Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/298

 Earl of Derby) conferred parliamentary institutions on Australia by his Constitution Act (5 and 6 Vict. cap. 76), under which the partially elective legislative council of New South Wales was created. When the writs were issued for this, the first election in Australia, ‘a new pulse beat in the veins of the people. … That which Wentworth had worked for, after a quarter of a century had come upon the land. His name was on every tongue’ . Wentworth and Bland were returned by an overwhelming majority for Sydney; the former's brother, Major D'Arcy Wentworth, was elected for a country borough. Richard Windeyer [q. v.], known to be friendly to Wentworth's views, was also returned. The council assembled on 1 Aug. 1843, and proceeded to elect a speaker. Even then there were limits to Wentworth's supremacy, and his old antagonist, Alexander Macleay, then in his seventy-seventh year, was elected to the chair. When it was moved that a ‘humble address’ should be presented to the governor, Wentworth expunged the word ‘humble.’ He at once attempted to remedy the financial evils of the time by a bill to regulate the rate of interest and a lien on wool bill; while he and Windeyer vigorously assailed the schedules under which the salaries of imperial officials and the cost of convict establishments were guaranteed. Sir George Gipps looked in vain among his nominees for a debater capable of meeting those eloquent reformers. Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) [q. v.] had newly arrived in the colony, and Gipps had already discussed with him in private the probable working of the new legislative machine. Having completely alienated Wentworth by the overthrow of his land claims in New Zealand, Gipps decided to nominate Lowe for the seat in the council which he had originally reserved for the ‘Australian patriot.’ In a few months Lowe, finding that the governor expected the non-official nominees to support his officials and to vote against the popular representatives on every occasion, right or wrong, resigned his seat. He was shortly afterwards elected for St. Vincent and Auckland, and joined Wentworth and Windeyer in the leadership of the opposition.

Wentworth by this time had embarked very largely in pastoral pursuits, and had become the acknowledged leader of the squatter party, among whom were many of the old imperial officials who had settled in the colony. The ‘Pastoral Association’ was formed with Wentworth at its head, and the Hon. Francis Scott (brother of Lord Polwarth) as its paid agent in the House of Commons. At first Lowe supported Wentworth and the squatters, and at a public banquet given by the Pastoral Association to Wentworth in the hall of Sydney College, 26 Jan. 1846, described him as ‘the great son of the soil.’ Subsequently Lowe declared that ‘the suppliants had become masters,’ and he and Wentworth fell into bitter conflict over the land question and the policy of transportation.

It has been the almost universal verdict of colonial writers that, with advancing years and increasing wealth, Wentworth deserted his early political convictions. This he himself denied. He asserted that his guiding political aim throughout life was to form a self-governing British state in Australasia, based on the British constitution, which, he declared, recognised all forms of personal and class distinction compatible with individual freedom and popular rights. Democracy he disclaimed and detested as based on an utterly false theory—that of human equality. When in his earlier years he so vehemently denounced all ‘set over him in authority,’ it was never on democratic grounds. He may have found it necessary or expedient to work with English liberals or colonial radicals; but he was no radical himself. His aim was to secure self-government for his native land, ‘to rid it of red-tape,’ and at the same time to form a self-governing, anti-democratic community with an Australian territorial upper class corresponding to the English landed gentry, whom he regarded as the peculiar glory of the mother-land. Nor was Wentworth conscious of any inconsistency between his early philippics on behalf of liberty and his later attempt to create for himself and others large landed estates. When twitted by a friend for his bold attempt to appropriate almost the whole of New Zealand, he is said to have replied, ‘Ralegh and Strafford, my two favourite English heroes, would have done precisely the same.’ He was never convinced by the arguments in favour of free trade, but, like the English country gentleman of Peel's time, remained to the end a staunch protectionist. With characteristic courage, in face of the rising flood of philanthropic and humanitarian sentiment on both sides, he upheld the system of sending out ship-loads of British criminals to Australia, and of utilising them as ‘assigned servants.’

At the general election of 1848 Wentworth and Bland were suddenly confronted in Sydney with the opposition of Robert Lowe, who, without his consent, was nominated at the last moment for the metropolitan constituency by the ‘anti-transporta-