ABELARDO GAMARRA

Another Cowper appointee who had been associated with Parkes was J.R. Wilshire, a hide and tallow merchant. He had been Sydney's second Mayor in 1842-3 and had been prominent on the Corporation in subsequent years. However, distinction in that city's politics won no favour in conservative eyes, for the abilities it indicated were those of a demagogue. At first, as James Martin explained in 1853, 'persons of known standing, education and respectability' had come forward as candidates for the council, but 'they were rejected, and men were elected who did not represent the intelligence or

respectability of the city'. Since then, he said, 'persons of education and station had stood aloof' and the Corporation had

5

fallen into ‘utter contempt'. As a result, it had been ^Pennington to Parkes, 21 July 1873, P.C., vol.30, A900, p p . 288-91.

2Pennington to Parkes, 23 May 1872, P.C., vol.31, A 9 0 1 ,p p .91-2. 3 Ibid.

4

A cogent analysis of the way such frustrations can lead to radicalism is given by R.S. Neale, Class and Ideology in the Nineteenth C e n t u r y , London, 1972. See also Janet McCalman,

'Respectability and the Working Class in Victorian London', Ph.D. thesis, A.N.U., 1974.

suspended late in 1853 and commissioners had been appointed in its place. Some liberals had been incensed, but even the Empire, for long the champion of elective municipal bodies, had confessed that 'the ordinary proceedings of the Corporation have but ill seconded our endeavours to keep the [elective principle j above contempt1 **45.'*'

Wilshire had one other claim to eminence, in that he had been elected to the Assembly in 1856. However, this also diminished him in conservative eyes, for with three other liberals, he had stood for the four member seat of Sydney against the conservative candidate, Plunkett. They had stood as a 'Bunch', and the liberals had disciplined their vote so effectively that Plunkett had not won a place. The superior electoral management which had helped Wilshire's election was,

in conservative eyes, unfair, and they alleged that corruption 2

was also involved. They can hardly have been surprised when, within months of Wilshire's appointment to the Council, he was

twice prosecuted for possessing fraudulent weights, although 3

each time he escaped on a technicality.

'Corruption' weighed against other Cowper appointees. One was Edward Hunt, a businessman of lowly origins, but a

member of the committee of the New South Wales Auxiliary to the 4

London Mission Society. As a member of the Council, he claimed to be 'guided by his conscience and the light of

5

Scripture' in deciding how to vote, but some saw reason to doubt this when it was revealed in 1860 that houses which he owned in Goulburn Street were brothels. His agent was

sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for allowing the houses to be used for immoral purposes but not until Hunt had

^Empire, 7 November 1853.

^S .M .H ., 20 May 1856; Moloney, op.cit., pp.233-4. ~^S .M.H. , 14, 17 September 1858.

4

Biographical details based on Ford's Australian Almanac..., Sydney, 1853, pp.108-9; Waugh's Australian Almanac, Sydney,

1858, pp.188-9; V. «Sc P . (L.A., N.S.W.), 1862, vol.5, pp.1108-13; Empire. 26 October 1860.

testified to his good character and told the court that he had been forced to complain to the police about the harrassment

to which they were subjecting his tenants. The jury drew its conclusions, and in returning its verdict, expressed 'regret that the law could not meet Mr. Hunt, as he could not but be aware in having received the rent of the houses for five years, that they were occupied by persons of bad character123

Another Cowper appointee involved in an unpleasant court case was John Dickson, who resigned from the Council when his schedule was filed for bankruptcy in 1859 and was not

2 reappointed in 1861 because of objections by the Governor. Dickson had been elevated to the Council in 1856 and had

seemed, on the surface, one of the better liberal appointees. He was a Doctor of Medicine of Edinburgh University, but was not practising his profession at the time of his appointment. He described himself as a 'gentleman' and although he held a

squatting run for a time, seems to have lived principally by his investments. He had also been an elected member of the old

3

Legislative Council. However, the circumstances under which his schedule was filed ruined his reputation for probity. His

liabilities were £2,190.13.0, while his assets were valued at only £10, and for reasons made public when he admitted that in December 1858 he had made a deed of settlement on his wife and daughter, and that he had subsequently made withdrawals from the bank to buy land at Coogee which he had also settled on his wife. At this point in the proceedings, Dickson seems to have decided that an arrangement with his family was preferable to

further publicity, for his creditors agreed to settle out of 4

court and the proceedings were terminated.

^Empiref 26 October 1860. Hunt's testimony may, of course, betray the naivete of a religious man, rather than guilt. 2

Young to Cowper, 4 June 1861, Cowper Correspondence, vol.I, A676, n.p.

3

Biographical details taken from Ford's Sydney Directory, Sydney, 1854, p.144; Waugh's Australian Almanac, Sydney, 1858, p.172; New South Wales Government Gazette, 1868, vol.I, p.593; V. «Sc P. (L.A., N.S.W.), 1857, vol.I, p.561; S.M.H. , 9 September

1858 (speech by Lutwyche), and 3 December 1859.

Based on reports of court proceedings in S.M.H., 3, 10 December 1859, 25 February, 19 April, 5 May 1860.

Scandal also besmirched the name of the liberal

Attorney-General, Lutwyche, whose reputation in conservative circles had declined soon after his refusal of the Donaldson ministry's offer of a seat in the Council. He had earned the * enmity of the Sydney Morning Herald by suing its proprietor, John Fairfax, for l i b e l a n d after his elevation to the Council by Cowper, he had offended conservative notions of parliamentary propriety by becoming a Vice-President of the Electoral Reform League and leading an agitation designed to

2

pressure parliament into extending the franchise. His

acceptance of office as Solicitor-General and then Attorney- General was regarded cynically by the profession for it was alleged that he was rendering political service as the price of judicial place. The accusation probably had substance, for he told the Council that he had no desire to remain for long

one of its members, as 'his views were bent in a very different

3

direction'. His words were explained only four months later, when the Cowper ministry made him Supreme Court Judge at

Moreton Bay.

Conservative indignation at the appointment was great, not only because it involved 'political jobbery', but also because of rumours implicating Lutwyche and his wife in sexual

immorality. Sir Alfred Stephen, for instance, admitted

L u t w y c h e 's ability but thought him disqualified for office as a man 'vehemently suspected of recent and open immoralities - and those of a low character - and whose wife's position

therefore was such as to unfit her for the circle into which 4

her husband's rank must place her'. Her position must have been equally tenuous in circles to which she ought to have been admitted by her husband's position as a member of the

Legislative Council. News of the scandal even reached the

,M.H., 13 May 1856, editorial, and 9 June 1856, report of court case.

2

Cf. article on Lutwyche by P.A. Howell in A .D .B ., vol.5. .M .H ., 16 September 1858.

4

Stephen to James Macarthur, 7 May 1859, Macarthur Papers, vol.28, A2924, p.283. See also Sir Charles Nicholson to James Macarthur, 12 September 1861, Macarthur Papers, vol.28, A2924, p.2935; Nicholson to W.M. Manning, 29 May 1860, Manning Papers, M.L., MSS 246; and S .M .H ., 6 May 1859.

Colonial Office, where one official commented that from what he had heard of Lutwyche's 'personal character', he was afraid

it was 'not a very good appointment'.

Rumours of liberal immorality consolidated conservative * prejudices, but they were more a symptom of conservative

hostility than its cause. Men of conservative principles were 2

not blameless. Wentworth had his marital infidelities; Dr Douglass had taken advantage of a bureaucratic oversight to avoid paying for seventeen years a debt to the government

3

of £700; and conservative chagrin at the abuse of patronage merely signified that the power to dispense it had passed to

other men. Indeed, liberals could have retorted that Deas Thomson had been appointed Colonial Secretary in place of Alexander Macleay in 1837 only because he was the Governor's

son-in-law, although such an accusation gives too little credit to Thomson's superior abilities; the Macarthur Papers contain

4

the leavings of patronage; and Sir Alfred Stephen, who had a finely developed sense of responsibility to his enormous family, became one of the most importunate and successful clients at the Colonial Secretary's office when it was

5 occupied by Henry Parkes.

Venality was common to both liberals and conservatives, but on social grounds, the conservatives were far better

Minute addressed to Merivale on Denison to Bulwer Lytton,

26 February 1859, P.R.O./C.O. 201/508. It should be noted that as a judge in Queensland, Lutwyche became a lay reader in the Church of England and a noted Synodsman. He was thought by at

least one clergyman to have influenced a moral revival in Brisbane. (J.M. Bennett, 'Sir James Cockle, First Chief

Justice of Queensland', Queensland Heritage, vol.2, no.6, May 1972, p.10, n.13.)

2

Michael Persse, article on Wentworth in A.D.B., vol.2. Wentworth had a child by the wife of Edward Eagar, a fellow

leader of the Emancipists. Eagar himself had at least ten children outside his marriage. See N.D. McLachlan, article on Eagar in A .D .B ., vol.l.

3

K.B. Noad, article on Douglass in A .D .B ., vol.l. 4

See, for example, J.M. Antill to James Macarthur, 31 January 1858, Macarthur Papers, vol.28, A2924, pp.14-22.

5

Stephen's mutually rewarding relationship with Parkes is discussed in Chapter VII.

qualified as members of the Council. Of the twenty-four conservatives who were active in the session of 1858, eight had been members of the Australian Club as long before as

1844.'*' Deas Thomson was the club's president and Dr James Mitchell, another conservative member of the Council, was vice-president. Of the remainder, ten were members of the

2

Union Club, which had been founded out of a split in the Australian Club in 1856. None of the fifteen liberals is known to have been a member of either club, and of the six conservatives who are not known to have been members, four had

3

previously been associated with the liberal movement. The liberals probably belonged to Cowper and Robertson's Sydney Club (from 1858 the Victoria Club), whose members were said to

4