Under his leadership the Irish church developed an "Hiberno-Roman" mission that was ultimately extended through Britain to the entire English-speaking world. But Cullen's biographers would argue that Duffy travestied Cullen and his church's complex and nuanced relationship to Irish nationalism.—perhaps as much as Cullen caricatured Duffy's separatism. Australia Emigration and new political career The cause of the Irish tenants, and indeed of Ireland generally, seemed to Duffy more hopeless than ever. Broken in health and spirit, he published in 1855 a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he had resolved to retire from parliament, as it was no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he had solicited their votes. To John Dillon he wrote that an Ireland where McKeogh typified patriotism and Cullen the church was an Ireland in which he could no longer live. In 1856 Duffy and his family emigrated to Australia. After being feted in Sydney and Melbourne, he settled in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. Duffy was followed to Melbourne by Margaret Callan. Her daughter was later to marry Duffy's eldest son by his first marriage, John Gavan Duffy. Duffy initially practised law in Melbourne, but a public appeal was soon 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). He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland. Duffy's Land Act Duffy stood on a platform of land reform. With the collapse of the Victorian Government's Haines Ministry, during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O'Shanassy, unexpectedly became Premier. Duffy was his deputy as well as 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's Protestant establishment was ill-prepared "to countenance so startling a novelty". Duffy's Land Act was passed in 1862. Like the Nicholson Act of 1860 which it modified, the Duffy Act provided, in specified areas, for new and extended pastoral leases. It was an effort to break the land-holding monopoly of the so-called "squatter" class. However, the bill had been amended into ineffectiveness by