3-058 (Text)

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 being in a figurative humour, he might endeavour to make some of the proposed nobility pass before the stage of our imagination, as the ghost of Banquo walked along in the vision of Macbeth, so that we might have a fair view of these harlequin aristocrats (laughter), these Botany Bay magnificos (laughter), these Australian mandarins. (Roars of laughter.) Let them walk across the stage in all the pomp and circumstances of hereditary titles. First, then, in the procession stalks the hoary Wentworth. But he could not imagine that to such a head the strawberry leaves would add any honour. (Cheers.) Next came the native aristocrat Mr. James Macarthur, he would he supposed, aspire to the coronet of an earl, he would call him the Earl of Camden, and he suggests for his coat of arms a field vert, the heraldic term for green - (great cheers and laughter) - and emblazoned on this field should be a rum keg of a New South Wales order of chivalry. There was also the colonial starred Terence Aubrey Murray, with more crosses and orders - not perhaps orders of merit - than a state of mandarinhood, (Loud laughter.) Another friend who claimed a colonial title was George Robert Nichols, the hereditary Grand Chancellor of all the Australias. (Roars of laughter.) Behold him in the serene and moody dignity of that portrait of Rodias that smiled on us in all the public-house parlours - (loud laughter) - the gentleman who took Mr. Lowe to task for altering his opinions this conqueror in the lists of jaw, and the victor in the realms of gab. It might be well to ridicule the doings of such a clique, but their doings merited burning indignation - yet, to speak seriously of such a project would too much resemble the Irishman's kicking at nothing, it wrenched one horribly. (Laughter.) But, though their weakness was ridiculous, he could assure them that these pigmies might do a great deal of mischief. They would bring contempt on a country whose interest he was sure they all had at heart, until even the poor Irishman in the Streets of Dublin would fling his jibe at the Botany Bay aristocrats. In fact, he was puzzled how to classify them. They could not aspire to the miserable and effete dignity of the grandees of Spain.  (Laughter.) They had antiquity of birth, but these he would defy any naturalist properly to classify them. But perhaps it was only a specimen of the remarkable contrariety that existed at the Antipodes. Here they all knew the common water mole was transformed into the duck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, he supposed they were to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy.