282 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



so inexcusable in a country where civil and religious liberty were the 

 right of all, was unhappily fomented by several irreconcilables, and 

 on many occasions afterwards was carried to serious lengths. Some 

 two or three years later it even brought the disgrace of martial law 

 upon the City of Melbourne, with soldiers bivouacked around camp 

 fires in Elizabeth Street, to the scandal of the more intelligent 

 members of the community. 



CondelTs temporary elevation did not do him any good. He 

 went to Sydney to attend to his Legislative duties, but he appears 

 to have been a nonentity in the house, and after eight months of 

 his barren honours he tendered his resignation, and returned to 

 Melbourne to look after his brewery. Mr. Curr was no longer am- 

 bitious of the position, and Melbourne had to fall back on the good 

 offices of a Sydney merchant, Mr. J. P. Eobinson, who was returned 

 unopposed on the nomination of Captain Cole, in March, 1844. Both 

 Ebden and Thomson found it necessary soon after to follow Condell's 

 example, and their places were eventually filled by Adolphus Young 

 and Benjamin Boyd. The former was a lawyer and High Sheriff 

 of New South Wales; the latter was the notorious banker and 

 mammoth land speculator, whose daring ventures were a prime 

 factor in the financial troubles of the time. Thus, it will be seen 

 that the promised boon of local representation in the Councils of 

 State for the Port Phillipians vanished within a year, and their 

 interests had to be confided to a scratch list of volunteers from 

 the enemy's camp. 



The first session of the Legislative Council was barren of interest 

 to the colonists on the Yarra. It was largely occupied by financial 

 debates on the relative expenditure of British and Colonial funds 

 on the maintenance of police and convicts, and by purely local dis- 

 cussions concerning the rights and wrongs of emancipists. Further, 

 much time was taken up in Quixotic attempts by Legislation to 

 palliate the alarming commercial and financial panic, just then 

 raging fiercely, and threatening ruin to the banks as well as their 

 constituents. Out of many chimerical proposals, the only one that 

 in practice bore good fruit was a Bill introduced by Wentworth 

 enabling pastoralists to anticipate their income by giving a legal 

 security over the growing clip of wool, and to mortgage live stock. 



