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THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA
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As a loyal colonist I cannot close without expressing my personal weariness of—I should say, contempt for—the cheap claptrap attacks so constantly made on Great Britain—her people, her government, and her Empire. What other nation, since the world began, would have suffered to grow up, and have even fostered under her broad ægis, such a belt of self-governing republics scattered all round the habitable globe? Under whose beneficent Imperial sway but hers could we find men whose past record is of political incendiarism, if not public crime, who, on showing any disposition to hold the lamp of Civilisation in lieu of the torch of Anarchy, have been elevated to posts of supreme trust, and have had pension, place, and title showered upon them? Truly, this Victorian era of ours, at least so far as it is concerned with the great Empire of Queen Victoria, is an era of hitherto unknown toleration of every form of race, creed, and opinion. From this all-embracing, beneficent path, who would wish to return to the narrow, miry byways of the intolerant Past? Britain, and her self-governing dependencies, as well as the great nation across the Atlantic, sprung from her loins, all prayerfully desire that they may be able to keep the path of