In Australian history there is a name as memorable and significant as the name of John Pym or John Hampden in English history. The one native Australian whom all the colonies agree to honour, and on whom his contemporaries bestowed the title of the "Australian Patriot," is William Wentworth. He was the son of an Irish surgeon in the employment of the Government, but, like Grattan and Flood in the time of his ancestors, he passed in a stride from the official class to the service of the people whom they ruled and oppressed. He was sent to England, when a boy, for his education. He returned to the colony an English barrister, and brought with him the seed of public liberty—a library of constitutional law, and a printing press to found an independent newspaper. The journal soon produced a political organization to carry its teaching into effect, and many of the best of the free population joined Wentworth in the Patriotic Association. After asserting successfully in a convict colony the fundamental, but forgotten, rights of public meeting, a free press, and trial by jury, he took the decisive step of claiming a Legislature and representative government for the people of New South Wales. The demand was resisted by the official class with the exaggeration of wrath and horror which we have seen displayed recently on a grander scale at home. To grant to convicts and the sons of convicts, to Irish rebels and the sons of Irish rebels, political power was, these grave persons predicted, to lay the basis of a turbulent republic. But it laid the basis of the free State which sent an expedition to the Soudan a couple of years ago at the instance of men who inherited both these reproaches. Wentworth pressed on, and in 1843, when O'Connell was claiming a native Parliament and Executive for Ireland, the first concession to Australia was made. A Legislative Council was established in New South Wales, consisting of twenty-four members, two-thirds elected by the colonists and onethird nominated by the Crown. It was a maimed and imperfect instrument, but it was used, as it was altogether inevitable it should be used, to exact in the end what was grudgingly withheld at the outset. In the new Legislature, the outlying district of Port Philip was assigned six members. But the colonists in the latter settlement were engaged in attending to their private business, and fit men could not be got to travel a thousand miles to Sydney, and reside for months at a distance from their homes. Port Philip, they declared, was as large as England, and could only be adequately governed by a Legislature of its own. One of their members, a man of exceptional originality and vigour, a Presbyterian minister resident in Sydney, moved that their wishes should be complied with, and Port Philip be created a separate colony. He was opposed by all the New South Wales representatives with a memorable exception. Robert Lowe, then a practising barrister in Sydney, who was not a political

pedant in colonial affairs, considered the union between Port Philip and New South Wales an injustice and a grievance, and voted for its immediate repeal. The motion was ignominiously defeated, but the pioneers of Australia Felix, as the settlement was already called in the language of poetry and oratory, were not to be repressed. They sent their complaint to the Home Government, despatched an agent to London to "flap" the Colonial Office, and even secured a certain tepid interest for the question in the London Press. It was of no imaginary wrongs the colonists complained; Port Philip was treated like another Ireland by its distant mistress. The remonstrances of the population were disregarded, and their native resources, especially the large fund derived from land sales, were expended in the adornment of Sydney.

Their next step was a significant illustration of the spirit and intelligence of the young community in Melbourne. In the summer of 1818, when Europe was electric with revolutionary passions, a peaceful coup d'état was struck on the small stage of the aspiring little settlement. At the nomination of the Port Philip members to serve in the Sydney Legislature, which happened at this time, not one candidate appeared. Nothing, it was conceived, would so effectually realize to the Colonial Office the distrust and contempt entertained by the colonists for the existing system, as an abstention like this by an entire community; and it would have the additional advantage of compelling a more respectful attention to their demands in the New South Wales Legislature, as that body could not proceed legally to business in their absence. The local authorities were alternately in a panic and a rage, and exercised all their skill to defeat the popular device. A few days later, at the nomination for the borough of Melbourne, which was separately represented, a Government candidate appeared. He was duly proposed and seconded, and as a single vote would suffice to elect him, the ingenious strategy of the colonists seemed for a moment to be defeated. But they had not exhausted their resources. It was moved that the Right Hon. Earl Grey, then Secretary for the Colonies, was a fit and proper person to represent the borough at Sydney. A poll was taken, and the noble Earl was elected by a triumphant majority over his local competitor. Mr. Latrobe, the Superintendent, and official persons in general were much scandalized at this profane use of the name of a peer and a Cabinet Minister; for in those days the official uniform in colonies usually covered a temper and demeanour closely akin to those which flourish under plush. Such a people, they said, were manifestly unfit for self-government; which is scarcely the reflection it will suggest to a philosophical reader. The Secretary of State, like a man of the world, took the matter in good part; and it was doubtless this stroke which awoke him to the conviction, which he soon afterwards expressed,

that Port Philip representation had become an unreal and illusory, not a substantial, enjoyment of representative institutions.

Letters from London accordingly announced that a Legislature like that of New South Wales would be established in Port Philip. But while the colonists were waiting for the promised Constitution they were tried by a serious crisis, and met it with a courage and resolution which proved them worthy of self-government. A ship freighted with ticket-of-leave men was despatched to Port Philip, on the pretence that New South Wales had invited convicts, and Port Philip was still undeniably a district of New South Wales. From the period when the new community became in any degree organized, it seems to have steadily determined upon two things: to claim self-government, as we have seen, and to shut out the felonry of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1845 a cargo of convicts from England arrived in the bay, but the news created such a storm of wrath in Melbourne, that they were ordered by the Superintendent to proceed to Ven Diemen's Land. And now in 1849, when the desire of self-government was about to be gratified, the renewal of the attempt-of which a fast sailing ship forewarned them-wounded their pride as much as it alarmed their fears. A meeting was immediately held, at which the chief men of the settlement-English, Irish, and Scotch-were spokesmen of the popular determination that the convicts should not be received. And not in the masquerade of savages, like the patriots of Boston, but without disguise or fear, they delivered their will. The magistrates of the city and district met soon afterwards, and indorsed the popular decision. The Governor at Sydney at this time, a ci-devant dandy, aiming only to keep things quiet, promised for peace sake that no convicts should be permitted to land in Port Philip until "the feelings of the community were made known in Downing Street." The colonists on their side determined that no felons should be intruded upon their wives and children, whatever might be the response of the distant oracle. The prison ship, however, the Randolph, in due time reached Hobson's Bay, and the captain, refusing to be bound by the concession of the Governor, insisted on his right to land his passengers, inasmuch as if he failed to do so he would imperil his insurance. Another public meeting was called to renew the protestation of the colony. The speakers declared that England had no constitutional right to tax the colonists for Imperial purposes by requiring them to maintain a portion of her criminals; that the introduction of felons would discredit the fair name Port Philip had begun to acquire in England, and deter the most eligible class of emigrants from coming out; and finally, "that they had never received convicts, and were prepared to undergo any extremity rather than submit to do so." The meeting agreed nemine contradicente that the prisoners should

not be permitted to land.

This intrepid resolution, like all daring action, was originally the work of a few, but it suited the temper of the people, and was adopted with as near an approach to unanimity as can ever be attained in communities where individual opinion is free. "The convicts must not land," became the popular watchword. The Governor at Sydney, having as little the temper as the resources necessary to play the part of a tyrant, adhered to his promise, and the captain at last yielded to his peremptory orders, and set sail for Sydney. Thus, for the second time in half a dozen years, the colonists successfully protected themselves against the mischievous errors of the Colonial Office. But the flame was too violent to subside with a temporary success. It spread to Sydney, where the convicts were also refused admission, though the Imperial Government were able to plead a certain amount of local sanction for sending them there; finally it spread to Ven Diemen's Land, then still a penal settlement, but where the younger colonists were determined to deliver it from this reproach. It is worth noting that the men who took the lead in Port Philip were so far from being "selfish and reckless demagogues," as was alleged in London,* that half a dozen of them afterwards became Ministers of the Crown; and thirty of them contributed €100 each to the Anti-Convict Fund-a munificent subscription from a settlement of shop-keepers and sheep-farmers.

In the Australian summer of 1850, the mid-winter of England, the news reached the settlement that their wishes were accomplished, an Act of the Imperial Parliament having created Port Philip a separate colony, and, as a mark of special distinction, the name of the Sovereign had been conferred upon it. It was to be pre-eminently the colony of Victoria, as in earlier times Virginia was named after an attribute of the renowned sovereign who in those days (before the coming of Mr. Froude, who is fatal to the reputation of his heroes and heroines) was supposed to resemble cities which have never surrendered. The joy of the colonists passed all bounds. There were public rejoicings for four days; processions, sports, bonfires, illuminations, public and private feasts, could scarcely exhaust their enthusiasm; and to the present time, when a new generation scarcely comprehends its meaning, every recurring anniversary is celebrated as a public holiday, under the title of Separation Day.

When the delirium had abated a little, there were not wanting grounds of apprehension and cavil in the new statute. One-third of its thirty members were to be nominated by the Governor, and the remaining two-thirds were not distributed so as necessarily to represent the population, intelligence, and wealth of the community. The Imperial Parliament, feeling ill qualified to deal with details demanding * The colonial malcontents were treated by the London Press as mercilessly as Irish boycotters have been in later times.

local knowledge, had empowered the New South Wales Legislature to fix the franchise and the representation at its discretion. But the New South Wales Legislature were precisely the persons whom of all others the new colonists most feared and distrusted. Sydney merchants and bankers had taken possession of large tracts of the public lands of Port Philip, which they held as tenants of the Crown, and the town population were jealous of their monopoly, and disposed to fear their subserviency on political questions to the authority under which they held. These Absentees, like their congeners in Ireland, being active politicians, were supreme in the Sydney Legislature, and it was feared they would employ their power to make the representation in the new colony partial and unequal. This fear did not prove illfounded. When the Act fixing the representation of Victoria became law, it was found that 30,000 of the town population got seven members, or one member to every 5000 inhabitants; 21,000 of an agricultural population got three members, or one member to every 7000 inhabitants; seven districts, chiefly pastoral, with a population of 14,000, got seven members, or one member to 2000 inhabitants; and a number of purely pastoral districts with 5800 inhabitants got three members, or one member to 1900 and a fraction. This was the parting gift of the "foreign Legislature" at Sydney; when it could hold them no longer, it sent them to sea in a boat built to capsize.

The territory which the new Legislature would control is situated in the most southern region, which in that hemisphere is the most cool and temperate. It lies in the same latitude as the favoured countries of Southern Europe, and produces abundantly whatever fruits or cereals are to be found between the Mediterranean and the Hebrides. Since Columbus gazed with rapture on the teeming valleys of Cuba, a richer prize had not been given to human enterprise and industry. In the fifteen years since Batman's landing a prodigious change had taken place in the character and extent of the population. The four white men who constituted that expedition were now represented by a population of nearly eighty thousand, of whom about half resided in Melbourne and its suburbs. The professional and educated class were estimated by official statistics at 1500, the houses in the little capital reached 4000, and land which had been bought at early sales at £40 the half-acre allotment now sold in good positions at £40 a foot. Of the houses, 3000 were of stone, the rest of all "shapes, materials, and colours." When the new country first became known to me I wrote a description of early Melbourne which is probably truer to the facts than any I could fish out of my memory at present:

"The four thousand houses, which look so trim and regular in a tabular return, were sown in patches over a wide straggling township, where groves of wattles and clumps of gum-trees still reared their sombre foliage. Next to