Emigration and Political Career
In 1856, despairing of the prospects for Irish independence, he resigned from the House of Commons and emigrated with his family to Australia. After being feted in Sydney and Melbourne, Duffy settled in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. In early colonial Victoria, Duffy, with his political and literary reputation, was an exotic and romantic figure, particularly for the colony's large Irish community.For this reason he was feared and hated by many in the English and Scottish Protestant establishment, especially when he indicated his intention of entering Victorian politics.
A public appeal was held to enable him to buy the freehold property necessary to stand for the colonial Parliament. He was immediately elected to the Legislative Assembly for Villiers and Heytesbury in the Western District in 1856. A Melbourne Punch cartoon depicted Duffy entering Parliament as a bog Irishman carrying a shillelagh atop the parliamentary benches (Punch, 4 December 1856, p. 141. Also see O'Brien, Shenangians, p. xi.). He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland.
With the collapse of the Victorian Government's Haines Ministry, during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O'Shanassy, unexpectedly became Premier and Duffy his second-in-charge. Duffy was Commissioner for Public Works, President of the Board of Land and Works, and Commissioner for Crown Lands and Survey. Irish Catholics serving as Cabinet Ministers was hitherto unknown in the British Empire and the Melbourne-based Protestants 'were not prepared to counternance so startling a novelty.'(McCaughey, Victoria's Colonial Governors,p. 75; also O'Brien) In 1858-59, Melbourne Punch cartoons linked Duffy and O'Shanassy with images of the French Revolution in an attempt to undermine their Ministry. One famous Punch image, 'Citizens John and Charles', depicted the pair as French revolutionaries holding the skull and cross bone flag of the so-called 'Victorian Republic'. (Punch, 7 January 1859, p. 5; also see O'Brien) The O'Shanassy Ministry was defeated at the 1859 election and a new government formed. (O'Brien)
Like other radicals, Duffy's main priority was to unlock the colony's lands from the grip of the squatter class, but his 1862 lands bill was amended into ineffectiveness by the Legislative Council. The historian Don Garden writes: "Unfortunately Duffy's dreams were on a higher plane than his practical skills as a legislator and the morals of those opposed to him."
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