9 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



particular Bill. .This " swamping " of the Council destroyed Wentworth's belief in the 

 principle of nomineeism, and made him a convert to that of election. At the request 

 of the Governor he accepted the office of President of the newly-appointed Legislative 

 Council, in order that he might assist in preparing a Constitution for the Upper House, 

 " which should supersede the present one, and prevent the recurrence of any future 

 attack upon its independence." A Bill to make the Upper House elective was introduced 

 into the Council in 1861, and referred to a Select Committee, of which Wentworth was 

 the Chairman. The Bill passed through the Council, but it was shelved in the Assembly. 



The day after the third reading took place in the Council, the aged statesman 

 announced his intention of resigning his office and returning to England, where he died 

 eleven years afterwards not the first, and not likely to be the last, of those reformers 

 who have lived long enough to be partially dissatisfied with the working of institutions 

 they have spent the best part of their lives in demanding and establishing. At his own 

 request his remains were brought to Sydney for interment near his old residence at 

 Yaucluse, one of the many beautiful spots which adorn the shores of Sydney Harbour. 

 The Government accorded him a public funeral, and though a new generation had grown 

 up since the elate of his great services, the immense attendance of people attested the 

 respect in which his memory was held. 



Sir William Denison succeeded Governor Fitzroy in the month of January, 1855, and 

 in his opening speech at the meeting of the Legislative Council in the following June 

 urged the importance of providing for the education of children, the development of 

 the railway system and the subsidising of a regular mail service with England. In the 

 month of October in the same year the Governor sent to the Legislative Council a 

 message enclosing an Act of Parliament, by which the Queen had given assent to a Bill 

 for conferring a Constitution on New South Wales, accompanied by a despatch from 

 Lord John Russell expressing a hope that the new institution might prove a solid and 

 permanent advantage ; and in the year following a general election was held and the 

 first responsible Ministry formed by Stuart Donaldson, Colonial Secretary, his colleagues 

 being Thomas Holt, Treasurer ; W. M. Manning, Attorney-General ; J. B. Darvall, 

 Solicitor-General ; G. R. Nichols, Secretary for Lands and Works ; and W. C. Mayne, 

 the representative of the Government in the Council. The first Parliament assembled on 

 the 22nd of May, when Sir Alfred Stephen was appointed President of the Council, and 

 Daniel Cooper was elected Speaker of the Assembly. A Bill to amend the electoral law, 

 in which the number of members was increased to eighty, was passed ; but an attempt 

 to regulate Chinese immigration by the imposition of a poll-tax of three pounds a head 

 was thrown out, decisive legislation on this matter being deferred for over thirty years. 



The change from the old system of government to the new was happily contempo- 

 raneous with the new life on which Australia entered as a consequence of the gold- 

 discoveries. A fresh and vigorous population poured in ; pastoral enterprise found enlarged 

 support in the rapidly-expanding local market for animal food ; new industries began to 

 spring up, and that passion for wealth which, in spite of the selfishness it engenders 

 and the many social evils that follow in its train, has yet done so much to raise up 

 great industrial communities, seized upon the whole people. This necessarily re-acted on 

 the political life of the community. There was a short struggle between the newly- 



