and presented to him by his admirers in order to give him a qualification either for the Upper or Lower House of the Legislature. So great was the popular enthusiasm that the diggers at Ballarat pledged themselves to contribute an ounce of gold apiece to the presentation fund. He was elected to the first Parliament of Victoria for Villiers and Heytesbury, his experience of the House of Commons enabling him to aid materially in introducing the practice of that body into the new Assembly. In the first session he was chairman of a select committee on a federal union of the colonies, whose labours gave the original impulse to Mr. Darcy MᶜGee in Canada some years later in founding the new Dominion; and he passed, against the determined resistance of the Government, the first Act of Parliament of Victoria, being one abolishing the property qualification for the popular branch of the Legislature. In the same session (March, 1857) he became Commissioner of Public Works and chairman of the Central Road Board in the second responsible Government, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) O'Shanassy being Chief Secretary and Premier. This administration only lasted till April 29th, but in March 1858 Mr. O'Shanassy resumed office, with Mr. Duffy as Minister of Lands. In about a year a dispute arose with Mr. O'Shanassy and some of his colleagues on the policy and management of the public estate, and Mr. Duffy resigned office in March 1859. On the defeat of the O'Shanassy Government in October of the same year, Mr. Nicholson, who succeeded him, offered Mr. Duffy and any one political friend he thought proper to select places in the new administration, but he declined to accept these terms unless a majority of the Cabinet were of his own way of thinking on the question of land law reform. In 1860, on the defeat of the Nicholson Government, a new administration was proposed by a coalition between Mr. Heales and Mr. Verdon with Mr. Brooke and Mr. Aspinall, of which Mr. Duffy was designed to be Premier; but as the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, refused to promise a dissolution in certain contingencies, Mr. Duffy declined to proceed, and the former Government were recalled. He returned to office, however, in Nov. 1861, as Minister of Lands in a coalition Ministry of which Mr. O'Shanassy, Mr. Haines, and Mr. Nicholson, each of whom had been Premier, were members, and next year he passed the well-known Land Act of 1862. He wrote a pamphlet illustrating the new Act, entitled "Guide to the Land Law," of which three publishers issued separate editions in the colony, and three others published separate editions in London. But the industrious classes whom the new law was intended to benefit hired themselves to the pastoral tenants to defeat it, and it was widely evaded, with the result of still further assisting the aggregation of large estates. On an attempt to amend the Act the Government were defeated, and Sir James MᶜCulloch came into office in June 1863, but Mr. Duffy, though displaced, supported all the land reforms proposed by the new administration. In 1864 he visited Europe for two years, and on his return speedily re-entered Parliament (in 1867) as member for Dalhousie. The Darling grant controversy was then commencing, and he took at the hustings the grounds which were finally adopted by nearly all parties—that the grant ought never to have been made, but that having been made, it ought to be sanctioned if sent in a separate Bill to the Council, on which it had been attempted to be forced in the shape of a tack to the Appropriation Bill. While a private member, Mr. Duffy was chairman of a Royal Commission which brought up a report that led to the experiment of payment of members being tried in Victoria, and chairman of a Royal Commission on the subject of federation of the Australian colonies, which recommended a permissive Act (which would enable two or more of the colonies to join together at their discretion), a principle which was applied to the Cape of Good Hope and the South African colonies by the Imperial Government. In 1869, the MᶜCulloch Government having been defeated on the motion of Mr. Robert Byrne, that gentleman invited Mr. Duffy to become Premier and form the new administration; but the state of parties at the moment made the time inopportune, and, after a lengthy consultation with political associates, he declined to proceed. In 1870 Mr. Duffy ventilated a project for
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