News comes from Victoria that the Government of Mr. Francis
has secured the re-election of its members through the folly of the Roman Catholic Bishop, who issued at the last moment a pastoral to Roman Catholics admonishing them to vote against a Government which had promised a Secular Education Bill. Of course this raised up a tremendous " No-popery " cry in the colony, and though all the candidates who were opposing Mr. Francis and his Ministers were themselves Protestants, and had had the most power- ful popular support up to the moment of the issue of this pastoral, "whole factories and workshops changed sides" suddenly when Dr. Goold threw his veto on Mr. Francis into Mr. Francis's scale. So violent was the turn of the tide that some of the papers favourable to Mr. Duffy hint that the Bishop,—a recluse, who does not pretend to know the world,—was influenced by some person behind the scenes who foresaw and desired the sinister effect of this step on the fortunes of the party which
had just left power. But it is pressing the argument from design too far to assume that an admittedly bad player who spoils his own game must have been prompted by a malignant genius who fully understood it. Mr. Duffy, -who for a moment when at bay seems to have lost some- thing of his usual equanimity, has entirely recovered his temper, and in a great speech at Kyneton, which has not yet reached us, seems, according to the accounts of the rural press, to have out- done himself. He is a statesman who can afford to wait. His day is not past.
Previous page
