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his absence from the reception at Sydney, and proposing a task which he believed to be the highest which an Australian statesman could undertake. Australian reformers, he said, regarded my arrival as an event of the deepest interest, as leading towards the end to which all these noble Colonies were tending—their entire freedom and independence. He believed it to be equally the interest of the Colonies and of the mother-country that this predestined end should be speedily realised. He held it to be equally a law of nature and an ordinance of God that full-grown communities, such as these Australian Colonies had become, should be self-governed, free, and independent. He loved his native country and deeply honoured the Queen, but his first duty was to the country in which he lived. Though he regretted as a Sydney man that I had not taken up my abode in the older colony, as an Australian he could not but rejoice that I had determined to settle in Victoria, for it was there the public battle would be fought and the victory won. I replied that I might demur to so abrupt a demand of a new-comer to stand and deliver his opinions on so grave a public interest, but as I had always believed that frankness like honesty was the best policy in the end, I would answer him at once. I did not think the course he recommended was a wise one. It was doubtless no more the destiny of Australia to remain for ever what it is than it had been the destiny of England to send subsidies for ever to the Cæsars, or of the American colonies to continue to the end little quarrelsome communities rivalling and hating each other. But the practical question was whether it was proper to ripen by public agitation or other artificial methods the natural growth of events to this end. You, I said, if I understand you, think it is; I think decidedly not. We have just attained constitutions which give the people of this country sovereign power over their own soil, their own laws, and their own institutions. Let us grow accustomed to the practice of self-government, and demonstrate our fitness for it by wise laws, wisely administered, and by a scrupulous respect for the principles of justice and liberty. Our duty at present, it seems to me, is to employ and improve the powers we possess. Let our new state, when it comes, be a man, not a blustering boy, impatient for the toga virilis.