Part 01: G. W. Rusden letters, 1846-1900

recitation of the facts as I have strung them together, is concerned, I have thought that it was only just to myself and to my friends to furnish such facts. I shall content myself with sending some 3 I think, to Sydney, and merely shewing it to a friend or two here. I have no feeling of revenge in the matter, but one may vindicate oneself without indignation against others. Contempt is the strongest feeling I could entertain twoards any one in the matter. Some things occurred which I thought it unnecessary to allude to, but they not the less characterized the transaction :– such as making the sudden demand upon your brother on the eve of the opening of the new Parliament here & &. However I leave the documents to speak for themselves, and if they do not prove that Haines and a majority of his colleagues were

untruthful to the country and unjust to me, I am deceived in my estimate of their meaning. I did not, I may say, wish to act on the Civil Service Board, and indeed I have been not without suspicion that it was a trap set for me (on the idea that I should speak independently if I spoke at all) when I was so eagerly pressed to act upon the Board. I think it was a cowardly thing towards your brother to inform him a few days before the Parliament met, that they would not meet me again, and consequently that unless he yielded to their wiles he should have no Executive Council at all. They tried the same curt method with Grimes the Auditor General a week or two after but his office did not afford them occasion for such a coup-de-main, and more time was taken up, and before Grimes' defence was received Sir H Barkly arrived, and the matter was decided not as Haines wished.

I don't think a ministry has a right

to feel sore at the expression of any abstract opinions, and the opinions in the Rider were merely abstract, not personal. By the bye since these transactions took place it has occurred to me that Stawell might have been sore at the Grand Jury quotation from Sir J. Dowling, but my object was not to refer to the past at that date, but the future, when the political feelings of a ministry might be supposed more and more to influence their public conduct.

Let me say that your view of Haines' note in which he "wished to look upon the dispute as fully and amicably adjusted" quite agrees with mine as to his desire to obscure or forget the facts, but I think he and his colleagues would have had the right had I been so cutting, to feel the contempt for me which I now feel for them. If their imputations were true, I was unworthy of any public office, if false, they were unworthy of any public office or respect, it seems to me.

I can quite forgive them; as why should I not? for my present office is more congenial to my tastes, and in some seasons gives me more leisure :– but "the hand of Douglas was his own" and nothing but penitence on Marmion's part could have brought the two together in friendly guise.

Equally I thank you, and I admit that, so strong is self bias in all of us, I am possibly, perhaps probably wrong in my views.

However I must not bore you with an essay. I don't wonder at your preferring the Ceylon route, for the Mauritius is an out of the way unpopular place, and when you can have such a party of your own as you describe you will be independent of all other passengers unless they should be pleasing people.

John King has returned to his station. Essington and Arthur are well, Mrs Arthur having a few days ago presented another

some to her spouse. Mr Linnett, about whom you enquire, left this Colony to settle in Adelaide as Telegraph correspondent to different journals. He is probably correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, and if so you can ascertain in Sydney whatever you may wish to know about him. I will make enquiry if I should meet any of his friends before your arrival here, or otherwise in the meantime, if the above information is insufficient for you.

This is rather an incoherent letter, but you will not wonder at its being so when I tell you that it has been written in the House while Hon. members are discussing the Education Bill; –you may wonder perhaps that I do not pay more attention to