Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/207

 history of Great Britain—and because, too, Earl Grey has ventured, in his published defence of his policy, on a misrepresentation and suppression of the facts of the case, which may mislead those who are not prepared for the drudgery of searching for colonial truth in blue-books, despatches, and files of colonial debates.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION. While the transportation question was unsettled and the land question in hot dispute, a third question, that of a new constitution, with extended powers, from time to time occupied the attention of the politicians of the three colonies. South Australia looked forward anxiously to the enjoyment of representative institutions having, up to 1850 been ruled by a governor with an official and nominee council. Port Phillip desired separation from New South Wales, and a representative legislature of its own. The distance of Melbourne from Sydney was so great that it was found impossible, in a limited and dispersed population, to find gentlemen able and willing to abandon their pursuits and property to pass the legislative sessions in so distant a city as Sydney.

In New South Wales it was confidently expected that the new constitution would bestow rights similar to those enjoyed by the Canadians—that is to say, an executive responsible to the Legislative Council, with full control over their revenues and the disposal of the waste lands.

In 1847 Earl Grey prepared a scheme by which the district councils, which were held throughout the colony in equal hatred and contempt, were to form electoral colleges, and by double election return a representative assembly, while a second superior chamber was to be composed of nominees.

The publication in the colony of the despatch containing a sketch of this scheme, which looked in print like a chapter out of "Telemachus," was followed by such a manifestation of opposition, and by petitions so numerously signed, requesting that no change should be made in the constitution without the colonists being first permitted to express their opinion upon it, that the colonial minister withdrew his project.

In 1849 a committee of the Board of Trade, to whom Earl Grey entrusted the task, prepared a report suggesting a form of constitution to be bestowed on the three colonies. A bill for carrying into effect this report was introduced into, but not carried through the British Parliament. Under this bill the three colonies would have had the power of settling the land, and several other questions, by a sort of congress.