HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



79 



with no other check than that of the Colonial Office. A Legislative Council was created 

 consisting of seven members, comprising the principal officials. Purely nominee as it was, 

 this Council contained the germs of constitutional government in the colony. 



One of the most notable events of this period was the appearance in public life of 

 William Charles Wentworth, the first native of the colony who distinguished himself as 



OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, 

 PARRAMATTA. 



an orator and a statesman. 

 He had been educated at 

 Oxford, and called to the 



Bar in London. On his return to the colony in 1824, he was admitted to the Bar, and 

 soon after became the champion of the popular party in the bitter struggles which, at 

 that time and for many years afterwards, were carried on between the " Emancipists " 

 and the " Exclusives." The first public question in which he was engaged was that of 

 trial by jury. When civil juries were first empanelled in the Courts of Quarter 

 Sessions, the Emancipists were held to be disqualified from serving as jurors ; an 

 exclusion which naturally aroused their indignation. Wentworth led the agitation, not 

 only in public meetings but in the columns of the Australian (a newspaper founded in 

 1824), in favour of the admission of Emancipists to the ranks of jurors. This agitation 

 was soon followed by another, for the purpose of extending the right of trial by jury 

 to the Supreme Court ; that is to say, trial by jurors drawn from the ranks of 

 Emancipists -as well as of free settlers, instead of the merely military juries then in 

 existence. It was not till 1833 that these principles were fully established. 



A still more important question in which Wentworth was destined to find his 

 greatest distinction occupied the minds of the colonists at this time. The colony had 

 outgrown the system of arbitrary government under the rule of a Governor, and the 

 popular party demanded those constitutional rights in the administration of their own 

 affairs which, they said, were the birthright of Englishmen. They held frequent public 



