even in the most democratic communities, are wont to bestow upon themselves high-sounding titles, just as in England they raise one another to the Peerage. These two gentlemen were Mr.—now Sir—Henry Parkes, G.C.M.G., the present veteran Prime Minister of New South Wales, and the late Right Hon. William Bede Dalley—then plain Mr. Dalley, but who was to become the first Australian Member of the Privy Council—an unique distinction bestowed upon him for sending a Colonial contingent to the support of the British troops in the Soudan.
During the visit of Mr. Parkes and Mr. Dalley to England, from the autumn of 1861 to the summer of 1862, the former, it seems, contributed a slender series of monthly letters to the columns of the Sydney Morning Herald,[1] Quite apart from any mere literary merit, these letters have a distinct sociological value as a record of the fresh impressions made on the mind of a colonial politician of exceptional ability, on his return, after an absence of twenty years, to his native land. It is perhaps due to the English reader that a few preliminary remarks should be made concerning the
- ↑ A selection of these Letters was published by Messrs. Macmillan in London under the title Australian Views of England.
