# The Irish in Australia/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV.
IRISH-AUSTRALIAN CHARACTERISTICS.
THE COLONIES A FAIR AND OPEN FIELD—GOOD RESULTS OF HONOURABLE COMPETITION—HOW IRISHMEN COME TO THE FRONT—TESTIMONY OF DION BOUCICAULT—REPRESENTATIVE IRISHMEN AT THE INDIAN AND COLONIAL EXHIBITION—THEIR WELCOME TO DUBLIN—SPEECH OF MR. T. D. SULLIVAN, M.P., LORD MAYOR—JOINT ALLEGIANCE OF IRISH-AUSTRALIANS TO THEIR NATIVE AND ADOPTED LANDS—WHAT SMITH O'BRIEN THOUGHT OF IT—LOCAL AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES—IRISHMEN PECULIARLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS—THEIR HARMONIOUS RELATIONS WITH PEOPLE OF OTHER NATIONALITIES—LADY WILDE ON THE COMING GREATNESS OF THE AUSTRALIAN IRISH—THE FUTURE OF THE COLONIES.
Mr. Dion Boucicault, the world-renowned reformer and delineator of the Irish character on the modern stage, in one of the many speeches he recently made in the principal cities of the colonies in response to addresses of welcome, pithily summarised the success of the Irish in Australia in a sentence, "They get a chance here." That is to say, our countrymen find in the colonies a fair and open field for the exercise of their abilities and their industry; their onward march is not obstructed by racial or religious prejudices; they are not unfairly or unjustly handicapped in the race with men of other nationalities; and thus, in the honourable competition for colonial honours in various departments of life, they always secure a goodly share of the prizes and distinctions in which young countries are proverbially fruitful. "I asked myself," said Mr. Boucicault, at a picnic given in his honour at Sydney, "as I came here and saw around me ​the evidences of such prosperity—such level prosperity, such level comfort; no great heapings of wealth, but then no great poverty—I asked what share Irishmen could fairly claim in the development of this great continent, in the discovery of its hidden wealth, in the enterprises of commerce, and in maintaining its peace and prosperity; and I found on inquiry that foremost amongst the explorers who opened up the central regions of Australia were Irishmen—I found that many of the wisest heads and most respected members of the legislative assemblies were Irishmen, that they were luminaries on the bench and leaders at the bar, and that men for places of trust and positions of responsibility were chosen from the ranks of the Irish. These Irishmen—why do they come here? They come from our native country. And in what spirit do they leave it? They leave it because they have no home in the land of their birth, because they have no scope for the exercise of their mental and physical energies. And it is for a home and a livelihood that they cross the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, and enter the Heads of Sydney, where they see, as though inscribed above their rocky portals, the words, 'Ye who enter leave despair behind.' They were poor and unappreciated at home; but they come here, and what is the result? They prove themselves to be most valuable citizens—good, loyal, hard-working members of your great progressive communities."
These reflections of a shrewd and much-travelled observer received ample corroboration at the recent Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, in which Irish art and industry in the colonies formed no inconsiderable portion of a brilliant and effective display, and at which representative Irishmen from the various divisions of the colonial empire ​attended officially on behalf of their respective states. In welcoming to Ireland a large contingent of these colonial visitors, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P., Lord Mayor of Dublin, referred to the many reasons that actuated the Irish race at home in giving the heartiest of greetings to their colonial guests. "We know," he said, "that crowds of our expatriated countrymen have found freedom and happiness in these distant lands. Our exiled people have been kindly and well received in these countries, and I am proud to-night to hear it said that they have given good and honourable services in the lands where they have made their homes. Yes, gentlemen, they form a large portion of the working population of these countries, and have formed no inconsiderable portion of the brain and intellect that have helped to make these countries free and great and prosperous. We have here to-night amongst our visitors Irishmen who have rendered good service in these countries, and who have won distinction there. We are glad to know and to hear from themselves that they do not forget, and that they do not ignore, the little island of their birth. Gentlemen, it befits a man, whatever his nationality, to remember his own country, and to call it by its own name, not to ignore it, not to seem to think that no such geographical entity exists on the face of the earth. You are citizens of the British Empire, subjects of the British Crown, but, I ask you, are you not proud to be self-governing communities? Gentlemen, your connection with the British Empire is a link of love and affection; that is the bond which unites you to the Crown, and to the Empire of which you form a part. The bond is not one of force, not one of compulsion, but it is one of good-will, and the good-will is there because you get fair-play, fair treatment, and freedom to develop the resources of ​your own country according to the power within yourselves. May such be the lot of every portion of the British Empire. May we see the day when it can truly be said that no portion of the Empire is held within its bounds by any other tie but the tie of good-will and affection. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, in many of the dark and troubled periods through which we have passed in Ireland, our sufferings would have been far harder, were it not for the large and abundant gifts that were poured in upon us in our day of distress with generous hands by our kindred and sympathisers, and friends abroad. From Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, and from the great free republic of America, have come to this country generous gifts, and largely have they come from our own people—from the sons and daughters of exiled Irishmen."
One of the chief characteristics of the Irish in Australia is felicitously indicated in the foregoing remarks by the Lord Mayor of Dublin—the remarkable manner in which they have succeeded in rendering full and satisfactory allegiance to the land of their adoption and all its local institutions, whilst never forgetting the filial loyalty they owed to the land of their fathers and all its cherished traditions. Whilst bravely doing their part in building up new states in faraway lands, founding fresh cities, taming the wild bush, and developing all the natural resources of the fifth division of the globe, they have at the same time religiously preserved a deep and abiding interest in all that pertained to the old land of their affections, in every national movement, in every patriotic undertaking, in every successive advance towards the goal of legislative freedom. If any proof of this assertion were wanting, it is abundantly sup})lied by the active and continuous interest that has been manifested by the Irish race throughout the colonies in the present national ​movement ever since the first day of its inception, and by the thousands of pounds that have been remitted from time to time in support of that movement to the parent National League in Dublin by its scores of colonial children. When Mr. J. E. Redmond, M.P. and Mr. W. H. K. Redmond, M.P., visited the colonies a few years ago, as the delegated representatives of the Irish National League, they were everywhere received with a generous welcome and a rousing enthusiasm, that were the most eloquent of testimonies to the depth and the strength of the sympathy and the affection, subsisting between the Irish in Australia and their brethren in the old land. The recent intercolonial tour of the Earl and the Countess of Aberdeen affords another evidence of the solidarity of the race. The knowledge that Lord Aberdeen was the first Irish Viceroy, for many long years, who had honestly striven to rule Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, secured him a princely reception at the hands of grateful Irish-Australians in all the colonial cities that were visited by the Countess and himself. The moment a patriotic note is sounded in the home country, it immediately finds a responsive echo in the hearts and deeds of the Irish in Australia showing how thorough is the sympathy, and how magnetic the influence, that bind together the "sea-divided Gael." The same fraternal feeling finds expression in the loving conservatism which has led to so many distinctively Irish customs and festivals being transplanted to the antipodes, and taking deep and lasting root in the soil. This striking characteristic of colonial Irishmen—this measure of equal justice meted out to the land of their birth and the land of their adoption—did not escape the notice of Smith O'Brien during his tour in Victoria after his recall from a five years' exile. "It has caused me intense ​satisfaction," said the leader of '48, "to find that in this colony the Irish have distinguished themselves by their industry, intelligence, enterprise, and good conduct, as well as that their exertions have for the most part been rewarded with success; but the satisfaction is greatly enhanced when I perceive that they retain in this hemisphere those features of the national character—those noble impulses, those generous emotions, those genial susceptibilities—which I have been elsewhere accustomed with loving pride to extol as the attributes of our race."
A second conspicuous feature in the character of the typical Irish-Australian is the remarkable facility, and the pronounced success, with which he has adapted himself to the administration of municipal and parliamentary forms of government in these newly-created states. Coming from a country in which the fewest possible governing privileges are grudgingly granted to the people, the signal all-round ability displayed by the Irish settlers in Australasia, in the work of both local and general government, is little less than marvellous, considering the previous absence of any adequate training for such positions of authority and responsibility. They seem to possess an intuitive acquaintance with the rules and forms of popular government, and a ready tact by which this invaluable knowledge becomes easily translated into action for the benefit of their fellow citizens. Special references have been made in preceding pages to the number of Irish-Australians who have distinguished themselves in the parliamentary arena, but it must not be forgotten that there are hundreds of their brother Celts all over the colonies doing equally good and useful work on a less lofty platform as mayors, presidents and councillors of cities, towns and shires. Many a business Irishman in Australian ​centres works hard all day for himself and his family, and gives his evenings to the service of the community that has called him to a foremost place in its Town Hall; and many an Irish farmer in thinly-settled districts travels twelve or fifteen miles at periodical intervals to take his seat in the shire council, of which he is an elected member. Facts like these are the strongest possible condemnation of the traditional policy, which has so long and so unwisely refused to Irishmen in their own native land, those legislative and municipal rights, which they have proved themselves fully competent to exercise in all other English-speaking dominions. As Sir Charles Gavan Duffy once told a Melbourne audience, "the history of the Irish race in Australia was one they might fairly be proud of. They exercised a large influence in public affairs, and he challenged any man to say it was not a beneficial and a salutary one. Every enlargement of Australian liberty had them for zealous friends; every enemy of Australian rights had them for uncompromising antagonists."
One further characteristic of the Irish in Australia must not be overlooked, and that is the general good-will, the prevailing amity of their social relations with their fellow-citizens of other nationalities. It is unfortunately true that, in times of exceptional political excitement, it is possible for unscrupulous agitators to raise and profit by an anti-Irish or anti-Catholic cry, but, viewing the colonies in their normal condition, the harmony that subsists between the inhabitants of Irish birth or parentage and the other component parts of the population, is one of the most noticeable and gratifying features of Australian life. In every colonial centre, Irishmen are found associated on the most amicable terms with their fellow-citizens of other nationalities in the management of public and charitable institutions, and in ​every movement devised for the furtherance of the common weal. Not a few Irish-Catholic charities in the principal Australasian cities number Protestant ladies and gentlemen amongst their most generous patrons and subscribers. This well-known and pleasing fact was once felicitously referred to by Mr. Dalley, in addressing a Sydney audience, as "a proof of their enjoyment of a civilisation which made the efforts of the intolerant and the fanatical mere exhibitions of impotent malignity, which could have no effect whatever upon the actions of the good and the gentle."
Lady Wilde ("Speranza"), writing a few years ago in a London magazine, prophesied that "the Australian Irish will in time be as powerful a people as their American kindred," and expressed her conviction that "the chances of wealth are even greater in Australia" than in the republic of the west. The famed poetess of the Young Ireland era went further, and anticipated a day when the Australian Irish would "return to green Erin and buy up the estates of the pauperised landlords." This would certainly be a sensational dramatic revenge—the evicted coming back with well-filled purses to enter into possession of the properties of the once harsh but now humble evictors—but it is by no means beyond the range of probability, in view of the remarkable rapidity with which large fortunes have been accumulated in Australia by Irishmen who landed there with nothing to bless themselves with, save the clothes on their backs and the few shillings in their dilapidated pockets.
When it is remembered that the marvellous progress detailed in the foregoing pages, to which Irish brains, courage, and enterprise contributed so much, has taken place within the lifetime of a single generation, no one will be surprised at the glowing anticipations in which many writers ​have indulged, regarding what the future has in store for these great southern hinds. There is, it must needs be admitted, a substantial foundation on which the prophet is at liberty to build. Abounding in vast and still undeveloped resources, possessing large areas of unoccupied territory, blessed with many safe and commodious harbours, and enjoying the freest of free constitutions, there is nothing to prevent the Australian colonies becoming, at no distant date, a second America, a national safety-valve, a home for millions. Manhood suffrage is the almost universal law, and no restriction whatever is placed, nor would it be tolerated for an instant, on the free and untrammelled exercise of the franchise. Practically, every man who can sign his name, and is not suffering under any legal disability, has a potential voice in the making of the laws by which he is governed. It is to the operation of this grand principle, that the Irishmen of the antipodes have been enabled to exert their due influence on the conduct of public affairs; to send, as representatives to their local parliaments, men of ability chosen from their own ranks; and, on occasions, by the weight of their united sentiment and generous indignation, have succeeded in keeping off the colonial statute-book some of those legislative enactments that have been productive of lamentable evils in the land of their birth. The Celtic element of the Australian population has, in fine, proved a valuable factor in the work of building up new states, and founding free, intelligent and enlightened communities beneath the Southern Cross.