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quality and brand, "designed for colonial exportation." I remember hearing Mr. Higinbotham, then in the full tide of his amazing popularity, refer to the two orders of knighthood reserved for colonists in terms of intense bitterness. Like Dr. Johnson when questioned by Boswell as to his views on Voltaire and Rousseau, Mr. Higinbotham declared of these knighthoods that it was "impossible to discriminate their relative baseness." He had heard that Mr. Francis had been offered a title, but he trusted that his old political ally, "the rough virtues of whose very fine and manly character" he declared he warmly admired, would never descend to the degradation of accepting such an invidious distinction. The result of this speech was that Mr. Francis never did accept a title; and Mr. Higinbotham himself has of course consistently declined it. But with these two exceptions—to which must now be added that of Mr. Higinbotham's most promising disciple, Mr. Alfred Deakin, the youthful Chief Secretary of Victoria—I can recall no other public man in Australasia who has not cheerfully accepted a K. C. M. G.-ship, though several have declined the mere C. M. G. as being beneath their own opinion of their deserts. On the whole, then, this recent system of recognising the merits of distinguished colonists would seem to