But in colonial public life, where he had to encounter greater
competition and sharper criticism than in his own smaller Irish world,
he lay under some disadvantages. Like his friend and occasional
opponent, Fawkner, he had an ungainly gait and rather mannerless
address; he had, too, a rich Clonmel brogue, and certainly he had not
enjoyed an education at all commensurate with his great natural
endowments. But, all defects notwithstanding, he steadily rose in
political estimation, and for the simple reason that his views of public
affairs were characteristic of the statesman more perhaps than those of
any others associated with him.
He first entered public life in 1851, as one of the three
representatives for Melbourne in Victoria's first Parliament. But,
doubtful perhaps, with his anti-radical temperament as to the fickleness
of large town populations, as well, possibly, as the dread of his
liability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changed
the venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat was
always secure, until, in his advancing years, he condescended to the
less laborious sphere of the Upper House.
I saw much of O'Shanassy at the outset of Victorian legislation, when he
and I, in 1851-3, sat together as colleagues for Melbourne in the single
chamber of that inaugurative time, and afterwards when we were
associated in the Goldfields Commission, 1854-5.
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