A REMARKABLE CAREER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 209, 6 April 1877, Page 15

A REMARKABLE CAREER.

Mb. John Pope Hennessy (writes the London correspondent of the Liverpool 'Mercury') who is going out to Hong Kong as governor with a salary of £5000 a year, has had a very remarkable career. In 1859, when he was clerk in a Government Office in Whitehall, about 25 years of age, and with about i>Bo a year stipend, he was selected by Cardinal Wiseman to stand for King's County at the general election which the then Lord Derby had suddenly announced. The young clerk went down, found three Liberals in the field, saw that he was sure to win, telegraphed to London on the eve of the election to resign his appointment, and was returned at the head of the poll. He thus found himself, like Phineas Finn, an M.P. at five-and-twenty, with something less than Phineas Finn's income to live upon. He spoke frequently in the House, and experienced none of that nervousness endured by Mr. Trollope's hero. He tried his hand at literature, and wrote, I believe, for a time in the ' Athenroum.' But letters were not his forte, and they would not have kept the wolf from the door. He had sufficient self-confi-dence to inspire confidence in others, and there were many who believed in Em sufficiently to aid him when supplies ran short. So things went on, and for six years Mr. Hennessy contrived to keep his head above water, and to make a certain amount of reputation for himself in the House. In 1865 there was a general election, and Mr. Hennessy had to go back to his constituents. Alas, he lost hia election by seven votes. Things looked very gloomy indeed at this time for the young politician. He was out in the cold, and his political friends seemed to be farther from office than they were six years before, for the country had increased Lord Palmerston'a majority from 13 to over 70. But we all know what happened — how the veteran premier died, how the Adullamites broke up the Russell-Gladstone Ministry, and how the third Derby-Disraeli Ministry was formed. One of the first things it did was to give Mr. Hennessy the governorship of Labuan. There he settled for a while and married. Then he was promoted to the West Coast of Africa, then the Leeward Islands, and now goeg to Hong Kong. Everything has seemed to tell in his favour. His very mistakes have turned out to his advantage, and because he did not get on in Barbadoes with .£4OOO a year, he is sent to China with £5000. This success is the more remarkable, because Mr. Hennessy suffers from what is usually a hindrance to promotion, the fact that he is a Eoman Catholic of ultramontane views.