I 4 i8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



become so great that the proportion of the grant of land offered to the new-comer was 

 graduated by the number of convicts he could afford to keep. This system had the 

 effect of introducing a new element into the population, which gradually blended with 

 the original official and emancipated classes. Though the line of demarcation between 

 these was kept as rigidly drawn as possible by the former class, the asperity of the 

 original conditions was in some degree softened, and the average of social and domestic 

 life in a measure raised. These free immigrants brought more or less capital into the 

 colony, too, and were thus enabled to engage in the pastoral and other operations of 

 which they were in the true sense the pioneers. Before this time it is to be observed 

 that the actual work of opening up the colony was commenced by the active and public- 

 spirited Governor Macquarie, who, in the face of the opposition of those who had 

 profited by the state of things he was sent out to alter, had ameliorated the condition 

 of the inhabitants, promoted trade and agriculture, and opened up so much of the 

 colony as was then known by the formation of good roads. Among these was that 

 to Bathurst over the Blue Mountains, which threw open the hitherto virgin country to 

 the west of the Range. 



With Governor Bourke another era of social development was entered upon. By 

 this time the free population had acquired so much influence by numbers and wealth 

 that it was found anxiously claiming to be relieved from the burden of a penal estab- 

 lishment, and the rule of prison officials. Bourke showed an intelligent sympathy with 

 this aspiration, and so far as his personal power went, it is to his credit that it was 

 on every occasion used to. promote the desire for responsibility of action. To him is 

 due the early emergence of the colony from the twilight of the ante-constitutional days, 

 just as to Macquarie is due its deliverance from the Cimmerian darkness of the earlier 

 penal times. Bourke stopped the system of the assignment of convict labour as it had 

 been carried on up to his time, and handed the privilege over to a Board. He strongly 

 recommended to the Downing Street Authorities at Home the complete abandonment of 

 the transportation system. He introduced the jury-right into the colony, and set on foot 

 a system of assisted free immigration. He abolished the supremacy of the State Church, 

 putting all denominations on a footing of equality. For the first time he gave a public 

 account of the colony's yearly receipts and expenditure. He established the liberty of 

 the Press, and in other ways of which these may stand as examples, he lifted the 

 whole body politic to a higher plane than that on which he found it on his arrival 

 in Australia, and thus more than corrected the tendency of the ill-advised measures 

 of his predecessors. 



During the time of Governors Gipps and Fitzroy the agitation for constitutional 

 privileges made considerable way. Step by step the battle of popular rights was fought, 

 and, although contested at every stage by the representatives of the older interests in 

 the colony, by 1850 these long-continued efforts were at last crowned with success. This 

 agitation began in 1825, when Governor Brisbane, on his departure from the colony, 

 took with him a petition for the right of self-government by the colonists. Two years 

 later another meeting for the same object was held. On both these occasions the name 

 of Wentworth was found on the list of promoters of the movement. In 1828, a Royal 

 Charter was received in the colony, under which the first formal Executive and Legisla- 



