CHAPTEE XII. 



THE CONSTITUTION STATUTE OF 1842 AND THE STRUGGLE 

 FOB SEPARATION. 



THE struggle for separation from the penal colony of New South 

 Wales, which raged during the greater part of Mr. Latrobe's 

 administration, was a very different affair from the long drawn out 

 and often somewhat apathetic movement which half a century later 

 resulted in the reunion of all the Colonies into a federated dominion. 

 It was marked by much passionate earnestness, much, and often 

 very able, personal exertion, and was stimulated by a continually 

 growing sense of the injustice which the settlers had reason to 

 suppose they endured at the hands of the Sydney authorities. 



The transition from the magisterial and semi-military form of 

 control by which New South Wales had been ruled since the 

 advent of Captain Phillip to the tentative stage of a restricted 

 representative constitution, which received the Eoyal assent on the 

 30th of July, 1842, marks an era of the first importance in the grow- 

 ing status of the colony. This statute gave to the colonists, for 

 the first time, the right to expend the whole revenue they could 

 collect, apart from the land fund, in such manner as seemed to 

 them best, subject only to a special reservation for the Civil Ser- 

 vice, and a sum of 30,000 a year for the maintenance of religious 

 worship. It granted full power of legislation within the colony in 

 any manner not repugnant to the laws of England, of which con- 

 dition the Judges of the Supreme Court were to be the arbiters. 

 It took from the Governor the right of initiation and veto, and 

 limited his disapproval to the reservation of any ordinance for the 

 Royal assent. 



The Legislative Council established by this Act was composed 



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