Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/90

 were permitted to award any number of lashes for insolence, idleness, or other indefinite offences. As it was not lawful for a man to flog- his own assigned servants, he exchanged compliments with a neighbour. Considering the class of persons who were then frequently selected for magistrates in the colonies, it may easily be conceived to what brutal excesses such irresponsible authority led.

But year by year the civilising elements of society made way. At one time, in 1826, we find a dispensary opened: in the following year a great public meeting is held, with the sheriff in the chair, to petition the King and both Houses of Parliament for the civil rights of trial by jury, and a House of Assembly; and the next year a general post-office throughout the colony, and an Australian jockey club, are established. The editor of a newspaper is found guilty of libel, and two gentlemen fight a bloodless duel. A dispensary, a post-office, an action for libel, and a duel!—the banes and antidotes of civilised society.

The two last years of Governor Darling present events and contrasts still more remarkable.

A Legislative Council, being a step in advance of the Executive Council established by the charter of 1824, held its first meeting in 1829. This was the check against which Governor Macquarie so earnestly and naively protested. The council consisted of Archdeacon (the late Bishop) Broughton, who superseded Mr. Scott, the Commander of the Forces, the Chief Justice, Attorney-General, and Colonial Treasure*, Alexander M'Cleay, afterwards (at eighty years of age) the first speaker of the first Australian Legislative Assembly, and four members selected by the governor.

The proceedings of this council were secret, under an oath administered to that intent; and the governor had an absolute veto. The majority were officials, totally unacquainted with the colony; and, looking at the minority in which the nominees of the government were constantly found in the subsequent open Legislative Assembly, it is not extraordinary that this council gave no satisfaction to the colony. It must, however, be confessed, that in 1829 New South Wales did not possess the materials for representative institutions.

The first act of the council was to establish trial by jury in civil cases.

In the following year, on the 31st March, 1831, the first steam-boat in Australia was launched; two other steam-boats came into use within a few months. Close upon the steam-boat followed Dr. Lang, from Scotland, the first Australian agitator, a Presbyterian O'Connell, who, after professing and printing every shade of political opinions, has