HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

SEPARATION OP VICTORIA

FROM

NEW SOUTH WALES.

JOHN DTJNMORE L A N C3-, D.D.,
SENIOR MINISTER OF THE SCOTS CHURCH, SYDNEY,
AND RECENTLY' ONE OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE CITY OF SYDNEY
IN THE PARLIAMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES :
HONORARY MEMBER OF THE AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF FRANCE,
OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY,
AND OF THE LITERARY INSTITUTE OF OLINDA IN THE BRAZILS.

SYDNEY:
JOHN L. SHERRIFF, PUBLISHER,
18 WYNYARD SQUARE.
~7 a 1870.
/S7oL

DU \ie
/87oL

TO THE HONORABLE MEMBERS
OF
BOTH HOUSES OF THE PAELIAMENT
OF
VICTORIA,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY
INSCRIBED ; By the AUTHOR.

HISTOEICAL ACCOUNT, &C.

I happened, in the disoharge of clerical duty, to visit the neigh
bouring colony of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, in the
month of November, 1835 ; visiting hoth Hobart Town and
Launceston during my stay. That colony was then in a state of ex
traordinary excitement, consequent upon the recent and fortuitous
discovery of extensive tracts of land of the first quality both for
agriculture and grazing in the country around Port Phillip,
right across Bass' Straits. Expeditions of all kinds were
planned, and companies formed on both sides of the island, to
take possession of this splendid country, and to colonize it as
extensively as possible ; the idea, entertained at the time, even
by some of the ablest men in the neighbouring colony, being
that it was a terra incognita, on which they could settle without
scruple and without question, and no part of New- South Wales.
In the early part of the year 1836, the late Dr. Thomson, of
Geelong,* with whom I had become acquainted in Tasmania,
called upon me in Sydney, and told me that he had resolved to
settle in Port Phillip himself, and had been conveying across a
large quantity of stock for the purpose ; adding that there were
then not fewer than two hundred persons in Port Phillip and
thirty thousand sheep.
In the year 1837, civil Government was established in the
country by the late Sir Richard Bourke, then Governor of New
South "Wales, who took possession of the territory as a part
of that colony; annulling all alleged purchases of land, some
of which were of great extent, from the aborigines, and
fixing upon Williamstown, which he named in honour of
the reigning king, William IV., as the site of the future
capital of the district, and Melbourne, which he named for
the Minister of the day, as the site of a suburban village.
How and why these arrangements of the Governor of the period
were subsequently reversed, it is no business of mine to shew.
From this period the colonization of Port Phillip advanced
with unexampled rapidity; colonists, with large quantities of
stock, crossing over in great numbers both from Tasmania and
from New South Wales, and numerous immigrants arriving
from the mother country, both at the public expense and at their
own. * He was one ofthe first six members elected for Port Phillip in the Legislative Council of
New South Wales, in the year 1843.

My first visit to Port Phillip was paid in November 1841.
Melbourne was then assuming the proportions of a regular town ;
and, in consequence of the great distance from Head Quarters,
the delays and mistakes of office, and the gross neglect and
frequent injustice of which the colonists of that district com
plained, there was even then an intense desire manifested among
all classes of the inhabitants for Separation from New South
Wales, and a Government of their own.
I had in the meantime made a voyage to England ; and, before
my return to the colony, I had crossed over to the United States,
to ascertain for my own satisfaction, whether Christianity could
subsist and prosper in any new country without assistance and
support from the State : for I foresaw even then that this would
ere long be the great question of the day in all these Australian
Colonies. I was fully satisfied, from all I saw and heard in America —
traversing as I did during my visit not fewer than eleven of the
States — that Christianity required no support, either for its
existence or for its maintenance from the State ; religion
generally, especially in its Protestant forms, being much more
vigorous and influential in that country than it is, even with all
the support it derives from too contemporaneous Protestant
establishments, in our own.
I discovered also, what I certainly did not expect to find in
America, that the good government and the general contentment
under their peculiar institutions that unquestionably characterizes
the American people, were not the result of any acts or deeds of
their Federal Congress, but rather of the division of their vast
territory into comparatively small and manageable portions or
States ; having each a Legislature of its own, empowered, under
the sovereignty of the people, to exercise all the functions and to
discharge all the duties of government, except in the four cases
reserved for the General Congress, viz. : 1 . Diplomacy, or the
questions of peace and war ; 2. Foreign Trade and the Custom
house ; 3. The management and disposal of the Public Lands,
and 4, the Post Office.
On all questions but these, the States are all Sovereign and
Independent, and have each their distinct Parliaments or Legis
latures. And as the beau ideal of the Americans, in regard to
what ought to be the extent of a State under such a system, is
that it should comprise not more than from 40,000 to 50,000
square miles — the seat of Government or capital of the State,
which is generally, as near as may be, in the centre of the
territory of the State, being easily accessible to all — the system
ensures justice to all and no favour to any.
I happened, during my stay in Melbourne on this occasion, to
be present at a public meeting on some educational question ;
and in the course of the proceedings, the position of the district,
as a remote and ill-governed dependency of New South Wales,
having been strongly referred to by more than one of the

speakers, and held up as a great and intolerable grievance, I
stated, on being invited to address the meeting, what I had
myself seen only a few months before in America ; expressing
my cordial approval of the agitation that was then in progress
in the district, for the separation of Port Phillip from New
South Wales, and its erection into a distinct and independent
colony. Towards the close of the year 1842, a new Constitution, of an
untried and experimental character, was granted by the Imperial
Parliament to New South Wales, at the instance of the late Earl
Derby, then Lord Stanley, and Principal Secretary of State for
the Colonies ;. under which a Legislature was constituted, con
sisting of thirty-six members, two-thirds of whom were to be
elective members, and the remaining third — including certain
Heads of Departments under the Colonial Government — to be
Nominees of the Crown. Of the twenty-four elective members,
six were assigned to Port Phillip —one for the town of Mel
bourne, and five for the district. And as my opinions on the
subject of Separation were generally known in Melbourne, while
I happened to be eligible for the office under the existing law of
the period — having recently before resigned my salary as a
State-paid minister — I was put in nomination by certain zealous
members of the Separation Committee, as a fit and proper person
to occupy one of the five seats for the district of Port Phillip
— as distinct from the town of Melbourne — in the Legislative
Council of New South Wales.
There were six candidates for the five seats for the District ;
for as to the seat for Melbourne, it had been allotted in public
estimation for months before the time of election, to the late
Edward Curr, Esq. — a gentleman who had been Manager of an
unfortunate Land and Agricultural Company in Van Diemen's
Land, and had come over to settle in Port Phillip in the infancy
of the settlement, with the property he had managed to save
from the wreck of the Company. Being thus a gentleman of
considerable fortune and of great Colonial experience, as well as
of a public spirit, who took a prominent part in all the public
movements of the time, it was generally understood that Mr. Curr
would be elected for Melbourne without opposition. Of the six
candidates for the five seats for the District, four were sure of
election. The contest, therefore, was for the fifth seat ; and it
happened to lie between the late Sir Thomas Mitchell and
myself. Sir Thomas was then Surveyor-General of the colony,
and was very popular throughout the Port Phillip district, from
his having discovered and described Australia Felix — the name
he had given to the district — to which a large immigration, of a
highly respectable character, was then in progress. But Sir
Thomas was known to be strongly opposed to Separation ; having
described the colony of New South Wales, in one of his books, as
extending from Cape Capricorn to Bass' Straits — an extent of
territory equal to that of three ofthe largest European Kingdoms —

and compared it to a Spread Eagle, of which Sydney was the head
and New South Wales Proper the body, while Port Phillip and
Moreton Bay were the two wings. In contrast with these claims,
I was known merely as an old colonist who had rendered
considerable service to the State in the way both of education
and of immigration, and who had taken up with great warmth
and energy the question of separation — the leading question of
the day. For in my addresses to the constituency, both in
Melbourne and Geeiong, as well as elsewhere in the district,
after shewing at great length how the process of separation had
been carried out for a period of a hundred and fifty years in the
thirteen British colonies, afterwards the United States of America,
I alluded on one of these occasions to Sir Thomas's famous figure
of the Spread Eagle, and maintained that it was then high time
that one of the wings of the noble bird, viz., Port Phillip, should
be lopped off; and I ventured to predict that if that wing should
actually be lopped off, the other, viz , Moreton Bay, now Queens
land, would at no distant period be lopped off also. I then asked
the meeting what they thought the Spread Eagle would be like
with both of its wings lopped off ; and nobody offering to reply,
I told them to their great amusement and delight, that it would
then be liker a colonial bird than ever ; for it would then be an
Emu, a bird which they all knew had never had wings at all,
and did remarkably well without them. In short, I had by this
time obtained a large amount of popular support on the Separa
tion question, and my election was no longer doubtful.
In the meantime, Mr. Edward Curr, the then unopposed
candidate for Melbourne, was guilty of a piece of folly which
I have never seen equalled in all my Parliamentary experience.
Mr. Curr was a zealous Roman Catholic, from the North of
England ; and for months previous no objection had ever been
made to him on that ground ; hut as I had published in the
year 1841, immediately after my return from England, a
pamphlet entitled " The Question of Questions ; or, is this Colony
to be transformed into a Province ofthe Popedom? " Mr. Curr
started up, at the close of a long speech on Separation which I
had delivered in the Mechanics' Institute, Melbourne, where the
tide was evidently and strongly in my favour, to denounce me
as an unfit and improper person to represent the district ;
brandishing a copy of my pamphlet as proof positive against me.
As that pamphlet throws much light on what might otherwise
seem unaccountable in theearly history of Victoria — I meanthevery
large proportion of its Irish Roman Catholic population — I may be
permitted to refer to it more particularly. From the year 1831 —
when the practice of giving large grants of land in New South
Wales to respectable immigrants from the mother country was
discontinued, and the waste lands were thenceforth sold by public
auction, at not less than a certain minimum price, and the
proceeds devoted to the promotion of the immigration of suitable
families and individuals into the colony — the business of emigra-

9
tion from the United_ Kingdom was superintended and conducted
by certain functionaries at home, designated "Emigration and
Land Commissioners." These gentlemen engaged, principally,
experienced surgeons of the Royal Navy, to proceed to the
different localities in Great Britain and Ireland, from which it
was desirable to promote emigration to the colonies ; selecting
the classes of emigrants required and proceeding with them
themselves to their destination. In this way a large and
most valuable addition to our population was made from
time to time in the shape of farm labourers from the agricultural
counties of England, and particularly that of Kent, as well as
from the South and West of Ireland ; of mechanics of the various
handicrafts required in house-building from Glasgow, Dundee,
Belfast, and Londonderry ; and of shepherds and farm-servants
from the Highlands of Scotland. But in the year 1839, when
the Land Fund — arising particularly from the large extent of
land sold in Port Phillip — began to assume gigantic proportions,
and to give rise to an extensive immigration from all these parts
of the United Kingdom, certain long-headed, but most unprin
cipled members of our mercantile community in Sydney,
conceiving that if they could get the management of this fund
into their own hands they could make something very handsome
by it, — as certain of their number eventually did — got up a
hue and cry against the Government system of immigration then
in progress, and induced both the Government and the public to
believe that if thsy could only get the management of the
business of immigration and the control of the Land Fund out of
the hands of the Emigration and Land Commissioners, they
could get us a much larger number and a better class of immi
grants for the amount to be expended on the service.
In this way what was long known as the Bounty System of
Immigration was inaugurated; the local Government issuing
Ordersvon the Land Revenue, at the rate of £15 for every statute
adult immigrant imported, to all who chose to apply for them,
under the absurd idea that the individual colonists could them
selves select and engage immigrants of the description required
from the mother country better than the Government Com
missioners. For as not one in fifty of the colonists of that period
could do anything of the kind, these Orders, for whomsoever
obtained, fell, as a matter of course, into the hands of the Sydney
merchant, who was now largely engaged in the Immigration
business, and in partnership of some kind with certain Emi
gration Brokers in London. On these gentlemen (the London
ship-brokers) there was no check or supervision whatever exer
cised by the local Government : they had merely to' send out so
many statute adults to enable them to claim the regular bounty ;
and, like all mercantile men, they "endeavoured to find these
adults in the cheapest market.
That market was the South and West of Ireland ; where the
London ship-brokers had thenceforth their whippers-in engaging

10
emigrants at so much per head for Sydney and Melbourne, and
forwarding them, with but little or no inquiry about their character
or qualifications, to the Australian emigrant ships— to the
general rendezvous of the period in Plymouth Sound — by the
Dublin or Cork steamboats trading to London. For as vessels
could generally be chartered to sail from London at a cheaper rate
than from any of the outports of the kingdom ; while cargo to
fill up with, and cabin passengers, were more likely to be found
there than at any outport, the Australian emigrant ships char
tered by the London ship-brokers sailed from London to touch
at Plymouth — after having got safely over the worst part of the
voyage, the passage down channel — -to receive their complement
of Irish bounty emigrants in that port.
I happened to come out as a cabin passenger by one of these
ships from Plymouth in the year 1840. For having missed my
passage by another vessel from Liverpool, I crossed over to Dub
lin and from thence by the Dublin steamer to Plymouth. That
steamer was filled, to my great surprise, with bounty emigrants to
Australia, who had been collected in the South and .West of Ire
land, and who were accordingly transferred from the deck of the
steamboat to that of the Emigrant ship in Plymouth Sound, with
out ever touching the English soil. The motto of the colony of
New South Wales is Sic fortis Etruria crevit. It might well be
translated, in reference to this period of our colonial history, " It
was in this way that the great colony of New South Wales,
including Port Phillip and Moreton Bay, had very nearly become
an Irish Roman Catholic colony."
By far the greater number of these emigrants were Roman
Catholics of the lowest class, from the South and West of Ireland ;
the proportion of Protestants in certain of the emigrant vessels
arriving in Sydney and Melbourne at this period being as low as
one in eighteen. Besides, the general character of these immi
grants and their unsuitableness to the circumstances and wants
of the colony, were described in the following language by the
late Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, as a witness before the Select
Committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales on
Immigration, in the year 1843.
"We have had a great many immigrants brought to Port
Phillip who are utterly useless ; in point of intellect, they are
inferior to our own aborigines.
26. By the Colonial-Secretary : What do they represent them
selves as being ? Labourers.
27. By Dr. Lang : Where do they come from ? The South of
Ireland." It was thus — through the heartless cupidity of certain Sydney
merchants and the incapacity and culpable neglect of the Local
Government of the day — that the Land Fund of the colony, which
in nine cases out of every ten was derived from the purchase of
land by English and Scotch Protestants, was expended for years
together in inundating the colony with Roman Catholics of the

11
lowest class from the South'and West of Ireland. My pamphlet,
already referred to, was the first protest against this monstrous
perversion of everything like honesty and justice. But it was not
the only one ; for in the following year, the late Bishop
Broughton entered a similar protest, after making a speech on
the subject in the Nominee Legislature of the period, in which
he showed that from the 1st January, 1841, to the 30th June,
1842, there had been imported into the Colony at the public
expense not fewer than 25,330 immigrants: of whom, 16,892
were from Ireland, chiefly Roman Catholics from the South and
West, while only 8,438 were from England and Scotland together.
I had, therefore, no reason to feel ashamed of my pamphlet ;
and as it was evident to Mr. Curr himself, from the demonstration
in my favor at the Mechanics' Institute, that I had every chance
of being elected, I recommended him, as far as I was personally
concerned in the case, to make the best he could of his adverse
circumstances, and to set himself to do his utmost for the welfare
and advancement of his adopted country in the Legislature of New
South Wales.
In the course of my observations in reply to Mr. Curr, I related
the following incident, which was remarkably well received by the
numerous meeting in the Mechanics' Institute. " In some part
of England, where the Society of Friends, or Quakers, were
pretty numerous, it was a rule of the body that when a bachelor
wished to change his condition and take to himself a wife, he was
not allowed the privilege of " free selection " in the case, but had
to submit the matter to the principal Friends and take the partner
they assigned him. On one occasion the lady selected for a
particular Quaker bachelor was not altogether to his liking ; but,
submitting himself resignedly to his lot, he thus addressed her,
"Martha, thou art not very beautiful, and thou art not very
handsome ; but, as the Friends have sent thee, I must take thee ;
so sit thee down and spin." Then, turning to Mr. Curr, to the
great amusement of the meeting, I added that it was very
possible I might neither be very beautiful nor very handsome,
in his estimation, as a representative of the people, in the
Legislative Council ; but, as it was very evident that the friends
had determined to send me in, in that capacity, I thought his
proper course was just to make the best of his bad bargain, and,
like the Quaker's wife, to sit himself down and spin."
But Mr. Curr was not satisfied with being the unopposed
member for Melbourne. He must dictate to the constituency,
as to whom they were to send in along with him ; and in
particular, that they were on no account to send in me. Nay,
he actually told the constituency, by way of threat, in a letter
which he published in the paper devoted to his interests, that if
they elected me for the District, they were not. to expect him as
their member for Melbourne, as he would not sit with such a
person. But this, Mr. Curr found when too late, was going a step too

12
far ; as it not only excited the indignation of the Separation
Gommittee, who were satisfied with my candidature, but at once
aroused the Protestant spirit of the great majority of the people.
It was therefore determined to take Mr. Curr at his word, and to
relieve him of all fear of being subjected to the indignity of
sitting with me, by getting rid of him altogether. The gentleman
who was first solicited to allow himself to be nominated for the
representation of Melbourne was Mr. Hull, a gentleman well
known in the early history of Victoria; but he declined the
honour. The late Mr. Alderman Kerr, at whose house I was
staying, and who was one of the zealous advocates of the Separa
tion movement, then asked me, on the Thursday evening before the
nomination, which was to take place on a Tuesday, to accompany
him to tho house of a Mr. Condell, a respectable Scotch brewer, who
had then been very recently elected the first Mayor of Melbourne ;
as it had been proposed to request him to contest the election, in
the interests of our common Protestantism, with Mr. Curr, who
seemed determined to establish something like Romish ascendancy
in the district. The night was pitch dark, so that nobody could
know what was a-foot ; and as there had been a great fall of rain
immediately before, the streets of Melbourne, which were then
neither paved nor lighted, were up to the anekles in mud. We
found the Mayor rather hard to move ; although, as a consistent
Protestant, indignant enough at the intolerable arrogance and
insolence of Mr. Curr. He was a mere tradesman, as he told us,
and no statesman or politician, and therefore quite unaccustomed
to such literary work — to draw up such papers, for instance — as
might be required in the position ih which it was proposed to
place him. I relieved him, however, of that difficulty, by
pledging myself to assist him in anything of that kind that might
be required of him. At length he consented to stand, provided
there should be a requisition to that effect, signed by not fewer
than two hundred of the electors of Melbourne by four o'clock
next day. By two o'clock of that day, the requisition to Mr.
Condell had obtained two hundred and fifty signatures, and he
agreed to stand ; the requisition, with all the names appended,
being published in the Saturday's paper. This unexpected
movement produced perfect consternation in Mr. Curr and all his
supporters ; and their only resource was to affect to treat it with
contempt, and to speak disparagingly and contemptuously of Mr.
Condell, as a mere brewer. In fulfilment of my pledge to that
gentleman, I wrote his speech for him at the nomination, which
I was told he delivered with great vigour and animation, or as
Hamlet says, " trippingly on the tongue." There was one part
of it, which was much noticed at the time, and which told
remarkably well for Mr. Condell. " They say I am only a brewer.
I do not deny it ; I am a brewer, and they will find before this
election is over, that we have brewed them some of the bitterest
beer they ever drank in their lives." The result was that Mr.
Condell was elected for Melbourne by a large majority over Mr.

13
Curr, while I was also elected for the District ; the Geelong vote
giving me a majority of eight over Sir Thomas Mitchell.
There was quite a riot in Melbourne the night after the
election ; and the Tipperary boys, who had been brought out
in hundreds with the Protestant funds of the colony, under the
system of Bounty Immigration I have been describing, actually
threatened to burn down the town in revenge for the defeat of
their champion. For Mr. Curr informed the citizens at the
hustings after the election that they owed it to him that the town
was not burned down about their ears !
Lest I should myself be suspected of cherishing an anti-Irish,
and especially an anti-Catholic feeling, so as to lead me either
to countenance or to practice injustice towards that class of our
fellow subjects, I can challenge all and sundry to point to a single
instance of anything of the kind in my public procedure in these
colonies for the last forty years ; during the whole of which period
I have ever acted on the principle of a fair field for all, and no favor
for any. At the same time I have all along been strongly of
opinion that it was alike the interest and the bounden duty of
all who had the best interests of the country at heart to do all
that in them lay to make these colonies British, and not Irish
colonies, and to maintain a somewhat similar proportion between
the different nationalities of which their population consists to
that whieh obtains in the United Kingdom. And I therefore
regard those unprincipled men, who, for their own personal
aggrandisement, established the Bounty Immigration system for
this colony, and thereby gave so disproportionate an influence to
the Irish Roman Catholic element in the period to which I have
been referring, as well as the Government that enabled them to
carry out their nefarious schemes, as having been guilty of a
species of high treason to Australia.
To return to the subject of the direct efforts for separation that
were made both before and after the general election of 1843, by
various public bodies in Port Phillip — Petitions, praying earnestly
for separation, and setting forth the reasons for so doing, were
addressed both to the Legislative Council of New South Wales
and to the Imperial Parliament, by the inhabitants of Port
Phillip generally ; by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors of
the town of Melbourne 5 by the Warden and Council ofthe district
of Bourke, and by the Warden and Council of the district of
Grant. But no response of any kind was given to any of these
petitions ; the policy of the Imperial Government, after conceding
representative institutions to any colony, being to leave all such
questions to the consideration and decision of the Local Legislature.
During .the first session of our Colonial Legislature, which
commenced its sittings on the first of August, 1843, I moved for
certain Statistical Returns, to bring out the case of Port Phillip
as a dependency of New South Wales, for the six years, from
the commencement of the settlement, in 1837, to the close
of 1842. From these Returns it appeared that the total amount

14
of the Ordinary Revenue of Port Phillip for these six years had
been £222,984 Os. 7d., while the expenditure, including the whole
cost of setting up the Government, amounted to £254,965 Os. 6jd. ;
but that while the revenue arising from the sale of land and
town allotments in Port Phillip, during the same period, had
amounted to not less than £393,911 lis. Id., the whole amount
expended for immigration into Port Phillip, these six years, did
not exceed £204,446 5s. 0£d. ; thereby shewing that besides
repaying to the Treasury of New South Wales every sixpence
of the whole amount expended in setting up its own civil
Government, Port Phillip had actually paid into that Treasury
£157,484 6s. Id., for which it had never received any return.
Having thus prepared the way for my motion, I gave notice,
on the first day of the assembling of the Legislative Council in
1844, that, on a certain day which was afterwards postponed
to the 20th of August of that year, I should move that — "A
humble Address be presented to her Majesty the Queen, praying
that Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to direct that the
requisite steps may be taken for the speedy and entire Separation
of Port Phillip from the territory of New South Wales, and for
its erection into a separate and independent Colony." I
accordingly made this motion on the day I have mentioned, in a
speech of two hours, in which I stated at great length the various
grounds or arguments on which the motion was based, and
described the practice of the Imperial Government in America,
where the two Colonies of North and South Virginia established
by King James I., of England, in the year 1606, had become, by
successive Acts of Separation, both North and South, not fewer
than thirteen colonies, afterwards the United States of America.
The other Port Phillip members were all strongly in favour of
my motion ; but with one solitary exception, the whole of the
other members, both elective and nominee, for the rest of the
Colony, were strongly opposed to it. That exception was Mr.
(now the Right Honourable) Robert Lowe, Chancellor of the
Exchequer in England, who was then merely a nominee member
of the Legislative Council of New South Wales ; and I confess I
cannot but regard the support of my measure by so eminent a
man, as one of the memorabilia of my political life. The state of
the vote, there being one seat vacant at the time, was Ayes — six ;
viz., Dr. (now Sir Charles) Nicholson, Mr. Walker, Mr. Young,
Mr. Lowe, Dr. Lang, and Mr.. Robinson, then member for
Melbourne, Teller; Noes — nineteen; viz., Mr. Murray, the
Attorney-General, the Auditor-General, the Colonial Secretary,
the Collector of Customs, Mr. Macarthur, Mr. Lord, Mr. Therry,
the Commander of the Forces, Mr. Cowper, Mr. Bland, Mr.
Panton, Mr. Foster, Captain Dumaresq, Mr. Lawson, Mr.
Coghill, Mr. Bradley, Mr. Icely, and the Colonial Treasurer,
Teller. The result of this effort gave rise to prodigious disappointment
and to feelings akin to despair in Port Phillip. On thinking over

15
the matter, however, for a few days thereafter, it seemed to me
that the case was not absolutely hopeless ; for as the whole of the
six Port Phillip members, without a single exception, were strong
ly in favour of Separation, it occurred to me that if these members
petitioned for it themselves, on behalf of their constituents,
they might, possibly, meet with a favourable result. I wrote,
accordingly, to Dr. James Kilgour, then Chairman of the
Separation Committee in Melbourne, now a prominent colonist of
New Zealand, submitting this proposal for their consideration as
a dernier ressouree, and requesting them, in the event of their
approval of it, to write to the other five members, and to invite
their co-operation. They did so, I believe, however, rather as a
matter of courtesy to myself, than with the slightest hope of
success, A meeting of the six Port Phillip members was
therefore held on the subject in the Library of the Council ; and
as the proposal had originated with me, I was deputed to
prepare the Petition to her Majesty and to submit the draft for
their approval at a future meeting. My draft was cordially
approved of by all the other members, with only a few verbal
exceptions ; and on being engrossed and signed by the six mem
bers, it was presented by them to His Excellency, Sir George
Gipps, to be forwarded to Lord Stanley, for presentation to her
Majesty, on one ofthe last days of the year 1844.
The following is a copy of the petition : —
PETITION TO THE QUEEN FOR THE SEPARATION OF PORT
PHILLIP, FROM THE SIX MEMBERS FOR THE DISTRICT.
To the Qmen's Most Excellent Majesty.
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, your Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects, the undersigned Members
of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, representing the entire
district of Port Phillip, beg leave to approach your Majesty with the
assurance of our cordial attachment to your Majesty's Royal Person and
Government. We humbly solicit permission to represent to your Majesty that, in our
deliberate opinion, the District of Port Phillip, which at present constitutes
the Southern portion of the colony of New South Wales, is peculiarly fitted —
as well from its superficial extent, its geographical position, and its other
physical characteristics, as from the amount, respectability, and intelligence
of its population, from its entire isolation from all other colonial communities,
and from the comparatively high state of general advancement which it has
so speedily attained — for being a separate and independent colony.
We beg, therefore, to submit to your Majesty, that the Superficial extent
of the District of Port Phillip is 139,500 square miles,* while that of the
undermentioned British colonies is as follows : —
New Brunswick., .. .. .. .. 27,704 square miles.
Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.. .. . 18,742 do.
Prince Edward's Island .. .. ., 2,131 do.
Newfoundland  36,000 do.
United Colonies of B. Guiana  100,000 do.
Jamaica, thelargest ofthe Colonies of the W.Indies 6,400 do.
Trinidad  ..... ., 2,400 do.
Van Dieman's Land .. .. .. .. 21,000 do.
* It was always supposed, previous to the final Separation of Port Phillip, that that
Colony would include the tract of country between the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers.
Had that been the case, the extent of the Colony of Victoria would probably have been as
above stated ; but it was difficult at the time to procure a correct estimate.

16
Occupying, as it does, the south eastern angle of this vast continental
island, the" District of Port Phillip extends upwards of five hundred miles
along the Great Southern Ocean, from Cape Howe to the eastern boundary
of South Australia, having the extensive harbour or inland sea, from
which it derives its name and ita peculiar commercial capabilities, as its
natural outlet, and the town of Melbourne, its natural and proper capital,
both nearly equi-distant from its eastern and western extremities ; while the
Colony of New South Wales Proper commands the whole line of the
eastern coast along the Pacific Ocean, having the magnificent harbour of
Port Jackson as its natural outlet, and the city of Sydney its natural and
proper capital ; the entire trade and commerce of the southern portion of the
colony necessarily concentrating itself in and around the inlet of Port
Phillip, while that of the northern portion, or Middle District, is neces
sarily concentrated in and Ground Port Jackson. The commercial
relations of Port Phillip are, therefore, with London, not with any other
portion of the colony of New South Wales ; and these relations are
managed through the town of Melbourne, not through the city and Port of
Sydney. In this peculiarity of its geographical position, your Majesty will,
doubtless, recognise the essential difference of the case of Port Phillip, as
regards New South Wales, from that of Upper Canada, which had no port of
its own for transatlantic commerce, as regards the Lower Province of that
colony. From these physical characteristics of the District, your Majesty will
perceive that the colonists of Port Phillip are entirely isolated from those of
the Middle or Sydney District of New South Wales — as much so as they are
from those of Van Dieman's Land or South Australia, The community
of Port Phillip, we beg leave to add, already comprises upwards of twenty-five
thousand souls, and is possessed of two millions of sheep, one hundred and
forty thousand horned cattle, and five thousand horses, besides a very large
amount of other valuable property in vessels, buildings, and cultivated land ;
the Ordinary Revenue of the District for the year 1843 having amounted to
£61,943 14s. 8d., while the imports for that year amounted to £183,321, and
the exports to £277,672.
In such circumstances as this extraordinary development of the natural
resources of the District implies, we humbly submit to your Majesty whether
the District of Port Phillip is not fully and fairly entitled to the rank and
position of a separate and independent colony, and whether the compulsory
union of that district with New South Wales Proper, from the capital of
which its own commercial capital and natural outlet is six hundred miles
distant, is not as unreasonable in itself, as it is unjust to the inhabitants of
Port Phillip, and opposed to the whole tenor and practice of British
Colonization. For we beg to remind your Majesty, that Port Phillip was
originally settled, not from New South Wales, but from Van Dieman's Land ;
the whole southern coast of this vast island having lain waste and unoccupied
for nearly half a century after the original settlement of New South Wales ;
and we humbly submit, that it is accordant with the uniform practice of your
Majesty's predecessors, whenever separate and distinct colonial communities
capable of self-government have in any instance been formed within the
nominal limits of any particular Colonial Territory, to erect such com- ¦
munities into separate and independent colonies, although of much more
limited extent and far less favourably circumstanced for the purpose than
that of Port Phillip. In accordance with this principle the ancient colony
of Virginia had two separate portions of its original territory cut off from
it at two different periods, to form the colonies of Maryland to the northward,
and of Carolina to the southward ; and although the colonists of Virginia
petitioned the Government of King Charles the First against the separation
of Maryland from their territory, it was nevertheless effected. In accordance
with this principle also, the Colony of Carolina was itself subsequently
divided into the two separate colonies of North and South Carolina j of which
the latter was at a still later period sub-divided by the establishment of the
colony of Georgia within its original limits.

17
But we would humbly beg to refer your Majesty to a much more recent
and still more apposite precedent for the measure we have taken the liberty
to recommend for Port Phillip, in the Separation of Van Dieman's Land
from the colony of New South Wales in the year 1825 ; for although the
island of Van Dieman's Land is separated from the territory of New South
Wales by Bass',s Straits, its two principal ports of Hobart Town and Laun-
ceston are virtually nearer Sydney than Port Phillip ; and in the year 1825,
when Van Dieman's Land was separated from New South Wales and erected
into a distinct and independent colony, the population and resources, the
revenue and trade of that island were all inconsiderable and insignificant in
comparison with those of Port Phillip at the present moment, as your
Majesty will perceive from the following comparison of their respective
statistics : — Port Phillip in 1843.

Ordinary Revenue
£61,343
14
8
Expenditure
54,352
0
0
Imports
. .
183,321
0
0
Exports
277,672
I)
(1
Sheep
. . 2,000,000
Cattle 
140,000
Horses
5,000
Van Dieman's
Land in 1824.
Population, including 5938 Convicts
12,643
Ordinary Revenue
£6,866
1
9
Expenditure
, .
23,126
16
11
Imports
62,000
0
0
Sheep \ Numbers in 1828,
"i 354,691 84,476
( 2,035
Cattle j 3 years after Sepa-
Horses ; ration
If it should be urged in reply to these statements, that the comparatively
recent union of the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, as well as those of
Demerara and Berbice respectively, indicates a totally different policy on the
part of the Imperial Government in the present day, we would humbly beg
to submit to your Majesty, that the union of the Canadas was a case entirely
sui generis ; the union of these provinces having become indispensably
necessary as a measure of State policy, wisely intended to neutralize the
great political evils arising from the presence of a large colonial population of
foreign origin in Lower Canada. And as to the union of the colonies of
Demerara and Berbice, as the coast line of these united colonies does not
exceed ?O0 miles altogether, it would have been impolitic in the extreme to
have continued to maintain two separate colonial establishments within the
comparatively narrow limits of British Guiana.
We humbly beg, moreover, to submit to your Majesty, that the necessity
for the erection of Port Phillip into a separate colony, altogether independent
of New South Wales, has already been virtually acknowledged by the
Imperial Government ; Port Phillip having all along had a Superintendent,
a Resident Judge, and various other offices and establishments to be found in
no other subordinate district of the colony. And while this subordinate,
inefficient, and unsatisfactory Government costs the inhabitants £44,748 9s 3d
per annum for a population of 25,000, the Government of the neighbouring
colony of South Australia, with a population precisely similar in its origin and
pursuits, costs the inhabitants only £25,000, for a population of 18,000;
thereby demonstrating that it is not true, as is commonly alleged by those
who are opposed to the Separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales,
that the Government of that district, as a separate and independent colony,
would necessarily be much more expensive than it is at present.
But the great practical grievance of which the inhabitants of Port Phillip
universally, and, in our opinion, justly complain, as the result of the com
pulsory union of that District with the colony of New South Wales, is the
18
annual abstraction of a large portion of the proper revenue of the District, and
its appropriation, under the authority of the Legislative Council, for purposes
and objects in which the inhabitants of Port Phillip can have no interest, no
concern ; thereby retarding indefinitely the general advancement of the
District, and the progressive development of its vast resources. For we beg
to remind your Majesty, that Port Phillip has not only never cost either the
mother-country or New South Wales one farthing for its establishment or
support, but a surplus of £176,000 of its land revenue, over and above the
payment of the whole amount of immigration into Port Phillip, has gone into
the general revenue of the colony, and been appropriated for the encourage
ment and support of immigration into New South Wales Proper ; while the
estimated Ordinary Revenue of the District for the year 1845 exceeds the
estimated Expenditure for that year by no smaller an amount than £19,000
or thereby. It will thus appear to your Majesty, that although a representa
tive system of Government has in so far been conceded to the Colony of New
South Wales, that eoncession, as far as the inhabitants of Port Phillip are
concerned, is a mere mockery and delusion ; the only service which the six
members for that District can, under existing circumstances, render to their
constituents, in a financial point of view, being to assist in legalizing the
annual and unwarrantable abstraction of £19,000 per annum of their proper
Revenue, under the authority of the General Legislature. In such circum
stances, your Majesty will not be surprised at the strenuous opposition
which all the other members of the Legislative Council, save one, have
hitherto exhibited towards the Separation of Port Phillip ; for so long as
it is the interest of five-sixths of the members of that body to retain Port
Phillip in a state of vassalage and dependence under New South Wales, it is
hopeless to expect either financial justice for that District from the General
Legislature, or a recommendation of its erection into a separate and independent
colony. But your Majesty will, doubtless, perceive that the case of Port Phillip is
one really deserving of your Majesty's immediate interference in behalf of
the inhabitants of that District on another and still higher ground, when we
add, that although Port Phillip is allowed to return six Representative
Members to the Colonial Legislature, not one of the six Members actually
returned is a resident in the District ; for although the 25,000 inhabitants of
Port Phillip, being almost exclusively recently arrived immigrants from the
mother-country, or from Van Dieman's Land and New South Wales, and
many of them men of superior intelligence and education, undoubtedly comprise
a much larger number of fit and proper persons to represent the District than
any other district of an equal amount of population in the colony, it has been
found impracticable to obtain the services of a single resident proprietor or
inhabitant of the District for the purpose ; men of the requisite intelligence
and ability being either unable or unwilling to absent themselves from their
families and establishments for five months successively in every year, to
attend the meetings of a Colonial Legislature at a distance of six or eight
hundred miles from their usual places ef residence. Highly, therefore, as we
appreciate individually the honour of representing the constituency of a
district whose rapid and general advancement in colonization is unprecedented
in the history of your Majesty's vast empire, we cannot consent to continue to
hold this honourable position without protestingagainstthe injustice that is thus
done to our constituents, who, if they had a Domestic Legislature, would un
questionably be able to find among themselves many men of superior intelli
gence, equally able to manage their affairs with any of us, . and far better
acquainted with the circumstances and wants of the District, than we who
are all resident in Sydney, can possibly be. Nor is this the only evil to
which our constituents are subjected from the great distance of Port Phillip,
and especially of the western portion of that district, from the seat of
Government ; for as gentlemen of the requisite standing in society in that
portion of the territory cannot be expected to attend the meetings of the Select
Committees of the Legislative Council to give evidence in regard to its
actual circumstances and more pressing wants, the business of legislation, as

19
far as the interests of the District are concerned, are conducted in a great
measure in the dark.
On these grounds we humbly pray that your Majesty will be graciously
pleased ^o take the case of our constituents into your Majesty's favourable
consideration, and to order that the requisite steps may be taken for effecting
the entire separation of the Distriot of Port Phillip from New South Wales,
and for its erection into a separate and independent colony.
Reiterating the assurance of our cordial attachment to your Majesty's
Royal Person and Government,
We have the honour to be,
With profound veneration,
Your Majesty's most loyal and dutiful subjects,
J. P. ROBINSON.
CHARLES NICHOLSON, M.D.
JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D.
ADOLPHUS W. YOUNG.
THOMAS WALKER.
BENJAMIN BOYD.
Sydney, New South Wales, 24th December, 1844.
The vote of the majority on my motion had been chuckled over
sufficiently by those concerned, as being in their opinion a happy
riddance from a disagreeable question, which, it was confidently
expected, would not be proposed a second time in that Council.
Even the six members who signed this petition had scarcely any
hope of a favourable result. The great surprise, therefore, the
astonishment of that majority, as well as the delight of all classes
of the inhabitants of Port Phillip, may be easily conceived, when,
in the month of October, 1845, Sir George Gipps informed the
Colony that he had received a dispatch from Lord Stanley, con
ceding separation to Port Phillip, on the part of Her Majesty,
and entrusting the Executive Council with the details of the
measure. I had occasion to visit Port Phillip again in the months of
January and February, 1846; and during my stay, I had a
regular ovation from the inhabitants, at a public festival, at
which there were not fewer than three hundred and fifty gentle
men present, for the services I had thus rendered to the District
in the matter of separation. The following are extracts from the
reports of the Port Phillip Herald and Melbourne Courier on the
occasion : —
GRAND SEPARATION FESTIVAL, MELBOURNE, 11th
FEBRUARY, 1846.
(From the Port Phillip Herald and Melbourne Courier.)
" The nations have fallen, but thou still art young,
Thy sun is but rising, whilst others have set ;
Mis-government o'er thee her mantle hath flung,
Separation shall beam round thee brilliantly yet."
Moore, slightly altered.
"Alderman Moor (Mayor of Melbourne for the year-1845) presided in his
usual able and agreeable manner, supported on his right by Dr. Lang and
Dr. Macarthur, J.P., and on his left by Dr. Thomson and Alderman Condell.
The office of Croupiers was most efficiently performed by Councillors Greeves
and Johnston."
" The President then rose and said — I now come to the toast of the evening ;
and here I cannot refrain from expressing my regret that it has not fallen into

20
the hands of some gentleman more competent to perform the task. _ In so
large a building as this is, and surrounded by so many of my fellow citizens,
I fear that I shall not make myself heard by all ; but I must ask their kind
indulgence, and beg them to remember that this is "my first appearance on
the stage." (Laughter and. cheers.) Gentlemen, it is known to all of you,
that for many years past we have been struggling to gain a political exis
tence — (cheers) — separate and apart from New South Wales, and that we
have sought the erection of our fair and prosperous District into a separate
colony. (Loud cheers.) We have with voices deep, loud and unanimous,
remonstrated against being any longer continued the dependency of a
dependency. (Loud cheers. ) We have attained the growth, and we possess
the vigour of manhood. (Cheers.) The period of our minority is past — we
have paid our guardian handsomely for his care of us — (cheers) — but we need
him no longer. The relation that must henceforth subsist between us is that
of equality. We desire to remain friends, but friends on an equal footing.
We desire to stand a separate and independent colony — (cheers) — dependent
only on her most gracious Majesty. Gentlemen, to attain this end the people
of Port Phillip appealed by petition to the Governor and to the Legislative
Council of New South Wales. And how did the latter receive our appeal ?
With folded arms and in silence : its members heard our prayer, and in silence
they rejected it. We spoke in the calm and sober voice of reason and truth.
We appealed to facts, supported by statistics, which they could not controvert,
and to their sense of justice, which they would not exercise. But no,
gentlemen, it was only Port Phillip they had to do with, and she was too
insignificant in their opinion to excite their alarm — (laughter and cheers, ) —
do what they would ; and she was too weak, they fondly thought, to break
the bonds which bound her. (Applause.) So to the vote they went, when,
with one honourable exception, all the Members of the Legislative Council
then present, voted against Port Phillip and her representatives. But,
gentlemen, there was " a Chiel amang them takin' notes." (Laughter and
cheers.) With a ready hand he prepared a petition to the Queen, which was
signed by all our members — was forwarded to Her Majesty, received the most
gracious consideration, and elicited an equally gracious reply. (Cheers.)
Gentlemen, that petition brought matters to a crisis. Separation was deemed
by the authorities at home to be our right ; and Sir George received his
instructions. (Cheers.) But who gained this great step towards separation ?
(Cheers.) Who was " the Chiel amang them takin' notes ? " Need I name
him ? He sits at our festive board ; he is our guest to-night. (Continued
and vehement applause.) To you [the Speaker here turned to the evening
guest] Doctor Lang, in the name of this meeting, and on behalf of the people
of Port Phillip, I tender our warm and hearty acknowledgments — (cheers) —
for your services in the great cause of Separation ; and sure I am, that when
the future historian of Port Phillip shall trace her origin and rise, your
name will be found inscribed upon the page as one of the most successful
champions of her early rights. (Loud cheers.) Gentlemen, I call upon you
all to join me in the toast — fill high the sparkling glass to "Dr. Lang;"
(cheers) fill higher yet, it is to " Separation ; " (cheers) make the rafters ring-
again with the loud response. The toast is — " Dr. Lang and Separation."
(Here the Theatre reverberated to the artillery of applause which rang right .
through it.)
Dr. Lang rose to respond, and was most enthusiastically received for
several minutes. In order to render himself audible to those at the extreme
end of the theatre, he was compelled to ascend the table, and proceeded as
follows : —
Mr. Chairman and -Gentlemen,— All I can do in acknowledgment of this
most unexpected but most gratifying testimonial of your cordial approval of
my conduct as one of your representatives in the Legislative Council,
especially in the matter of Separation, is to return you, which I assure you I
do from the bottom of my heart, my sincere and most respectful thanks.
(Cheers.) I am not vain enough to suppose that my humble efforts in that
capacity could have merited anything of the kind ; but as this rather enhances

21
the kindness of the demonstration on your part, it will not diminish the
gratitude with which it ought to be received on mine. (Cheers.) I ascribe
this demonstration in great measure to the happy, but somewhat fortuitous
accident through which my name and efforts happen at the present moment
to be associated in your minds with the furtherance of that great object in
the promotion of which you are all so deeply interested, the speedy and entire
separation of this province from the colony of New South Wales. (Renewed
cheers.) It is not for me therefore to assume anything on such an occasion,
as if my services in this matter had been of such extraordinary merit as your
kindness induces you to suppose they have, but simply to be encouraged by
this great demonstration of kindliness on your part to renewed efforts and
exertions in the same cause, wherever they are likeliest to prove successful.
(Great cheering.) Gentlemen, when the constituency of this province did mo
the honour to. consider me a fit and proper person to hold the office of a
Representative of this district in the Legislative Council, nearly three years
ago, I accepted that office (which I confess I was induced to do chiefly from an
enthusiastic desire to promote the cause of civil and religious liherty in this
land), on the understanding that Port Phillip expected that every man in
that important situation should do his duty. (Renewed cheering.) Now,
if you are satisfied that I have duly responded to this expectation, as your
presence on this occasion and the flattering reception you have just given me
fully demonstrate, I am not conscious of having done anything more. Con
curring, as I did entirely from the first, in the views of those who were
anxious to obtain for this dependency the rank of a separate and independent
colony, I brought forward a motion on the subject in the Legislative Council,
as soon as it was practicable and expedient to do so, in the Session of 1844.
You are all well aware of the ill success of that motion. It was strongly
opposed by the Government, and by all the nominee members with one
solitary exception ;' and, what was worse, there was not a single elective
member for the Middle District in its favour ; (Cries of Shame ! Shame ! ) —
the Port Phillip members, with the solitary exception I have mentioned,
standing alone. In such circumstances I saw plainly that there was no hope
of ever carrying such a measure through the Legislative Council ; but as I had
frequently been foiled before, in far humbler efforts for the welfare and
advancement of this colony, by rebuffs from the Local Authorities, in cases in
which I had afterwards been successful by taking them, as the sailors say,
"on the other tack" — (laughter) — it occurred to me that there was still some
hope for Port Phillip and Separation, if a strong petitionjon the subject should
be forwarded to Her Majesty from the six Port Phillip members themselves ;
(cheers) — and the Separation Committee, whom 1 consulted on the subject,
having sanctioned and approved of the measure, it was resolved upon accord
ingly, and the drawing up of the petition was intrusted to myself. The
reasoning and statistics of that petition were not materially different from
those of the other petitions ihat had previously emanated from the district ;
but there was one part of it necessarily and essentially different from anything
contained in any of the others, and which, it struck me, must " touch the
conscience of the King." (Laughter.) It was that paragraph, in which the
six members, who were all resident in Sydney, after expressing their high
sense of the honour that had been done them by the constituency of Port
Phillip in electing them their Representatives, and representing their utter
inability to do justice to their constituents at so great a distance, offered to
denude themselves of their Legislative office and honours, provided that
justice should only be done to Port Phillip, in the concession of a separate
and Independent Colonial Legislature, the members of which should be
selected from amongst themselves, and would therefore be far better able to
consult their best interests than members resident in Sydney. (Great
Cheering.) I was apprehensive, I confess, at first, that some of my respected
colleagues might not be altogether disposed to allow such a paragraph to
pass — to submit to such "a self-denying ordinance," as the Long Parliament
would have called it. (Laughter;) But I was doing my colleagues wrong in
doubting for a moment their willingness to attach their names to such a

22
document. (Renewed Cheering.) They were thoroughly honest men,
sincerely desirous that justice should be done to Port Phillip, whatever might
become of themselves as legislators ; and they signed the petition accordingly,
with the utmost cheerfulness— for which I consider they are well entitled to
all honour and esteem from this constituency. (Long and vehement cheering.)
I repeat it, I trusted not a little to the moral effect of this exhibition of dis
interestedness on the part of the Port Phillip members. For it is not every
day that the Home Authorities receive a document from six members of
Parliament, whether Imperial or Colonial, offering virtually to resign their
legislative office and honours, and to submit to something like political
annihilation for the good of the people. (Renewed cheering.) I was appre
hensive, I confess, that Lord Stanley would treat the statistics of our petition
in much the same way as he did those of yours ; but there was something in
this tacit appeal to the better feelings of his nature, which I felt confident he
could not resist — and I am truly happy to find that I was not mistaken
(Cheers.) Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I congratulate you all on the
prospect of the speedy attainment of this great and reasonable object of your
desires. (Cheering long and loud.)
" It appears to me that some great and vigorous effort should be made in
the present most important crisis of your colonial history for the introduction
and settlement in this province of a numerous agricultural population, to
develop the vast resources of the country, and to form a broad and perma
nent basis for the institutions of our fatherland. With all deference to the
Squatters, I agree entirely in the sentiment so well expressed on one occa
sion by the late General Jackson, then President of the United States of
America — ' The strength and glory of a country are its population, and the
best part of that population are the cultivators of the soil.' (Cheers.) I am
decidedly of opinion that it is as much the interest of Port Phillip as it is of
England to encourage and to promote by every means the formation of
' A brave yeomanry, their country's pride.'
(Renewed cheers.) "
" It is beyond all controversy that this portion of the colony is admirably
adapted for the settlement of an industrious and virtuous population ; and
going home, as I intend doing, at this important crisis, I am in great hopes
that I may be instrumental in giving such an impulse to emigration in the
mother-country as will lead to the speedy introduction and settlement of
many thousands of our countrymen at home of that most important class of
society in this province. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, if in any way I can be of
service to this district in the mother-country, either in promoting the cause
of Separation, or in advancing the best interests of the province in any
way, you may rest assured I shall not be wanting in my efforts to the utmost
of my ability." (Renewed cheering.)
The Honourable and Reverend Gentleman then repeating his thanks for
the honour conferred upon him, resumed his seat amidst the most rapturous
applause. My object in visiting Port Phillip on this occasion was to
ascertain, from a pretty extensive tour which I made in the
district, the capabilities of the country for the settlement of a
reputable and industrious population from, the mother country.
For as it was expected that immigration, which had then been in
abeyance for several years previous,from the failure of the Land
Fund and the general depression of the colony, would forthwith
be resumed with the returning prosperity of the country, great
fears were entertained, as the sequel sufficiently justified, that
that immigration would, still exhibit the same Irish and Eomish
character as it had exhibited so prejudicially to the colony under
the Bounty system. In these circumstances it was deemed by
many zealous Protestants a matter of transcendant importance to

23
the colony generally, that a great effort should be made to give
an _ impulse, throughout the United Kingdom, to Protestant
emigration to Australia, and especially to the districts of Port
Phillip and Moreton Bay. And as there was nobody else at the
time disposed to undertake this duty, I determined to do so
personally, and entirely at my own risk and charges.
In contemplating another voyage to England with this view,
I offered, through certain zealous members of the Separation
Committee, to resign my seat for Port Phillip in the Legislative
Council, as there would still be a considerable portion of the five
years of its legal existence to run after my departure. But this
offer was very strongly declined, as it was supposed that I might
possibly be of some service to the district in going home as one
of its representatives, rather than as a private individual.
I embarked for England on the 1st of July, 1846, and did not
return to the colony till the month of March, 1850. Soon after
my arrival in England, Earl Grey, who was then Principal
Secretary of State for the Colonies, brought in a Bill into the
House of Lords for the better government of the Australian
Colonies ; and on my presenting myself at the Colonial office,
where I was not unknown, Mr. Benjamin Hawes, the Under-
Secretary, invited me, on the part of Earl Grey, to offer any
suggestions I might deem of importance for its improvement.
One of the suggestions I offered on this invitation was that the
boundary line between New South Wales and Victoria should not
be the Murray River, as it is now, but the Murrumbidgee, from the
point where the latter river receives the Tumut at Darbillehra, a
few miles from Gundagai, to where it joins the Murray. As this
question is one of great importance to the colony of Victoria,
while there are few, if any, of the inhabitants of that colony who
are acquainted with its history, the following statement on the
subject will probably not be unacceptable to the reader : —
In a despatch from Lord John Russell, then Principal Secretary
of State, to Governor Sir George Gipps, of 31st May, 1840, his
lordship announced the intention of the Imperial Government to
divide the great colony of New South Wales into three portions
or colonies ; the proposed dividing line between New South
Wales and the future colony to the southward, being the
Murrumbidgee River, which runs nearly due west for the greater
part of its course, and as nearly as possible in the 36th degree of
latitude, till it joins the Murray, together with a line produced
from the Murrumbidgee in that latitude to the Pacific Ocean.
The following is an extract from Lord John Russell's despatch
on the subject : —
" For all purposes connected with the disposal of land, it will be desirable
that the present territory of New South Wales should be divided into three
distinct portions or districts, which I may describe under the names of a
Northern, a Middle, and a Southern district. * * * I proceed to. the
more urgent question of separating the Southern from the Middle or Sydney
district. " These two districts are to be divided by the boundaries of the two Southern
most counties of New South Wales, as proclaimed by the Governor on the

24
14th of October, 1829, and from the limits of these two counties for the whole
course of the River Murrwnbidgee and the Murray, until it meets the Eastern
boundary of South Australia, which, of course, will constitute the limit to the
westward, both of the Sydney and of the Port Phillip districts. Seeing how
little the general direction of the Murrumbidgee, after leaving the boundary
of the original settlement of New South Wales, varies from an East and
West course, it has appeared to me more convenient to choose this natural
and well defined boundary than to adopt a parallel of latitude.
" Despatch from Lord John Russell, to Governor Sir George Gipps,
of date, Downing-street, 31st May, 1840."
This was partly a very injudicious, not to say absurd, but
partly, also, a very judicious arrangement. It would have been
exceedingly injudicious on the one hand to have separated from
New South Wales the tract of country extending northwards,
from Cape Howe to the eastward of the Snowy Mountains or
Australian Alps ; as that tract of country lies into Sydney, and
has all its commercial relations with New South Wales. On the
other hand it was equally injudicious, and directly contrary to
the order of nature, and the evident appointment of the Creator,
to include in New South Wales, as was actually done, although
in direct opposition to the proposal of Lord John Russell, tbe
portion of territory extending westward from the Snowy
Mountains, lying between the Murray and the Murrumbidgee
Rivers. That portion of territory is now virtually a part of
Victoria, although belonging politically to New South Wales ;
almost all of its commercial relations being with Victoria, and
most of its inhabitants being from that province.
There was a prodigious outcry, however, in the colony when
Lord John Russell's proposed division of its territory was
announced; and the result on the occasion shows how
completely the Imperial Govornment had abdicated its proper
functions in the case, and left the decision of an all-important
question to one of the interested parties concerned, without
allowing the other to be heard in the matter. The late Bishop
Broughton, one of the members of the Nominee Legislative
Council of the period, took the lead on the discussion of the
question in that body, and made a long speech on the
subject, insisting upon the Murray, and not the Murrumbidgee,
as the only proper boundary between New South Wales and the
proposed southern colony. The following is an extract of his
speech on the occasion : —
"In support of the proposal that the Murray should be our southern
boundary, let me ask whose River is the Murray ? To whom does it naturally
appertain but to its first discoverers, who have been exclusively inhabitants
of New South Wales P It was first crossed by Mr. Hume and Mr. Hovell ;
its course, from the junction of the Murrumbidgee to the sea, was traced by
Captain Sturt, and it has since been further explored by Sir Thomas Mitchell.
And under whose instructions were these expeditions fitted out? Under
those of Sir Ralph Darling and Sir Richard Bourke, Governors of New South
Wales. And by whom were they conducted P By officers in the service of
the Government of New South Wales. And at whose expense? At the
expense ofthe colonists of New South- Wales"
Now the Right Reverend Bishop has certainly, although

25
doubtless unconsciously, made a very considerable misstatement
of fact in this allegation — in alleging that the expeditions both
of Sir Thomas Mitchell and Captain Sturt were undertaken and
conducted at the expense of the colonists of New South Wales.
Being of a different opinion in the matter, although not quite
certain as to the fact, I referred within the last few days, to the
Audit Office of this colony, as to whether the expenses of Sir
Thomas Mitchell's and Captain Sturt's expeditions of discovery
had been actually borne by the colonists of New South Wales ;
and in a letter dated "The Treasury, 15th February, 1870," I
have been informed, after due search made in the Records ofthe
office, that "It would appear that both expeditions were provided
for by the Home Government." The colonists of New South
Wales had therefore no part or lot in the fitting out and main
taining of these expeditions, or in the discoveries they effected.
For it was expressly provided, in an Act of the Imperial
Parliament, for the Government of New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land, " That the Governor of the said colony of New
South Wales, with the advice and consent of the said Legislative
Council, shall have authority to make laws for the peace, welfare
and good government of the said colony ; provided always, that
no such law shall be repugnant to the law of England, or interfere
in any manner with the sale or other appropriation of the lands
belonging to the Crown within the said colony, or with the revenues
thence arising." It was not the fact, therefore, although so
strongly asserted by the late bishop, who ought, as a legislator,
to have known better, that the discovery either of the Murrum
bidgee or the Murray River, or that of the intervening territory,
was effected either at the instance or at the cost of the colonists
of New South Wales. It was all done and paid for by orders
from home, and with Imperial funds.
In these circumstances, acting on the invitation of the Colonial
Office, and in the capacity of one of the Representatives of Port
Phillip in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, I
addressed a letter to Earl Grey, then Principal Secretary of State
for the Colonies, immediately after his Lordship had introduced
into the House of Lords his Bill for the better government of
the Australian Colonies, in the month of March, 1847 ; setting
forth, for reasons which I stated at length, what I conceived was
the only proper boundary between New South Wales and the
future colony of Port Phillip, and earnestly recommending that
that boundary should be adopted and established in the forth
coming Bill. Presuming, therefore, that the territory extending
northwards from Cape Howe, and lying between the Snowy
Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, would be included — as I was
strongly of opinion it ought to be — in New South Wales, I re
commended that the boundary between the two colonies should,
in accordance with the latter portion of Lord John Russell's
Despatch of the 31st Ma.y,.1840, be the Murrumbidgee River, from
Darbillehra, the point where the Murrumbidgee receives the

26
Tumut River, flowing northwards from the higher ranges of thu
Snowy Mountains, to its junction with the Murray River, towards
the Colony of South Australia.
Earl Grey's Bill was subsequently withdrawn in 1847, but
was again submitted to Parliament, with considerable amend
ments, during the Sessions of 1848 and 1849. On both of these
occasions I wrote again and again to the Colonial Office, repeat
ing and urging, with all the earnestness I could use, the recom
mendation I had given — that the Murrumbidgee, from the point
I had indicated, and not the Murray, should be the boundary
line between the two colonies. There was an influential gentle
man at the time, who took a great interest in Port Phillip, and
with whom I had become acquainted through our mutual friend,
the late Benjamin Boyd, Esq., then one of the six members for
Port Phillip. The gentleman I allude to was the Honourable
Francis Scott, then M.P. for Berwick, and a younger brother of
the Scotch peer, Lord Polwarth. Mr. Scott, along with a brother of
Mr. Boyd's, had called upon me on my arrival in England, and
we entered at once into mutual and friendly relations ; Mr.
Scott expressing, at my desire, his willingness to do whatever
might be practicable for the improvement of Earl Grey's Bill,
when it should come into Committee in the House of Commons,
and particularly to ensure the adoption of the Boundary line I
have indicated. With this view I got a map of the country con
structed for his use, which he promised to place upon the Table
of the House of Commons when the Bill should be in Com
mittee ; explaining to him the measure I had recommended, and
impressing upon him its great importance for the future welfare
and good government of both colonies.
The years 1848 and 1849 were the Revolutionary period on the
Continent of Europe, during which the attention of the Imperial
Parliament was so much absorbed in matters of much greater
importance in the estimation of its members, that the petty
affairs of the Australian Colonies could not even obtain a hear
ing. Earl Grey's Bill, which was to separate Port Phillip
entirely from New Soutb Wales, was therefore still in abeyance,
when I left England on my return to the Colony in November,
1849 ; and it was not finally passed till the month of August,
1850. Unacquainted as I was, from my absence in the Colony,
with the particular manner in which the Bill had been treated in
passing through the Imperial Parliament, I then found, to my
great mortification, that all my labour in England, in endeavour
ing to obtain a proper boundary for Port Phillip, had been lost ;
and that the question had been at length decided upon the false
issue submitted to our Nominee Legislative Council of 1840, by
the late Bishop Broughton.
I have no doubt, however, that this arrangement will not be a
permanent one, and that when a uniform tariff, a Customs
League and a federation of the Australian colonies, which are
all, unquestionably, events of the future, are actually ratified and

27
established, the tract of country lying between the Murray and
Murrumbidgee Rivers, whieh I took the liberty many years ago
to designate Riverina, will eithei be annexed to Victoria or
formed into a separate and independent colony. That tract of
country is considerably larger than all Scotland, and much larger
than Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. I bave had occasion
to cross over it from North to South in two different localities
within the last few months ; and I can testify, from all I have
heard as well as from my own observation, that almost all its
commercial relations are now with Victoria and not with New
South Wales, and that although there is no particular desire on
the part of its inhabitants for annexation to Victoria, there is a
complete alienation of feeling as well as of interest from New
South Wales. The political connection still subsists, but every
other has ceased.
I was more successful, however, with tbe Colonial Office, in
regard to another suggestion which Iliad made, on the invitation
of Mr, Hawes, for the improvement of Earl Grey's forthcoming
Imperial Act for the better government of the Australian
Colonies. For reasons which I stated at length in the same
series of letters in whieh I had recommended, although unsuccess
fully, a proper boundary for Port Phillip, I suggested that a
clause should be inserted in the future Act, authorising Her
Majesty, whenever she should deem it expedient and necessary,
to separate from New South Wales and to erect into another and
distinct Colony, the portion of territory, then forming part of
that Colony, situated to the northward ofthe 30th parallel of lati
tude. After much correspondence on the subject and many
disappointments, my suggestion was happily adopted, and a
clause, almost in my own words, was embodied in the Imperial
Act of 1850 ; thereby lopping off the other wing of Sir Thomas
Mitchell's Spread Eagle, and providing for the eventual separa
tion from New South Wales of what is now the noble colony of
Queensland. It was the second time that our venerable Legis
lative Council of 1843 — thoroughly selfish, uncharitable, grasping
and unjust as it was — had been fairly outwitted by one of its
own members.
I have already stated that my principal object in proceeding
to England in 1846, was to give an impulse to Protestant
emigration to Australia from the United Kingdom, and thereby
to prevent the consummation with which the country had been
threatened for a series of years before, of being transformed into
an Irish Roman Catholic from a British Protestant colony. That
there was real danger of this kind at the period in question will
doubtless be recognised and acknowledged from the fact that
during the eighteen months ending 30th June, 1 849, the Colonial
Office and the Emigration Commissioners had sent out not fewer
than 2,219 Irish females, under the denomination of orphans,
and almost exclusively Roman Catholics, at the expense of the
Land Fund of the colony, which was then contributed in at least

28
three eases out of every four, if not rather in nine cases out of
every ten, by English and Scotch Protestants. There was no
difficulty at the time in procuring English and Scotch Protestant
females in any number and of unexceptionable character to
emigrate to Australia ; but, through evil influence in certain
quarters, which had been allowed to predominate in Downing-
street, the funds of the colony were thus unfairly and unjustly
appropriated in promoting the immigration of one particular
class, Irish Roman Catholics, while tbe door was virtually shut
against English and Scotch Protestant females. Nay, all this
was done in direct contravention of a principle which bad been
embodied at my suggestion in the Report of the Select Committee
of our Legislative Council on Immigration for the year 1845,
(Sir Charles Nicholson, Chairman) to the following effect: —
" Whatever number of emigrants may henceforth be introduced"
(that is by Government at the public expense) " ought to be
derived in equal proportions from the three Kingdoms."
My efforts in endeavouring to give a powerful impulse to
Protestant emigration to Australia, during the tliree years of my
stay in the mother country on this occasion, were nearly equally
divided between Port Phillip and Moreton Bay, now the great
colonies of Victoria and Queensland. They were of three kinds :
1. Through the Press — in publishing a separate work on each
of these countries, shortly after my arrival in England, in 1847 ;
descriptive of their physical character and circumstances, and
setting forth the prospects they then exhibited, as Emigration
Fields, to reputable and industrious families and individuals of
different classes of society ; in circulating various papers and
pamphlets on the subject, and in writing a series of articles which
were published in successive numbers of influential journals,
having an extensive circulation at the time among the classes I
desired to influence.
2. In delivering lectures or addresses on Australia generally,
sometimes on Port Phillip and at others on Moreton Bay, in
many of the principal localities in the three kingdoms ; as, for
instance, in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds,
Newcastle, Bristol, Gloucester, Bedford, and in various other
localities in England. In Scotland, I delivered similar addresses
in the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen ; in the
towns of Ayr, Kirkintilloch, Kirkaldy, Cupar, Kilmarnock,
Elgin, Inverness, and Oban ; at Wick, in Caithness ; at Kirkwali
and Stromness, in the Orkney Islands, and at Lerwick in the
Shetland Islands. In Ireland, my efforts were confined to the
Province of Ulster, the chief seat of Irish Protestantism, in which
I debvered addresses on emigration to Australia in Belfast,
Coleraine, Londonderry, Armagh, and Baiibridge. Many of the
meetings held in the localities I have mentioned in all the three
kingdoms, were numerous and enthusiastic ; and thus not only
was emigration to Australia, and especially to Port Phillip,
brought under the notice of thousands of zealous Protestants in

29
all parts of the United Kingdom, who had never thought on the
subject before, but the minds of men generally in the mother
country were thereby undergoing the necessary preparation for
taking advantage, with intelligence and success, of the great
impending crisis, when the discovery of gold in Australia
astonished the whole civilized world, and attracted tens of
thousands of energetic persons and families to its shores.
3. In sending out to Port Phillip in the year 1849 and 1850
three ships — the Larpent, the Travancore, and the Clifton — laden
with a large body, about six hundred in all, of thoroughly
Protestant emigrants whom I had personally selected for the
purpose, and who thus paved the way for thousands of a similar
class and character to follow in their track. In short, Protestant
emigration to Australia was a new idea which my own efforts, in
the various ways and places I have indicated, had served to in
fuse into the minds of myriads of people throughout the United
Kingdom who had never thought of it before ; and a large pro
portion of whom, I am happy to say, have since, as emigrants to
Fort Phillip, been endeavouring, in hundreds of instancs, and by
no means unsuccessfully, to impress a thoroughly Christian and
Protestant character on the land of their adoption.
If it should be asked how or why I came to feel myself called
on to make such efforts as I have mentioned for our common
Protestantism, and the furtherance of the general welfare and
advancement of these Colonies, I would reply that as so much
had been done in previous years, through the cupidity of our
Sydney merchants and the apathy of our Local Government, to
Romanize this great Colony by immigration at the public expense
from the South and West of Ireland, it appeared to not a few
zealous Protestants in the year 1846 — when the resumption of
immigration was generally anticipated, after a period of great
depression during which it had been discontinued — that it was
indispensably necessary for the interests of Protestantism, as
well as for the real welfare of these noble colonies, that a great
effort should be made by some fit and proper person to give an
impulse to Protestant immigration to Australia throughout the
United Kingdom ; and, as I have already observed, as no other
fit and proper person appeared to undertake the duty, it seemed
to devolve upon me. At all events I cordially approved of the
object and determined to carry it out at all hazards.
The grand difficulty in the way was the supply of the requisite
funds for so great an undertaking ; for with my well-known
Separation tendencies, I had nothing to expect from the Local
Government, and I neither asked nor obtained pecuniary assist
ance from the public — with the exception of two free-will offerings,
amounting together to not more than £120, contributed by private
friends towards the enterprise. But, having taken up the under
taking in real earnest, as a matter of life and death for the
country, I broke up my domestic estabbshment in the colony and
sold off my effects, which realized something considerable to

30
commence with. The sale of my valuable library of two thousand
volumes, with which I parted witb much regret, cleared, after
paying expenses, even at a great undervalue, £300 additional ;
and a small property I had inherited in Scotland, and sold during
my stay in the mother country, brought me £700 more. The
rest of the large expenditure I incurred in my three years'
agitation in the mother country — in which the very rents of
the Halls I had to engage for my Lectures or Addresses,
amounted to a serious item — is represented by a mortgage on
my remaining property to tbe present day. But where has there
ever been anything great or important achieved for humanity
without much enthusiasm on the one hand and great self-sacrifice
on the other ?
The last service I had the honor of rendering to Victoria, in
common with all the other colonies of Eastern Austraba, previous
to its final separation from New South Wales on the 1st July,
1851, was in taking a prominent and successful part in the Anti-
transportation movement of that period. There had been a
vacancy in the representation of the City of Sydney, which then
returned only two members, shortly after my return to the colony
from England in March, 1850, andi was chosen to fill it. In
that position I was honored to present the most numerously
signed petition that had ever been presented on any subject to
the Legislative Council, against the obnoxious measure which
certain influential persons in the colony were anxious to carry ;
the number of signatures to the petition being 11,963.

John L. Sherriff, Bookseller and Stationer, 18 Wynyard Square, Sydney

POSTSCEIPT.

Sydney, 22nd March, 1870.
The notorious misgovernment of the Austraban Colonies during
the three years of my stay in England, under the administration
of Earl Grey, had brought these colonies to the very verge of
revolution. The grand object of his lordship was to effect the
resumption of Transportation to New South Wales, including
Port PhilUp, and to extend it also to the Cape of Good Hope
and New Zealand. And it was shrewdly suspected that tbe delay
in granting the famous measure of Separation which Lord Stanley
had guaranteed in 1845, for more than six long years thereafter,
was merely an artful dodge on the part of his lordship to enable
him to carry his own favorite measure through a more pliant
legislature. At all events, the people of Melbourne testified their
indignation at the treatment they had experienced, and their
contempt of the privilege of representation in Sydney, which they
•enjoyed under the old constitution, by electing as their member
Earl Grey himself; who was accordingly questioned by one of
the Conservative Peers in tbe House of Lords as to whether he
was not going out to represent his Australian constituency ?
As to the Transportation experiment, the Colony of the Cape
rose indignantly as one man to prevent his lordship's Trial
Convict Ship from landing its cargo on their shores. Port
Phillip did the samo ; and it was only because we had a faineant
Governor at the time, and a small but influential party to back
up bis lordship, that they were allowed to be landed here. At a
great public meeting on tbe subject in Sydney, a popular Roman
CathoHc priest of the day exclaimed, "Rather cut the painter
than submit to such tyranny and degradation." The phrase has
been ascribed to me : but I was not its author, although I confess
I cordially approved of the sentiment it expressed.
On leaving England for the colony in 1849, I addressed a
letter, of which the following are extracts, to Earl Grey, which
made much noise and excited not a little indignation in Downing-
street circles at tbe time, but which was then so much in ac
cordance with the feebngs of Port Phillip, that it was printed in
a separate form, and circulated by certain colonists, all over the
district. I have already indicated the reception I met with on
the occasion from the citizens of Sydney.

TO THE EARL GREY, &C, &C.
On board the ship Clifton, off Gravesend,
November 14, 1849.
My Lord,— It is now nearly three years since I arrived in this country,
as a representative of the people of New South Wales, for the furtherance of
certain objects of vast importance to my adopted country ; and as I am now
on the eve of my return to Australia, with hut little prospect of ever setting
foot again on English ground, I trust your lordship will excuse me for
troubling you, previous to my departure, with the result of my experience and
observation of the first three years of your lordship's administration as
" Autocrat of all the Russias " of our colonial empire."
I beg, therefore, to assure your lordship, that I arrived in this country
entertaining the highest hopes, as a British colonist, from your lordship's
accession to office — an event which I was simple enough to regard as one of
the happiest omen for the colonies ; I am now returning to Australia with
the bitterest disappointment and the deepest disgust, cherishing precisely the
same feelings as the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin did when he left
England as a British subject for the last time.
My principal object in coming to England towards the close of the year
1846 was to give such an impulse to emigration to Australia, as would direct
to that country many families and individuals of virtuous character and
industrious habits, who would not only contribute materially to develop its
va3t resources, but who would transmit the precious inheritance of our civil
and religious liberties unimpaired to posterity. In this object, I am happy
to say that I have succeeded far beyond my own highest expectations,
although I have experienced nothing from your lordship's office but incivility
and obstruction.

In reviewing the intercourse I have thus had with your lordship's
department for the last three years, I cannot but express the extreme regret,
not unmingled with indignation, which I cannot but feel as a British colonist,
when I reflect that I have myself experienced much more courtesy and
attention, merely as a British traveller, from the President of the United
States of America, in his marble palace at Washington, than I have done as
a representative of the people of New South Wales from the paltriest
underlings of your lordship's department. Like the mutes in the Sultan's
palace at Constantinople, these familiars of your lordship regularly strangle
honest men, and every honest measure connected with the colonies, in the
dark recesses of their political inquisition ; and the people of England never
hear of the matter any more than the Turks used to do of those hapless
victims whose bodies were thrown at midnight into the waters of the
Bosphorus. In singular contrast with the heavy blow and great discouragement
which emigration of v. superior character to New South Wales has
experienced from your lordship's department, is the officious encouragement
and assistance afforded by that department from colonial funds for Irish
female emigration. In the report of the commissioners for administering the
laws for the relief of the poor in Ireland , addressed to his Excellency the
Earl of Clarendon, of date July 14th, 1819, I find the following announce
ment : —
" We have to report with satisfaction the steady progress of the emigration
of orphan girls from the Irish workhouses to the Australian colonies, which
we undertook in pursuance of your Excellency's command, and which we first
commenced in the spring of 1848. Since that time the number of these
emigrants shipped from Plymouth for Sydney and Adelaide has been 2,219,
at a cost to the unions of about £5 per head for outfit and conveyance to
Plymouth, the remaining cost being defrayed from the colonial funds.''

Now, my Lord, from the origin and character of the influence which was
notoriously brought to bear upon your lordship and his Excellency the Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland, in furtherance of this measure of Irish female
emigration, no intelligent person, at all acquainted either with the parties
who originated that measure or with the Australian colonies, can doubt for a
moment that the real object of those parties at whose instance your lordship
was induced to sanction the measure in question was simply to supply Roman
Catholic wives for the English and Scotch protectants of the humbler classes
in Australia, and thereby to Romanise the Australian colonies through the
artful and thoroughly Jesuitical device of mixed marriages. Your lordship
has thus been transforming your department as far as Irish female emigration
is concerned, into a mere Romish propaganda. And what right, I ask my
lord, had your lordship to misappropriate the funds of the Australian colonies
— funds derived almost exclusively from the capital and enterprise of English
and Scotch protestants — for any such purposes or in any- such way ? Was it
because there were no " distressed needlewomen " in England to whom a free
passage to Australia would have proved an invaluable boon ? Was it because
there were no virtuous unmarried females struggling with poverty in
Scotland, that the funds contributed in such large measure by English and
Scotch protestants, should be appropriated in inundating their adopted country
with Irish Romanism? I admit that neither your lordship nor his Excellency
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland could possibly have had any design to
unprotestantize the Australian colonies. I am well aware that in this whole
matter your lordship and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland were merely the
dupes of an artful female Jesuit, the able but concealed agent of the
Romish priesthood in Australia, who had thus adroitly managed to
attach both of your lordships — two ministers of state — to her apron-
string. The cruel injustice, the enormous wrong which your lordship
has thus been inflicting upon the protestant colonists of Australia,
is the more inexcusable for the following reasons. The late Legislai ive Coun
cil of New South Wales, at the instance of a select Committee of that body,
of which I had the honour to be a member, had actually recommended to
your lordship that in any future immigration into that colony at the public
expense, there should, as nearly as possible, be an equal number of immi
grants from each of the three kingdoms ; and the same recommendation and
request was also pressed upon your lordship, in a series of petitions which I
had the honour to submit to your lordship, on my arrival in this countiy.
from various important districts of New South Wales. But, in that spirit of
haughty and contemptuous disregard both of the feelings and wishes of
British colonists and colonial legislatures which seems to form a leading
principle of your lordship's administration, these recommendations and re
quests have been left unheeded, and a course diametrically opposed to the
wishes and interests of the best portion of the colonists has been pursued.
Your lordship's procedure in the matter of the resumption of transpor
tation to New South Wales has been precisely similar in its character.
Your lordship's predecessor, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, had projected
and partly formed a new penal colony on the east coast of Australia, imme
diately to the northward of New South Wales, in which it was proposed to
carry out an improved system of convict discipline. Had this judicious
measure, which your lordship unceremoniously and without examination set
aside, on your accession to office, been pursued, your lordship would have
been spared all the humiliation and annoyance which jour lordship's depart
ment has recently experienced from New Zealand., from the Cape of Good
Hope, and from New South Wales. But your krdship appears to be quite
above both advice and warning in this matter); for your lordship has not
only determined to transform the peculiarly investing and promising settle
ment of Moreton Bay into a penal settlement .once more, but has actually
ordered more convicts to he sent to Sydney, iif the face of the repeated re
monstrances and protests of the colonists. |
My lord, there are certain injuries and insults — especially those offered
to communities — which, for the good of society! ought neither to be tolerated
nor forgiven ; and this, I conceive, is an injur* and insult of that particular
kind. If your lordship, therefore, should persevere in carrying out this

measure, in direct opposition to the publicly expressed opinion of large bodies
of the colonists of New South Wales in all parts of the territory, the
people of that colony will, in my humble opinion, be justified in resorting to
measures of self-preservation which your lordship will scarcely anticipate,
but which will effectually insure the redress of all such grievances for the
future. * * * * * * * . *
And does your lordship suppose that men of British spirit, with means
of redress at their hands, will suffer themselves to be treated any longer like
mere children in a nursery, by any peer in Her Majesty's realm ? Does
your lordship suppose that there are not men of higher mark in Australia
than tbe Irish incapables of Dublin and Ballingarry P
For three years past your lordship has been promising a Constitution
for the Australian colonies ; but if that Constitution should not be something
very different from the miserable apology for a Constitution which your
lordship's subaltern, Mr. Hawes, presented to the House of Commons during
last session of Parliament, and subsequently withdrew, I will venture to pre
dict that the colonies will endorse and return it with the well-kno wn Post-
office marks, " Too late," and " More to pay." Very moderate concessions
would have satisfied the colonists three years ago, but such concessions will
not satisfy them now. To use a vulgar but expressive phrase, which I trust
your lordship will excuse, they will now " go for the whole hog,'' or for
nothing at all.
For the three years of gross mis-government which your lordship has per
mitted to subsist throughout the colonies — mis-government which it was
fully in your lordship's power, and which it was your lordship's first duty,
in accordance with your own previous professions, to have rectified — your
lordship, in my humble opinion, deserves both dismissal and impeachment ;
and if the government of this great nation were only in such able and
vigorous hands as the extreme urgency of the times demands, both of these
measures of justice would be dealt out to your lordship without fail and
without hesitation.
As far as regards the Australian colonies, your lordship has for three
years past been knocking at the gate of futurity for the President of the
United States of Australia : be assured, my lord, he is getting ready, and
will shortly be out ; and he will astonish the world with the manliness of
his port and the dignity of his demeanour. As in duty bound, he will make
a profound obeisance to your lordship, in the first instance, in grateful
acknowledgment of the concern which your lordship has had in his paternity ;
he will then take his place in the great family of nations, with a proud con
sciousness of the brilliant career upon which his country has entered when
delivered at length from the baleful domination of Downing-street He will
require no soldiers to enable him to keep his seat, like Louis Napoleon. He
will have no foul blot of slavery to defile his national escutcheon, like
Zachary Taylor. I have the honour to be,
My Lord,
. Your Lordship's very humble
And most obedient servant,

YALE

JOHN DUNMORE LANG.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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