THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 151 



earnestly upheld the people's right of freehold." He 

 was, in fact, a statesman by vocation, and if he was 

 a territorial prince, the virtual owner of half-a-county, 

 it was for the honour of the thing and the prestige at- 

 tached to the practical possession of extensive domains. 

 He was the Australian homologue of the great Enghsh 

 and European nobles, in whom the government of their 

 country was inseparable from the tenure of great landed 

 estates. 



The possession of those great estates conspired with 

 his innate pride of race to convert Wentworth openly 

 into the aristocrat that he had always been at heart, 

 and dug a gulf between his earlier and his later career. 

 The old emancipist and Radical was already a Con- 

 servative. In that great year of 1848 Wentworth stood 

 at bay, as if resisting the advent of that democracy that 

 was to sweep men like him for ever from power. He 

 spoke like Gladstone in 1866, defending himself from 

 a charge of tergiversation or apostasy. On the Trans- 

 portation question he had acted with Cowper and Lowe. 

 " Why, then," he indignantly asked, " do you raise 

 your voices against me only ? Why am I to be singled 

 out for obloquy for doing that which all besides have 

 done ? Why do you not clamour down others with 

 this charge ? " 



He was accused of misrepresenting and slandering 

 the Irish. It was a dangerous charge in those days, 

 when the vast majority of the emancipists was Irish, 

 and therefore the bulk of the population was Irish. It 

 would be a dangerous charge even now, when nominally 

 30 per cent., but probably, if personal observation may 

 be trusted, 60 per cent., of the population of Sydney, 

 is still Irish and Catholic. His retort was passionate 

 and personal : — 



"It is true that in a certain debate in the Council I did de- 

 nounce the Irish murderers — those branded ruffians who, in some 

 of her counties, were polluting her soil and blasting her fame 

 with the blood of innocent and unresisting victims. In the full 

 abhorrence and detestation of my heart I denounce these men. 



