THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 155 



elocution was as unequal as his rhetoric. Rcgcr Therrj\ 

 Attorney-General in the forties, says that his manner 

 of speaking was " abrupt," and asserts that he neglected 

 to sacrifice to the graces. It was the man behind his 

 utterances that made them impressive and persuasive. 



With all its greatness, Wentworth's was a career 

 manque. He never fulfilled the measure of his possi- 

 bilities. He had no adequate arena. The Legislative 

 Council of his day — and he was fifty years old before 

 he attained even that small eminence — with its few 

 members and limited powers, was no proper sphere for 

 such a royal nature. He skilfully led his small Oppo- 

 sition faction in that Council, but he had never a chance 

 of being a great Parliamentary leader. Still less had he 

 an opportunity of proving himself a statesman. Never, 

 save indirectly and, as it were, surreptitiously, in the 

 time of Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy, when he enjoyed 

 the repute of being the dictator of the Colony, did he 

 influence the administration of the affairs of State. It 

 was all a matter of environment. In England, one or 

 two generations earlier, he might have been a Pitt or 

 a Chatham ; a generation later, he might have been a 

 Gladstone. Even in Austraha he is now almost for- 

 gotten, and sometimes, on high juridical authority, 

 he is disparaged, as Sir George Grey is now either ignored 

 or contemned in New Zealand. Outside of Australia 

 he is almost unknown. Yet, though he lacked the 

 highest kind of greatness — moral grandeur, he was one 

 of the Empire's greatest sons. 



