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146
AUSTRALIA AND THE EMPIRE

practices which have been tried under the guise of "English liberty" in the colonies and elsewhere. Lest Sir Charles Gavan Duffy should deceive himself, as well as other people, as to the true meaning of the prominence of the Irish Celts in Colonial Legislatures and Cabinets, Municipal Councils and Road Boards, I will presume to imitate his favourite practice, and relate a little anecdote, the only artistic drawback to which is that it happens to be true.

One day, walking through the great Melbourne legal hive, appropriately called Temple Court, I came upon two barrister friends—one a Celt, the other an Anglo-Saxon. The former had just been returned for some "up-country" constituency, but, as he well knew and, to do him justice, would have been the first to admit, he was in intellectual grasp or political capacity altogether the inferior of the Englishman, who saw no prospect of adding the magic letters M.P. to his name.

"Why don't you," said the glowing young Irish colonist, "stand for some country constituency? You would be sure to be returned."

"Well," said the Anglo-Saxon slowly, with a quiet smile, "I am not an Irishman, and therefore the Irish wouldn't vote for me. I am an English-