part of that clothing, then
flog him worse than any dog! And thus, whilst severed from all
kindness and all love, whilst the stern harsh voice of his
task-master is grating in incessant jars within his ear, take all
rest out of his flesh, and plant the thorn; take all feeling out of
his heart, and leave the withered core; take all peace out of his
conscience, and leave the worm of remorse; and then let any one come
and dare to tell me that the man is happy because he has bread and
meat. Is it not here, if ever there was such a case, where the taste
of bread is a taste of misery, and where to feed and prolong life is
to feed and lengthen our sorrow? And in pondering these things, do
not those strong words of Sacred Scripture bring down their load of
truth in heavy trouble to our thoughts, that, 'Their bread is
loathsome to their eye, and their meat unto their soul.'"

But the bright side of the story of the Irish in Australia and New
Zealand unfolds in the subsequent years. The men who had been sent
forth from Erin with the brand of the convict upon them became the
founders of a new commonwealth. To them were joined the numerous
voluntary settlers who, attracted by the natural resources of the
island-continent and especially by the gold discoveries of the
fifties, migrated to Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales. When
in 1858 William E. Gladstone sought to establish a new colony to be
known as North Australia, he opened a fresh field for Irish
initiative. As a result of his effort there stands today, on a
terrace overlooking Port Curtis, the city of Gladstone, the terminal
of the Australian railway system. It was here, according to Cardinal
Moran, that in 1606, Mass was first celebrated in Australia, when the
Spaniards sought shelter in the "Harbor of the Holy Cross." The first
government resident at Gladstone was Sir Maurice Charles O'Connell, a
relative of the great Liberator; he was four times acting-governor of
Queensland.

The list of Irish pioneer settlers in Australasia is a lengthy one.
The name of Thomas Poynton stands out prominently. He was a New
Zealand pioneer who had married an Irish girl in Sydney. The devotion
of Poynton and his wife to the faith of their fathers is evidenced by
the fact that he several times made the long journey from his home to
Sydney to interest the church authorities in the wants of the New
Zealand Irish Catholics, and that she twice made the same arduous
trip to have her ch