Wales? If not, then there is no analogy at all between her case and that of Port Phillip. Robert Lowe was clearly of opinion in 1844 that the 20,000 inhabitants of that district should be altogether severed politically from New South Wales; and it is needless to say that since 1851 Victoria has been as independent of New South Wales as Canada is of France, or the United States of England. It is doubtless because Lord Sherbrooke believed that the logical if not inevitable outcome of the Home Rule policy is the total separation of Ireland from Great Britain that he declined, not from political pedantry, but from a profound feeling of patriotism, to follow his former leader down the steep declivity.

A week after the delivery of his speech in favour of the separation of Port Phillip, Robert Lowe presented the Report of the Select Committee on Education (see Appendix, Chapter XIII.), and moved that it be printed, and taken into consideration on the Tuesday week following. He then made this brief announcement of the resignation of his seat as a nominee member of the Legislative Council:

It will not be in my power to take charge of the Report on that day, because, having performed the task of preparing it which the Council had done me the honour of delegating to me, it is my intention immediately to resign my seat as a nominee of the Crown in Council. I regret this the less, however, as I am convinced from the zeal and earnestness with which the inquiry has been prosecuted by the other members of the committee that these measures could not be in better hands than theirs. As to the reasons which have induced me to take this step, it is unnecessary here to state them, I would simply repeat my former assertion, that I entered the House unfettered and unpledged, and I would add that I now leave it without any communication on the subject, direct or indirect, with His Excellency the Governor.

The question that the Report be printed was put and carried. Thus ended for the time being Lowe's connection with the Legislative Council of New South Wales. His resignation of his seat as a Crown nominee took place on

August 30, 1844-less than two years after his arrival in the colony, and less than one from the time of his nomination by Sir George Gipps. Yet what a mark he had made in the political history of Australia during that brief period !

In addition to the independence of his action in the Council, where he found himself compelled on most questions to support the Opposition against the Government officials, there was also a private misunderstanding between Mr. Lowe and Sir George Gipps. It is an old story, which has been often told, but generally with gross inaccuracy. Shortly after Mr. and Mrs. Lowe had taken up their residence in Sydney, and were still constant visitors at Government House, certain damaging reports were spread about some persons who also enjoyed the entrée. These reports were believed by the Lowes but ignored by Sir George Gipps, who continued to invite the discredited persons; whereupon Mr. and Mrs. Lowe ceased to accept further Viceregal invitations. Accordingly, those who could not otherwise understand Mr. Lowe's opposition to Sir George Gipps's officials in the Council attributed it to this private misunderstanding. Such persons realised that for a Crown nominee to act with independence was not the way to achieve a salaried post in the Counciland for what other reason Mr. Lowe had entered the Council they were at a loss to see.

Mr. Roger Therry, the chief courtier of Sir Richard Bourke, who at first found some difficulty in winning his way into the good graces of his more rugged successor, Sir George Gipps, seized the opportunity to make an attack on Lowe for his independent action as a Crown nominee, purely as a means of ingratiating himself with the Governor. It was, he said, like the adder which stung its benefactor to death. Wentworth gave this taunt currency at the Sydney election of 1848, when Lowe opposed him. He even said that this absurd attack drove Lowe out of the Council. The facts are plain enough: Lowe resigned his onerous nominee membership, finding his

views quite irreconcilable with those of Sir George Gipps, who had appointed him. The remark of a pliant Irish lawyer, eager for fresh, highly-paid employment, which the Governor alone could bestow, had no effect whatever in determining Lowe's resignation. He may have well felt some amazement at such a speech coming from such a quarter. Imagine Bishop Ken, or some other stout old Nonjuror, accused of venality by the veritable Vicar of Bray! Yet this story of Therry has been given over and over again as the reason of Lowe's resignation.

Years afterwards, on his return to England, Lowe described the anomalous position of a Crown nominee in his terse and most felicitous manner: If I voted with the Government I was in danger of being reproached as a mere tool; and if I voted with the Opposition, as I did on most questions, I was reproached by the officials as a traitor to the Government. In fact I was in this position-if I voted with the Government I was taunted with being a slave; and if I voted against them I was taunted with being a traitor.'

When, in the year 1845, Mr. Lowe sought to represent the constituency of St. Vincent and Auckland, the Sydney Morning Herald, which for some reason opposed his election, declared that he was a mere place-hunter, and that he had resigned his seat as a Crown nominee simply because he differed from the Governor on a question of etiquette.' Such a man, actuated by mere pique, would (the Herald feared), if it suited him, rush into the Governor's arms, and forget his pledges to the people. To this newspaper attack Lowe, contrary to his custom, replied, and at some length :

Place-hunters, men of no fixed principle, and sycophants do not usually quarrel with governors on points of etiquette, or make their support conditional upon being allowed to exclude whomsoever they please from their houses. I may be servile, or I may be dictatorial, but I cannot be both.

He then reviews his conduct while sitting in the Council

as a Crown nominee in words that must remain his best defence, if, indeed, any defence be necessary :

I never was a thick-and-thin supporter of the Governor, nor yet in Council was I his bitterest opponent. I entered the Council sincerely anxious to do my duty to the country, and voted against the Government on the Water Police Bill, my vote turning the scale against them, almost immediately after I was appointed nominee; this is at the very time when, according to you, I was qualifying for the office of Groom of the Stole. When I found the Governor and Council brought into direct collision with each other, I resigned my seat, feeling a repugnance to vote systematically against the person to whom I owed it, and being firmly determined not to injure the country for whom I held it. Those who, like you, habitually seek for the most paltry and miserable motives for the conduct of public men, will of course attach no credit to my assertion; but there are spirits more honourable and generous than you, who will believe me when I say that my conduct in Council would have been precisely the same had no private difference existed between the Governor and myself.

Nothing can possibly be added to this statement; it may be accepted as an absolutely truthful summary of his motives and public conduct during the brief time that he sat as a Crown nominee in the first Australian Parliament.

The rupture between Mr. Lowe and Sir George Gipps grew wider after the former re-entered the Legislative Council as a 'popular,' or elected, member. In a very short time Lowe became the leader of that dangerous Opposition which Sir George had at one time hoped he would have been the means of overthrowing. This of course gave point and piquancy to the oft-repeated tale that it was on a mere question of etiquette that Robert Lowe had quarrelled with the Governor.

It is now quite five-and-forty years since Sir George Gipps was laid to rest in the cloisters of Canterbury, followed a few years afterwards by his friend, Bishop Broughton, who died at the house of Lady Gipps, and is also buried in that great cathedral. Of the Governor's political opponents, Wentworth, Windeyer, Cowper, Lang, all have long since passed away; and to these we must now add Lord Sherbrooke himself. Under

the circumstances, one touches as lightly as possible on the private feuds and personal quarrels of that old fierce time in Sydney. Lord Sherbrooke himself said to me some few years ago: It was always a great regret to me that I had been compelled to oppose Sir George Gipps so strongly, as he had always been personally most kind.'1

APPENDIX

Speech delivered by Robert Lowe in the Debate on the Separation of Port Phillip. Legislative Council, Sydney, August 20, 1844.

Mr. Lowe said that far different from his friend, Dr. Nicholson, was his theory with regard to the prosperity of the Colonies. As a general rule, the interests of the Colonies were not consulted by frittering them away into minute particles, but by combining as large a territory into a single State as could be effectually controlled by a single Government. He cordially agreed in the abstract truth of the motto prefixed to the article in the newspaper of this morning, that' Union is strength,' and he would extend that principle to the whole Colonial Empire of Great Britain. He held and believed that the time was not remote when Great Britain would give up the idea of treating the dependencies of the Crown as children, to be cast adrift by their parent as soon as they arrive at manhood, and substitute for it the far wiser and nobler policy of knitting herself and her Colonies into one mighty Confederacy, girdling the earth in its whole circumference, and confident against the world in arts and arms. Neither could he agree that the separation would be otherwise than injurious, in some extent, at least, to New South Wales. It implied the loss of a fertile and wealthy province, already paying much more into the Treasury than it drew out of it; and he was also fearful that a separation might be attended with that animosity and ill-feeling which were so apt to prevail between neighbouring States, and that the result might be a war of tariffs and restrictive duties, which he held in utter horror and aversion; but still, compelled by the force of truth and justice, he was bound to say that these considerations came too late.

When the district was first settled, it became the duty of Government to consider, and they doubtless did consider, what was to be its future destiny, and he firmly believed that that destiny was separation. He could not agree in the wisdom of the decision, but it was too late to object now. The district had been placed out of the jurisdiction of the Sydney courts; its boundaries had been defined, its accounts kept separate from the first; it was provided with officers presiding over every department of the Service; the machinery was ready-all that was needed was independence. It was 1 See Australia and the Empire, chap. i., 'Robert Lowe in Sydney.' VOL. I.

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