1420 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



live Councils were constituted. In 1830, another demonstration of those in favour of 

 Responsible Government was held in Sydney ; a memorial to the same effect was sent 

 Home on the accession of William IV.; and in 1833, a large public meeting was held 

 which advocated the same object. A body known as the Patriotic Association was formed 

 to direct the popular movement on this question, and at a meeting for the pur- 

 pose, held in 1841, a strongly-worded manifesto of the people was drawn up, defining 

 the claims of the colonists to control their own political affairs. Another meeting was 

 convened six months later in the same year, and in 1842 an Act was passed by the 

 English Parliament granting a new Constitution to New South Wales, with a Council 

 composed of twelve nominee Members and twenty-four to be elected by the people. 

 This was the first recognition of the elective principle in Australia. The Act reached 

 Sydney in January, 1843, and by June in the same year the first election took place 

 under its provisions. This Constitution remained in force for about thirteen years. It 

 merely satisfied the popular aspiration for the moment, and formed a temporary step 

 between the nominee Council of the previous and the elective Parliament of the 

 succeeding periods. For the next few years, the public mind was occupied chiefly with 

 the anti-transportation movement. The social conditions of the colony had by this time 

 so far developed that the new race which had grown up was no longer content to 

 receive the outcasts of the civilization of the older parts of the Empire. But the 

 settlement of both this and the Constitution question was precipitated in an unexpected 

 way by the brilliant discovery of gold that marked the opening of the second half of the 

 century. How that discovery was made has already been told, and it concerns us here 

 only in regard to the effect it had in changing and re-modelling the social conditions 

 of the Australian people. Immigration up to this time had been fitful at the best. In 

 the time of Bourke and Gipps, encouragement was given to the process by assisting 

 intending colonists to make the passage to Australia. Land was sold, and the prices 

 obtained funded to form an "Immigration Reserve" for this purpose; but the utmost that 

 was done in this way dwindled into insignificance beside the extraordinary effect which 

 the news of the Australian gold discoveries suddenly exercised over the minds of men 

 in all quarters of the globe. The spirit of enterprise and the lust of adventure and 

 gain were every-where aroused. The movement was not confined to men trained to 

 work the earth for a livelihood. The younger sons of wealthy families, young doctors 

 and barristers and University men, who found their diplomas and degrees of little 

 service to assist them in passing the portals of the over-crowded professions to which 

 they had been trained to belong, seemed to have hailed with unanimous enthusiasm the 

 unexpected chance that now offered to try a new field, and make the best of the 

 limited competition of a new country. Adventurers, too, from the Pacific Slope of the 

 United States, who had been disappointed in their hopes of a golden fortune in Cali- 

 fornia, began to pour into the two elder colonies, as well as thousands of other active 

 spirits from all quarters of the world, whose very presence in Australia showed them to 

 be people of restless habit and active mind. Victoria had separated from New South 

 Wales in 1850, so that by the time the gold discovery was made known, the southern 

 portion of Eastern Australia was just entering on its career as an independent colony. 

 The dazzling reports of mineral wealth at Bendigo and Ballarat drew a large proportion 



