448 



The Review of Reviews. 



June 1, 19K. 



he denounced the arbitrary action of Governors and 

 Government officials, and more than any other man 

 brought about the establishment of representative 

 government in Australia. 



There are some still living, whu can tell of his 

 powerful eloquence, who remember his speech, ex- 

 tending over two days, in which he contended with 

 Sir George Gipps that the Maoris had the right to 

 dispose of their land to private individuals or com- 

 panies, without the 

 sanction of the 

 British Crown. 



Rusden, in his 

 " History of Aus- 

 tralia," wTiting 

 from personal 

 knowledge, said of 

 Went worth: — 

 " Whether in im- 

 p e t u o u s youth 

 flinging himself 

 against the ram 

 parts of autocra- 

 tic government, 

 whether contend- 

 ing for a laurel 

 crown, on the 

 banks of the Cam, 

 whether pouring 

 forth unreported 

 orations with an 

 eloquence which 

 his auditors re- 

 membered to their 

 dying days as sur- 

 passing that of 

 other men ; whe- 

 ther on less public 

 occasion in coarse 

 vituperation, 

 sometimes using 

 language which 

 only his enemies 

 could wish to cite ; 

 whether defying a 

 Governor, or 

 trampling on a re- 

 negade, or a slan- 

 derer ; at all times 

 he was the ob- 

 served of all ob- 

 servers, and seem- 

 ed able to rise in great emergencies, with greater 

 ease to the height of his argument." 



Wentworth's admirers may justly claim for him 

 the honour of having been the founder of Consti- 

 tutional Government in Australia, as he drafted the 

 Constitution for the New South Wales Pariiament. 

 All that he advocated was not embodied in the 

 New South Wales Constitution Act, but he deserved 



Monument erected by the inhabitants of the Hume River district in honour 

 of Hamilton Hume, Esq., to commemorale his discovery of the Hume River, 

 17th November 1824. 



Note. — This monument formerly stood beside the tree upon which Hovell 

 cut his name, close to the river, it has been removed to the Public Gardens, 

 Albury, for better security. 



to be called by Lecky, " the great Australian states- 

 man," and Sir Henry Parkes said of him that '' for 

 colossal power, clear insight into the principles of 

 government, and for comprehensive grasp of almost 

 all questions put before him, there have been few 

 saperior men in my time anywhere " 



Wentworth was in favour of the creation of an 

 aristocracy who should constitute the Upper House 

 in Xew South Wales. He failed to carry that. He 



also met with ob- 

 loquy, through ad- 

 vocating a gra- 

 dual, instead of a 

 sudden stop being 

 put to transporta- 

 tion. 



But his feJlow- 

 citizens honoured 

 him. He was vir- 

 tually the founder 

 of the Sydney Uni- 

 versitv, and ere he 

 left New South 

 Wales his friends 

 collected funds to 

 erect his statue dur- 

 ing his life time. 

 This was chiselled 

 by Tenevari, and 

 was unveiled in 

 the hall of the 

 Sydney Universitv 

 in 1862. 



Wentworth died 

 in England in 

 1872, requesting 

 that his remains 

 should be brought 

 to Australia and 

 buried at Vau- 

 cluse, his residence 

 for years on the 

 shores of Sydney 

 Harbour. He was 

 fitly honoured with 

 a public funeral. 

 When some years 

 since the Mel- 

 bourne Evening 

 Herald offered a 

 prize for the most 

 suitable name for 

 the capital of the Commonwealth the adjudicators 

 selected " Wenhvorth " as the best name forwarded. 

 Wentworth deserved that honour, for, as far 

 back as 1853, he foresaw the necessity for 

 some form of Australian Federation, and 

 drafted a report in which he stated that 

 cne of the most prominent measures required for 

 New South Wales, and the colonies of the Australian 



