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Name: Our First Half-Century, 1909 Section name: Part 1, Chapter 1, The Birth of Queensland

Pages: 1–4

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PART I.- OUR NATAL YEAR.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIRTH OF QUEENSLAND.

Issue of Letters Patent and Order in Council.—Appointment of Sir George Ferguson Bowen asFirst Governor.—Continuity of Colonial Office Policy.—Instructions to Governor. —

Munificent Gift of all Waste Lands of the Crown.—Temporary Limitation of ElectoralSuffrage.—Responsible Government Unqualified by Restrictions or Reservations.—

Governor-General of New South Wales Initiates Elections.

FIFTY years ago an emphatic expression of confidence in the self-govern-ing competence of the people of North-eastern Australia was given bythe British Government of Lord Derby. On 6th June, 1859, QueenVictoria in Council adopted Letters Patent—which had been alreadyapproved in draft on 13th May—" erecting Moreton Bay into a colonyunder the name of Queensland," and appointing Sir George FergusonBowen to be " Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the same." Onthe same day an Order in Council was made " empowering the Governorof Queensland to make laws and provide for the administration ofjustice in the said colony"; also to constitute therein a Government andLegislature as nearly resembling the form of Government andLegislature established in New South Wales as the circumstances of thecolony would allow. This meant that representative and responsiblegovernment had been granted to the people of the new colony to the fullextent that it was enjoyed by the people of New South Wales under theepoch-making Constitution Act of 1855. It meant also that the wholeof the unalienated Crown Lands of the colony were vested in theLegislature.

Next day, the 7th June, the annual session of the ImperialParliament was opened, and four days later an amendment upon. theAddress in Reply was carried in the House of Commons, whereupon LordDerby and his Conservative colleagues forthwith resigned, and weresucceeded by a Liberal (or Whig) Ministry under Lord Palmerston.The new Government included men of such distinction as Mr. W. E.Gladstone, Lord John Russell, and the Duke of Newcastle, the last-mentioned assuming the office of Colonial Secretary. The change ofMinistry, however, caused no interruption in the continuity of ColonialOffice policy ; and no time was lost in despatching Sir George Bowen todischarge the highly responsible duties imposed upon him by the Queen'sCommission.

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2 OUR FIRST HALF-CENTURY.

In notifying Sir George Bowen of his appointment, Sir EdwardBulwer Lytton tendered him some friendly advice. He said that SirGeorge would experience the greatest amount of difficulty in connectionwith the squatters, and he went on in these words :—" But in this, which isan irritating contest between rival interests, you will wisely abstain asmuch as possible from interference. Avoid taking part with one or theother. . . . The first care of a Governor in a free colony," hecontinued, " is to shun the reproach of being a party man. Give allparties and all Ministries formed the fairest play." In public addressesSir George was advised to " appeal to the noblest idiosyncracies of thecommunity—the noblest are generally the most universal and the mostdurable. They are peculiar to no party. Let your thoughts never bedistracted from the paramount object of finance. All states thrivein proportion to the administration of revenue." A number ofexcellent maxims followed, among them—" The more you treat peopleas gentlemen the more ' they will behave as such.' " Again, " courtesyis a duty which public servants owe to the humblest member of thecommunity." And, in a postscript, " Get all the details of the landquestion from the Colonial Office, and master them thoroughly. Convertthe jealousies now existing between Moreton Bay and Sydney intoemulation." All these generous didactics from the great novelist and Torystatesman, followed by congratulations and good wishes, must have beenstimulative to the aspirations of the embryo Governor charged with thefoundation of a new colony at the Antipodes.

The value of autonomous government is generally appreciated ; butthe free gift of land made by the Imperial authority to the various self-governing colonies has no parallel in human history. In the case ofQueensland the recipients were a mere handful of people, mostly settledat one end of a vast territory, at least half of which was unexplored.Plenary authority was in fact given to manage and control the wastelands belonging to the Crown, as well as to appropriate the grossproceeds of the sales of any such lands, and all other proceeds and;revenues of the same from whatever source arising, including all royalties,mines, and minerals, all of which by the Letters Patent and the Orderin Council were vested in the Legislature. This vesting, however, wassubject to a proviso validating all contracts, promises, and engagementslawfully made on behalf of Her Majesty before the proclamation tookeffect. The proviso also stipulated that there should be no disturbanceof any vested or other rights which had accrued or belonged to thelicensed occupants or lessees of Crown Lands under any repealed Act,

OUR NATAL YEAR. 3

or under any Order in Council issued in pursuance thereof. (a) Thisreservation was really for the protection of a number of people in thecolony, and not for the benefit of the Imperial Government. The licensedoccupants would be subject to the mandates of the Legislature ; whilethe reservation in favour of the owners of freehold lands was of acomparatively trivial nature, the total area alienated from the Crown ayear after the establishment of the new colony amounting to only 108,870acres, which had yielded £305,250 as purchase-money chiefly to the NewSouth Wales Treasury. Taking the 670,500 square miles within thecolony thus handed over to be worth five shillings per acre, or £160 thesquare mile, the total value of the Imperial gift to Queensland would be

£107,280,000. Of course that price was not immediately realisable, andbefore much of the vast area could be utilised millions of capital must beexpended in reclamation and development ; but as some indication ofultimate value it may be pointed out that the land sold up to 31stDecember, 1860, realised at the rate of nearly £3 per acre. That the" waste " land was not a dead asset was shown by the fact that the publicrevenue of the colony for the first year of its existence was £178,589, towhich rents and sales of land contributed a substantial proportion. Itwas not surprising, therefore, that Sir George Bowen's early despatchesto the Secretary of State testified to the grateful and enthusiastic loyaltyof the people of the colony to the Queen and the mother country.

When the previously established Australian colonies were severallyconstituted the people were kept for years in a state of tutelage, so tospeak, power being exercised in each case by a Governor advised byMinisters appointed by and responsible only to the Crown. The singleChamber of the Legislature, if not wholly nominated, included aprescribed number of members appointed by the Governor, and waspractically under his control. It had therefore been supposed by manycolonists that separation having been hotly opposed by some influentialresidents of the territory concerned—and having been emphaticallycondemned by an official despatch received in England from Sir WilliamDenison, then Governor-General of New South Wales, almost at the lastmoment—conditions in restraint of popular government would have beenimposed on the establishment of Queensland. For the separation strugglehad been long continued, and marked by much personal and partybitterness. The agitation had been originated and chiefly maintained bypeople on the seaboard led by

, ardent patriots introduced a few yearspreviously under the auspices of Dr. John Dunmore Lang, who while

(a) These powers were given in the New South Wales Constitution Act, 1855. Sect. 2.

4 OUR FIRST HALF-CENTURY.

undoubtedly a great Australian patriot was unhappily not a personagrata with the controlling authority at the Colonial Office. Themovement was from its initiation protested against by the enterprisingCrown tenants who had driven their flocks and herds overland from NewSouth Wales, and had, taking their lives in their hands, adventurouslyformed stations in the remote wilderness. They not unnaturally dreadedthe effect of popular sovereignty upon what they deemed their vestedinterests. But British statesmen, whether Conservative or Liberal.appear to have felt that, responsible government having been granted toand enjoyed by the people of New South Wales—and consequently tothe people of that part of its territory about to be separated—anyImperial limitation of popular rights already conferred would be regardedas an unjustifiable encroachment upon public liberty achieved after manyyears of ardent struggle in the parent colony. True, the language of theLetters Patent and Order in Council was afterwards construed to involvesome temporary limitation of the manhood suffrage which had beenaffirmed by the Parliament of New South Wales ; but whether thislimitation was actual or inadvertent does not clearly appear. It was notof much practical consequence, perhaps, in a new country that wasrapidly multiplying its scant population, whether or not the electors forthe first Legislative Assembly were required to have some other qualifica-tion than adult age and six months' residence; but the incident operatedprejudicially against the Government, and gave a rallying cry toOpposition politicians.

A somewhat singular course adopted by the Home Government was theauthorisation of the Governor-General of New South Wales to appoint thefirst members of the Queensland Legislative Council, with a term of fiveyears, although subsequent appointments were to be made by the Governorof Queensland for the term of the members' natural lives. Sir WilliamDenison was also empowered to summon and call together the firstLegislative Assembly of Queensland ; to fix by proclamation the numberof members ; to divide the colony into convenient electoral districts; toprepare the electoral rolls; to issue the writs of election; and to make allnecessary provision for the conduct of the first elections. It was required,moreover, that the Parliament should be called together for a date notmore than six months after the proclamation of the colony, and shouldremain in existence, unless previously dissolved by the Governor, for aperiod of five years. Yet there was practically no limitation of popularauthority except in respect of the preliminary arrangements, for theQueensland consolidating and amending Constitution Act of 1867 re-affirmed all rights and privileges conferred by the New South WalesConstitution Act.