of the democratic legislation of late
years, and from out back came the overwhelming vote in favour of
Australian as Imperial Federation.

The name Royal Hotel is as familiar as that of the Railway Hotel, and
passes unnoticed and ungrowled at, even by bush republicans. The Royal
Hotel at Bourke was kept by an Irishman, one O'Donohoo, who was Union to
the backbone, loudly in favour of "Australia for the Australians," and,
of course, against even the democratic New South Wales Government of the
time. He went round town all one St Patrick's morning with a bunch
of green ribbon fastened to his coat-tail with a large fish-hook, and
wasn't aware of the fact till he sat down on the point of it. But that's
got nothing to do with it.

The Imperial Hotel at Bourke was unpopular from the first. It was said
that the very existence of the house was the result of a swindle. It had
been built with money borrowed on certain allotments in the centre
of the town and on the understanding that it should be built on the
mortgaged land, whereas it was erected on a free allotment. Which fact
was discovered, greatly to its surprise, by the building society when it
came to foreclose on the allotments some years later. While the building
was being erected the Bourke people understood, in a vague way, that it
was to be a convent (perhaps the building society thought so, too), and
when certain ornaments in brick and cement in the shape of a bishop's
mitre were placed over the corners of the walls the question seemed
decided. But when the place was finished a bar was fitted up, and up
went the sign, to the disgust of the other publicans, who didn't know a
licence had been taken out--for licensing didn't go by local option in
those days. It was rumoured that the place belonged to, and the whole
business was engineered by, a priest. And priests are men of the world.

The Imperial Hotel was patronized by the pastoralists, the civil
servants, the bank manager and clerks--all the scrub aristocracy; it was
the headquarters of the Pastoralists' Union in Bourke; a barracks for
blacklegs brought up from Sydney to take the place of Union shearers
on strike; and the new Governor, on his inevitable visit to Bourke, was
banqueted at the Imperial Hotel. The editor of the local "capitalistic
rag" stayed there; the pastoralists' member was elected mostly by dark
ways and means devised at the Imperial Hotel, and one of its managers
had stood as a dummy candidate