V.
ANTIPODEAN GRATITUDE.”

DURING the period of the Exhibition, and owing to my having to deal officially on behalf of the colonies for the international shows to be held in Sydney and Melbourne in the following year, I had naturally to come in close contact with many of the leading men of that period. For a time it was very doubtful whether we could get the assistance of the European Powers. They all kept aloof; and, in spite of the willingness of my friend, Leon Say, the Parliament positively vetoed the proposal made to vote money and send a French transport with the exhibits. Our opponent was the all-powerful Gambetta, leader of the Opposition and Chairman of the Budget. He was the sole arbiter of the destiny of our Exhibitions, and, they said, could not be moved.

We were in despair, when a vote of 5,000,000 francs was proposed for a cable from Noumea to Cape Sandy. The discussion on that matter was a long and bitter one; I happened to be in the House at the time. Gambetta fought hard against the vote. The discussion having been adjourned, I sought an interview with the great man, and complimenting him on his brilliant speech and on his evident omniscience, I pointed out to him that owing to the position of the Middleton Shoal lying in the way of the proposed cable, its being placed there was a practical impossibility. Gambetta at once sent for charts of New Caledonia and the eastern coast of Australia, saw the truth of my statement, grasped my hand, and acknowledged that I had furnished him with an irrefutable argument to win his case.

On the spur of the moment he asked me what he could do in return. The Exhibition vote, of course, was my object. Gambetta went carefully and minutely into the matter—inquired into the trade, past, present, and future, between Australia and France—and being fully aware of the importance of a thorough representation, gave me a short note for the Minister of Commerce, asking him to move to have the £10,000 credit put again on the Budget. It was one of M. Gambetta’s best speeches when he recanted all he had said on a previous occasion against the project, carried the vote, the granting of a transport, and the appointment of a Commission; and, since then, the subsidy of the Messageries and the establishment of branches of the Comptoir d’Escompte in Melbourne and Sydney. To this small matter great results are due—another instance of the truth of the old fable of the mouse and the caged lion.

I cannot say that on my return to Australia I found much gratitude for “services rendered.” During my passage back some good friends (?) had managed to throw cold water down my back, and on my arrival in Sydney I found all the offices in connection with the Exhibition filled.

Even the secretaryship of the Agricultural Society was taken from me. After seventeen years of hard work to make it what it was, I was politely requested to resign. I had to accept the commissionership of New Caledonia to secure an official entrée to an Exhibition which I conceived from the first, and, without boast can say, carried out in all its details up to its—failure!—for, after all, it was a great financial failure, like all such undertakings when carried out by Government, tied up in red tape, and bungled by committees.

What I say of the Sydney I repeat as regards the Melbourne show. Ten years have made Victoria older, but not wiser. The issue of the Centennial bears out my statement.

To say that I did not feel keenly the ingratitude of New South Wales would be an untruth. I did feel it most bitterly; and although I had looked upon that colony as my home, so bitterly did I feel the treatment that I made up my mind for evermore to leave it. But in so doing I also resolved that, cost what it might, I would prove practically the statement I had made, that Exhibitions well managed could not possibly show a loss. I accordingly waited until the close of the Melbourne Exhibition to start one in Adelaide, Perth, Christchurch, and at last one on a gigantic scale in Calcutta—larger than even that of Sydney or Melbourne.

I will quote Lord Ripon’s words at the closing ceremony of that great Indian Exhibition:—