THE TRANSITION TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 65 



When the result of the elections was published in the Gazette 

 of 6th November, 1856, it was seen that out of thirty members 

 elected to the Upper House of the Legislature, one-third had previ- 

 ously served in the old Council, either elective or as nominees. 

 The remainder, owing to the heavy property qualification, were 

 mainly representatives of the mercantile and squatting interests, 

 but in the whole twenty names there is not one that left any 

 impression upon the legislation of a momentous period. In the 

 Legislative Assembly the proportion of experienced politicians to 

 the freshmen was about the same, there being quite twenty mem- 

 bers who had played their part in the old Council, some of them 

 with vigour and originality. Naturally, it was towards this branch 

 of Parliament that the more ambitious, as well as the more capable, 

 turned their attention. 



Here were found such men as W. F. Stawell and T. H. Fellows, 

 destined for the Supreme Court Bench; W. C. Haines and John 

 O'Shanassy, the oft-contending Premiers ; H. C. E. Childers, Archi- 

 bald Michie, Charles Sladen, George Harker, J. M. Grant, Peter 

 Lalor, J. B. Humffray, B. C. Aspinall, and many others who 

 gravitated into important Ministerial office. J. F. L. Foster, the dis- 

 credited Colonial Secretary, was returned unopposed for Williams- 

 town, but amidst the new political elements of the House he failed 

 to acquire his former prestige, though he acted as Treasurer for 

 a few weeks in one of O'Shanassy's short-lived administrations. 

 The press was directly represented by Ebenezer Syme and David 

 Blair, and indirectly by at least half a dozen energetic barristers, 

 who found journalism a very profitable interlude to the study of 

 briefs. On the whole, it was a chamber exhibiting a very fair 

 quality of debating power and initiative, and when, as shortly 

 happened, it was weeded of a dozen or so of nonentities, who 

 had floated in under the unregulated process of selection, and 

 their places were filled by men of the stamp of James Service, 

 James McCulloch, Eichard D. Ireland, C. H. Ebden, Eichard 

 Heales, and others who had shown a masterful grasp of their own 

 business or professional avocations, it reached a level of capacity 

 rarely equalled in the latter years of its existence. 



Villiers and Heytesbury, a sparsely populated electorate in the 



VOL. II. 5 



