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 THE EIGHT HON. EOBEET LOWE 
 VISCOUNT SHEEBEOOKE 
 
 VOL. I
 
 It has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism, 7iot a 
 hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters. . . Not only for the 
 interest of a biography, but for arriving at the inside of things, the publica- 
 tion of letters is the true viethod. Biographers varnish, they assign motives, 
 they conjecture feelings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but con. 
 tempoi-ary letters are /acfs. —Dr. Newman, to his Sister, Mrs. John Mozley, 
 May 18, 18G3.
 
 oZ1(?1x.aJ^ 
 
 U^
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE ROBERT LOWE 
 
 VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE, G.C.B., D.CL 
 
 ETC. 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR OF SIR JOHN COAPE SHERBROOKE, G.C.B. 
 SOMETIME GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA 
 
 BY 
 
 A. PATCHETT MARTIN 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES — VOLUME I. 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16'" STREET 
 1893 
 
 All ri'jhts reservd
 
 TTT?T> A f» Y 
 -^-^ SANTA BAEBABA ^ 
 
 TO 
 
 CAEOLINE, VISCOUNTESS SHERBROOKE 
 
 IN THE HOPE THAT SOME MEASURE OF SUCCESS 
 
 MAY HAVE ATTENDED 
 
 MY EARNEST ENDEAVOUR 
 
 TO MAKE A GREAT ENGLISHMAN RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD 
 
 BY HIS COUNTRYMEN 
 
 THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The small amount of time and pains which Lord Sherbrooke 
 bestowed on his Autobiography may be gathered from a 
 perusal of the brief personal memoir which forms the Intro- 
 duction to these volumes. 
 
 When, however, it was represented to him that his share 
 in the formation of contemporary history would be of interest 
 to the public, he readily assented to the preparation of this 
 work, and rendered whatever assistance was in his power. It 
 is true that the imperfect measure of sight, which he had 
 once enjoyed, had entirely deserted him ; but he retained his 
 lifelong habit of attention to every subject presented to him, 
 and his criticism on what was read was always valuable and 
 suggestive of further sources of information. 
 
 It is superfluous to record the obligations I am under to 
 the relations and intimate friends of Lord and Lady Sherbrooke. 
 Their kindly aid has been invaluable ; and without it, the ac- 
 complishment of my task would have been impossible. Those 
 who knew Lord Sherbrooke well regarded him with a sincere 
 affection which made their co-operation a labour of love. But 
 on the part of a very large number of correspondents at home
 
 VI 11 LIFE OF LOPJ) SIIERBIIOOKE 
 
 and abroad, from whom I had httle to expect, I have met with 
 an evident anxiety to further the work, which, though due to 
 their esteem for Lord Sherbrooke, leaves me under a heavy 
 debt of personal obligation. 
 
 Several of Lord Sherbrooke's old friends and contemporaries 
 have favoured me witli written reminiscences, which I have 
 embodied m this work, while others have communicated their 
 information verbally. In the former category I must especially 
 mention Lord Sherbrooke's schoolfellow, Lord Selborne, who 
 has been good enough to contribute his narrative of an unbroken 
 friendship of over sixty years. Professor Jow^ett, the Master 
 of Balliol, has sent me a personal memoir of one who was to 
 him much more than a statesman — the fine scholar and close 
 friend, to whom he thought fit to dedicate his Thucydides. 
 With these should be linked the name of Canon Melville, with 
 whom Lord Sherbrooke enjoyed the happiness of an uninter- 
 rupted intercourse extendmg from Oxford days to the last 
 months of his life. 
 
 Among another group of friends whose intimacy com- 
 menced in the drier regions of official intercourse and ripened 
 into warm friendship, I would name Sir John Simon, K.C.B., 
 author of Enrjlish Sanitary Institutions, who was for many 
 years associated with Lord Sherbrooke in the initiation and 
 subsequent work of the Medical Department of the Privy 
 Council. I have left Sir John's clear and concise statement of 
 that relationship to stand, as he has written it — in my humble 
 judgment an invahiablu record of a noble joint achievement. 
 
 From Sir Rivers Wilson, Sir Thomas Farrer, Lord Thring, 
 and othfr notable men who have l»ocn officiallv associated
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 with Lord Sherbrooke, I have received most valuable assist- 
 ance. I am under special obligation to Sir Douglas Galton, 
 the friend and travelling companion of Lord Sherbrooke on 
 his American and Canadian tour of 1856. Acknowledgment 
 must also be made to Mr. Cotterell Tupp, formerly of the 
 Indian Civil Service ; to the Hon. Lionel ToUemache for the 
 kind offer of his unpublished manuscript reminiscences ; to 
 Mr. Topham Hough, for the very interesting Pedigrees to be 
 found at the close of the second volume ; as well as to General 
 Sneyd for papers and notes concerning the Kidderminster 
 riots, kept by him at the time. 
 
 Of those who have courteously placed letters at my disposal, 
 letters of especial value in the case of one to whom corre- 
 spondence was so dijfficult, I am greatly indebted to Lord 
 Sherbrooke' s sisters and to Mrs. Sherbrooke of Oxton. Among 
 others whose kindness in this respect must be specially 
 acknowledged, I must mention the Duchess of St. Albans, the 
 Earl and Countess of Derby, Canon Melville, Mr. Gladstone, 
 the Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Countess Granville, the 
 Countess of Airlie, Sir F. B. Outram, Sir Archibald and Lady 
 Dunbar, Mrs. Michell, Archdeacon Boyd, the late Sir George 
 Macleay, Sir William Windeyer, and Mrs. Billyard of Sydne3^ 
 
 Among other correspondents to whom I am indebted for 
 aid and sympathy are — the Earl of Cranbrook, the Earl of 
 Wemyss, Mr. Goschen, the late Dr. Charles Wordsworth, the 
 Dean of Westminster, Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes, Sir Wilham Smith, 
 Sir John Lubbock, Sir Richard Quain, Professor J. A. Froude, 
 Mr. Henry Reeve, Sir John Pender, Colonel Capel Coape, 
 Sir Juland Danvers, Lord Lingen, Sir Reginald Welby,
 
 X LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Rev. "Win. Eogers, Dr. Piichard Congreve, Mr. l\. A. Macfie, 
 Mr. Edward Jenkins, Mr. T. B. Boulton, Rev. J. Pickfurd, 
 Professor Goldwin Smith, and Mr. Moberly Bell. 
 
 The kindness of Mrs. Cliaworth Mnsters in sending her 
 correspondence with her uncle, has been supplemented by 
 her personal recollections of Lord Sherbrooke, and by much 
 valuable incidental information with regard to the family 
 history of the Lowes and Sherbrookes. 
 
 Following the Life and Letters of Robert Lowe, Viscoiiiit 
 Sherbrooke, will be found a l)rief memoir of Sir John Coape 
 Sherbrooke, G.C.B. For the papers and documents on which 
 this narrative is mainly based, I am indebted to Mrs. Sher- 
 brooke of Oxton. It is here necessary that I should acknow- 
 ledge the courtesy of the present Duke of "Wellington in giving 
 permission, through the late Lord Sherbrooke, for the publica- 
 tion in tliis memoir of two unpublished letters, written by 
 his illustrious grandfather to Sir John Sherbrooke during the 
 Peninsular War. 
 
 I have only to add that my task has been greatly facilitated 
 by the fact that all documents, family and private letters and 
 papers connected with the late Viscount Sherbrooke, have 
 been placed unreservedly in my hands. 
 
 A. PATCIIETT ^L\HTL\. 
 LuMxjx: MarcJi 1893.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME 
 
 INTRODUCTION .... '.^''i 
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 (lobd shekbrooke's type-weitten memoir — 1870) . 3 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 parentage and descent • . • .45 
 
 Appendix to Chapter I 
 (Ireland and the Poor-Law) . . . .59 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 childhood and school-days 
 
 (1811-1829) 64 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 OXFORD 
 (1829-18,33) 
 
 The Undergraduate — ' Union ' Debates and Classic Wit . . . .70 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OXFORD [continued) 
 (1833-1840) 
 
 Graduate— Fellow of Magdalen - Private Tutor, and would-be Professor . 92
 
 xii LIFE OF LORD SIIERBUOOKE 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MARRIAGE, AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 
 
 PAOE 
 
 (March-August, 1836) 107 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARIANS 
 
 (1841) 119 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN LONDON 
 (1841-1842) 
 
 Called to the Bar — Emigration to Australia 134 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 
 
 Letters for ' Home ' — Fire at Sea — All but wrecked off Cape Otway — Mel- 
 bourne in 1842 144 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN SYDNEY 
 
 Port Jackson — Sir George Gipps at Paramatta— W. S. Macleay at Eliza- 
 beth Bay — Condition of Sydney 155 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 
 
 Threatened Blindness— Bush Wanderings— Tribute to W. S. Macleay — 
 
 Eeturn to the Bar 170 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 
 (1843-1844) 
 
 Lord Stanley's ' New Constitution ' — Richard Windcyer, the ' Popular 
 Member' — \V. C. Wentworth, the 'Australian Patriot' — Lowe's 
 Maiden Speech in tlie Council — His Stand for Free-Trade Becomes 
 a Personage in Sydney 185
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 
 
 TAliK 
 
 Tiial of Knatchbull — Lowe and Judge Burton— Dr. Elliotson of the Zoist 
 
 — ' Mr. Lowe's Ethics ' 198 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 Chairman of Committees — The Chaplain — Dr. Lang and State Churches 
 — Breach of Privilege — Duelling in Sydney — Anti-Corn-Law Speech 
 — Parallel between Canada and Australia — Report on Education . 211 
 
 Appendix to Chapter XIII 
 (Report of Robert Lowe's Committee on Public Education) , 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 
 
 Robert Lowe's ' Separation ' Speech — Resigns his Seat as Crown Nominee 
 — Sir C. Gavan Duiiy's Comments on Irish and Victorian ' Home 
 Rule ' —Lowe's alleged ' Pedantry ' — Account of the Rupture with Sir 
 George Gipps 232 
 
 Appendix to Chapter XIV 
 
 (Speech delivered by Robert Lowe in the Debate on the Separation 
 of Port Phillip. Legislative Council, Sydney, August 20, 1844) . 241 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 the EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Sir Richard Bourke and Lord Stanley's Irish National System — Attitude 
 of Dr. Ullathorne — Robert Lowe becomes its Chief Advocate — First 
 Speech to the People of Sydney — Roger Therry and M. Guizot— Mr. 
 Lowe and the Council checkmated ....... 243 
 
 Note A. — In Defence of Bishop Broughton 2.51
 
 Xiv LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE ' ATLAS ' AND ITS CONTEIBUTORS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Condition of the Colony — Appearance of the Atlas — Lowe's Articles and 
 Verses— Attacks Colonial Otifice -Satirises Sir George Gipps and 
 Eoger Therry — Songs cf the Sqicatters—'Prmci^&l Contributors . , 253 
 
 CHAPTER XVn 
 
 MEMBER FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 
 
 Sir George Gipps and the Legislative Council — District Councils — Quit- 
 rents — Lowe stands for St. Vincent and Auckland — Address to the 
 Electors — Returned unopposed — Speech from the Hustings — 
 Schedules A, B, C— Takes his Seat in the Council .... 269 
 
 CHAPTER XVni 
 
 AT NELSON BAY 
 
 At Nelson Bay — Mrs. Lowe's Description of Nelson Bay — Sir Thomas 
 Mitchell— W. S. Macleay- Sir Alfred Stephen -Letter to Eev. E. 
 Michell — Success in Court and Council — Wentworth's Dinner — 
 Lowe's Imperialist Speech — Alexander Macleay's Pension — Went- 
 worth's Oiler for the Speakership— Lowe's Views on Dignity and 
 Dining 281 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 
 
 The Wentworth Banquet — Robert Lowe and Imperial Federation - Private 
 Friends and Public Funds — The Speakership and Bi-weekly Dinners 
 — Lowe on Economy— Hon. Francis Scott, M.P. — Land Legislation 
 — Death of Richard Windeyer — Death of Lady Mary Fitzroy— Caro- 
 line Chisholra .... 2.^0 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY 
 
 Archbishop Whately and Charles Buller— Dr. Bland and the Australian 
 Patriots— Review of the Transportation Question — Mr. Gladstone's 
 Despatches to Sir Ciuvrics Fitzroy —Wentworth's Select Committee 
 — The Penal Colony in North Australia— Robert Lowe in the Atlas — 
 A Popular Idol .S07
 
 COMMENTS 01' THE FIRST VOLUME xv 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 NOTES OF A GREAT SrEECH 
 
 PAQK 
 
 (Legislative Council, Sydney : Oct. 9, 1840) . . . 3'20 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 
 
 Earl Grey's Land Bill — Mr. Lowe on Downing Street Solicitude — Went- 
 wortli and the Waste Lands — Roman Nobles and Australian Squatters 
 ^Lowe's Appeal to the Squatters— To the Council — Lowe's Eeply 
 to AVentworth — His Pamphlet — The Division — Review of the Land 
 Question — Agrarian Gamblers— Character of Wentworth — Lowe de- 
 termines to return to England 32G 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A SLAVE-TRADE PHILIPPIC 
 
 The ' Orator ' in Heads of the People — German and French Immigrants 
 
 — The Squatters and the South Sea Islanders 347 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 
 
 Lowe's Address to the Electors of St. Vincent — Action of Henry Parkes 
 and Sydney Electors — Returned for Sydney without Canvass or 
 Expense — His Last Letter ' Home '....... 350 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 
 
 Port Phillip declines to send Members — Lowe's Letter — Earl Grey elected 
 
 for Melbourne — Lowe and the Sydney Unemployed .... 300 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 
 
 The Proposed Constitution — Lowe and Wentworth at the Victoria Theatre 
 — Earl Grey's 'Exiles ' — The Convict Ship Hashemy — -Lowe at Cir- 
 cular Quay — Alarms Sir Charles Eitzroy — His Plea for Responsible 
 Government 373
 
 XVI LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IN AUSTRALIA 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lowe's Attack on the Sydney Corporation — Proposed University for Syd- 
 ney — Cliallenged by Dr. Bland — Lowe's Offence to the ' Emancipist ' 
 Class — Sails for England— A Footnote on Stanley, Gladstone, and 
 Grey 391 
 
 INDEX 407 
 
 ILLUSTBATIONS 
 
 ROBERT LOWE, 183G Frontispiece 
 
 REV. ROBERT LOWE, J.P., 1806 . . . . . To face page U 
 
 MRS. LOWE, 1806 „ 46 
 
 GEORGIANA LOWE, 1836 „ IOC 
 
 Erratum 
 Page 64, line 15, for July 28, read July 27.
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. ROBERT LOWE 
 
 VISCOUNT SHEEBEOOKB 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The life of Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, falls naturally 
 into three epochs — Oxford, Sydney and London were, in turn, 
 the scenes of his active life, and no higher testimony is needed 
 to the greatness and versatility of his powers than the fact 
 that in fields so dissimilar he reaped the highest distinction. 
 Differing, however, as they did in other respects, these epochs 
 of his life had one point in common : they were periods of 
 incessant labour. Such a life, even under ordinary circum- 
 stances, leaves little leisure for retrospect, but, handicapped 
 as he was by semi-blindness, the accomplishment of each 
 day's task was sufficient without the toil of recording it. 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke had, moreover, a positive repugnance to 
 autobiography. It savoured to him of egotism ; and it is 
 solely due to the intervention of friends that he left even the 
 brief and incomplete memoir which is here appended. Written 
 in the interval of comparative rest which followed his resig- 
 nation of office in 1876, it is marked by his habitual direct- 
 ness. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 With characteristic energy, this memoir was ' type-written ' 
 by his own hand. Even towards the close of life, and with his 
 all but total want of sight. Lord Sherbrooke took a certain 
 delight in mastering our latter-day mechanical contriv- 
 ances. 
 
 This chapter of autobiography, it will be seen, is a rapid 
 retrospect of his entire life. At first it seemed the better 
 plan to begin this work in the usual way, with a full account 
 of his birth, parentage, education, and public career, weaving 
 in from his own memoir the ' pur^^le patches ' of his vigorous 
 phrases and apt allusions. By this means a certain order 
 and continuity m the narrative might have been preserved. 
 But after careful reflection, it was felt to be unfair to such a 
 man as Lord Sherbrooke to break up, or in any way remodel 
 his all too brief personal reminiscences. Here, in these 
 few pages, we have at least his own account of those events 
 and incidents in his life which he most vividly recalled in old 
 age — the rough schooldays at Winchester, the studious years 
 at Oxford, the chance meetings with Wordsworth and Darwin, 
 the call to the Bar, the threatened total blindness, the long 
 voyage to Australia. Here, too, he pays his pathetic tribute 
 of aJBfection to his wife, the faithful companion and constant 
 helpmate in his darkest as in his happiest hours ; and here 
 he passes a singularly unbiassed judgment on his remarkable 
 and in a sense unprecedented career, in which he gives his own 
 explanation of his one striking failure — the failure to win the 
 passing plaudits of the multitude in a democratic age.
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 (Lord Sherbrooke's Type-written Memoir — 1876) 
 
 If, as is generally and not without good reason assumed, the 
 success of an undertaking is proportionate to the care and 
 labour employed in preparing for it, I confess I do not enter on 
 the task of autobiography under very favourable conditions. 
 During the course of an active and laborious life it never 
 occurred to me that there was anything in it which was worth 
 handing down to posterity. I never was able to understand 
 the use of keeping accounts or keeping a journal. Accounts 
 are, of course, indispensable to those who are entrusted with 
 other people's money, but why a man should keep accounts 
 against himself, I never could understand. It never occurred 
 to me that anyone else would want to know what I said or what 
 I did, and as for myself it always appeared to me that every 
 one is inclined to talk and think a great deal too much about 
 him or herself. Egotism, in fact, appeared to me just one of 
 those tendencies of human nature which least of all require to 
 be encouraged. 
 
 I have kept no correspondence. I must also confess that 
 my defect of sight is no slight disqualification ; of its great- 
 ness those who have had no experience can form little idea. 
 It is one of those subjects about which it is impossible to 
 deceive oneself. Besides, I have never found my chief pleasure 
 in society ; why then should I undertake a task for which I 
 profess no particular vocation, and for which I have neglected 
 to store up much information which was once in my power ? 
 I have two reasons : I have been pressed by many friends to
 
 4 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 leave behind me some account of a life which they are good 
 enough to say they believe is sufficiently out of the common 
 track to be worth recording ; I also am vain enough to believe 
 that a narrative of the very great difficulties with which I have 
 had to contend and which I have contrived to surmount, may 
 possibly be useful to some who are inclined to throw up the 
 cards before the game is lost, and to impute to adverse fortune 
 the result of their own want of steadiness and enterprise. 
 
 I was born at Bingham, a small town in the south of 
 Nottinghamshire, of which my father was the Rector, on 
 December 4th, 1811. I was a younger son, one of six children. 
 The living was a good one, and my father had some property 
 of his own. My mother was the daughter of the Eev. 
 Reginald Pyndar, rector of Madresfield, near Malvern. 
 
 I had the misfortune (which I share with a sister older 
 than myself) to be what is called an albino. I presume 
 there is no one so entirely free from personal vanity as to be 
 able, without some feeling of reluctance, to discourse on his 
 physical defects and infirmities. But happily, not having been 
 endowed by Nature with a poetical temperament or having a 
 special gift for self-torture, I have contrived to bear this in- 
 fliction with tolerable equanimitj'. My poor sister was not 
 so fortunate ; she was, I think, the gentlest and the best person 
 I ever knew, but was ver}^ keenly alive to this misfortune. 
 Had I felt my peculiarities as she did, anything like public or 
 even active life would have been to me an impossibility ; but, 
 jiuttrng sentiment aside, the misfortune was serious enough. 
 
 The peculiarity of my eyes consists in the total absence of 
 colouring matter ; this occasions, of course, especially in a 
 man, a very marked peculiarity of complexion, amounting m 
 early youth to something of effeminacy. For this evil, how- 
 ever, I have found age a sovereign cure ; but as the absence 
 of colouring matter extends to the eye, it necessarily occasions 
 a great impatience of light. The eyelids must always be 
 nearly closed, and so I never liave l)een able to enjoy the
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5 
 
 luxury of staring anyone full in the face. Of course this 
 intolerance of light must be attended with something very 
 closely approaching to pain. I cannot even conceive the state 
 of a person to whom sight is a function free from all pain and 
 distress, but as I have no standard to measure by I may 
 perhaps exaggerate my own misfortune. The cause of this 
 annoyance is the total absence of what is called i\\Q j^ngmentum 
 nifirum, the dark rim which surrounds the pupil of the eye 
 and absorbs the rays of light which are not needed for the act 
 of vision, and only confuse and disturb it. But, in addition 
 to this defect, I had to contend with a malformation of the 
 eye ; one eye has never been available to me for reading, and 
 the other was hypermetropic — that is, the refracting power 
 was so slight that the focus must be very near the back of my 
 head. I began life, in fact, very much in the state of persons 
 who have been couched for cataract, with the two additional 
 disqualifications that I had only one eye to rely upon, and 
 that had no pi<i men turn m<irit)ii to protect it. 
 
 So hopeless did my visual prospects appear that I was six 
 years old before any attempt was made to teach me my letters. 
 Of course, the natural remed}^ for my sight would have been 
 to use strong magnifying spectacles such as are recommended 
 to persons who have been couched for a cataract. I do not 
 know if such an idea was ever entertained, but I have every 
 reason to be glad that it was not acted on, for experience has 
 proved that the eye was quite unable to bear it. 
 
 As it was, my progress was so slow that I was eight years 
 old before I began the great business of life — in other words, 
 entered on the study of the Latin Grammar. So great was 
 the difficulty I found in the beginning of my career that my 
 mother was of opinion I was quite unfit to be sent to school, 
 and that there was no chance for me in the open arena of life. 
 Happily for me, my father formed a truer estimate of the 
 ease, and it was decided that the experiment should be tried. 
 I, at least, was never troubled with any misgivings. Nature
 
 6 LIFE OF LORD 8IIERBR00KE 
 
 had given me as some compensation for many deficiencies 
 excellent health, good spirits, an easy temper, and a heart 
 which has never failed me in all my trials and difficulties. 
 
 The first public event which I remember was the death of 
 the Princess Charlotte, and my surprise at the extreme grief 
 felt by everyone around me for a person whom they had never 
 seen, and I had never h^ard of. I remember, also, being much 
 aflectcd l)y the death of Napoleon, though, as I derived my 
 first knowledge of his career from Sir Walter Scott's Biognqihy, 
 I do not kno\v whence I derived my sentiment. I enjoyed the 
 pri\ilege and delight of reading all the writings of the author 
 of WavcrUy after the Heart of Mid-Lotluan as they came out, 
 a literary pleasure which nothing since has ever equalled. I 
 may mention to my credit that I never doubted that Scott 
 was the author : the ground of my belief was a quotation 
 which is to be found in llie Bride of Laiiune)-))iour and in the 
 notes to TJic Lady of tlie Lahe. 
 
 If thou be hart with hoi'ii of hart 
 
 It brings thee to thy bier, 
 But barbers' hand boar's tusk can cure, 
 
 Therefore thou need not fear. 
 
 I argued that if the poem and the novel had been written by 
 different hands, the quotation would have been acknowledged 
 by the writer of the novel who might well forget that he had 
 inserted it in a note. I was always very positive as to Scott's 
 authorship of the novels, and received some not unmerited 
 rebukes from my elders and betters for presuming to set my 
 opinion against persons who must know so much better than 
 I. T hope I bore my victory with becoming moderation, but 
 am by no means clear on the point. Our life was a very 
 secluded one. Our nearest, and indeed almost our only, 
 neighbour was tlie family of Mr. Musters, the husband of 
 Byron's Mary. A visit to my grandfather in Herefordshire 
 in summer, and to Mr. Sherbrooke of Oxton, whose estate has 
 now passed into the hands of my eldest Itrotlier, were almost
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7 
 
 the only breaks in the monotony of our existence. I did not 
 shine as a playfellow, and so reading, which had been my 
 great difficulty, became my great pleasure. 
 
 In 1822 I went to school at Southwell, where my father's 
 famil}' once lived and where many of them are buried. There 
 is one of them, one Gervase Lee, in whom I always took a par- 
 ticular interest because he was fined 500Z. by Archbishop 
 Laud in the Star Chamber for writing a scurrilous ballad on 
 the Canons of the Cathedral church of Southwell. I used to 
 fancy that some shreds of his mantle had descended on me, 
 though candour obliges me to confess that his performance 
 was utterly without literary merit, and according to the rule 
 of Horace — ' si mala condideiit in quern quis carmina jus est 
 judiciumque ' — the poet richly deserved all he got. 
 
 I spent two years at Southwell, and one year at a school 
 at Eisley in Derbyshire, and in September 1825 I went to 
 Winchester as a commoner. This was a most important 
 epoch of my life ; anybody can get on somehow at a private 
 school, but a public school to a person labouring under such 
 disabilities as I did was a crucial test under any circumstances, 
 and Winchester, such as it was in my time, was an ordeal 
 which a boy so singular in appearance, and so helpless in 
 some respects as I was, might well have trembled to encounter. 
 Since my time the buildings which we occupied have been 
 pulled down, the hours have been altered, and what I write 
 now has no application to the Winchester of the present day, 
 but such as it was in my time I will describe it for the benefit 
 of boys who think they are badly treated. 
 
 The school consisted of 200 boys ; 70 collegers and 130 
 commoners. The collegers were well lodged and fed, had an 
 excellent playground, and the run of the schoolroom when the 
 masters were out of it. In commoners things were very dif- 
 ferent ; the bedrooms were shamefully crowded, there was a very 
 small court — reference being had to the number of boys who 
 were shut up in it — there was a hall of very moderate dimen-
 
 8 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 sions, considering that in it we lived, studied, and had our 
 meals, there was generally a game of cricket going on, and as 
 my cujiboard happened to be what is technically called ' middle 
 on,' the pursuit ot the Muses was attended with some difficulty. 
 I have often said to myself-—' I nunc ct versus tecum mcditare 
 canoros.' 
 
 In these miserable quarters much of the time which was 
 not spent in school was passed. We were expected to be 
 down at six in summer and a quarter to seven in winter ; we 
 went into school at half-past seven and stayed there till ten, 
 then we had breakfast — bread as much as we could eat, a pat 
 of butter each, and one pail of milk among 130 boys, for this 
 we made a queue, every fag with his jug. Occasionally, when 
 the competition was more than ordinarily severe, the pail was 
 upset, and the school went milkless to breakfast. Tea and 
 sugar we might find for ourselves if we had the money, they 
 were sold to us at the buttery hatch on account of whom it 
 might concern. We went into school from eleven till twelve, 
 IVom twelve to one was our play hour ; the field was half a 
 mile off, so that to make the most of it we usually ran there 
 and back and came in streaming with perspiration. At one 
 we dined ! At two we went into school, w'here we remained 
 till six, then supper— bread and cheese and beer, then work 
 in the hall till half-past eight, then to bed. Twice a week we 
 ]i;ul what was called a ' remedy ' — I suppose because it was 
 worse than the disease, applying that name to the ordinary 
 school days,— we were marched two and two to the hill a 
 mile off, and in consideration of this airing were shut up in 
 the hall for four hours. Sunday w^as a particularly miserable 
 day ; two hours in chapel, nearly three in the cathedral, one 
 hour to w\alk, and the rest shut up in our court and hall. 
 
 It will hv. seen from this statement that we fasted from 
 seven o'clock in the evening till half-past ten in the morning ; 
 that four hours and a half were interposed between rising and 
 breakfast ; that we had no food for breakfast but biead : that
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9 
 
 we dined three hours after breakfast and immediately after an 
 hour of violent exercise. The result may be easily imagined 
 — we were ravenous at breakfast and there was nothing but 
 bread to eat unless we had pocket money to buy food ; out of 
 breath and reeking with perspiration we loathed our dinner, 
 and it was only when in school that we felt hunger which 
 there was no means of appeasing for hours, and then with the 
 (to gentlemen's children) uncongenial fare of bread and 
 cheese. Our pocket money, as long as it lasted, went in buying 
 the food with which we ought to have been supplied, and 
 when that was gone we bore our loss as best we could, only 
 too happy if we could coax a colleger to impart to us some- 
 thing from his comparatively liberal dietary. 
 
 We were, it will be observed, never alone by day or by 
 night, so that the power that one boy possessed to annoy 
 another was almost boundless. We were, besides, debarred of 
 our natural liberty, and the high spirits of youth, missing their 
 natural vent, found employment in mutual torment. Into 
 this place such as I have described it, I was introduced at the 
 rather advanced age of thirteen. I was placed in the second 
 class in the school, and thus escaped fagging. I was strong 
 and healthy, and did not greatly care for our meagre fare ; nor, 
 1 must say for myself, did I ever make any complaint of any- 
 thing or anybody ; but the ordeal I had to go through was 
 nevertheless really terrible. For the purposes of relieving the 
 weary hours of enforced society I was invaluable. No one 
 was so dull as to be unable to say something rather smart on my 
 peculiarities, and my short sight offered almost comj^lete 
 immunity to my tormenters. This went on, as well as I can 
 remember, for about a year and a half, and then, as even the 
 most delightful amusements pall by repetition, it died out. 
 
 Two things I may mention as rather remarkable ; one, that 
 though I beheve never accused of a want of physical courage, 
 I never fought a l)attle ; the other, that though I suffered so 
 severely from torments of all kinds, I never felt at the time or
 
 10 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 afterwards any ill-^Yill towards my persecutors, I never de- 
 ceived myself as to my personal peculiarities, and I think I 
 had sense enough to see that, situated as we were under con- 
 ditions which made us all more or less miserable, I could have 
 nothing better to expect ; ill-fed, shut up, or forced as it were 
 upon each other, I have no doubt that much of what happened 
 wa^ inevitable. At any rate, I had effectually solved the pro- 
 blem as to whether I was able to hold my own in life, and 
 proved by a most crucial experiment that I was not too 
 sensitive nor too soft for the business. 
 
 The present Lord Selborne was next to me in the class, 
 and as there was no taking of places, he continued there. I 
 do not think this would have been the case otherwise, as he 
 was a very clever boy, much more industrious than I, and had 
 a father who made him work during vacations. In my fourth 
 half-year, though I was only half-way up in my class, I gained 
 the second prize, and was in consequence promoted to the 
 first class a year before my time. 
 
 Latm and Greek had now become easy to me, and I eon- 
 tented myself with my lessons and spent the rest of my time 
 in reading English, which I thought at the time a great piece 
 of idleness, but have since learnt to consider some of the l)est 
 spent hours of my life, for it was thus I learnt the art of 
 speaking and writing correctly, to which I owe almost everj'-- 
 thing. 
 
 In the fourth year of my residence at Winchester, I became 
 a prefect. As this institution still exists, and has drawn upon 
 itself no Httle public notice, I will say a few words about it, 
 and should be very glad if anything I can say shall draw re- 
 newed attention to the subject. It will ])e gathered from what 
 I have already said that the school was conducted with a view 
 to make the exi)enses to the Master as small as possible. We 
 had only two men-servants to wait on 180 boys ; of course it 
 followed that in a similar spirit there were not enough masters 
 to do the work, and one reason why we were so unmercifully
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 11 
 
 long in school was the want of more masters, and the conse- 
 quent impossibility of a subdivision of classes. 
 
 The result was that a good deal of the discipline of the 
 school was entrusted to the prefects ; they had to keep order, 
 and as a reward for thus doing the duty of under-masters, were 
 invested with personal inviolability, besides the power of 
 fagging the other boys as before mentioned. Thus I found 
 myself at the mature age of sixteen invested with infinitely 
 more - power, with infinitely less control, than I have ever 
 had since. A stick was put into my hand, and I had to walk 
 up and down the hall and keep silence by applying the said 
 stick to the back of any boy whose voice or conduct disturbed 
 the silence of 130 boys. I had besides the power of funding, 
 a punishment far more severe than that of flogging, which was 
 in fact little better than a farce. I do not think that at first, 
 at any rate, I abused my new power. I had no great zeal for 
 the discij)line of the school, which I not unreasonably con- 
 sidered was no afl'air of mine. But an event happened which 
 entirely changed this state of affairs. 
 
 The senior prefect had made himself unpopular with the 
 boys, and on one occasion when he was about to inflict a fund- 
 ing the boys rescued his intended victim from his grasp. Of 
 course we, his colleagues, thought the world was coming to an 
 end, and in truth we had some sort of ground for our indigna- 
 tion, for it was obviously impossible for us to maintain the 
 discipline of the school, which most improperly, as I think, was 
 confided to us, if we were not invested with the inviolability 
 of the Eoman tribunes. So we made our complaint to the 
 head master, and he very injudiciously expelled the poor boy, 
 who had been guilty of the offence of causing a rescue. I 
 cannot help thinking that a much lighter punishment would 
 have been quite enough for an offence which had in it no really 
 serious delinquency, and that it would have been wise to con- 
 sider a little more seriously the results of such a measure. 
 The boys (though I really think that under the provocation
 
 12 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 they behaved at least as well as could be expected) were not 
 unnaturally very angry. They made us feel this m every way 
 they safely could ; we on our side were not slow to retaliate, 
 and thus, as Hume says of the days of the Popish plot, the 
 two parties within the narrow limits of the law vented against 
 each other their mutual animosity. 
 
 At last things grew so serious that my colleagues became 
 frightened, and gradually more and more indulgent, till at 
 last the boys were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased. 
 I am not aware that any very. bad results followed, and looking 
 at the matter from this distance of time, I am. not at all sure 
 that I should not have done better to have followed their 
 example. 
 
 If I could have persuaded myself that there was any 
 generosity in it T might have yielded, but, I was perfectly aware 
 that any relaxation of the reins would l)e imputed to fear, and 
 to that I could not l)ring myself to consent. The half year 
 ended without any change, and on the re-assembling of the 
 school after Christmas holidays, the headmaster communicated 
 to us his wish that the discipline of the school should be 
 relaxed. To this I most joyfully acceded, and content that it 
 should be known to the school that I acted not under fear 
 but under the express directions of the headmaster, I for a 
 half year let them do just as they pleased. I cannot help 
 thinking that however economical or convenient it may be to 
 put a stick into the hand of a boy of sixteen and allow him to 
 use it upon his schoolfellows, it is neither fair on the tunder 
 nor the tunded. If servants are wanted they ought to be 
 supplied from some other source than the junior scholars, and 
 if more masters are wanted they ought to be supplied from 
 some other source than the senior boys. 
 
 I left Winchester after four years' residence, and in October 
 1829 went up to reside at University College, Oxford. It 
 would be ungrateful of me to part from Winchester without 
 recording my gratitude to my tutor, ^Fi-. Wickhani. lie was,
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 13 
 
 as far as I may presume to judge, an excellent scholar, and, 
 what to a bo}^ of my temperament, smarting under much 
 undeserved ill-usage, was more important, he really took an 
 interest in me and spurred me on to exertion. I never shall 
 forget the pleasure in the midst of all that I had to endure to 
 find that there was some one, and that, a person placed so high 
 above me, who did not despise me for being unlike other people, 
 and who took a hearty interest in my success. I had a great 
 wish for knowledge of all kinds, I learnt from my mother 
 and aunts a little French and Italian, and I had a great desire 
 to learn mathematics. But this failed because the mathemati- 
 cal master at Winchester had never pursued his studies beyond 
 the Fourth Book of Euclid. I do not think that such know- 
 ledge as I obtained of Latin and Greek was of the kind best 
 suited to make a figure in examinations. I had very little 
 acquaintance with the writers on the niceties of the learned 
 languages, and consequently was at a great disadvantage at 
 examinations as they were then conducted. It was also an 
 intolerable labour to me to look out words in a dictionary. 
 My plan, which was almost unconsciously forced on me by 
 necessity, was to make myself, as far as I could, thoroughly 
 master of what I read by every means in my power. If there 
 was a question of the meaning of a word, I could always tell 
 the passage where it occurred in any author that I had read. 
 I was within the limits of my reading a complete dictionary of 
 parallel passages. Thus what I knew was all my own, and 
 was exactly proportioned to the amount of my reading : there 
 was no cram in it, and, if not very showy, it was solid, resting 
 upon a genuine basis — the very words of the author- and 
 their comparison with and correction by other passages. I 
 suppose the truth is that this plan, which necessity forced upon 
 me, was good as far as it went, but would never have led to 
 any real eminence as a scholar, though it satisfied my aspira- 
 tions as a student, and was sufiicient foi" my requirements as 
 a teacher.
 
 14 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 The change from Winchester to Oxford was dehghtful. It 
 was a change from perpetual noise and worry to quiet, from 
 imprisonment to freedom, from an odious pre-eminence to a 
 ■fair and just equality. I was delighted with the kindness of 
 my companions, and foi- the first year I did very little more 
 than thoroughly enjoy the change. Mine was not in those 
 days a reading college, and the tutors told me very fairly and 
 very truly that the greatest kindness they could show me was 
 to dispense with my attendance at their lectures. That year 
 is the only period in my life during which I can tax myself 
 with idleness, and though I look back with regret at the 
 thoughtlessness which could so waste my opportunities, I 
 cannot greatly wonder that I yielded to the temptation. I 
 came up at the commencement of my second year full of good 
 resolutions, to which, on the whole, I very fairly adhered. I 
 determined to take a double first-class and set to work accord- 
 ingly. This was a great mistake. A first-class in classics 
 was easily within my reach with moderate industr}', but a 
 first-class in mathematics was to me a very difficult, and on 
 looking back I might almost say an impossible, undertaking. 
 The pursuit of this uinis fatnns occupied by far the largest part 
 of my time at Oxford, and the labour of two long vacations, 
 and probably prevented my obtaining any of the minor 
 University distinctions. It was not, I think, that I had any 
 especial difficulty in understanding mathematics, though I must 
 confess to rather an awkward symptom, a desire like that of 
 Macaulay, to argue the point and to contend that what I was 
 told was conclusive reasoning, was not conclusive at all. I still 
 believe that many of the conclusions of mathematics are more 
 certain than the premisses ; when we know that a conclusion 
 is true and that all the steps of the demonstration except one 
 are also true, we know the excepted position must be true 
 whether the reason we give for its truth be true or not. Thus 
 I imagine that most persons are niudi ninre certain that two 
 minus quantities multiplied together produce a phm than they
 
 A CIIAPTEll OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15 
 
 are of the cogency of the argument by which this position is 
 sought to be proved. At any rate, I had no decided aptitude 
 for mathematics, and I could not have selected any study in 
 which my defective sight told so heavily against me. Small 
 diagrams and figures were to me a species of torture ; they 
 absorbed in the effort to see them the attention that was 
 needed to understand them. When I came to write them out 
 matters were still worse. It was a great triumph if I could 
 make my writing intelligible to myself and very improbable 
 that I should make it intelligible to others. I had a most ex- 
 cellent tutor in Mr. Walker ; indeed, the only fault I have 
 to find with him is that he thought much too well of his pupil 
 and fully believed that I should have triumphed over diffi- 
 culties with which I really was quite unable to cope. I believe 
 that what Horace says of drunkenness is true of physical 
 defects, and that the faculties corresponding to defective 
 organs become themselves enfeebled. Corpus onustmn natune 
 vitiis animam quoque pnegravat una atquc affi,git luimi divina 
 particuliun aiirce. 
 
 Thus I apprehend bad sight impairs the power of observa- 
 tion, and bad hearing of attention. I must console myself 
 with the reflection that though a mistake as regards uni- 
 versity distinction, the study of mathematics was probably 
 the soundest and most sensible part of my education, as being 
 the key to the study of physics. 
 
 On looking back on this part of my life I am much struck 
 with the utter absence of anyone within my reach to whom I 
 could apply for advice in these and similar questions. It is 
 mortifying to think how much waste of time and, what is still 
 more valuable, eyesight, I might have been saved if I had had 
 the good luck to meet with some one who possessed the ex- 
 perience that I so much needed to advise me how to turn my 
 very slender, and, as it then seemed, precarious means of ac- 
 quiring information to the best account. My cotemporaries 
 were mostly country gentlemen or embryo clergymen whose
 
 16 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 ambition was centred on the not very difficult object of obtain- 
 ing a degree as a necessary preliminary to taking orders. My 
 object should have been to have found for myself pursuits 
 which depended more on the mind than the eye, but I never 
 thought of such things, and it would have been a good fortune 
 which I had no right to expect had I found anyone caj^able of 
 looking so far beyond the narrow routine of a University as to 
 think of them for me. 
 
 The first thing that brought me into notice at Oxford was 
 a burlesque poem on a visit paid by the Duchess of Kent and 
 the Princess Victoria to the Universitj^ in 1833. I had been 
 reading the macaronic poems of Dr. Geddes, and was seized 
 with a desire to emulate him. The best I can say of my per- 
 formance is that it succeeded, having gone through seven 
 editions ; that it contained a true prophecy, that Her Majesty 
 would reign thirty years, and that having succeeded so far 
 beyond my expectations and deserts, I had the good sense not 
 to try my fortune again in a vein which owes so much to 
 mere novelty and eccentricity, and of which the public ear 
 would so soon tire. As it has been long out of print, I subjoin 
 a copy.' 
 
 Another source for me if not of fame at least of notoriety, 
 was the Union Debating Society. At that time it was pecu- 
 liarly fortunate in its leading members ; Gladstone, Sidney 
 Herbert, Lord Lincoln, Gaskell, Tait, Palmer, Cardwell, 
 Piickards, Anstice, Mussie, Trevor and others, whose names I 
 do not recall at the moment, formed a brilliant assemblage 
 of talent and eloquence whose early promise has since been 
 amply fulfilled. 
 
 We were in what appeared to wiser and more experienced 
 heads than ours to be the full tide of revolution. Many 
 speeches were made which would not have disgraced, and some 
 that would have adorned, a Parliamentary debate. I well re- 
 member the first time I heard Gladstone speak. It was on the 
 
 ' See pp. 88-')0.
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 17 
 
 emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. As far as mere 
 elocution went he spoke just as well as he does now in 1876. 
 He had taken just as much pains with the details of his subject 
 as he would have if he had been Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies. He did not launch into commonplaces about the 
 rights of man, but he proposed a well-considered and carefully- 
 prepared scheme of gradual emancipation. It is not too much 
 to say that even then he gave full promise of all which he has 
 since achieved. I remember that I proposed that the King 
 ought to make new Peers in order to pass the Keform Bill, and 
 that I could only get four people to vote with me. Subse- 
 quently I had a good deal to do with the memorable schism of 
 the Eambler. The Union Society had elected a president 
 against whom there was no serious objection, but who was not 
 a 'persona grata to some of its principal members. This was 
 after most of the stars I have mentioned had set. The dis- 
 sentients, instead of taking their defeat in good humour after 
 the manner of Englishmen, resolved to set up an opposition 
 society which was to be called the Rambler, at the same time 
 retaining their position in the old society. The obnoxious 
 president sought my help. I thought, as I still think (and 
 forty years have not obliterated the impression), that he was 
 very ill used. I am not so sure about the measure we took. 
 We proposed that the members of the new society should 
 elect between the new society and the old. We had a furious 
 debate and failed to carry our motion. People cooled down 
 — they saw that the thing had a ludicrous as well as a tragic 
 side, and the matter is now principally remembered by a mock 
 Homeric poem, by several authors, in which the present most 
 learned Dean of Rochester, Scott, bore a distinguished part 
 — a wit before he was a lexicographer. JJehita Trojanis exercet 
 spicidafatis. 
 
 But how shall I relate my own share in the transaction ? 
 It was my task to open the debate, which I do not doubt that 
 I did with quite as much bitterness as the occasion required. 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 Afterwards the president, the Helen who had made this war, 
 rose to speak, and I, as a Hbrarian, took the chair. The 
 speaker met with considerable interruption, and among others 
 from Mr. Tait of Balliol, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 and I, not being, it is to be feared, in a very judicial mood, 
 fined the future Head of the Church 11. for disorderly conduct. 
 The rule was that at the end of the year an appeal lay against 
 this decision, at which Tait and I fought it out, and my 
 ruling was maintained by a very small majority. So I hope 
 1 was right, but am by no means confident. 
 
 Nature gave me a strong, almost childish, taste for all sorts 
 of sports and games, but she in a great measure cancelled the 
 gift by denying me the power of taking part in them. Water, 
 that is, swimming, furnished me with my only amusement at 
 Winchester, and the same element provided me with my 
 principal amusement at Oxford in the more agreeable and 
 athletic exercise of rowing. Even now I am conscious of 
 some childish vanity in recording that I was chosen one of 
 the crew of the University in a match which we were to row 
 against Cambridge. I was entrusted with the important place 
 of ' seven,' and as the match never came off, I may assume 
 that I should have distinguished myself highly, without the 
 possibility of contradiction. At any rate, though our boats 
 were of very primitive construction, we should have rowed 
 our match at Henley instead of Hammersmith, in the presence 
 of the inhabitants of the little country town and the gentle- 
 men and ladies of the neighbourhood, instead of in a whirl- 
 pool of steamers and the roar of thousands of spectators. 
 We should have escaped the comments of newspapers on our 
 skill and strength, and no money would have changed hands 
 on the event. 
 
 I remember when I was at Oxford I was a great advocate 
 for all athletic sports, but I am bound to say my wishes have 
 been more than gratified. The facility of transport has made 
 these matches pultlic instead of private affairs, the public
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 19 
 
 schools, always on the look-out to find some excuse to lighten 
 the labours of teaching, have placed cricket at least on a level 
 with the ordinary studies of the place, and the little that is 
 taught is made less in order to indulge the silly vanity of 
 parents, and to open to dulness also its road to fame. 
 A dunce at Euclid, and a dab at taw. 
 
 I spent the long vacation of 1831 reading mathematics 
 with a tutor at Barmouth, a singularly beautiful place. This 
 expedition was memorable to me for several reasons. In 
 going there we, that is my elder brother and myself, passed 
 over the Liverpool and Manchester Eailway a few months 
 after it was opened. People who have been brought up to 
 railways cannot conceive the wonder, delight, and astonish- 
 ment that such a journey occasioned ; it was as if the Arabian 
 Nights had suddenly l^ecome true. I can never forget the 
 delight of the passage or the agony of thinking how soon it 
 would be over ; then there was the sight of the Menai Bridge, 
 then, and perhaps still, one of the wonders of the world, and 
 as beautiful as wonderful ; then the drive under Snowdon 
 with Gray"s Ode in my mind, and the glorious sail from 
 Tremadoc to Barmouth across the Bay of Carnarvon. It was 
 Nature and Art opening on us all at once for the first time. 
 Here also, though last, not least, I met with the lady who 
 afterw^ards became my wife, and who has now for forty years 
 been the faithful companion of my chequered destiny, and to 
 whose zeal, industry, and energy I owe in no small degree 
 such success as I have obtained. 
 
 Here I met for the first time the illustrious Darwin. He 
 was making a geological tour in Wales, and carried with him, 
 in addition to his other burdens, a hammer of 14 lbs. weight. 
 I remember he was full of modesty, and was always lamenting 
 his bad memory for languages and inability to quote. I am 
 proud to remember that though quite ignorant of physical 
 science, I saw a something in him which marked him out as 
 superior to anyone I had ever met : the proof which I gave 
 
 c2
 
 20 LIFE OF LORD SHElir.KOOKE 
 
 of this was somewhat canme m its nature, I followed him. 
 I walked twenty-two miles with him when he went away, a 
 thing which I never did for anyone else before or since. 
 
 My next vacation I spent in a little farmhouse, about a 
 mile and a half away from Gosport, reading mathematics with 
 Mr. Walker. There were very few steamers on the Solent in 
 those days, so I bought a little boat with a sprit-sail, and 
 amused myself with sailing about, often quite alone. I was 
 often out by myself all night, and cannot imagine how I escaped 
 being drowned, as I had no special knowledge of the manage- 
 ment of a boat, and troubled myself very little whether the 
 weather were fine or stormy. 
 
 In the spring of 1833 I went up for my degree, and took a 
 first class in classics and a second class in mathematics. This 
 was a disai:)pointment to me, for I was sure that I knew enough 
 to entitle me to a first class, though I felt perfectly conscious 
 that I had not brought my knowledge properly out. There 
 were thirteen of us in the first class in classics. Among them 
 stand the names of Liddell and Scott, the present Bishop of 
 London, and Lord Canning. My examination in Divinity 
 was very amusing. It will be remembered that I had made 
 myself rather conspicuous by my speeches in the debating 
 society, and I suppose it is to that that I must attribute the 
 very singular examination to which I was subjected by Mr. 
 Lancaster, one of the classical examiners. It was to the 
 following effect : — 
 
 Examiner ; ' Which gave the better counsel to Rehoboam, the 
 old men or the young '? ' 
 
 I : ' The old men. It was quitu right to lighten the taxation.' 
 
 Examiner : ' Did not Solomon obtain large revenues by com- 
 merce ? ' 
 
 I : • I don't think so. Princes have, as Adam Smith tells us, 
 always been bad traders ; we do not know what he exported to 
 Ophir, but he brought back gold and silver, mere articles of luxury, 
 and monkeys and peacocks, not, I appreliend, a very profitable con- 
 signment.' (A laugh.) 
 
 Examiner : ' Still, the country is described as being very
 
 A CIIAPTEIi OF AUTOBIOGKAPIIY 21 
 
 prosperous under his government, and the revenue is described as 
 being large.' 
 
 I : ' Yes, but then only see how it was squandered : there was 
 the Temple, the Golden Throne, and the Sea of Gold, and the lions, 
 and the cherubim, and the mercy seat.' 
 
 Examiner : ' Still, that hardly bears out the opinion of the old 
 men.' 
 
 I : ' No, sir. There was besides the support of 300 wives and 
 700 concubines. We often see a man ruined by one wife : surely 
 a thousand women were enough to ruin a whole country.' (A general 
 roar of laughter.) 
 
 Examiner : ' Thank you, sir. Your examination has been very 
 pleasing.' 
 
 I was examined in Tlie Ku if/Ids of Aristophanes in the 
 well-known passage where the rather striking defects of the 
 sausage seller are proved to be so many recommendations for 
 the trade of a demagogue ; and, finally, a pro-proctor, who had 
 caught me out in some small delinquency a few months before, 
 selected from Juvenal the passage : — ' Ehriiis et petulans qui 
 ■) lulkmi forte c ecidit. ' 
 
 I was very well pleased with all this, because 1 felt sure 
 that unless they had intended to give me a first class, they 
 would not have introduced this scene of high jinks mixed up 
 with party politics into the schools, and thus given me the 
 opportunity of saying that my speeches at the Union had 
 lost me my class. This was about six months after the 
 passing of the Eeform Bill, and it is only fair to acknowledge 
 the good humour with which the whole affair was treated. It 
 gave, perhaps, rather a false h-lat to my performance, and 
 was doubtless the means of obtaining for me the further 
 questionable advantage of a large number of private pupils, 
 which, as will be seen, had a considerable influence on my 
 future destiny, and by no means altogether for good. 
 
 I ought to have mentioned that Mr. Woods, a member of 
 University College, took a first class at the same time. The 
 College ought to have been much obliged to us, for they had 
 not had a first class for nine years, and we had not the slightest
 
 22 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 assistance from the tutors, whom I, at least, paid for tuition 
 I had never received, and to be exempt from which my tutor 
 justly considered a great boon. I was entitled by the usage 
 of the coUege to books to the value of 17/. lOs. I chose the 
 Attic orators, and Bekker's Plato. My tutor tried hard to 
 dissuade me from my choice, on the ground that these were 
 books which it was quite certain I should never open. I am 
 very happy to think that in this he was entirely mistaken. 
 Almost all the Fellowships at University were clerical, so that 
 I had nothing to hope in that quarter. The only other notice 
 which I received from my college was that a prize was offered 
 for the best essay by any member of the college under the 
 degree of a Master of Arts. The Master sent for me, and re- 
 quested me not to compete, and to make the fact known, for 
 fear, as he said, I should discourage competition. 
 
 In the summer of this year, my brother and I made a 
 walking tour through Scotland. It was the year after the 
 death of Sir Walter Scott, and we were full of his writings. 
 The interest of such a tour at such a time can hardly be 
 imagined. But we had the good fortune to travel with a great 
 living poet — no less a person than Wordsworth. I am afraid 
 I was not then as well acquainted with his poems as I ought 
 to have been or as I have become since. My principal amuse- 
 ment, I am ashamed to say, was to watch his demeanour under 
 the torture which the indiscriminate and hj no means over- 
 refined praise of Scott inflicted upon a poet justly conscious 
 of higher merits than the coarse taste of the age was disposed 
 to allow him. He absolutely writhed under the perpetual 
 references to Fitz James and Eoderick Dim with which he 
 was regaled by the passengers of the Locli Lomond steamboat, 
 and at last in despair began to a very unsympathetic audience 
 a criticism on Scott's English ; the only point I can recollect 
 is that in the line — 
 
 Loch Katrine lay before him rolled, 
 he said it should have been ' unrolled.'
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 23 
 
 I also remember that he recited his own sonnet on the 
 Mill of Inversnaid. 
 
 I met with him again on the steamer going to Staffa, when 
 we had an adventure to which he partly alludes in his sonnet 
 on this his second visit to Staffa. His son, my brother, 
 and I, climbed up to the summit of the island where there is 
 a very fine view, and he became extremely poetical. As the 
 sea was rough the steamer was moored at some distance from 
 the island, and we were transferred to a coble which landed 
 us and was to bring us back. At the end of one of Words- 
 worth's finest periods one of us happened to look round and 
 observed that the coble had left Staffa and was very near the 
 steamer which was rolling heavily. Staffa is uninhabited, 
 and the prospect of remaining there for a week without food 
 or shelter was by no means inviting. We made signals of 
 distress and had the satisfaction of seeing the coble, after 
 having put its passengers on board the steamer which was 
 rolling heavily, return for us. We had no reason to expect a 
 pleasant reception ; a delay of three-quarters of an hour is 
 sufficiently irritating even without the addition of sea-sick- 
 ness. As we approached the steamer we could see the pas- 
 sengers drawn up in an ominous semicircle with the captain 
 in the arc, red and lowering like a comet. We were all seized 
 with the utmost reverence for Wordsworth, whom we insisted 
 on sending up the ladder first. What passed I do not know, 
 for, happy in my insignificance, I mingled with the crowd and 
 left the poet to his fate. 
 
 In October I returned to Oxford, having made up my mind 
 as to the course of life I meant to pursue. I was but poorly 
 fitted for the solution of a problem which involved questions 
 which might have puzzled a wiser head than mine. Prudence 
 would have counselled me to take orders, get a Fellowship, 
 and work my way through Oxford to whatever haven Fortune 
 might open for me ; but as I had a decided objection to the 
 Church, I determined to go to the Bar. This was a very unwise
 
 24 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 resolution, and one I am sure I should never have formed if I 
 had possessed a friend who could have laid the whole case 
 before me. If I had been asked such questions as these : — 
 ' Can you see the face of a witness ? ' ' Can you watch the 
 countenances of a jury so as to judge whether what you say 
 finds acceptance with them or no ? ' ' Can you in a crowded 
 Court take full and accurate notes of evidence and cases ? ' 
 ' Can you read through a long affidavit in a fog or by candle- 
 light '? ' ' Can you find your place readily in a long brief or 
 report ? ' — all these and many more such questions I must 
 have answered in the negative. However, it was on this 
 impossibility that I had set my heart, and, the matter being 
 resolved upon, I had next to consider the way to get called to 
 the Bar. For this two things were necessary ; one to get a 
 lay Fellowship, the other to support myself and bear the 
 expenses incident to the study and the entrance into the legal 
 profession. 
 
 I happened to know that a lay Fellowship at Magdalen 
 confined to Nottinghamshire would be vacant in two years, 
 which solved the first difficulty, and for the second I had to 
 rely on finding a sufficient number of pupils. And now I 
 began a labour compared with which everything else which I 
 have had to do in my life has been mere play and recreation. 
 The business of a private tutor at Oxford may be described to 
 be to give an hour a day to each pupil. Had I meant to 
 make teaching my profession I should have gone to work with 
 more moderation, but I thought, and justly, according to the 
 plan I had laid down for myself, that I was bound to work as 
 hard as 1 could in order to carry out my ideal. For seven 
 years I took as many pupils as I could do justice to. My 
 number very often amounted to ten, and in addition to this, 
 for five years out of the seven I took pupils during the long 
 vacation. I do not think I could have gone on with it much 
 longer. It has at any rate had this good effect, that all other 
 work has seemed to me trifling after it. To dismiss this sub-
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 25 
 
 ject at once I may say that I was very popular as a tutor and 
 retained my number up to the last, and finished in November 
 with four pupils of mine in a first class of six. I have lost 
 the list of my pupils, but I am proud to mention amongst 
 them Lord Justice Mellish, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, Mr, Charles 
 Eeade the novelist, Mr. Clough the poet, Mr. Congreve, and the 
 late Father Dalgairns. I had not the honour to be known either 
 to Mr. Newman or to Dr. Arnold, but so many pupils came to 
 me from those two distinguished men that I flattered myself, 
 perhaps too readily, that it was not wholly fortuitous. 
 
 In 1834 I spent the long vacation with some pupils in 
 Wales. The latter part of the time we spent at Festiniog, 
 where I had a most extraordinary escape. About half a mile 
 from the village there is a fine mountain stream which has 
 worn itself an exceedingly deep channel, and makes a series 
 of cataracts. There is also in the stream a very remarkable 
 rock called ' Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit.' I walked down to the 
 brook after my work was over to look at one of these cascades 
 which was called ' The Black Pools.' The rock projected over 
 it so that the fall seemed directly under my feet. I laid hold 
 of the branch of a tree to steady myself while I looked over, my 
 foot slipped on the mossy bank, the branch that I held broke, 
 I fell on my side, rolled over and over three or four times, and 
 then shot clear over the precipice. People are described in 
 such situations as having their whole life pass before them, as 
 losing their breath, as dead before they reach the ground. 
 None of these things happened to me. I seemed a long time 
 to be rolling over and over in the air. I remember hoping 
 that I should be killed outright, and then the relief of finding 
 myself in water. I rose to the surface like a duck and on 
 looking round found myself in a deep basin with the waterfall 
 facing me, high rocks all round, and one very close to the 
 place where I had fallen in. After a futile attempt to get out 
 by the way that I came in, which showed that I had not quite 
 recovered my senses, I swam down the stream and crawled
 
 26 LIFE OF LOUD SHERBKOOKE 
 
 out at the first point where the bank began to slope. I 
 sprained my ankle and my hand, was only able to crawl on 
 all fours most of the way home, and ended by fainting with 
 the pain. They said the height of the fall was 120 feet. On 
 this I can give no opinion, for my experience has proved to 
 me that the worst possible way of measuring a height is to 
 fall down it. My kind old friend, Martha Owen the landlady, 
 whose name, if there is gratitude in man, ought to be green 
 in the valleys of Wales, and who bore no inconsiderable 
 resemblance to Scott's Meg Dodds, took excellent care of me, 
 and I felt no permanent bad effects from my accident. 
 
 The next year was a memorable one. The Fellowship at 
 Magdalen fell vacant and I was elected without a competitor. 
 I took a party of pupils to read at Beaumaris, and three 
 months after 1 had obtained the Fellowship which had formed 
 so prominent a part of my scheme for being called to the Bar, 
 I effectually cancelled that part of my programme by engaging 
 myself to the lady whom I had met at Barmouth. It was a 
 matter that might have waited a little while, but I had a 
 motive which induced us to rather precipitate matters. If I 
 vacated my Fellowship during that year, my younger brother 
 would be sure to get it. I had taught him at Oxford, he had 
 obtained a second class, and as he intended to take orders 
 would thus be provided for for life. So we arranged matters 
 accordingly, and were married in March 1836. As I never 
 was a full Fellow, all that I received from the munificence of 
 William of Wainfleet was 10/. 
 
 The summer of this auspicious year we spent in a tour in 
 Switzerland ; we left England in the beginning of June and 
 did not return till the middle of October. We walked, I may 
 literally say all over Switzerland, for not only did we visit the 
 Oberland and Chamouni, l)ut Appenzell, St. Gallen, and the 
 Orisons. My wife was an excellent walker, and thus our 
 slender resources, being relieved of the charges of transport, 
 held out till the end of our long campaign. We walked 700
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 27 
 
 miles in two months ; m}' wife, who drew extremely well, 
 carrying her sketch-book and drawing materials, and I our 
 wardrobe and the money, which, being silver, was the heaviest 
 of all. We returned to Oxford, bought a small house between 
 Christchurch and Folly Bridge, and set to work at the business 
 of life in good earnest. This lasted for four years, during 
 which I underwent an enormous amount of drudgery. 
 
 The Oxford of to-day, owing to changes in which I have 
 been so fortunate as to bear a part, is very diiferent from the 
 Oxford of forty years ago. At that time we were governed 
 academically and socially by what I can only describe as a 
 clerical gerontocracy. Almost all power was vested in the 
 heads of colleges, an office to which men seldom succeed when 
 young, and in which there is no superannuation. Bacon says 
 that a university should be like a beehive, ' quo ncqiie sit 
 rentis aditus,' and certainly the institution was well qualified 
 to secure that its government should not be of a too revolu- 
 tionary' or innovating character. It might perhaps have 
 occurred to some people that I, who was able to obtain in the 
 open field of competition more pupils than I required, might 
 have been a useful auxiliary to the not very powerful tutorial 
 staff of the college to which I belonged. I do not believe such 
 an idea was ever rejected, because I do not believe that it ever 
 occurred to anyone. 
 
 Magdalen was less of a reading college than University, 
 and, as the Duke of Wellington once told the authorities, had 
 been notorious for idleness ever since the time of Gibbon. Our 
 president was a scholar and a gentleman, but his reign began 
 in the reign of Louis the Sixteenth. If such a plan as that 
 of utilising me had ever been broached, I am sure it would 
 have been overruled. I was popular with the Fellows but I 
 was a decided Liberal, and worse than all was known to enter- 
 tain very strong opinions in favour of the rejDeal of the Corn 
 Laws, a most distasteful heresy in academical eyes, as having 
 a tendency to diminish the value of Fellowships. The heads
 
 28 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 of houses had the usual quahty of a narrow and factitious 
 aristocracy — they were socially exclusive. Not that this would 
 have been any great loss in itself, but the evil was that Oxford 
 was too small to support two societies, and so those who had 
 not university or collegiate rank enough to place them in 
 what was somewhat irreverently called ' the cod's head and 
 shoulders ' set, ran some risk of having no society at all. 
 
 As for us, we found an ample indemnity for general society 
 in youth, health, constant employment, and in the kindness 
 of many of my old college friends. In 1837 I was appointed 
 a Master of the Schools, or in other better understood words 
 a ' little-go ' examiner. This I owed, if I remember right, to 
 my connection with Magdalen College. One of our Fellows 
 was Proctor and he gave me the appointment. Among my 
 colleagues were Dr. Dyne and Dr. Kynaston, who have since 
 been remarkably successful as schoolmasters ; Dyne at High- 
 gate, and Kynaston at St. Paul's. I held the office for two 
 years. Our duties were laid down for us by statute and there 
 was no difficulty in performing them, except that to do so was 
 extremely unpopular and quite contrary to the spirit of the 
 place. Our duty was to see that the students of so many 
 terms' standmg were not wholly wasting their time and might 
 with propriety be allowed to continue their studies at Oxford. 
 One would have supposed that the wish of all parties would 
 be that this duty should be strictly and creditably performed ; 
 sometimes, indeed, I have been thanked by a tutor for cutting 
 short the career of an idle and dissipated young man whose 
 bad examjile was doing injury to the college, but much more 
 frequently the matter was received with a growl and visible 
 annoyance. We were, in fact, to compare small things with 
 great, judges residing among a small society greatly interested 
 in the manner in which we administered justice — all whose 
 sympathies were, so to say, with the criminals. 
 
 As people talk very much and understand very little about 
 what they call l^niversity teaching, I will try to explain the
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 29 
 
 subject, though I smcerely hope that long before these pages 
 see the light, the explanation may have become unnecessary. 
 
 The University teaching of which these persons speak is 
 the teaching of Oxford and Cambridge — now, the word 
 University as used at Oxford and Cambridge has two distinct 
 meanings. Its proper meaning is the body incorporated by 
 the Crown, which has by virtue of that incorporation the 
 privilege of conferring that particular title of honour which is 
 called a degree. In this sense the Universities are not teaching 
 bodies at all. There is, however, another sense in which the 
 term University is used : it is used to include all the colleges 
 of which the members of the University are also members, 
 and it is in that sense that University teaching is used. Now, 
 is this union of teaching and conferring degrees in the same 
 hands a good or an evil ? The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge 
 must be regarded not only as places for giving instruction ; 
 the honour and credit of the University are kept up by those 
 who take high honours, and public opinion in the Universities 
 is in favour of keeping up this, the show part of the system. 
 Examiners may be as strict as they please in the amount they 
 require, and no objection is made. But it is quite different 
 with regard to the ordinary pass degree and the ' little go.' 
 
 Those persons who desire a degree, either as a title to orders 
 or as a social distinction, are the great bulk of the University, 
 and the whole weight of opinion in the University is in favour 
 of treating them very leniently. Instead of a competition 
 which of the two shall give a degree that implies the greatest 
 amount of attainment, and as therefore the most honourable 
 to giver and receiver, the competition between Oxford and 
 Cambridge has hitherto been which can offer a degree on the 
 easiest terms. There is no other way^f explaining the ad- 
 mitted fact that at both Oxford and Cambridge the degree is 
 discreditably low. It thus appears that University teaching 
 carries with it as a necessary result a degradation of learning, 
 because those who teach, instead of working up to a fixed
 
 30 LIFE OF LOED SHERBEOOKE 
 
 standard can fix the standard for themselves. Nothmg would 
 improve the Universities as teaching bodies so much as to take 
 out of their hands the power of conferring the ordinary pass 
 degree, and conversely nothing would tend so much to enhance 
 the value of a degree as placing it in the hands of persons 
 who have no pecuniary interest in reducing it below a fair and 
 honourable standard. It was this tendency to keep down the 
 standard of examinations in order to fill the colleges that I felt 
 and resisted as far as my humble position admitted. I find 
 exactly the same evil still existing, only people have been 
 somehow persuaded to consider that evil as a merit. 
 
 Another trouble seems to me to impend over the new plan 
 of University teaching. When the system is once firmly 
 established in any great town, the request is sure to be made 
 that the standard of knowledge should be raised to the level of 
 a University degree. This can hardly be refused, and indeed, 
 as the outside public become more and more aware of the 
 nakedness of the land, it will be strange if a demand for more 
 than the University standard should not be heard. At any 
 rate, if Nottingham shall obtain an equality of examination 
 with Oxford and Cambridge, the demand is sure to follow in 
 no long time that, as the proficiency is equal, the degree shall 
 be the same. Then we shall have reached the graves of the 
 Scythians — the equality will never be granted, because to grant 
 it would be to strike a fatal blow at the college system and the 
 very comfortable maintenance which a great number of very 
 worthy persons derive from compulsory charges for tuition, 
 besides room rent, and some other little matters. The result 
 will be a quarrel and a separation. 
 
 I return to my biography with this observation, that in my 
 judgment the Civil Service Commission migl)t very easily be 
 enlarged so as to perform the office of a University and an 
 examiner of schools for the whole country. Examining is a 
 judicial function and would be well placed in such hands as a 
 commission responsible to Parliament.
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 31 
 
 In 18B7 I took a party of pupils to Dinan, in Brittany, 
 having been, as I believe, the first private tutor who ventured 
 to carry his pupils beyond the sacred precincts of the United 
 Kingdom. I have often regretted that I did not try Ireland. 
 
 The next year, 1838, seemed likely at one time to have 
 entirely altered my course of life. Sir Daniel Sandford, the 
 Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow, died. There 
 was a great competition for the Professorship, a most eligible 
 situation, for the emoluments were said to be '2,000^. a year, 
 and the session only lasted six months. The election was in 
 the hands of the Senatas Academicus, that is, thirteen profes- 
 sors. I never dreamt of aspiring to such a prize. However, 
 it came to pass that for some reason which I do not know, 
 the electors declared themselves discontented with the candi- 
 dates and invited others to come forward. I had a relation 
 who had married Mr. Findlay, of Easterhill, who lived about 
 three miles from Glasgow. My testimonials were, as I believe 
 testimonials always are, a splendid instance of what Bentham 
 calls the fallacy of indiscriminate laudation. I know not 
 whether I had begun to entertain any doubts as to my grand 
 plan of going to the Bar. I certainly had a warning, which 
 I will mention presently, which ought to have influenced my 
 mind in this direction. I went to Glasgow and spent a month 
 there, with the assistance and under the advice of my kind 
 friend Mr. Findlay, and at the end of that time had every 
 reason to believe that my exertions had been crowned with 
 success. 
 
 My antagonist was Mr. Lushington, one of the original 
 candidates ; at the end of my canvass the numbers stood 
 three for Lushington and the rest for me. It was with in- 
 describable pleasure that I saw apparently within my reach 
 an honourable competence to be earned by moderate labour in 
 a field in which I felt confident I could discharge the duties 
 required of me without any impediment from those physical 
 infirmities which I had at last begun to estimate a little more
 
 32 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 justly. But my prospect was soon overclouded. Mr. Lush- 
 ington had only three adherents, but they were true and 
 staunch. It was in the power of the Senatns Academicus to 
 translate one professor to another and more highly paid chair 
 in case of death. Now, as my evil star would have it, Dr. 
 Milne, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, was at this moment 
 dying. Equally unfortunate, my principal supporter, the 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was a candidate for the 
 expected vacancy. The three professors who supported Mr. 
 Lushmgton pointed out to the Professor of Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory that they certamly could not prevent him from electing 
 me for the Greek Professorship, but that if he carried that it 
 was in their power by throwing their votes into the adverse 
 scale to prevent him from obtaming the Chair of Moral Phi- 
 losophy. The menace had its effect. The professor threw his 
 weight into the opposite scale, Mr. Lushington was elected to 
 the Greek Chair, and my quondam supporter to the Chair of 
 Moral Philosophy. 
 
 This was to me a very bitter disappointment. I was weary 
 of the monotonous drudgery of teaching ; I had every reason 
 to suppose that I had succeeded, and the election after all of 
 one who had been among the first list of candidates looked 
 something like a breach of faith. These feelings were not 
 much soothed by the reflection that I had been sacrificed 
 simply to the interests of a third person without the slightest 
 regard to the merits of the case, but I soon took a cooler and, 
 I honestly believe, a juster view. The main fault lay in the 
 miserable system of translation. After all it was perhaps too 
 much to expect that my supporter should prefer my interest 
 to his own, especially as he had given me no personal pledge. 
 I must also admit that I believe Mr. Lushington to have been 
 a better scholar than myself, and am happy to record that 
 after thirty-two years of most excellent service he has retired, 
 carrying with him the respect and regard of the whole Uni- 
 versity.
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 83 
 
 About this time my eyes gave me very distinct notice tliat 
 I must give up all idea of reading by candlelight. This was 
 a very great distress to me, as it cut me off from what has 
 always been my greatest pleasure. The decline having mani- 
 fested itself so early, gave me much reason to fear that this 
 was only the first step towards a still greater failure of sight, 
 and ought, I think, to have made me give up my scheme of 
 the Bar altogether. But the dogged resolution which sticks 
 to its purpose in the face of almost insuperable obstacles is in 
 itself an element of prosperity, and answered in the long run, 
 though in a very different way from anything I had imagined. 
 From that time till now, some forty years, I have never been 
 able to read by candlelight, and when I think of all the things 
 that I might have known if I had not had this misfortune, I 
 am astonished how persons who have all their winter evenings 
 to themselves contrive to know so little. 
 
 Some sacrifice I resolved to make to this new misfortune. 
 I do not think I chose my victim well. We had the great 
 honour and privilege to have as Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford 
 Mr. Wilson, a man of profound erudition and the author of 
 the great English and Sanscrit Dictionary. He was not over- 
 burdened with pupils, and he took, or seemed to take, pleasure 
 in teaching me. Under the guidance of this most admirable 
 scholar and most charming companion, I gained a very fair 
 knowledge of the grammar of this complicated and difficult 
 language. I read through the Laws of Menu, and a good deal 
 of the Ratiiayana. The language is beautiful, and easily read. 
 I really had conquered the main difficulties, and had I gone 
 to Glasgow should, I do not doubt, have mastered it thoroughly. 
 I can even now repeat many verses from the Mahabharata. 
 It is a great pity that so noble a language should not have 
 been the vehicle of a more interesting and instructive litera- 
 ture. 
 
 In 1839, I took a party of pupils to Ambleside. The ex- 
 pedition was remarkable mainly for the fact that during the 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 whole three months we had only three days of fine weather. 
 In 1840 I took a party a second time to Dinan, and m this 
 year my residence of eleven years at Oxford, and my seven 
 years labour as a private tutor, came to an end. As the time 
 drew nearer I became more timid as to making the plunge. 
 A small office worth, if I remember rightly, less than 300/. a 
 year, a Pre-lectorship of Logic, had just been created, and I 
 really think if I had obtained it, I should very probably have 
 shrunk from the plunge into the great world which I was 
 about to make. Happily I did not get it, and so the plunge 
 was made. 
 
 It is usual for novelists and moralists to represent youth 
 as the season of overweening confidence and self-estimation : 
 that is not my experience. Some of the ablest men I have 
 known have thrown themselves away for want of a manly 
 confidence in themselves, from a sickly over-refinement, or 
 from indolence concealing itself under the mask of humility. 
 As far as I have been able to observe, the first step in life is 
 greatly crowded with competitors, but this once passed, the 
 scene entirely changes, and instead of a struggle for existence, 
 the difficulty is to find men equal in any tolerable degree to 
 the duties required of them. 
 
 I did not start from Oxford wholly ignorant of law, for I 
 had carefully read over twice, I think, Cruise's Digest, a most 
 excellent work on Eeal Property, the most abstruse, but also 
 the most systematic, j)art of the Law, and, therefore, the part 
 most easily acquired by private study. We sold our house in 
 Oxford for something more than we gave for it, and established 
 ourselves in London, in Burton Crescent. In both my legal 
 teachers I was very fortunate ; they were Mr. Coulson, after- 
 wards counsel to the Government, and the present Sir Barnes 
 Peacock. 
 
 It was rather late to begin, and I had to give my mind 
 a serious wrench before I could get it to look at things from 
 the dry legal point of view, that is to discard all facts and all
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 85 
 
 thoughts except those which were necessary for the decision 
 of the case. After a much longer time and harder struggle 
 than my conceit told me was necessary, I completely conquered 
 this difficulty at least. But when I came to the mysteries of 
 special pleading, I stood aghast at its mingled iniquity and 
 absurdity. It will probably escape the reprobation which it 
 so signally merits from posterity because no human being 
 will be found willing to learn it for the purpose merely of 
 knowing to what monstrous folly and iniquity, custom, tradi- 
 tion, and the pride of knowing something extremely difficult 
 will reconcile really able and honest men. 
 
 The very name of this false and mischievous science is 
 utterly misunderstood. Every one not a lawyer believes 
 special pleading to mean an over-refined and sophistical argu- 
 mentation. Nothing of the kind. It means in fact stating 
 your case, telling your adversary what you undertake, or re- 
 quire him to prove. As each party is well aware of what the 
 matter in dispute is, such a proceeding has always appeared 
 to me quite superfluous ; but so far from this being the case, 
 the difficulty was not to find out what the law was, but, given 
 the law, how to state your case without being tripped by some 
 miserable technicality. At the time when I began m}- studies, 
 this system was in all its glory. I think about eight of the six- 
 teen volumes of Meeson and Welsby, in which this wonderful 
 system is developed, were published. I cannot express my 
 disgust at finding that the principal difficulty I had to over- 
 come was not the rules of evidence, nor the vast and compli- 
 cated common and statute law of England, but the art of 
 stating my case so that my future client might not be ruined 
 because I made some slip in stating what I was prepared or 
 wished him to prove. And yet so powerful is hal)it that the 
 only thing that I can reproach myself with as a barrister is 
 having on one or two occasions availed myself of some of the 
 tricks of this wretched trade in order to obtain a success to 
 which on the merits I was not entitled. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 It is only fair to record that at last the good sense of the 
 Bar itself rose up against this iniquity, and has swept it away, 
 though 1 hold the opinion that there is still far too much of 
 it left. In written statement of the case and defence of this 
 view I am supported by very high authority. 
 
 I was called to the Bar in, I think, January, 1842. The 
 question was, what should I do next ? I had no hope of 
 immediate business, and might think myself very fortunate 
 if, at the end of seven years, I could pick up a few briefs at 
 sessions. I resolved to do that which, if it was to be of any 
 use, I ought to have done long before, to take the best advice 
 I could get as to the probability that if business came, I should 
 be able to do it. I consulted Lawrence, Travers, and Alex- 
 ander. They said that I should become blmd in seven years, 
 recommended out-of-doors employment, and spoke of Australia 
 or New Zealand as suitable places for the purpose. This 
 strange advice, as I may now by the light of experience pre- 
 sume to call it, entirely subverted and demolished the whole 
 plan of my life. It is not very difficult to imagine the bitter- 
 ness of such a revelation : to be told at eight-and-twenty that 
 I had only seven more years of sight, and to think of the long 
 night that lay beyond it was bad enough ; but the reflection 
 that the object which I had struggled through a thousand 
 difficulties with such intense labour to attain was lost to me, 
 was almost as bitter. 
 
 However, fortunately neither my wife nor myself were of a 
 disposition to sit down and lament over the inevitable. That 
 such great authorities could possibly be entirely wrong in a 
 matter on which they spoke with such confidence and so much 
 precision never entered our minds. Taking this opinion as 
 our guide we sat down calmly to consider what was the best 
 course that was open to us under the new conditions that were 
 thus started upon us. It was impossible to give worse advice 
 than that which I had received from my three learned ad- 
 visers. They chose to fix the exact term of seven years for the
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 37 
 
 time during which I was to enjoy the blessing of sight, and 
 for this, as subsequently appeared, they had no grounds what- 
 ever. This they must have known, for there was no incipient 
 disease of the eye, as has been abundantly proved l)y the 
 fact that from that time to this — some forty years — I had 
 been quite free from any ocular disease. But, condoning this 
 most unpardonable mistake, and supposing that I had some 
 disease, the advice was the very worst that could be given. 
 My eyes, being unprotected by a in<imcntum nigrum and having 
 nothing but white lashes to screen them, were peculiarly 
 subject to injury from the blazing sky of Australia, which is 
 one of the brightest and most trying in the world. Had 
 I followed their advice literally and betaken myself to out- 
 door employment, I cannot doubt that blindness must in no 
 long time have been the result. 
 
 It seemed quite clear that it was vain to think of the 
 English Bar, for I could not, as above remarked, hope to do 
 anything worth speaking of here, before the night that was 
 to come in which no man can work. Equally clear was it that 
 I had neither capital nor knowledge, nor sight, which would 
 enable me to l)ecome a settler in a new country. Thus it was 
 impossible for me, on the supposition which I never thought 
 of disputing, that the opinion was correct, either to follow 
 my own plans or those that were suggested for me. But it 
 occurred to me that I might unite the two. The Bar at 
 Sydney was said to be very lucrative, and at any rate in a 
 new country I was sure of having a speedy trial and making 
 something before tlie fatal seven years expired, so we decided 
 to go to Sydney, and on June 8th, not six months after I was 
 called to the Bar, we sailed in the good ship Aden for New 
 South Wales. A few weeks after we had sailed, a letter was 
 sent to me, which, had it reached me in time, would most pro- 
 l)ably have altered my destination, and with it my whole 
 career hi life. It was an invitation to become a contributor 
 to the Times, but at that time I was in the tropics.
 
 38 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 Of all the descriptions of a long voj'age, the best I ever read 
 (anyone who refers to it will see wh}^) is that given in Wash- 
 ington Irving's Astoria. There were a great many passengers ; 
 the first occupation was sea-sickness. This took from about a 
 week to a fortnight according to the constitution of the patient. 
 My wife was an exception, for she never really got over it 
 during the whole voyage. "When this was over the second 
 stage was gluttony ; people talked of nothing but what they 
 had eaten, were eating, or were going to eat. The fare of a 
 ship is necessarily rather monotonous, and so this subject after 
 a while lost its charms. After the coarser passion of greediness 
 was exhausted came the gentler influence of love ; as we ap- 
 proached the tropics, the disposition to flirt increased ; it was 
 very hot and there was nothing else to do. This also had its 
 season and ended in a copious crop of jealousies and quarrels. 
 Factions were formed, and the most dreadful threats uttered 
 as to what should happen when we reached the shore. But 
 Time, as Sophocles says, is a good-natured god, and the heat 
 of the quarrels died away for want of fresh fuel to feed them. 
 The fifth act of the drama, for it divided itself with true scenic 
 propriety, was a general combination against the captain. 
 He was by no means exempt from errors of judgment, and, 
 strange to say, his manners were by no means perfect. He 
 had not candles to last till the end of the voyage, so he seized 
 ours for the binnacle, and, worst of all, the voyage lasted four 
 months. At last, even this amusement, the only thing in 
 which we all agreed, palled upon us, and we sank into a state 
 of absolute vacuity. 
 
 Two events only broke the monotony of the voyage ; the 
 first was a call at St. Jago, a Portuguese convict settlement, one 
 of the Cape de Yerde islands — I presume the name was ironical, 
 for of green there was none, and nothing could exceed the 
 drought and barrenness of its l)are and rugged mountains. 
 There are few sights more beautiful than a sunset among the 
 Canary Islands, with Fogo, an active volcano 7,000 feet high,
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 39 
 
 in the foreground, and the green and crimson clouds of the 
 tropics behind. 
 
 The other incident was of a less agreeable nature. Our 
 captain was very careless, especially about fire ; we had been 
 in the habit of constantly remonstrating with him as to the 
 danger of allowing candles to l)e taken into the hold without 
 protecting them. At last we had the satisfaction of saying, 
 
 * I told you so,' though we seemed very likely to pay dear for the 
 pleasure. What we had predicted came to pass : the candle 
 was dropped and the straw in the spirit room took fire just as 
 we said it would. 
 
 When the Antiquary saw the j^hoca overthrow Hector, and 
 scuttle off with his walking-stick, his first emotion was pleasure. 
 
 * I am glad of it,' he said, ' I'm glad of it with all my heart.' 
 But this did not last, and we began to reflect that the ship was 
 to the north of lier usual course, and that we might before 
 long have to choose between burning and drowning. It is 
 strange that even at such supreme moments, as it is the fashion 
 to call them, the mind is still open to ludicrous impressions. 
 The ship was rolling heavily when a little boy came 
 staggering along the deck with a cracked pie-dish in his hand 
 which might have held a half-pint of water, and emptied it 
 into the hold. I thought of Huss, the faggot, and the old 
 woman, and could not help laughing. The fire was extin- 
 guished and we were quit for the fright. 
 
 We had another narrow escape. In the long stretch from 
 the Cape to Australia we overran our dead reckoning, so that, 
 when we believed ourselves to be three hundred miles from 
 land, we found ourselves one morning at daybreak within two 
 miles of Cape Otway, then a desolate promontory in the colony 
 of Port Phillip. The addition of another half-hour to our 
 miscalculation would have made all the difterence. I had the 
 satisfaction, as a member of council, of voting for placing a 
 lighthouse on this very spot. 
 
 At last, after a voyage of nearly four months, we found
 
 40 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 ourselves, not in Sydney but in Melbourne ; that is to say, with 
 still five hundred miles to go. The state of Melbourne was 
 at this time very peculiar. It was in the by no means envi- 
 able position of being a dependency of a dependency, governed 
 by a colony which was not permitted to govern itself. A 
 good deal had been done in the way of building, but some cause, 
 to us unknown, had arrested its progress in mid-career. The 
 place seemed stricken with paralysis, everything was at a 
 standstill, everybody wanted to sell and nobody wanted to 
 buy. No purchaser would look at a house unless it was at 
 the corner of a street. In the middle of the main street 
 were two considerable rivers facetiously named by the inhabi- 
 tants after their rulers and governors, the Williams and the 
 Latrobe. We were told that someone had been drowned in one 
 of these urban streams not long ago. 
 
 To regret that I have no money has been to me during the 
 whole of my life no uncommon sensation, but I never remember 
 experiencing it so poignantly as on this occasion. It required no 
 very strong foresight to be aware that here was an opportunity 
 such as no man could expect to see twice. For a very few 
 thousand pounds a man might have possessed himself of pro- 
 perty which in a few years would repay him much more than 
 tenfold, and why, oh why had I not got it ? 
 
 We arrived at Sydney about the middle of October 1842 
 and had our first experience of the climate in the shape of a 
 dense fog which lasted for three days, during which the 
 thermometer stood steadily at 115. We took a small house 
 in Macquarie Street overlooking the Domain and the beauti- 
 ful saltwater lake, as we should call it in England, which forms 
 the peerless harbour whicli will, I believe, place Sydney at the 
 head of the Australian colonies. 
 
 I was not long in obtaining a fair amount of business at a 
 rate of remuneration which, to one who had been working ten 
 hours a day at seven shillings an hour, seemed very ample. 
 But here a new misfortune beset me. The prophecies of my
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 41 
 
 three Job's comforters had made me very nervous about my 
 eyes ; I suffered somewhat from the glare of an Australian 
 summer, Sydney bemg one of the most dazzling places in the 
 world, and in an evil hour I consulted a doctor. He cupped 
 me and advised me that it was absolutely necessary that I 
 should discontinue my practice which was rapidly increasing. 
 I doubt if I should have been so docile to my Sydney 
 iEsculapius if his opinion had not tallied with the opinions of 
 the London doctors. The time has come, I said to myself, 
 sooner than I thought, and if I do not wish to be wholly 
 blind I must give up my business. This was the lowest ebb 
 of my fortunes ; it really seemed as if I was destined to sink 
 into a situation in which I should look back with regret on the 
 position which it had cost me so much trouble to quit. To 
 make the thing complete I was forbidden to read, so that all 
 that remained to me was to forget what I had learnt, enlivened 
 by the joyless dignity to starve. 
 
 However, in this the lowest ebb of my fortunes, I found 
 several alleviations. The principal was the extraordinary good 
 fortune which gave me the acquaintance, and I am proud to 
 say the friendship, of Mr. William Macleay. He had l^een 
 secretary at Paris for claims of English subjects, and after- 
 wards had been a commissioner for the extinction of the slave 
 trade at Cuba. He was an excellent classical scholar, he knew 
 more of modern history and biography than anyone with whom 
 I was ever acquainted, and in addition to all this he was a 
 profoundly scientific man, thoroughly conversant with zoology 
 and entomology. An excellent companion, with a store of 
 caustic wit, he reminded me continually of the best part of 
 Scott's Antiquary. It fell to my lot to do him some service for 
 which he never knew how to be sufficiently grateful. It 
 would have been a good find to meet with such a person any- 
 where, but in a remote colony it was a good fortune for which 
 one could not be sufficiently grateful. I have not seen and 
 shall not see his like again.
 
 42 LIFE OF LOKD SHERBROOIvE 
 
 Another alle\'iation of my condition during this most try- 
 ing period of m}^ life was the opportunity ^hich mj compul- 
 sory idleness afforded of making ourselves well acquainted 
 with the beautiful scenery of the colony. New South Wales 
 is rich in fine coast and river scenery, and in peculiarly fine 
 waterfalls. There is a district fifty miles south of Sydney 
 called Illawarra, which seemed to me to be the nearest 
 approach to a terrestrial paradise. The glorious sea coast, 
 with caverns which flung up their spray far inland, the 
 enormous trees on the top of which the bellbird fluted its notes 
 into the air, the lovely flowers and the profusion of animals in 
 all their strange varieties, made of this delicious district a 
 fairyland, the very place where a man might pass his time 
 with no other regret than that of being totally useless. 
 
 Among all the difficulties with which it has been my lot to 
 contend in a long and not uneventful life, the greatest, and 
 the least appreciated by the public, was the defect of sight. 
 It was not merely that for forty j'ears I have been obliged to 
 abstain from reading by candlelight, nor that I was threat- 
 ened, by the ignorance of my medical advisers, with the 
 almost certaintj^ of blindness ; the real evils were of a nature 
 which, if I had understood and anticipated, I should never 
 have had the courage to face. So long as it was only a busi- 
 ness of teaching pupils I did not feel it ; they wanted to learn 
 and were quite ready to take anything I told them either for 
 truth or for what would be as good as truth for their purpose. 
 But it was a very different thing when I came to deal with an 
 auditor who was either hostile or indifferent. I could not see 
 the face of the witness whom T was examining, I could not 
 see the faces of the jury whom I was addressing, and worst of 
 all I could not see the impression I was making on the House 
 of Commons, and have often for want of this faculty fallen 
 into mistakes which I could gladly and easily have avoided. 
 Nor was this all. Those impressions which we receive imper-
 
 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 43 
 
 fectly, we remember badly. I have never been able to recog- 
 nise the faces of persons whom I do not see frequently, and 
 the consequence is that I spend a great deal of my time in 
 fencing with persons whom I do not know but who know me 
 very well. This has deprived me of numberless friendships 
 and intimacies which I should have been glad to cultivate, and 
 the loss of which I sincerely lament. 
 
 But the worst of all was when I came to hold really high 
 and important office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He 
 who has to refuse many things to many men has need to exert 
 some counteracting power to neutralise the offence, which if 
 he does his duty he is pretty sure to give. Nature, though in 
 many respects a hard stepmother, had, I may say without 
 vanity, bestowed on me some power of conversation. My 
 dear and lamented friend, Sir George Lewis, used to say that, 
 if he were to be cast away on a desert island, I was the asso- 
 ciate whom he would choose. And I have been told that Sir 
 Alexander Cockburn said that I was the companion he would 
 choose on a wet day in a country house. I might say with 
 Shakespeare : ' Wherefore are these things hid ? ' Why did 
 not you employ whatever conversational power you possessed 
 in making yourself popular ? The answer is given in what I 
 said before. I could not conciliate my victims or my antago- 
 nists because I could not find them. Thus, with a quiet 
 temper and a real wish to please, I have been obliged to sub- 
 mit all my life to an amount of unpopularity which I really 
 did not deserve, and to feel myself condemned for what, after 
 all allowance has been made for numerous faults and follies, 
 were really rather physical than moral deficiencies. The fact 
 also that I had contrived to raise myself to so prominent a 
 position prevented people from making allowance for physical 
 deficiencies which, if better known, would doubtless have been 
 more generally allowed for.
 
 44 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 [Here the memoir ends abruptly. It is indicative of the 
 sHght importance which Lord Sherbrooke himself attached to 
 it, and of the labour it had cost him to ' type ' it, that he never 
 attempted to reproduce the concluding portion, which, by an 
 unhappy fatality, was lost in its transmission through the post.]
 
 ''•^^iM.Sirdc-'JxJ>^i''"' 
 
 /6'06.
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 P/VKENTAGE AND DESCENT 
 
 Egbert Lgwe, Viscount SherbrGoke, was, as will be seen from 
 his own account, of clerical descent on both sides. His 
 father was the Eev. Robert Lowe, Rector of Bingham and 
 Prebendary of Southwell, Notts, and his mother was the 
 daughter of the Rev. Reginald Pyndar, Rector of Madresfield, 
 Worcester. The mere fact that clerical celibacy is the law of 
 the great Latin Church is proof positive that much may be said 
 for it, from a purely sacerdotal standpoint. But England, as a 
 State and as a nation, has assuredly been the gainer by the 
 legalising of the marriage of her priesthood at the Reformation. 
 It would astonish most persons, were the facts fairly placed 
 before them, to find how much of the greatness and stability 
 of our Empire is plainly due to the worth and patriotism of 
 the ' sons of the clei-gy.' To go back only a hundred years, 
 it may be doubted if there would now be an independent 
 England at all, save for the little sickly offspring of a Norfolk 
 parsonage, who fell at Trafalgar — but not before he had 
 secured the inviolability of his native shores. In quite other 
 ways, who, in our own day, has done so much by his indivi- 
 dual genius to show that England and England's language 
 should ever be foremost in the world, as that gifted and 
 patriotic son of the Lincolnshire rectory — the late deeply 
 lamented poet laureate '? 
 
 These are merely two conspicuous instances. But the 
 number of eminent Englishmen who first saw the light in a
 
 46 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOltE 
 
 quiet parsonage, and received their early and indelible impres- 
 sions of the world from its inmates and through the medium of 
 its associations, is legion. One of the most notable is the 
 subject of this biography, although it must be admitted that 
 Lord Sherbrooke was among the least ecclesiastical of English 
 statesmen. 
 
 The so-called law of heredity clearly contains a great truth, 
 Like produces like ; and a man of genius or of great talent is, 
 as a rule, the child, or at least the descendant, of gifted and 
 remarkable people. The Rev. Robert Lowe, Rector of 
 Bingham, was a man of distinct ability and of great in- 
 dividuality — qualities which only needed a wider stage for 
 their display, to have made him famous. He was of the old- 
 fashioned type of squire-parson it is the custom to revile now- 
 a-days in the cheap prints, but which Mr. Froude, with the 
 illustration of his own father, the Archdeacon of Totnes, before 
 his eyes, so finely commemorates. 
 
 The Rev. Robert Lowe was some years older than Lord 
 Byron, and had known him intimately at Southwell in his 
 early youth. The Miss Pigot who was a literary friend of 
 Byron, was a cousin of Mr. Lowe, as was also the Rev. J. T. 
 Becher of Southwell, to whom the poet addressed the verses 
 beginning, ' Dear Becher, you tell me to mix with mankind.' 
 Mrs. Chaworth Musters, who kindly sends the following letter, 
 adds that her grandfather was naturally excessively annoyed 
 at having been made the mouthpiece of an untruth ; and that 
 the coolness which arose in consequence lasted up to the end 
 of Byron's life. 
 
 Lord Byron to the Bcv. B. Lotce. 
 
 S St. James Street : May 15, 1809. 
 My dear Sir, I have ju.st been informed that a report is circu- 
 lating in Notts of an intention on my part to sell Newstead, which 
 is rather unfortunate, as I have just tied the property up in such a 
 manner as to prevent the practicability, even if my inclination led 
 me to dispose of it. But as such a report may render my tenants 
 uncomfortable, I will feel very much oliliged if you will be good 
 enough to contradict the rumour, should it come to your ears, on
 
 :?/£y«-b-4 ^ou/aU:/'A^- 

 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT 47 
 
 my authority. I rather conjecture it has arisen from the sale of 
 some copyholds of mine in Norfolk. I sail for Gibraltar in June, 
 and thence to Malta when, of course, you shall have the promised 
 detail. I saw your friend Thornhill last night, who spoke of you 
 as a friend ought to do. Excuse this trouble, and believe me to be, 
 with great sincerity, 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 Byron. 
 
 One wonders, in reading his letter, whether the noble bard 
 
 remembered two of the lines in the verses he had sent to Mr. 
 
 Lowe's kinsman : — • 
 
 Deceit is a stranger as yet to my soiil, 
 
 I still ain unpractised to varnish tlie truth. 
 
 It should be added that the poet actually sold Newstead 
 in 1811. 
 
 The rector of Bingham, it will be seen, was a leading 
 country gentleman as well as the priest and pastor of a rural 
 flock. He was a keen sportsman and above all a mighty 
 hunter. The eldest son Henry, afterwards Mr. Sherbrooke of 
 Oxton, would often ride to cover with his father ; and sometimes 
 the younger son, Eobert, notwithstanding his semi-blindness, 
 would be permitted to do the same. So strong, indeed, 
 was his inherited love of sport that he would, in his father's 
 absence, take one of the hunters from the stables on the sly 
 and scour the country on his own account— a grave offence, 
 and, if discovered, visited with condign punishment. 
 
 The following rhymes, still remembered in the county, give 
 us a glimpse of the rector's reputation as a local Nimrod : — 
 
 Next little Bob Lowe, on his little brown mare. 
 Comes nicking across with all possible care. 
 On her he rides steady ; but when he rides Stella, 
 No man in the hunt can be his playfellow. 
 
 (And of his cousin, Mr. Sherbrooke) : — 
 
 Who is it that rides at that hedge there full slap ? 
 'Tis Sherbrooke, I see, by the cut of his cap. 
 Sir Calidore clears it, top binding and all. 
 And ne'er puts his rider in mind of a fall. 
 
 {Notts Hunting Song. By the Hon. Philip Pierrepoint.)
 
 48 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 But there was another and a more serious side to the 
 character of the rector of Bingham. Like his famous son, 
 he was an independent thinker and a social reformer ; yet 
 withal an intrepid upholder of law and order and a strong 
 hater of the domination of the unfit. In his own county 
 of Nottingham and in his parish of Bingham, the Rev. 
 Eobert Lowe put into force the main principle of the Poor 
 Law of 1832, years before that measure was passed and esta- 
 blished throughout the country. This was in the year 1818. 
 Some dispute as to the priority in this matter of Bingham and 
 Southwell having arisen in later years, Mr. Lowe set the 
 matter to rest by a very vigorous letter addressed to the Eev. 
 J. T. Becher, who was also the magistrate of the latter place. 
 
 Mr. Becher, unlike the rector of Bingham, was in the 
 habit of publishing his views on social reform, and his efforts 
 to ameliorate the condition of the rural labourers are known 
 and recognised to this day by our foremost economic authorities. 
 
 In that admirable little work, Mutual Thrift, by the Rev. 
 J. Frome Wilkinson, an account is given of the ' Becher Clubs ' 
 and the ' Southwell Tallies,' both of which were instituted by 
 this energetic clerical magistrate and social reformer. The 
 following letter, however, clearly shows that Mr. Becher should 
 at least share his honours with his equally active and vigorous 
 relative of the neighbouring parish : — 
 
 The Rev. B. Loive to the licv. J. T. Becher. 
 
 Cuckney : April 4th, 1834. 
 
 My dear Becher, — I read your ' Anti-pauper System ' (for which 
 I beg to thank you) on my road here. I never read it before, and I 
 congratulate you on having written so very useful and convincing a 
 pamphlet. I am no apologist for the misrepresentations of Mr. 
 Cowell, for misrepresentations they certaiidy are ; but I have always, 
 in charity, supposed, as he took his notes on scraps of paper, tliat he 
 had mixed those relating to Bingham with his other papers, and in 
 severing them again had substituted his remarks on some other 
 parish for those on mine. 
 
 But be that as it may, I couie to liis justification in asserting 
 that the system of forcing independence upon paupers by means of
 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT 49 
 
 a workhouse was begun at Bingham and afterwards mtroduced at 
 Southwell. This is no very difficult task, because he had that 
 information from me, and had it confirmed, I have no doubt, by Mr. 
 Nichols ; whatever blame, therefore, attaches to that statement rests 
 Avith me. I entirely exonerate him and thus defend myself. The 
 system of forcing able-bodied paupers to provide for themselves 
 tiarough the terror of a well-disciplined workhouse was begun at 
 Bingham in 1818 ; a few years after its establishment, and when the 
 effects of the system became known. Captain Nichols talked to me 
 very deeply upon the subject, and, I think, came to Bingham to see 
 what we had done. He was very much pleased with the simplicity of 
 the principle and said that he was appointed overseer of Southwell, 
 where he wished to introduce the same system. He told me also of 
 his intention of publishing a pamphlet upon the subject and urged 
 me to write one instead. My object loas jMrochial utility not public 
 apijlause, and I declined. He afterwards frequently consulted me 
 and asked my advice upon difficulties as they arose, and we had the 
 fullest communication upon this subject, so interesting to both of 
 us. He one day told me, in very bad spirits, he was afraid that all 
 his trouble was thrown away ; that you opposed him and this system 
 so powerfully, and as a magistrate so effectually, that he despaired 
 of doing any good and of making the system work, as it did at 
 Bingham. My reply to him was, that no good could possibly be 
 done under a hostile magistracy, and I advised him either to attempt 
 to bring you over to his opinion as to the management of the poor 
 or to establish a select vestry, as a dying struggle. You afterwards, 
 however, co-operated with him and the system has been con- 
 ducted to its present results, most advantageously to the country, 
 and most honourably to you and all the parties concerned. 
 
 I think you cannot be surprised if Mr. Cowell heard from me 
 that the Workhouse System as now practised at Bingham, Uley, 
 Derby, Southwell, and many other places, was first in operation at 
 Bingham and was afterwards introduced at Southwell. I know that 
 you had a workhouse at Southwell before 1818 and so had we at 
 Bingham. I know also that they were both of them infamously 
 managed, without any discipline or control, and that the inmates of 
 that at Southwell used to kill their time by the amusement of fish- 
 ing in the Greet. A w^orkhouse is not discipline though it is 
 necessary to it ; but as you yourself begin your tables at the year 
 ending Lady-day 1821 and state the expenditure of that year to be 
 2,254L, which sum in the year ending at Lady-day 1824 is reduced 
 according to the table to 1001., it is quite evident that you fix the 
 date of the commencement of the Anti-pauper System at Southwell 
 incontrovertibly at 1821 ; but you insinuate in your letter that the 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 00 LIFE OF LOED SHEEBROOKE 
 
 Anti-pauper System, established at Southwell in 1821, is essentially 
 different from that established at Bingham in 1818. I see no 
 difference in the prmciple at all. One definition will include 
 both. It is a system by which able-bodied paupers are forced to 
 depend upon their own exertions by the agency of a workhouse, 
 the same as that adopted at Uley, with which you claim affinity ; 
 and it is mentioned by Captain Nichols as based upon the same 
 principle as that introduced by him at Southwell, where it is now 
 flourishing under your able management. The only difference I see 
 upon reading your pamphlet is in the details, some of wliich if I 
 were acting on a greater scale I should adopt, but I am so fond of 
 simplicity and of acting by general rules in imitation of Divine 
 Wisiom, that I hate exceptions, or anything which throws the 
 principle upon which I stand into obscurity ; and minute detail 
 Avould be quite impracticable in a single parish managing its own 
 poor. We are both, however, acting upon precisely the same 
 ■principle ; and if you were to divert the system of my principle, you 
 must strike out the word ' anti ' from the name you have given it, 
 and then what remains of the name would exactly describe what 
 would remain of the system. 
 
 I am quite ashamed to write so much on the subject of self; it 
 is an odious subject, but I am driven into a corner. I cannot but 
 avow what I said to Mr. Cowell, and I cannot but justify myself in 
 saymg it. Wliilst, however, I claim priority in point of time, I by 
 no means claim priority in point of merit. Yours is the palm of 
 ha\"ing extended the system over an immense tract of country, and 
 of having published it to the world in the most con\'incing form, and 
 
 1 -willingly resign it ; whether you came in at the first, second, or 
 third watch, you have watched well and deserve the thanks of your 
 country. 
 
 I am very sincerely yours, 
 
 Robert Lowe. 
 
 It will be seen from this letter that the rector of Bingham 
 distinctly laid claim to the i)aternity of the principle on which 
 the new Poor Law of 1834 was based. Lord Sherbrooke 
 always asserted that his father was the author of that measure 
 which was really founded on the workhouse experiments 
 made by himself in the first instance, and afterwards by Mr. 
 Becher and others, in the county of Nottingham. We have 
 perhaps advanced in the matter of social economics since the 
 time of the Piev. Eobert Lowe ; and, also, we live in a time of
 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT 51 
 
 loose socialistic theories propagated by sentimental literature. 
 It would be easy enough to ridicule the notions of the rector 
 that the paupers of Southwell were doing harm by practising 
 the gentle art of Izaak Walton in the local stream. Let us 
 turn to the pages of that Liberal but thoroughly sober-minded 
 historian Dr. S. E. Gardiner, and we shall then see what the 
 evils were which Mr. Lowe strove to remedy, not without a 
 certain measure of success. 
 
 The Poor Law as it existed (i.e. before 1834) was a direct 
 encouragement to thriftlessness. Eelief was given to the poor at 
 random, even when they were earning wages, so that employers of 
 labour preferred to be served by paupers, because part of the wages 
 would then be paid out of the rates. The more children a poor man 
 had the more he received out of the rates, and in this and in other 
 ways labourers were taught that they would be better off by being 
 dependent on the parish than by striving to make their own way in 
 the world ... By the new Poor Law passed in 1834, workhouses 
 were built and no person was to receive relief who did not consent 
 to live in one of them. The object of this rule was that no one 
 might claim to be svipported by others, who was capable of supporting 
 himself, and residence in the workhouse, where work would be 
 required was considered as the best test of real poverty.^ 
 
 In even stronger words, the evil of the old Poor Law and 
 the benefits that followed on the Act of 1834, with regard to 
 national as well as individual thrift, is shown by Mr. Frome 
 Wilkinson, one of the latest and best authorities, in his work 
 previously cited. 
 
 Doubtless, like all human devices, the ' Workhouse system ' 
 was liable to abuse ; and some relaxation in the matter of out- 
 door rehef was found necessary. But the principle — despite 
 Lord Beaconsfield's sentimental dislike of it — was essentially 
 sound. 
 
 It was but natural that the Eev. Eobert Lowe should, after 
 1834, have a great deal of correspondence with the new Poor 
 Law Commissioners. One of the most interesting of these 
 letters was written from Ireland by Mr. Edward Gulson, in 1839. 
 
 ' A Student's History of England, p. 911. S. B. Gardiner.
 
 52 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 This gentleman had previously acted as assistant Poor Law 
 Commissioner in Notts and Lincolnshire, and was regarded 
 at head-quarters as one of the ablest of officials. Mr. Gulson 
 was, in fact, specially selected to go to Ireland to divide that 
 country into 'Unions,' under the Poor Law Act; and in writing 
 to Bingham he gives a graphic picture of the condition of the 
 country, and winds up by cordially inviting Mr. and Mrs. 
 Lowe and the young ladies to the romantic shores of Piostrevor. 
 Ireland, like the poor, is always with us, and Mr. Gulson's 
 letter will be read all these years after it was written with 
 considerable interest by serious-minded public men (see Ap- 
 pendix). 
 
 The perusal of such letters shows plainly that the rector 
 of Bingham was looked upon, not only as a very intelligent 
 correspondent, to whom it was a pleasure to dilate on public 
 matters, but as a leading social reformer in his county. The 
 following brief letter is hardly likely to find favour with some 
 of the moving personages of our day ; but it is informed with 
 the true Lowe spirit, and might have been written by Lord 
 Sherbrooke himself. It is from the rector to a lodge of 
 Oddfellows with which he had been associated : — 
 
 Bev. B. Loive to the Oddfelloivs. 
 
 October, 1832. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I became a member of your lodge upon the oft- 
 times repeated assurance that you were associated solely for the 
 purposes of benevolence and that you had no concern with politicks 
 in any way whatever, either directly or indirectly. Circumstances 
 have now arisen which e\adently show that I have been misled, and 
 I beg you not to consider me any longer a member of your Union. 
 I understand that you espouse my own political opinions, but I deem 
 all Unions of every kind upon such subjects fraught with so much 
 danger to the State, so much inconvenience to the public, and so 
 much mischief to the members themselves, that I can never consent, 
 ardently as I am attached to my own principles of liberty, to further 
 them by such means. 
 
 I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 KoBEKT Lowe.
 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT 53 
 
 The rector of Bingham had yet another gift over and 
 above his active, well-knit physical frame and his clear and 
 powerful intellect. He had the artistic sense, and would quote 
 and linger over the lines of the poets whom he loved in a way 
 never forgotten by those who heard him. Almost to his dying 
 day Lord Sherbrooke would recall the impressive manner in 
 which his father read the Lessons in the village church, and 
 many friends will remember how he would reproduce the tones 
 of the voice. Above all, he never forgot his father's manner 
 and intonation in pronouncing the Blessing. ' It was beautiful,' 
 he would say, ' simply beautiful.' 
 
 Such, briefly, was the Eev. Eobert Lowe of Bingham ; by 
 no means, it is to be feared, an ideal clergyman to this genera- 
 tion. To the devoted followers of Dr. Pusey belongs the 
 distinction of removmg the huntsman's coat from the back of 
 the higher-class English rural clergy. With the diffusion of 
 the sacerdotal doctrine, it was felt that a body of men, so 
 specially set apart for sacred duties, should not join in the 
 ordinary sports and recreations of the laity, especially if a 
 distinctive dress was de rigueur. It may be admitted that, 
 with keen and enthusiastic natures, there must always be a 
 danger of a favourite pastime becoming a passion ; and 
 doubtless the clergy can find nobler work to do than hunting, 
 shooting, and fishing. But under the new dispensation there 
 has also disappeared too often the wise and intelligent interest 
 in social problems, the rare and exact scholarship, the old- 
 world courtesy and good breeding. It is the loss of the first of 
 these that is most to be deplored in an age of rash experiment 
 and confident ignorance. There is no doubt that the English 
 clergy now-a-days, especially in the cities and towns, take a 
 stronger personal interest in the well-being of their poorer 
 fellow-creatures than ever before ; but the interest is too 
 largely either professional or sentimental. It needs the appli- 
 cation of broad and general principles, and the patient investi- 
 gation of cause and effect, to solve our complex social problems :
 
 54 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 mere sentiment, however charming and touching, can never 
 go far. It may be a minor point, but the utterly incompre- 
 hensible way in which the magnificent language of the Liturgy 
 is too often, now-a-days, gabbled through cannot but make 
 us regret the fine reading of an earlier and a more sturdy 
 race of men. 
 
 To go back to the preceding generation. Lord Sherbrooke's 
 grandfather, Eobert Lowe of Oxton, High Sheriff of Notts 
 (1802), was likewise a man of light and leadmg in the county. 
 In the marvellous archives of the British Museum may be 
 found a thickish pamphlet entitled ' General View of the Agri- 
 culture of Nottingham. By Robert Loice {of Oxton).'' This was 
 originally published in 1794, but, unlike the majority of pam- 
 phlets — not on party politics or partisan theology — it ran into 
 a second edition, and was re-issued in 1798. No one can 
 glance at its pages and the accompanying map, showing the 
 soils, &c., of the county, without recognising that its author 
 was a man of knowledge and capacity. A large silver salver 
 is still preserved in the famil}', which was presented to Eobert 
 Lowe of Oxton by the bank at Newark * for an obligation not 
 to be surpassed ' : he had guaranteed them 120,000/. during 
 a financial panic in 1803. 
 
 The Lowe family, who came originally from Cheshire, 
 had been for some generations settled in Nottinghamshire and 
 seem always to have been people of standing and substance. 
 In the reign of Queen Anne, the first instance of * bounty ' 
 was a present of as much timber to the chapter of Southwell 
 by Samuel Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke's great-great-grandfather) 
 as was necessary for the building of a vicarage house. The 
 only other which appears on record is a contribution of 500Z. 
 by the Duchess of Newcastle. It was this Samuel Lowe's son 
 who married Elizabeth Sherl)rooke, one of whose sons was the 
 father of the rector of Bingham. 
 
 It is commonly held — perhaps erroneously — that dis- 
 tinguished men owe more to the mother than to the father.
 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT Qo 
 
 We have seen that Lord Sherbrooke's father, though he was 
 no doubt far from popular with the evil-doers and the 
 wastrels of Bingham, was a notable man, with aims and 
 energies far beyond the reach of ordinary persons. His 
 mother was a woman of singular refinement, grace and 
 charm. She was a good and affectionate mother as well as a 
 beautiful and attractive lady of the rectory ; and beloved by all. 
 
 A writer gives the following picture of Prebendary Lowe 
 and his Family at Southwell : — 
 
 ' Long ago we remember, in the old vicarage drawing-room 
 after a dinner-party, examining the face of a tall boy on the 
 verge of manhood, who sat in a corner, with his face towards 
 the wall, in a room which, though lighted up for company, 
 was dim then in comparison with the lights of the present, 
 and saw with wonder that in the almost darkness, the object 
 of our curiosity was deeply engaged in a book he was reading. 
 That boy was the present Lord Sherbrooke ; his father was 
 then in Residence, and his beautiful dark-eyed mother made 
 it even more strange that two of her children should be albinos. 
 The Prebendary himself and all the other members were a 
 remarkably handsome family.' 
 
 The present rectory of Bingham is much altered from 
 what it was in Lord Sherbrooke's childhood ; but the old 
 mulberry-tree on the lawn is still standing, round which he 
 and his brothers and sisters used to play the parts of the 
 heroes and heroines of the Waverley Novels. 
 
 Fifty years afterwards, when one of these children of the 
 rectory was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he made the following 
 reference to the favourite author of his boyhood, in a speech 
 delivered at Glasgow when he was presented with the freedom 
 of that city : — ' Long before I had the privilege which this 
 honour confers, I belonged to that generation whose youth was 
 fed with the Waverley Novels. I had the pleasure and privilege 
 of reading most of those novels as they issued from the press, 
 causing a literary excitement and delight that nothing which
 
 56 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 has been given since has in any way equalled, and nothing, I 
 venture to say, is ever likely to surpass. To us, the youth of 
 that far-away time, Scotland was a fairyland — the Arcadia 
 of our dreams ; and our aspirations were to visit and see the 
 spots that the Wizard had made his own and our own. From 
 that time, whenever I had the opportunity, I always spent my 
 holidays in Scotland. My affection has been a disinterested 
 one, for I have neither the power nor the will to make war on 
 your deer, your fowl, or your fishes.' 
 
 There is a picture of the garden and orchard at Bingham 
 by the late Alfred Miles, the well-known artist, whose father 
 succeeded Lord Sherbrooke's as rector. Among the earlier 
 rectors was the father of Sir Christopher Wren, and also 
 Archbishop Abbott, Laud's predecessor at Canterbury. 
 
 As already stated, Mrs. Lowe was the daughter of 
 the Eev. Keginald Pyndar, who was of the family of Pyndar 
 of Duffield in the county of Derby. The name of this 
 family occurs in the list of gentry in the time of Henry VI. 
 Eeginald Pyndar of Duffield was sheriff of the county in 
 1684. 
 
 Either he, or his son, removed to Kimpley in Gloucester- 
 shire. Eeginald, the representative of this family, who died 
 in 1788, had taken the name of Lygon on succeeding to the 
 estate of Madresfield in Worcestershire. His son William was 
 in 1816 created Lord Beauchamp of Powick, and in 1815 Earl 
 Beauchamp and Viscount Elmley. He died in 1816 and was 
 succeeded by the late Earl. 
 
 We have here an explanation of the oft-quoted remark of 
 the late Earl Beauchamp, who at the time of Eobert Lowe's 
 great anti-reform speeches, when his name was on every 
 tongue, used to refer to him as ' My distinguished kins- 
 man.' The Irish branch of the Bechers were also kinsmen of 
 the Lowes (see Pedigree). The Eev. Eeginald Pyndar, Lord 
 Sherbrooke's maternal grandfather, seems to have been of the 
 same type of vigorous parson-magistrate as was the rector
 
 PARENTAGE AND DESCENT 57 
 
 of Bingham. The Pyndars are of the same family also as Sir 
 Paul Pindar. 
 
 Few men of good birth ever took less personal interest in 
 questions of lineage and the intricacies of pedigrees than did 
 the late Viscount Sherhrooke. Not one single particular of 
 his family history here set forth was obtained directly from 
 himself. The only ancestor to whom he refers in the preced- 
 ing memoir is the feeble lampooner of Archbishop Laud. 
 
 Strange to say, the most complete family tree hitherto 
 published of the Lowes and Sherbrookes will be found in a 
 huge tome compiled by that sturdy and uncompromising 
 Eadical, the late Mr. Peter Taylor, for years Member of Parlia- 
 ment for Leicester. The work, which was ' printed for private 
 circulation,' is entitled Some Account of the Taylor Family ; 
 and in it he has traced the pedigree of every family directly 
 or indirectly connected with his own. 
 
 It is stated that when Mr. Taylor offered to present Lord 
 Sherbrooke in the Lobby of the House of Commons with his 
 handsome but bulky book, he was amazed to be met with a 
 blank refusal. Had the work-harassed statesman been able 
 with his dim eyes to recognise that his refusal caused pain 
 and mortification to a very worthy if inconsistent man, he 
 would have been the last to decline or disdain this ponderous 
 gift. Who knows but that he may have suspected the 
 unsolicited volume would be followed by a deputation desirous 
 of dipping its hand in the public purse ? 
 
 For the series of Pedigrees to be found at the end of the 
 second volume I am indebted to Mr. Topham Hough, himself a 
 kinsman of the late Lord Sherbrooke. Apart altogether from 
 the interest of these pedigrees to students of genealogy, those 
 of the Dabridgecourt and Becher families disclose two remark- 
 able facts concerning the kin and ancestry of Lord Sherbrooke 
 of which he was not, I think, himself aware. Eobert Lowe 
 was the thirteenth in lineal descent from John Hampden, of
 
 58 LIFE OF LOED SHERBEOOKE 
 
 Great Hampden, Bucks, the progenitor of the ever memorable 
 John Hampden and John Pym. 
 
 The hterary reader will surely be interested to learn that 
 William Makepeace Thackeray and Piobert Lowe were of the 
 same kindred ; while to the historian and the politician it 
 will be even more attractive to find that John Pym, the great 
 Parliamentarian, who curiously enough represented Calne in 
 the House of Commons in the time of the ill-fated Charles I., 
 was a kinsman of the most distinguished representative of 
 that borough in the more tranquil and happier reign of 
 Queen Victoria. 
 
 It is a curious and interesting fact that the ancient family 
 of Dabridgecourt, which came into England with Philippa of 
 Hainaultand established itself at Strathfieldsaj'e in Hampshire, 
 with branches in Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire, and 
 which is now, so far as can be ascertained, extinct in the male 
 line, produced in the seventeenth century John Pym, and in 
 the nineteenth century William Makepeace Thackeray and 
 Piobert Lowe. The Dabridgecourts, one of whom was a 
 Knight Founder of the Order of the Garter, were lords of 
 Strathficldsaye for nearly three hundred years. From the 
 Dabridgecourts the estate passed by purchase to the Pitts, from 
 whom it was bought by the nation early in the present century 
 for the great Duke of Wellington. 
 
 Two other distinguished kinsmen of Eobert Lowe may 
 here be mentioned. The one eminent as a statesman and 
 man of affairs, making a great figure in Irish history; the 
 other eminent in the world of science and thought, a sagacious 
 seeker after knowledge, and philosopher. Through his descent 
 from Pilchard Boyle, Archbishop of Tuam, Lord Sherbrooke 
 was related at once to Eichard Boyle, the ' great ' Earl of Cork, 
 and to his not less famous son Eobert Boyle, one of the Fathers 
 of the Eoyal Society.
 
 59 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTEK I 
 
 Ireland and the Poor Laiv. 
 
 Kostrevor : December 5, 1839. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I think you will perhaps like to know how we are 
 going on this side the Channel, and I have great pleasure in thus 
 reminduig you that I have a lively remembrance of the kindness I 
 have experienced at your hands, and of the pleasure I have had in 
 my friendly intercourse with your family, I believe I may safely 
 say we are getting on well and rapidly in organising the Unions into 
 which Ireland will be divided, I have this week completed the 
 district assigned to my charge, my last Union is finished, and I 
 already begin to ask myself where I shall ever form or organise 
 another, in Scotland or the West Indies '? We have, however, very 
 much to attend to, and it will take us many years to work out the 
 system to its intended results, 
 
 Ireland will be divided into 129 or 130 Unions, Of these 93 are 
 already constituted. In nearly all, new Workhouses have to be 
 erected, but as in this country the Commissioners (and not the 
 Guardians) have this part of the business in their own hands, ive 
 purchase the ground, lay down the plan, employ our own architect 
 to superintend the works when contracted for. We are getting on 
 fast in this respect and already some of my houses begin to astonish 
 the natives. I am more forward in this district, comprising the 
 counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Louth, and Monaghan, than 
 they are in any other, for I have new houses, each for 800 inmates, 
 partly roofed in. The population is so dense in this part of Ireland 
 that our houses are necessarily very large. I have scarcely any 
 Unions, though of moderate size, say eight miles round the centre, 
 with less than 60,000, and generally 70 or 80,000 inhabitants. 
 In the Belfast, Armagh, and Newry Unions, I am building houses 
 to contain 1,000 each, for the population in each is above 80,000. 
 We build cheaply in Ireland. Very excellent substantial stone 
 houses to hold 800 are built for 8,000Z., including six acres of land, 
 fittings Sind furniticre. The houses for 1,000 will be completed for 
 less than 10,000Z. each, including every expense. All which I see 
 convinces me that the Workhouse System, if lyroperly applied, will 
 prove quite as applicable and quite as beneficial to Ireland as to 
 England, 
 
 It is true that the labouring population of this country live so 
 wretchedly that it will be impossible to lay down any diet or rule for 
 their food which will not be superior to that on which the poor
 
 CO LIFE OF LORD SHERBEOOKE 
 
 subsist at their own homes. It is impossible for me to describe the 
 wretched scenes I have ^^itnessed as regards the food on which the 
 independent poor of this comitry Kve. So also by their houses. A 
 workhouse will be a palace compared to their cabins. But they riot 
 in dirt and filth. Cleanliness will be imbearable, and, above all, the 
 Irish are so impatient of restraint, they have so great a repugnance 
 to everything approaching to regularity and control, that I have no 
 fear of their willingness to enter the Workhouses. Already I hear 
 the beggars and mendicants declare they will never go into them, 
 and, as far as the North of Ireland (with which I am at present only 
 acquainted) is concerned, in the fear wliich was expressed m Parlia- 
 ment that the Workhouses would be swamped, it is, I am sure, the 
 last thing we have to apprehend. You are probably aware that in 
 Ireland no valuation or assessment of j)roperty exists upon which a 
 poor rate could be founded. We consequently have to value all 
 property throughout Ireland and in each Union before any Kate can 
 be made. This is an immense work, and engages very much of our 
 time and attention, and will necessarily continue so to do for at least 
 a year to come. Ireland is a blank in this respect. No valuation 
 of occupations exists for any purpose whatever. If you had to value 
 all the property in an English Union it would be a great work, but 
 you would have officers in each parish, who would be entrusted with 
 the duty, whilst here there are no officers of any description what- 
 ever, since there has been hitherto no local administration of any kind. 
 
 Again, in England there are competent valuers on all sides, 
 whilst here, as no valuation has ever been wanted, we have no 
 valuers. All is a blank as to matters of business or organisation, 
 and we have to depend upon our own exertions and management 
 entirely. There are advantages as well as disadvantages attending 
 this state of things, but it only proves how little the state of Ireland 
 is fully understood on your side the Channel. Again, the vast sub- 
 division of land here, as compared to anything known in England, 
 creates impediments to which, before coming here, 1 was a stranger. 
 In one of your parishes the farms and occupations are well known 
 and the list is short. Here the holdings are small and almost end- 
 less. I cannot better describe this state of matters than by gi^^llg 
 you an instance, which I have just had under my eye, and the 
 particulars of which I have taken from the landlord's books and on 
 the spot. I do not give it as a singular instance : it is a fair example. 
 I must quote some one instance in order to explain, and I only take 
 this as a common one. 
 
 j\Ir. Sliirley, M.P. for South Warwickshire, has a fine and locll- 
 managed property in the Co. Monaghan. It consists of an area 
 of 31,000 acres, in a ring fence. Of this area, 3,000 acres are turf
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I 61 
 
 bog (for firing) and water, and 28,000 acres are arable land. Upon 
 this 28,000 acres, 28,000 inhabitants are located, and there is not 
 a town or village upon the estate. The people are all in cabins, 
 or small houses, dotted in every direction over the land. They do 
 not strike the eye in the distance when looking at a large surface, 
 as an English eye might imagine, for most of the houses are made 
 of turf and are covered with grass sods, or straw grown green, and, 
 therefore, are so much the colour of the land that you scarcely see 
 them. 
 
 But to go on with this estate. From the 28,000 acres, Mr. 
 Shirley derives a nctt rental of 24,000Z. per annum, and the estate 
 is not highly rented. He has no less than 4,000 direct tenants 
 letting land and paying rent, and consequently, on an average, they 
 only pay Ql. per annum each, and yet at the present moment there 
 is not 150Z. arrear upoji the tohole estate. 
 
 The 28,000 acres are, therefore, divided between 4,000 tenants, 
 every holding has to be valued separately, and in Ireland rent is no 
 criterion of value ; rent depends upon the kind of landlord under 
 whom tenants live, upon the fact of whether the land is sublet, once 
 again di\aded, and sublet twice, and so on till the nominal rent may 
 be five times the real value, and the real rent just what can be ex- 
 tracted from the poor tenant beyond his own bare subsistence. Of 
 the 28,000 persons located on Mr. Shirley's 28,000 acres, 20,000 are 
 Roman Catholics and 2,000 are Protestants of all denominations, 
 and I may add there is neither a poUceman, a constable, a soldier, 
 nor a magistrate upon the whole property. What think you of the 
 picture ? 
 
 I wish, however, to tell you that, as far as my observation ex- 
 tends, I have found the principal landed proprietors of the North of 
 Ireland a benevolent, kind, well-intentioned, and, in public opinion, a 
 much injured class of gentlemen. It has been too much the custom 
 by those who are strangers to the circumstances under which the 
 landlords are placed to decry the landlords of Ireland as a hard- 
 hearted class of men, who had little consideration for those around 
 them, I assure you I think just the contrary ; for whatever my 
 opinions might have been before I better understood the condition of 
 the country, I certainly must give them as a body the credit of doing- 
 all in their power to better the condition of their tenantry. They 
 are, however, the creatures of circumstances far beyond their 
 control. 
 
 What can Mr. Shirley do with his 28,000 people ? To turn 
 them off would be to turn them to starvation, and, by the bye, it is 
 more than his or his agent's life is worth to turn a tenant out 
 whilst he pays his rent.
 
 62 LIFE OF LOED SHERBEOOIvE 
 
 There is a combination, the fruit of circumstances and years of 
 mismanagement of former days, which is beyond the law as regards 
 the tenure of land, but in tJds respect only, and if a man does not 
 pay his rent, he forfeits the protection which would be otherwise 
 afforded him. 
 
 The original error for which most of the landlords of Ireland are 
 now paying so dearly, and as far as I can see without remedy, was 
 created by the gross and abommable perversion of parliamentary 
 influence to private purposes. That man who could make most 405. 
 freeholders, could best demand favours from the Ministers of the day, 
 and time was when upon this very Shirley Estate, 2,500 freeholders 
 were taken up to the poll like a flock of sheep. There they and 
 their families now are, the day of reckoning has come, and though 
 Mr. Shirley is one of the most benevolent of men, spending money 
 without limit in educating the people — letting his land lower than 
 any landlord about him, affording every possible assistance towards 
 improvement — yet such is the picture which his estate affords. 
 
 You ^\dll be pleased to hear that a vast change has taken place 
 in public opinion as regards the Poor Law for Ireland. When I 
 first came to this part of the country I found the greatest possible 
 mistrust, misconception and objection to exist against the measure. 
 
 I remember when I was last at your house and about coming to 
 Ireland, that we expressed ourselves rather at a loss why I was 
 directed to the North. I soon found out. Every man was opposed 
 to the law ; from the North the great opposition in ParUament had 
 emanated. But I assure you I now do not know where to find an 
 opponent. Without reference to party or religion, I am assisted 
 cordially and heartily by all. Every gentleman lends a helping 
 hand. There are no steady, business-like men as in England — there 
 has been nothing hitherto for them to do in public matters — but 
 from Lord Rodcn, who is one of my chairmen, and with whom and 
 his Lady, Mrs. Gulson and myself have been staying at one of the 
 most beautiful places which Nature can produce, TuUymore Park, 
 to the Catholics amongst whom I have many esteemed friends, I 
 now find but one opinion — that the measure will do great good and 
 will in time work out great practical improvement in the state of 
 society. 
 
 The amount of rate will, I feel confident, be light, as it always 
 must be when the Workhouse system is strictly adhered to, and pro- 
 perly managed. It will not in Ireland amount to Is. in the £., one- 
 half of which the landlords, and the other half the occupiers, pay. 
 In this part of Ireland it will not be so much — in the poorer districts 
 perhaps rather more ; though I doubt if anywhere it exceeds Is., 
 including all establishment and other charges. Every man now
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I (53 
 
 holding land gives away far more than this to the mendicants and 
 others ; they all now feel that the measure will be a great relief. 
 
 I wish you would come and see us ; we live in a beautiful spot, 
 Rostrevor near Newry. The sea is before our windows, bounded by 
 mountains 2,000 and 3,000 feet high. At any rate we could show 
 you much that is new, and variety without end. Excellent steam 
 packets leave Liverpool three times a week for Warren Pomt, near 
 Newry, withm two miles of our house, where we would meet you. 
 
 We have plenty of room, and we much wish you would bring 
 Mrs. and the Misses Lowe, in whose society I have spent many hours 
 on which I look back with the greatest pleasure. I expect Lord 
 Worsley over in the Spring salmon-fishing. We have to go to the 
 extreme North and West of L'eland for it, and to rough it occasion- 
 ally, but we catch great numbers there. 
 
 At Ballina, 2,000 fish, salmon and trout, are taken out of the 
 river every morning. At the Giant's Causeway we saw them in 
 shoals and caught some, but the weather was too fine. 
 
 I cannot conclude this long, straggling, and perhaps tiresome 
 letter, without most sincerely thankmg yoa for your great and con- 
 tinued kindness to my brother-in-law, Mr. Massey, who, I can assure 
 you, is very grateful for your goodness to him. If Mr. Henry is with 
 you, pray remember me kindly to him ; tell liim of the salmon and 
 assure him I shall be very much delighted to see him here and to 
 take him amongst ' the finest Pisintry in the world.' 
 
 I hope both he and yourself will try to contrive it. The passage 
 is only fourteen hours from Liverpool, and the ladies must not be 
 left behind. Pray give Mrs. Gulson's and my kind regards to them, 
 and 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 Edward Gulson. 
 Eev. Eobert Lowe, 
 
 Bingham Eectory. 
 
 We hope to get a good Act this Session for England, and a good 
 Vagrant Law for Ireland.
 
 C4 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 
 
 (1811-1829) 
 
 ' The child,' Wordsworth tells us, ' is father of the man.' 
 Lord Sherbrooke, who was not even the eldest member of the 
 Lowe family, seems to have begun his law-making in the 
 nursery. The children of the Bingham rectory, in the order 
 of their ages, were : — 
 
 Ellen Pyndar Lowe. 
 
 Elizabeth Agnes Pyndar Lowe ; born, 1809 ; died, 1860. 
 
 Henry Porter Lowe (afterwards assumed the name of Sher- 
 brooke on inheriting the estates) ; born, September 3, 1810 ; 
 died, June 12, 1887. 
 
 Robert (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke) ; born, December 4, 
 1811 ; died, July 28, 1892. 
 
 Frederick Pyndar Lowe ; born, 1813 ; died, October 12, 1872. 
 
 Margaret Anne Lowe. 
 
 There was also Mary Anne Lowe, who died an infant in 1810. 
 
 It seems to have struck the future Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer and Home Secretary, that even this tiny community 
 needed the restraints of a legal code to keep them at peace 
 and in order. He accordingly formulated the following some- 
 what Cromwcllian code : — 
 
 Code of Laws instituted by the Lowes in Defence of their Society, 
 1819. {Compiled by Bobert Loiue, aged seven and a half years.) 
 
 (1) That no one may take a chair when there is another person's 
 clothes on it. 
 
 (2) If a King or Queen do anytliing unlawful they must be de- 
 throned, and another chosen by election of the people.
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 65 
 
 (3) That no person or persons may fight with a brick army for 
 any affront except about the bricks. 
 
 (4) That whatever they say in a passion shall be considered as 
 nothing. 
 
 (5) That when a law is passing and the votes are equal, the ages 
 of both parties be added up, and those that have the most gain and 
 the law is passed. 
 
 (6) That no person may laugh in Court, or fidget about, under 
 pain of being turned out of the Society till that time next day ; and 
 likewise that no one may have a sword at meals or make disagree- 
 able noises at any time. 
 
 (7) That when we ask any of the younger class of the Society to 
 give their opinion on any law, that they are not told who agrees to 
 it and who does not. 
 
 (8) That no member of the Society may have a stick on Sunday. 
 
 (9) That nobody may bribe any person to give their vote about 
 any law. 
 
 (10) That every law must be written on the day that it is made. 
 
 (11) That no law shall be proposed on Sunday. 
 
 (12) That no law shall be made after six in the evening. 
 
 (13) That no person may have a book at meals. 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke has told iis himself that, owing to his 
 
 deficient eyesight, he was eight years old before he 'began the 
 
 great business of life — the study of the Latin grammar.' In 
 
 these more indulgent days, many may think this age quite 
 
 young enough, while others may hold that it were better never 
 
 to enter on this study at all. It is somewhat singular that 
 
 Eobert Lowe should have begun the study of Latin precisely 
 
 at the same age as his future most intellectual opponent on 
 
 the floor of the House of Commons ; but John Stuart Mill 
 
 had the advantage — or disadvantage — of having begun Greek 
 
 when only three years old. In after years Lord Sherbrooke 
 
 had more than one brilliant fling at the classics, and he even 
 
 said irreverent things of the whole scheme of University 
 
 training. But such chastisement was after all from the loving 
 
 hand of a friend ; or, rather, it was the protest of a true son of 
 
 Alma Mater. Despite his theories, to the end of life he was 
 
 passionately fond of the classic writers, and was one of the 
 
 last of the scholars among the ranks of our public men. 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 Yet the commencement of his studies seemed sadly unpro- 
 pitious. His mother, he expressly tells us, was opposed even 
 to his going to school, considering his eyesight a fatal barrier 
 to all learning. His father, however, took a more hopeful view, 
 and in any event thought it better that the boy who was so 
 vigorous in mind and body — save for his unfortunate eyes — 
 should take his chance with the others in the competition 
 of the schoolroom, and the rough-and-tumble of the play- 
 ground. 
 
 Accordingly Kobert Lowe, in his tenth year, was sent as 
 day scholar, while his father was in residence as Prebendary, 
 to a private school at Southwell, and afterwards to an ancient 
 grammar school at Eisley in Derbyshire, where gentlemen's 
 sons began their Latin education. 
 
 But his real education (and therefore his troubles) began 
 when he was entered as a Commoner at Winchester. He 
 was then fourteen years of age. Nothing can well exceed his 
 own forbidding account of his life at this famous public school ; 
 and reading it over one understands the fervour with which the 
 boys on ' breaking up ' have sung from time immemorial 
 ' Dulce Doinuni ' ! 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke, in writing this description of the ^Ym- 
 chester of his early youth, was careful to point out that it in 
 no way applied to the Winchester of our day. The reform is 
 generally said to have set in with Dr. Moberly and Dr. Charles 
 Wordsworth, who were in charge of the school after Robert 
 Lowe had left it for Oxford. Certain of Lord Sherbrooke's 
 contemporaries at Winchester have given almost as gloomy a 
 picture of their school experiences, notably Mr. T. Adolphus 
 Trollope in his very interesting reminiscences, What I Remem- 
 ber ; and his younger brother, the late Anthony Trollope, who, 
 however, is even more severe on the Harrow of Dr. Butler, to 
 which school his erratic parents sent him after he had been 
 three years at Winchester. Anthony Trollope's greatest enemy 
 at Winchester was his own brother, who, I presume, occupied
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 67 
 
 that singular post of prefect, for he tells us that ' as part of his 
 daily exercise he thrashed me with a big stick.' 
 
 It is perhaps only fair to Winchester to bear in mind that 
 at that time the other great public schools were quite as bad. 
 It is amusing to compare the hard life of the young gentry of 
 England, forced to go to Eton, Harrow, or Winchester in those 
 years, with that of the petted ' gutter-child ' in the Board 
 School of to-day, whose sacred person must by no means 
 receive chastisement, whatever his offence may be.' Anthony 
 Trollope's misery at Harrow was even more intense than at 
 Winchester. Then there is the story of the famous Dr. Keate of 
 Eton flogging a dozen innocent boys, who w^ere sent up not 
 to be physically punished, but to be prepared for confirmation. 
 
 It was a Spartan time ; but in thinking with a shudder of 
 the brutalities of Winchester in 1825, let us not forget that 
 three of its boys rose in after life by sheer force of ability 
 to be Cabinet Ministers and peers of the realm — Eobert 
 Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke ; Edward Cardwell, Earl Cardwell ; 
 and Eoundell Palmer, Earl Selborne. Another complaining 
 AVykehamite of that period — Tennyson's ' most generous of all 
 Ultramontanes,' William George Ward, passed through its 
 iron tyranny apparently unscathed ; for, at Oxford, he dis- 
 played such vivacity of mind and vigour of body, that he fairly 
 worried his nominal master, Newman, into the Church of Eome, 
 and his favourite pupil, Clough, into Infidelity. Nor can either 
 of the Trollopes be regarded as a broken reed — Who was more 
 constant at the desk or eager in the hunting field than the 
 
 ' ' It is very satisfactory to find that a summons against a London Board 
 schoolmaster for whipping a boy has been dismissed. There was no suggestion 
 that the punishment was unreasonable or excessive, and the summons was 
 merely taken out because the boy had for absenting himself from school 
 received two canings on two different days. The boy said he did not like going 
 to school, and his mother supported his view. It is simply another effort to 
 enforce one law for the rich and another for the peer. If the headmaster of a 
 public school were to be summoned every time a young gentleman was 
 '' swished," we should be told that the boys of the upper classes were becoming 
 effeminate.' — St. James's Gazette, October 1892. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 LIFE OF LORD SILERBROOKE 
 
 author oi Bar Chester Towers'? In the whole range of modern 
 men of letters, can we indeed point to a more typical, sturdy 
 Englishman than Anthony Trollope, unless it be his brother, 
 who, in his eighty-third year, is the most distinguished of Anglo- 
 Italian publicists, and still looks out on this fascinating world 
 with the intelligent, ever-inquiring eye of the scholar and the 
 thinker.^ Nor does this by any means exhaust the list of 
 eminent Winchester boys who passed through the school during 
 this dark hour of anarchy tempered by flagellation. There was 
 also among the contemporaries of Lord Sherbrooke, Tindal, 
 afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ; and shortly 
 before his time, in 1820, there entered a yet more distin- 
 guished scholar, Christopher AYordsworth, afterwards Bishop 
 of Lincoln, one -of the great ornaments of the English Church 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 It is plain that neither the tyranny nor the mismanage- 
 ment under either Dr. Gable or Dr. Williams, in any way 
 injured or weakened these illustrious Wykehamites. In read- 
 ing Lord Sherbrooke's account too, it is only fair to remember 
 that his physical infirmity would have made any form of 
 public school-life irksome and in a measure dangerous. Mr. 
 Adolphus Trollope bears testimony to the fact that while his 
 old schoolfellow was 'respected, he was not liked,' simply be- 
 cause he could not take part in the rough games of the play- 
 ground. To a boy of Eobert Lowe's great vigour of body as 
 well as of mind, with his consequent high health and good 
 spirits, this must have been no slight deprivation. At Oxford, 
 where there was boating, at which his preternaturally short 
 sight was no great drawback, he became one of the strongest 
 of oarsmen. 
 
 In a letter of condolence on the death of his famous 
 schoolfellow, Mr. Adolphus Trollope writes to the present 
 Viscountess Sherbrooke — 
 
 ' Thomas Adolphus Trollope died at Clifton, November 11, 1892, while these 
 pages were passing through the press.
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 69 
 
 July 30, 1892. 
 
 My recollection of him after the sixty-five years — or thereabouts 
 • — that have passed is as perfect as on the day after I last saw him. 
 I can recall every trick of his manner, his voice ; and could put my 
 finger on the spot in the schoolroom where I last saw him standing. 
 There are, of course, but few of our contemporaries remaining ! 
 There is Lord Selborne ; the Warden of New Coll., by whose side I 
 dined the other day, and perhaps half a dozen country parsons^ 
 sprinkled— as salt — over the country. 
 
 This brief reminiscence will form a prologue to the follow- 
 ing tribute to the memory of his old schoolfellow and his oldest 
 friend, which Lord Selborne has been good enough to write 
 for this chapter. Not only are these reminiscences of Eobert 
 Lowe at Winchester interesting in themselves, but with regard 
 to the school itself, they show, as it were, the other side of the 
 shield. Lord Selborne writes : — 
 
 ' My knowledge of Robert Lowe dates from November 
 1825, when I first went to school at Winchester, being then 
 thirteen years old. He was a year older, and had come to the 
 school only two months before. I was placed next to him at 
 the bottom of the form (senior part of the fifth we called it), 
 next to the highest. There was in that, and in the higher form 
 into which we passed in due course of time, no change of 
 places ; so Lowe and I continued, until he left in the summer 
 of 1829, always to sit together at lessons. We also slept in 
 the same room during great part of the first three years, and 
 in these ways we were thrown very much into each other's 
 company. This was a good thing for me, for we were both 
 ambitious, and there was a useful and always friendly rivalry 
 between us, especially in verse exercises ; Latin composition 
 (and sometimes English also) being much cultivated in those 
 days, and being an almost certain road to the honours both 
 of the school and of the Universities. 
 
 ' Each of us may have done something to sharpen the other's 
 wits, but I think the balance of obligation, and of the risk of
 
 70 LIFE OF LOIIU SIIERBROOKE 
 
 taking things too easily if there had not heen such a stimukis, 
 was on my side. Now and then we agreed to have special 
 competitions with each other in particular exercises, and neither 
 of us was unwilling when he thought the other had the 
 superiority, to acknowledge it. 
 
 * Lowe was not a boy with whom successful rivalry was 
 possible without a continual effort, and he certainly did much 
 more to keep me up to a high standard of exertion than any- 
 body else. 
 
 ' He had the drawback of a nearness of sight so great that 
 he could not read without bringing the book close to his face, 
 so as almost, if not quite, to touch it, and he could not write 
 with ease. I remember an epigram of his on " Sleep " (such 
 epigrams, called " Vulguses," were among our tasks on several 
 days in the week), in which he described his own experience 
 of the consequences of lying in bed too long hi the morning, 
 as we both sometimes did. It ended : — 
 
 Scribenduui est, pigro scribendi ferre laboreiu, 
 
 Et servanda mese terga dolore manus. 
 Talia si fuerint tua munera, perfide Morphea, 
 
 Liimina linqiie, oro, nostra — vel usque tene. 
 
 This difficult}^ of sight was not only against him in school 
 work, but it disqualified him from entering into school games 
 and athletics, in which he might otherwise have been likely to 
 excel, as he learnt to do, notwithstanding it, in swimming ; and 
 it might have stood in his way, if he had been obliged to repel 
 by his own strength any rough usage from his schoolfellows. 
 Boys are not apt to be considerate in their treatment of each 
 other, and I have no doubt he had his share of trials at Win- 
 chester, but I think upon the whole he held his own as well 
 as most of us, and was never very roughly handled. 
 
 ' This may have been partly due to the impression made 
 by his force of character, and partl,y to the feeling that, but 
 for one disadvantage, no one would have been more capable 
 of defending himself, or more prompt to do so ; for he had a
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 71 
 
 very high sph'it and courage, and was not wanting in strength 
 for his age. But I am also wilHng to beHeve that most of his 
 schoolfellows, of equal or greater age and strength, would have 
 been ashamed of taking an unfair advantage of one who could 
 not see as well as themselves, and such as were of a meaner 
 spirit may perhaps have been restrained by the better feeling 
 of others. 
 
 ' Still, he must have felt the strain of contending with 
 difficulties from which his competitors and companions were 
 free, though his pluck and energy enabled him to surmount 
 them ; and this may have sharpened his sense of what was 
 bad in the life and moral atmosphere, and uncomfortable in 
 the arrangements, of the school. 
 
 ' Certain it is that Winchester never obtained that place 
 in his affections which (in spite of everything which might 
 have had an opposite tendency) it did in my own,' and in 
 those of most other Wykehamists. Drawbacks enough upon 
 our comfort there undoubtedly were, for Winchester in those 
 days was as different as possible from what it is now. The 
 commoners, 130 in number, to whose body he and I belonged, 
 were inconveniently crowded together in a large brick building 
 like a barrack, and on three days in the week we were con- 
 fined to it and the schoolroom, except for one hour before 
 dinner. The hours and meals were not at all well arranged, 
 and in every part of the system there was a more than Spartan 
 austerity. 
 
 ' We had, however, in our Head Master, Dr. Williams, an 
 excellent man and thorough gentleman, of a generous and 
 kindly nature, who taught well, and had the faculty of 
 interesting the more active-minded of his scholars in their 
 work. The range of teaching may have been limited in com- 
 parison with that of the present day ; but it was effective 
 
 ' See ' Lines projected and partly written, on the Four Hundred and Fiftieth 
 Anniversary of the Oj)ening of Winchester College,' March '25, 1843. By 
 Koundell Palmer. Annals of My Early Life, Bishop Charles Wordsworth 
 (Longmans), p. 396.
 
 72 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 M'ithin that range, and Lowe was one of those who profited 
 by it most. 
 
 ' He became a very good verse-writer and a first-rate 
 scholar, of the robust and tasteful, rather than the minute 
 and technical, kind. When near the top of the school 
 he displayed his poetical gift m a voluntary English exer- 
 cise upon " The Music of the Spheres," which was recited 
 by him at the public speeches then annually delivered at 
 Easter, and which took high rank among other performances 
 of the same kind by the ablest boys of our own and former 
 generations. 
 
 ' He was remarkable, even then, for a ready caustic wit, 
 and for a capacity of saying sharp things, which, if they were 
 not always pleasant (I came in for my share of them), left no 
 sting behind. I do not remember any occasion on which we 
 had a serious quarrel. The longer I knew him, the better I 
 learnt to understand the generosity as well as the force of his 
 character. 
 
 * He left Winchester a year before I did ; and I followed him 
 in 1830 to Oxford.' 
 
 No one can read this narrative of schoolboy days, although 
 written at an interval of some sixty-five years from the time 
 and events it describes, without feeling its essential veracity. 
 In it Lord Selborne has presented us with the brighter side 
 of Winchester life, under the old Spartan regime. 
 
 Sir Thomas Farrer, of Abinger Hull, writes : ' Some time 
 in the fifties, Lowe, Cardwell, Eoundell Palmer, and Henry 
 Halford Vaughan dined with me together. The talk fell on 
 Winchester, and it was characteristic of the men that Eoundell 
 Palmer, with true esprit de corps, stood up stoutly for his old 
 school ; while the others, and especially Lowe and Cardwell, 
 abused it as a coarse, brutal, cruel school.' 
 
 Winchester is now, like all our great public schools, entirely 
 changed ; in many respects, doubtless, for the better. Bishop
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 73 
 
 Charles Wordsworth, in his Annals of my Early Life, tells us 
 in his own modest way of the work he himself did under 
 Dr. Moberly, to soften, and, so to speak, Christianise the 
 school. The ' discipline of the rod ' — which, however, the 
 wisest of men thought essential in the training of youth — 
 was practically abolished by the Bishop of St. Andrews ' 
 while second master at Winchester. 
 
 It was the recognised method of dealing with boyish offences. 
 And no doubt my predecessor Bidding was equally * plagosus ' 
 with his superior ' Orbilius,' Williams, who succeeded Gabell : for 
 the second master equally with the head master had the power of 
 the rod. It was not, I believe, unusual for him, after morning school, 
 to castigate in that manner not less than four or five boys at a time 
 who had been ' tardy chapel.' But I can remember when, in reply- 
 ing to the toast of my health in the Wardens' Gallery at a Domum 
 Festival, I had the satisfaction of stating that not a single boy had 
 been flogged by me during the whole of the long half-year which 
 was then ended. And certainly there had been no relaxation — biit 
 quite the contrary — in the needful discipline of the school (pp. 236- 
 237). 
 
 No one can presume to doubt the testimony of the good 
 Bishop ; and all we can charitably hope is that, under its 
 improved and more humane discipline and its wider and more 
 enlightened curriculum, Winchester may some day again 
 produce three such men as Lord Sherbrooke, Lord Selborne, 
 and his own brother, Christopher Wordsworth. 
 
 Lord Selborne, with characteristic impartiality, sums up 
 what his schoolfellow really gained at Winchester. It made 
 him (he writes) ' a very good verse-writer and a first-class 
 scholar of the robust and tasteful, rather than the minute and 
 technical, kind.' Lord Sherbrooke himself supplements this 
 testimony by his grateful tribute to his Winchester tutor, 
 Mr. Wickham. But — inorc siio — he goes further, and states 
 that Winchester settled for him an even graver question than 
 
 ' Dr. Charles Wordsworth died on Monday, December 5, 1892, at St. 
 Andrews. The Times, in a leading article on the death of the venerable pre- 
 late, remarks : ' Among the many eminent men who have borne the name of 
 Wordsworth, he will be remembered as by no means the least eminent.'
 
 74 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 that of mere scholarship — ' It solved the problem as to whether 
 I was able to hold my own in life, and proved by a most 
 crucial experiment that I was not too sensitive, nor too soft 
 for the business.' 
 
 As to his fitness for the battle of life, there will be much 
 to say later on. With regard to his verse-making there 
 can be no doubt that Winchester fostered and stimulated 
 the practice ; but even as a child at Bingham, Eobert Lowe 
 ' lisped in numbers.' Many of his schoolboy effusions 
 have been preserved, and nearly all are very superior to 
 the average of juvenile verse. To his family and imme- 
 diate friends these must possess a peculiar interest, in which 
 the ordinary reading public can hardly be expected to par- 
 ticipate. 
 
 There lies before me now a small bundle of such verse, 
 some written in childhood at Bingham, but most at Win- 
 chester. One of these youthful poems arrests the attention 
 more from the subject than the treatment. The lines are 
 headed, Tlie Fideliti/ of the Swiss Guards to Louis XVI. ; 
 and signed, Robert Lowe, Jimr., Winchester College, 1828. 
 They show, as clearly as Wordsworth's later Toryism or Pitt's 
 abandonment of his policy of Peace and Pieform, how profound 
 was the reaction in England against the excesses of the French 
 Kevolution. For Eobert Lowe was never a blind worshipper 
 of the ' divinity that doth hedge a king ' ; on the contrary, he 
 was opposed to any form of Conservatism which appeared to 
 him to be based on traditional ignorance or innate stupidity. 
 But his nature abhorred anarchy and lawlessness and the wild 
 frenzy that at times seizes on mobs, usurping and over-riding 
 reason and common-sense even in the most ancient and civi- 
 lised communities — 
 
 Red ruin and the breaking up of laws. 
 
 In these schoolboy verses, in which he passionately calls 
 upon us to do honour to the Swiss mercenaries who so nobly
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 75 
 
 gave up their lives for the French King, he gives expression in 
 four powerful lines to the prevailing political sentiment of his 
 
 whole life : — 
 
 Not theirs to wish to break the regal chain, 
 To bid the many-headed Monster reign. 
 To phinge the land in anarchy and blood 
 For vain chimeras of ideal good.
 
 76 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 (1829-1833) 
 
 The Undergraduate — ' Union ' Debates and Classic Wit 
 
 As a supplement to Lord Sherbrooke's own graphic account 
 of his career at Oxford, the following narratives by Lord 
 Selborne and Canon Melville may fitly open this chapter. 
 Having already told us that Lowe left Winchester a year 
 before himself — that is in October 1829 — Lord Selborne thus 
 continues his reminiscences : — 
 
 ' We were at different colleges not very near each other — 
 he at University College, I at Trinity ; but we met frequently, 
 both in the society of the place and at the " Union " Debating 
 Club, in which we both for some time took a leading part, 
 as did our schoolfellow, Cardwell, Tait (afterwards Archbishop 
 of Canterbury), and others of our friends. Lowe was then, as 
 since, a nervous, incisive speaker, always taking the Liberal side 
 on the political questions which we discussed. There was a 
 schism in the Union in 1833, arising out of the very inadequate 
 cause that the set of men to which we belonged, having for 
 some time had the predominance in the offices and business 
 of the society, were outvoted in the election of a new president, 
 and a clever Radical named Massie, not a favourite with us 
 (though I know no good reason why he should not have been) 
 was placed in the Chair. Lowe took his own line on that 
 occasion, and supported Massie; in wliich he was, I have no
 
 OXFORD 77 
 
 doubt, quite right. But the dissentients withdrew for a term 
 or two and formed a new society, called the " Eambler," whose 
 debates, for a short time, eclipsed those of the Union. This, 
 the new Government of the Union thought high treason ; and 
 they made a motion to expel us, which Lowe supported, but 
 which was defeated by a large majority, at a crowded special 
 meeting, after a very lively debate. Lowe was one of the heroes 
 of that fight ; and his prowess in it, as well as that of the other 
 principal speakers, was celebrated in mock Homeric strain — 
 in a jeu d'esprit of doggerel Greek called Uriiomachia, which 
 obtained at the time some local celebrity.' 
 
 Canon Melville thus recounts the story of the early 
 academic period of Lord Sherbrooke's career : — 
 
 ' Eobert Lowe left Winchester for Oxford in 1829. Unlike 
 his schoolfellows — Eoundell Palmer and Edward Cardwell — 
 he never held a college scholarship. But though so far seem- 
 ingly short of their successes, the first being a scholar of 
 Trinity and the last of Balliol, this was due to the fact that 
 the endowments of University College were at that time con- 
 fined to localities with which Eobert Lowe had no connection. 
 Otherwise the three schoolfellows had careers very remarkable 
 in their similarity and coincidence. Each attained the high- 
 est academic distinctions. Eoundell Palmer gathered all the 
 chief University prizes except the English essay. Edward 
 Cardwell was a double first class man. Eobert Lowe only lost 
 his mathematical first class through his very defective sight 
 interfering with the clear record of his work ; his nose, as was 
 said at the time, obliterating much which his hand had written. 
 His classical first was well understood in Oxford to be of a high 
 standard. The late Bishop of London, Bishop Jackson ; the 
 late Dean of Christchurch, Dr. Liddell ; Scott, late Dean 
 of Eochester, and others who afterwards became eminent in 
 their several spheres, were in the same class. 
 
 ' Eobert Lowe passed these examinations and took his B.A.
 
 78 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 degree in Easter term 1833. The undergraduate life was 
 spent much as such Hfe at that time generally was. Univer- 
 sity College, with its close foundation, was not then a literary 
 college ; and Lowe owed his own successes to his own mental 
 activity, not at all to collegiate aid. Indeed, so conscious was 
 the tutor of the time of his own inadequacy to train such a 
 pupil, that the college offered to excuse Lowe the college lec- 
 tures, and supply him with a private tutor, if he pleased, 
 from among those distinguished at the time as trainers for the 
 final examination. But it was the inherent energy of his 
 own mmd that induced study and led to its results. The 
 three friends on one occasion started the question among 
 themselves — what caused them to work ? Cardwell said he 
 did not really know why he worked — he fell into the way of it 
 — so far as he did work. Eoundell Palmer admitted that he 
 worked to obtain the prize to which it led. Lowe said he 
 worked from the love of the pursuit.' 
 
 Mr. Francis W. Newman, the well-known surviving brother 
 of Cardinal Newman, supplies the following quaint reminiscence 
 of Eobert Lowe as an undergraduate : — 
 
 ' When I was a young Fellow in Balliol College, Oxford, a 
 young boy, perhaps aged sixteen, not yet of full height, 
 appeared before us Fellows, as candidate for a vacant scholar- 
 ship, in the close of November, probably 1830. He had white 
 eyelashes, &c., as an albino, and his name was Eobert Lowe. He 
 wrote a huge text like a child learning to write. His examina- 
 tion was not such as to gain the honour sought ; that is, he had 
 elders who surpassed him. But among others of his judges, 
 / warmly applauded him and augured future success for him,' 
 
 Canon Melville gives the following account of Lord Sher- 
 In'ooke's connection with the famous University Debating 
 Club — the Union : — 
 
 ' The Union Debating Society was an early scene of those
 
 OXFORD 79 
 
 powers which in the future were to raise Eobert Lowe to Parha- 
 mentary success. He was elected February 16, 1831 — after a 
 memorable debate on a motion condemnatory of the Catholic 
 Relief Bill — on which Mr. Gladstone spoke and carried an 
 amendment by a majority of sixteen. Eobert Lowe's first 
 speech was in March following, on a motion in favour of the 
 then sj^stem of popular education. Lowe opposed this, and 
 was joined in the debate by the late Cardinal Manning in an 
 amendment which was carried by twenty-six. After this he 
 was a constant speaker — notably in June of the same year — 
 for " the gradual emancipation of West Indian slavery through 
 the promotion of personal and civil rights and Christian 
 education." 
 
 ' May 10, 1832. — E. Lowe moved, " That all taxes on know- 
 ledge should be done away ; " which with scarce any debate was 
 rejected. Of the many public questions in which he took part 
 it might seem singular that only twice did he plead for any 
 motion — all the rest being in opposition. The decidedly 
 Tory and anti-Liberal cast of the society at that time fur- 
 nishes the explanation, as the one or two examples given above 
 will illustrate.' 
 
 After 1834 heavy tutorial work precluded all but very 
 occasional presence at the Union, of which Lord Sherbrooke 
 always preserved the liveliest recollections ; and, like a dis- 
 tinguished contemporary and fellow -member of this far-famed 
 debating club, he regarded it as one of the best institutions 
 at Oxford. 
 
 It has been thought advisable to add some further par- 
 ticulars of these debates at the Union. For this famous 
 debating society has played no small part in training our 
 future statesmen and Parliamentary gladiators, from Mr. 
 Gladstone himself to his latest Home Secretary, Mr. Asquith. 
 Lowe ranked among the most brilliant of these Oxford debaters ; 
 and no one who knows human nature will smile in disbelief
 
 80 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 or in derision when it is said that many of these debates at 
 the Union equalled, and perhaps surpassed, the efforts of the 
 same men in after years on the floor of either House of 
 Parliament. For they were then in the full flush and pride 
 of their strength and powers ; eager to investigate and solve 
 the great problems of humanity, eager also to cross swords 
 with every foe, and only too glad to illumine the path of all 
 whom they judged to be misguided or in darkness. No mere 
 paltry considerations of expediency occurred to these fresh, 
 ingenuous minds; no sad premonition that the world would go 
 on much the same whatever their eloquent tongues might 
 utter. 
 
 What better proof and illustration of this can we have than 
 the case of Mr. Gladstone himself. ' Gladstone,' writes Mr. 
 Brinsley Richards, ' was elected Secretary to the Union in 
 1830 and President in the following year. It was soon after 
 this that he attacked the Reform Bill; and he spoke with 
 such trenchant force, such overflowing conviction, that Lord 
 Lincoln [afterwards Duke of Newcastle], transported with 
 enthusiasm, at once wrote to his father, to say that " a man 
 had uprisen in Israel." ' Dr. Charles Wordsworth says of this 
 speech that it was ' better than any I heard in the House of 
 Lords, though I followed the five days' debate in that House, 
 and the Lords' debate was acknowledged to have been better 
 than that in the Commons.' The result of the speech was 
 that Gladstone was invited to stay at Clumber during the Long 
 Vacation, and the further result was that three years later 
 he got inducted into the Duke of Newcastle's pocket borough 
 of Newark.' 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was then, and for some years afterwards, the 
 ' rising hope ' of the ' unbending Tories ' ; while his future Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer was one of the leaders of the small but 
 active Liberal and anti- clerical party at Oxford. Everybody 
 has read Sir Francis H. Doyle's graphic and amusing account, 
 
 ' ' Ml. Gladstone's Oxford Days,' Temple Bar, May 1«83.
 
 OXFORD 81 
 
 in his delightful Reminiscences and Opinions, of his meeting 
 with Lowe at the Union. How Thursday after Thursday he 
 had watched * affectionately and respectfully ' an ' old gentleman 
 with snow-white hair, who seemed to have become a regular 
 attendant,' and how he kept saying to himself: ' There is that 
 dear old boy again. How nice of him to come and investigate 
 what we are worth.' Sir Francis is careful to explain that he 
 was himself ' as blind as a bat ' ; but having noticed the nice 
 old gentleman he longed to know his name. 
 
 The information was soon to be vouchsafed to me. Whilst the 
 Reform debate was going on, some earnest young Tory had denounced 
 Lord Grey and his colleagues as a vile crew of traitors. He had 
 hardly finished, when up jumped my patriarch (it was summer 
 term, with the boat races in full force), and in a loud and vigorous 
 tone of voice took him to task thus : ' The lion, gentleman has 
 called her Majesty's Ministers a crew. We accept the omen, a crew 
 they are; and with Lord Grey for stroke, Lord Brougham for steerer, 
 and the whole people of England hallooing on the banks, I can tell 
 the hon. gentleman they are pretty sure of winning their race. 
 
 Then it was Sir Francis Doyle found he had been ' re- 
 vering as an old man the famous white-haired boy Bob 
 Lowe,' 
 
 This story down to his latest years used to afford Lord 
 Sherbrooke great amusement. I have more than once heard 
 him exclaim, ' Those are the very words I used.' 
 
 One of the most memorable debates of this time was that 
 of May 16, 1831, on the motion of Mr. Knatchbull : — 
 
 ' That the present Ministry is incompetent to carry on the 
 government of the country.' 
 
 To which Mr. Gladstone moved as a rider : — 
 
 ' That the Ministry has unwisely introduced and most un- 
 scrupulously forwarded a measure which threatens not only to 
 change the form of our government, but ultimately to break 
 up the very foundations of social order, as well as materially 
 to forward the views of those who are pursuing this project 
 throughout the civilised world.' 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 The debate was prolonged for three days, and, on a division, 
 the Ayes were 94 — the Noes 38. 
 
 Among those who took part in this debate, and honorary 
 members of this period (to some of whom reference is made in 
 these pages), we find the names of Palmer, Lowe, Hicks Beach, 
 Ackland, Sneyd, Anstice, Wilberforce, Wordsworth, Doyle, 
 Massie, Tait, Kickards, and Ward. 
 
 The late Dean Church — and there could be no more com- 
 petent judge — declared that in his time Ward and Eobert 
 Lowe were the first speakers at the Oxford Union : ' Cardwell 
 was equally fluent, but the effect of his speeches was injured 
 by a touch of affectation.' 
 
 With both Ward and Lowe, according to the Dean's 
 account, there was a strong sense of the seriousness of the 
 matters in debate ; and they raised the atmosphere of discus- 
 sion above that of a mimic parliament — playing at ministers 
 as boys may play at soldiers — to that of serious men discussing 
 views known and felt in all the importance of their bearing. 
 If the palm must be given to either, Lowe carried it off in the 
 directly political debates.^ 
 
 Lord Cranbrook — then Mr. Gathorne Hardy — recalls 
 
 the fierce warfare that was waged rather later at the Union 
 
 between various members and Mr. (afterwards Canon) Trevor, 
 
 who led the committee an uneasy life, and was so redoubtable 
 
 a foe that ' once he put Ward into hysterics.' Lord Cranbrook 
 
 writes : ' No doubt some of those more active in the Union 
 
 than I was will have told you of Lowe's being more than once 
 
 brought back, after taking leave of its debates, that he might 
 
 encounter Trevor. I remember Lowe was much struck by his 
 
 ability and his clear and forcible stjde of speaking. On one 
 
 occasion when Lowe had returned Trevor quoted the lines : — 
 
 Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, 
 And often took leave, but was loath to depart. 
 
 ' The next day when I went to Lowe, he was trying to find 
 
 ' W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement, p. 22.
 
 OXFORD 83 
 
 the author. He found it to be Prior ; and we then went on 
 with our work. Lowe was much taken with the appositeness 
 of the quotation.' 
 
 Sir .John Mowbray, the present worthy member for the 
 University of Oxford, recalls vividly the Homeric battle between 
 the Union and the Rambler in the October term of 1833 ; 
 nor does he forget the great incidents of the fining of the future 
 Archbishop of Canterbury a pound, the recollection of which 
 was a source of humorous delight to Lord Sherbrooke to 
 the very last : ' It was indeed,' writes Sir John Mowbray, ' a 
 battle of giants ; is it not recorded in Greek verse in the 
 Uniomachia, and in other lays in English ? ' So irate were 
 certain leading members of the Union at the election of Massie, 
 the ' Eadical,' as President (with Lowe as Treasurer), that 
 they seceded — among them Tait, Eoundell Palmer, and Ward 
 — and formed the Piambler. They boycotted the Union, 
 the debates languished, and the benches were empty. Massie 
 and his cabinet, determined not to be outdone by their anta- 
 gonists, brought forward a motion to turn the Ramblers out 
 of the Union. An extraordinary meeting was held at the 
 larger room at the Star (now the Clarendon) Hotel, and there 
 was a fierce debate. When the President was speaking, Lowe, 
 as the next principal officer, occupied the chair. In the midst 
 of the President's speech, Tait rose in great excitement — 
 
 Tait shook his tasselled cap and sprang to ground. 
 
 Lowe enforced silence and fined the future Archbishop one 
 pound. The debate ended in the defeat of the motion ; the 
 Ramblers carried the day. 
 
 The next term (January 1834) a ministry of conciliation 
 was installed and the feud was at an end. One remarkable 
 fact, however, occurred. Tait appealed, after the new Ministry 
 came in, against the fine imposed by Lowe ; but the Union 
 confirmed the fine. 
 
 In the summer term of 1835 there was again a party 
 
 G 2
 
 84 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 conflict at the Union, commonly known as the ' Trevor row,' 
 but less famous. Caret quia vaie sacro. Trevor of Magdalen 
 Hall, a remarkably able speaker, made a fierce attack on the 
 Committee of the daj^ and especially on the Treasurer. The 
 Committee demanded that the charges should be referred to 
 a Select Committee — which was done. A strong Select 
 Committee of older members, in which Lowe took the most 
 prominent part, investigated the matter, and reported that 
 the charges were without foundation, and that Trevor must 
 withdraw them or retire from the Union, Lowe threw him- 
 self into the fight with all his accustomed vigour, and had 
 many a sharp encounter with Trevor, who, on his side, fought 
 almost single-handed with marvellous ability. ' I appeared 
 before the Select Committee,' adds Sir John Mowbray, 'as the 
 representative of the Executive Committee of the Union, and 
 was thus brought into very close and most friendly relations 
 with Lowe. It was the beginning of a friendship which never 
 failed, although it never ripened into great intimacy through 
 life. We have often had many a pleasant chat in the lobby of 
 the House of Commons on old Union days, to which we both 
 reverted with delight. Our intercourse was always agreeable 
 and never marred for a moment by any political differences.' 
 
 The present Dean of Westminster writes : — ' As a freshman 
 I remember seeing Robert Lowe at the Union in November 
 1840 at a famous and rather fierce debate and division as to 
 the taking Bell's Life. I was not yet a member — fresh- 
 men were not admitted in those days — but was taken in by a 
 friend. 
 
 * I can see him now as he was then : tall figure with white 
 hair ; and an undergraduate friend saying in answer to my 
 question, " That's Bob Lowe, he's come to vote for BeWs Life." 
 And, after pointing out his white hair, adding, " he's so blind " 
 (meaning, of course, short-sighted), " that he lost his First in 
 mathematics because he rubbed out so much of his work with 
 his nose." '
 
 OXFORD 85 
 
 It will be remembered that Lord Sherbrooke, in his own 
 accomit of the fierce battle between the Union and the Eambler, 
 adds : ' The matter is now principally remembered by a mock 
 Homeric poem, in the composition of which the late learned 
 Dean Scott, a wit before he was a lexicographer, bore a 
 distinguished part.' This effusion was called Uniomachia, and 
 Lowe figured in it as ^skwyyovvovs. Uniomachia was the 
 joint work of William Jackson (afterwards Prebendary of 
 St. Paul's and rector of Stoke Newington) and Thomas Sinclair 
 (sometime rector of St. George's, Leeds), both of St. Mary 
 Hall. The * Slawkenberg ' notes were by Scott of Balliol 
 (afterwards Dean of Eochester), and the English translation 
 by Archdeacon Giles. 
 
 Loive's Speech in Uniomachia 
 
 Tois fiiv vvv TTpofxdxi-C^ fj.eXdyyovvos Aooet'S^? 
 Kal a(f)e(.is (pu)Vi](jai eVfa TTTepuivra TTpocrtjvda. 
 ' TiTTTf (f>i\ni, fxever i^oniQev ttoXv (SerTepov e'iq 
 YVavras "y e^rreWeiv, ol (popyeTTovres eruLpovs, 
 Kaivr]v (puppovtTLV kXv;3^j;i', lieKovTos ffiflo, 
 AfLTTOvcriv Maaixrjv, Kai ttuvB' vpTovai 5e/3ara, 
 QpvaTovcr eis kolXtjv prjTpos SoXiKoaKiov eyxoi, 
 Nui" Kvdpovs TOKeacopev, iroipoi TTflires' apirrroi, 
 TpuLTopas eKKpLPeiv' kuI KCKKovTuipev aTravTcii.^ 
 
 In many a sable fold of honour drest, 
 The great Lowides tow'red above the rest ; 
 Before the faithful lines advancing far, 
 With winged words the chief provoked the war : 
 ' friends, be men ! be ours the noble boast 
 From Union rooms to drive a traitor host. 
 Against our sov'reign will they dare combine, 
 Form a new club, a diff'rent club from mine ? 
 The godlike Massie feels their jealous hate 
 In empty benches and in burk'd debate. 
 Accursed crew, whose ruthless hands have gored 
 Their mother's breast with parricidal sword 1 
 Vote, then, my friends, and be the turncoat race 
 Expell'd, kick'd out, in merited disgrace.'
 
 86 LIFE OF LORD SHERBPtOOK 
 
 We now come to the still more famous macaronic poem 
 which Lowe himself composed on the visit of Queen Victoria — 
 then the Princess Victoria — and her mother, the Duchess of 
 Kent, to Oxford, in 1833. One very wet day in that year 
 (writes Canon Melville) the Duchess of Kent and the Princess 
 Victoria excited Oxford from heads to tails by a visit. Kobert 
 Lowe memorialised the event by a very witty macaronic poem. 
 Even yet rainy dies aderat, and the hexameter verse which 
 worked in the then leading hostelries : — 
 
 Aiisrelus aut Mitre vicinave Stella Gazellae — 
 
 are not forgotten. Spite of the doggerel element of such com- 
 positions, there was in Lowe's example such true classic ring 
 that friends said he ought to write for the annual Latin verse 
 Chancellor's prize. It was late in his undergraduate career, 
 and he had never previously competed. He did, however, 
 in that year ; and though desuetude told against him, he 
 only lost the victory from want of that finish which prac- 
 tice alone secures, running second to his friend Roundell 
 Palmer. 
 
 Mr. Pycroft, in his Oxford Memories, states that ' copies were 
 sent to every part of the world where Oxford men were to be 
 found.' 
 
 Judging by the following letter, it would seem that Lord 
 Sherbrooke, contrary to his custom, sent at least two copies 
 of the poem himself to the sister University of Cambridge : — 
 
 Robert Loioe to H. P. Lotve, Esq., Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 
 
 University College (no date). 
 
 Dear Henry, — Many tlianks for your letter, wliicli amused me 
 much, especially the part devoted to the malediction you are pleased 
 to pronounce upon the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. You 
 will be surprised to see the parcel that accompanies this note it is 
 a burlesque Ijatin poem, which is led by unavoidable circumstances 
 to consider me as its author. Having been deemed worthy of 
 the favour of the Oxford public, it is now about to make its ap- 
 pearance in the Sister University. You and Whitley will find
 
 OXFORD 87 
 
 copies for yourselves and be able to appreciate its merits at your 
 leisure. . . . With regard to the various philosophical treatises 
 you propose to my acceptance, sore doth it grieve me to say that I 
 have caused a bookseller to suffer for the amount of the above- 
 mentioned publications, with the single exception of Miller's 
 Hydrostatics, for which I shall be grateful by the first opportunity 
 that offers, as I am in no immediate want of it. 
 
 Tell Whitley if he has any regard for me he will write me a 
 detailed account of his campaign in the long vacation, and how I 
 stand in certain people's good graces. . . . 
 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 K. Lowe. 
 
 Few topical skits have enjoyed so long a life. The vener- 
 able Dr. Charles Wordsworth, late Bishop of St. Andrews, 
 who was the tutor both of Mr. Gladstone and of the late 
 Cardinal Manning, wrote just before his death : ' Not long 
 ago I could have quoted several of the lines, which were 
 clever and amusing ; and I fancy a good specimen of his gift 
 in humorous satire. Now, I can only recall the beginning of 
 one, Rainy dies aderat '. ' 
 
 Sir John Mowbray declares that he was so delighted with 
 Lowe's verses, that he learnt them when they first appeared, 
 and that now, after nearly three-score years, he can quote 
 almost the whole poem from memory. 
 
 Many other distinguished Oxford men, including Mr. J. A. 
 Froude, who calls it 'a brilliant Latin poem,' have written to 
 remind me of it, and several have specially urged on the score 
 of its extreme rarity, as well as cleverness, its republication in 
 this ' Life.' Lord Sherbrooke had indeed lost his own copy ; 
 but, fortunately, the one which he had presented to his old 
 Eadical friend Edward Massie sixty years ago has come to 
 hand. 
 
 It only remains to add that Lowe's burlesque Latin 
 poem was published before the amusing Greek verses, XJnio- 
 macJiia, which have sometimes erroneously been accorded the 
 priority : —
 
 88 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 PoEMA Canino-Anglico-Latinum Super Adventu Eecenti 
 
 Serenissimarum Principum 
 
 Dicite praeclaram, Musae, mihi dicite Kentae 
 Duchessam, Princessque simul Victoria nostro 
 Singatur versu, Conroianusqiie triuniplius, 
 Et qiiani shoutiirunt Undergraduates atque Magistri, 
 Et quantum dederit Vice-Cliancellor ipse refreshment. 
 
 Rainy dies aderat ; decimam striliantibus horam 
 Jam clockis, portae panduntm-, then what a rush was, 
 Musa, velim, memores : si possis, damna recounta, 
 Quae juvenum nimis audaces subiere catervae, 
 Quot periere capi, quot gownes ingemuere 
 VuLaera vae ? nimium loyalas testantia vires. 
 
 Fugerat all patience, cum jam procedere troopum 
 Sensimus, et loudo Mavortia trumpeta cantu 
 Spiravere : venit, venit, Oh ! carissima conjux 
 Guelphiadae ; ad currus equites spatiantur anheli. 
 
 Versibus hie fortes liceat celebrare cohortes, 
 Norrisiasque manus, AbiBgdoniamque juventum, 
 Multa the rain, et multa lutum, permulta caballi 
 Damna tulere illis : necnon wiva cuique criebat 
 Absentem ob dominum, neque enim gens est ea, cui sit 
 Flectere ludus equos, et pistola tendere marko, 
 Ast assueta to plough, terramque invertere rastris. 
 
 Quid memorem quanto crepuit domus alta tumuitu ? 
 Intremuere scholae ; celsii suspecta cathedra 
 Intremuit Christchurch, tremmt Maudlenia turris, 
 Ratcliffique domus, geminisque University portis, 
 Doctoruni stipata choro pokerisque tremendis 
 Royalty ubi ingressa est, super omnes scilicet ilia 
 Guelphiadas felix, dextram Rhedycina benignam 
 Cui dedit, accepitque sinu, propriam(]ue dicavit. 
 
 Consedere duces, et tum Vice-Chancellor infit, 
 * Si placeat vestrae, Celsissima, niajestati, 
 Nos tuus hie populus, tuaque haec Universitas omnis 
 Supplicibus coelum manibus veneraniur, ut adsit 
 Omne good et pulchrum tibi filiolaeque serenae, 
 Quae niatris guided auspiciis, eductaque curls, 
 In modern Uteris, Graecis etiam atque Latinis, 
 Triginta magnos volvendis niensibus orbes 
 Imperio explebit, regnunique il sedc Londini 
 Transferet, et nostrani multa vi muniet Oxford.' 
 Insequitur loud shout ; loud shoutis deinde quietis, 
 Kentea pauca refert, set nun et pauca fuerunt 
 Clappea, nee paucis se gratified esse fatetur
 
 OXFORD 89 
 
 Curtseis, tanto mage gens perversa fatigat 
 Plausibus assidnis non inflexibile collum. 
 
 Qualis libi ingentes, coacha veniente, portmantos, 
 Greatcoatosque, bagosqne humeros onerare niinistri 
 Bendentis A'idi, qnem dura ad munia mittit 
 Angelus, ant Mitre, vicinave Stella Gazellae. 
 Ilia refert, ' We thank you, kind sir, for the honour you've done us. 
 Nought's interested us more in the tour, which we just have been taking, 
 Than this our reception in Oxford. I beg to assure you that I shall 
 Always endeavour to teach my daughter whatever is useful. 
 That she may be fit to reign over a great and a glorious people.' 
 Dixerat ; et strepitu prodis. Conroie, secundo, 
 Phillimori deducte manu tibi tegmen honoris 
 Obvolvit latos humeros subjectaque coUa ! 
 
 Jamque silent cunei ; turn rhetor with paper in hand 
 Ore rotundato narrat fortissima facta 
 Heroic, narrat fidum Princessis amorem, 
 Multaque dicta before, et quae race postera dicet, 
 Protulit — in totum fertur vox clara theatrum — 
 Olli sedato resj)ondet pectore Praeses — 
 ' Admitto causa te, Vir Fortissime, honoris 
 Doctoris gi'adui civili in jure Periti.' — 
 Heu ! nimium felix, civilia condere jura 
 Nescius, aut tenues lingua distinguere causas, 
 Non Lincoln's Inn ilium, non Intima Templa tulerunt 
 Furnipulive aedes clarum boastavit alumnum ; 
 Nee tanaeu inde minus juris consultus abibat 
 Suifragiis doctis, et serto templa forensi 
 Vinxit, et insigni laetus terga induit ostro 
 Ah ! nullas miserum causas subitiu^a reorum. 
 
 Tum subito Praeses, all things jam rite peractis, 
 ' Nos hunc concursum extemplo dissolvimus,' inquit — ■ 
 Exoritur clamorque virum, clangorque tubarum, 
 Effudit vacuis turbam domus alta cathedris, 
 Una eademque via Princessam effudit et ipsam. 
 Ciirritm- ad Christchurch, de Christchurch curritur All Souls. 
 Alfredi tandem fessas domus alta recepit 
 Hospitio of the best, sed quod magis hearty voluntas 
 Commendat domini cum sedulitate feloiim, 
 Plurima quam nitida quae stant opsonia mensa, 
 Scrubbatumve platum, kidglovative ministri. 
 
 Quis cladem illius Imicheon, qiais dishia fando 
 Explicet ? baud equidem quanquam sint voices a hundred, 
 Cast iron all, omnes dapium comprendere formas, 
 Magnificaeque queam fastus evolvere coenae. 
 
 Egressis (neque enim possunt eatare for ever) 
 Gens effraena riiens, nondum graduatia pubes,
 
 90 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 Ingeminat loudos plausos, hip hip hurra coelum 
 Percutit, high wavere capi, quadranguhis huzzas 
 Audiit, atque imis tremefactus sedibus High Street. 
 
 Tuui forte in turri, sic fama est, reading-man alta 
 Invigilans studiis pensum carpebat, at iUum 
 Startulat horrid uproar, evertitur inkstand, ibi oronis 
 Effusus labor, impurus nam labitur amnis 
 Ethica per Ehetoricque, expensive fulgida bindings, 
 Virgiliumque etiam heroas, etiam arma, canentem. 
 
 Sit satis haec hisisse — Peryaeam mihi pennam, 
 Fessa adiniit Nonsense, botelas glassasque claretque, 
 Poscit, inexpletum cupiens haurire trecenta 
 Pocula, terque tribus Princessam tollere cheeris. — 
 
 Ergo alacres potate viri — nee fortia doctor 
 Pocula si quis amat, nee si commonrooma magistrum 
 Mensa tenet socium, nee si quis bachelor aut si 
 Non graduatus erit, idcirco sobrius esto ; 
 Sic honors acceptos nobis celebramus in Oxford — 
 Hoc juvat et melli est — non mentior —hie mihi finis. 
 
 In his recent work, The History of the Church of St. Mary the 
 Virgin, the learned and scholarly author, the Eev. Edmund 
 S. Ffoulkes, writing in praise of Hansel's Phrontisterion, ob- 
 serves : ' A classic masterpiece, as brilliant as anything that 
 had ever proceeded from the pens of George Canning, Hookham 
 Frere, or Kobert Lowe.' 
 
 The late Lord Sherbrooke was singularly devoid of vanity ; 
 but it would have been a source of some gratification to him, 
 had he lived to read it, to see his name thus bracketed with 
 the twin masters of University Je«,r (V esprit. 
 
 The debates in the Union, and the writing of macaronic 
 poems by no means absorbed the whole of Lowe's leisure at 
 Oxford. As he himself tells us, he diligently practised the 
 art of rowing, and was even chosen as * No. 7 ' of the crew in 
 a match between the two Universities which never came off. 
 The late Sir Buchanan Eiddell, who was also to have been in 
 the Oxford boat of that year, used to relate that Lowe pulled 
 a remarkably strong and steady oar. He was, in fact, very 
 fond of rowing, which was one of the few athletic sports in 
 which his defective eyesight allowed him to indulge. As he
 
 OXFORD 91 
 
 states, he grew to have a dishke to school and university 
 matches being made pubHc rather than private affairs ; and 
 his remarks on this head are full of his characteristic common- 
 sense. There can, however, be no doubt that Nature had im- 
 planted in him a most healthy and ardent love of outdoor 
 sports and exercises. As he was a vigorous oarsman as an 
 Oxford undergraduate, so in later years, when a grave states- 
 man, he was a fearless whip and an adroit and intrepid 
 cyclist.
 
 92 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 OXFORD (continued) 
 
 (1833-1840) 
 Graduate — Fellow of Magdalen— Private Tutor, and would-be Professor 
 
 Lord Selborne thus closes his narrative of Eobert Lowe's 
 career at Oxford : — 
 
 ' In 1833 Lowe took his degree with great honour — a first 
 class in classics and second in mathematics. He was not 
 long afterwards elected to a Fellowship of Magdalen, of which 
 College I had myself become a Fellow in 1834 on taking my 
 degree ; but I left Oxford in 1835 for London ; and had from 
 that time till he entered Parliament fewer opportunities of 
 meeting him than before. He married in 1836, and remained 
 for some years in Oxford taking pupils ; and was beyond 
 question the ablest and most successful private tutor then in 
 the University.' 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke in his brief autobiography states that his 
 failure to secure the double-first was a disappointment to him; 
 for (he writes) ' I was sure that I knew enough to entitle me 
 to a first class [in mathematics], though I felt perfectly 
 conscious that I had not brought my knowledge properly out.' 
 Mr. Pycroft, who, however, like most anecdote-mongers, is as 
 often wrong as right, states in his Orford Memories that 
 ' Lord Sherbrooke was pronounced by his tutors certain of a 
 first in mathematics and not certain in classics.' Although
 
 OXFORD 93 
 
 this remark appears in a book of anecdotal reminiscences, it 
 looks, in the light of Lord Sherbrooke's own statement, as if 
 it had some foundation in fact. 
 
 In 1835 Robert Lowe was elected Fellow of Magdalen on the 
 foundation of which birth in the county of Notts was a qualifi- 
 cation. Two years previous to this, as he tells us in the 
 Chapter of Autobiography, he had embarked on his labours 
 as a private tutor. We have his own word for it that, compared 
 with these labours, everything else in his career ' has been 
 mere play and recreation.' More than one old Oxford man 
 has written to express his very natural doubt as to whether 
 even Lord Sherbrooke's head could have long withstood the 
 strain of this terrific time. He often had, he tells us, no less 
 than ten pupils ; and for five years out of the seven during 
 which he was a private tutor, he also took pupils during 
 the long vacation. 
 
 ' I do not think (he writes) I could have gone on with it 
 much longer.' One does not wonder at this confession when 
 it is recorded that so able a man as the late Bishop Jackson, 
 who as a private tutor had fewer pupils than Lowe, owned 
 that his head was giving way. 
 
 Canon Melville, however, referring to this tutorial period, 
 relates a story concerning Lord Sherbrooke which, under the 
 circumstances, can only fill us with amazement for his capacity 
 for work and his love of learning for its own sake. 
 
 Lowe was a much-sought private tutor — a function which 
 he fulfilled for some years after taking his own degree. At 
 one time he had so many pupils that, between nine in the 
 morning and ten at night, he had besides his dinner-hour but 
 one spare hour — viz. that from four to five. A friend 
 similarly occupied met Lowe at the time one day in Oxford 
 with a book under his arm and said : ' Where are you going ? 
 Come for a turn in the country, as I do for my hour.' ' No,' 
 said Lowe, ' it's the only time I have for a Sanscrit lesson with 
 Professor Wilson.'
 
 94 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 111 Mr. Pycroft's Oxford Memories we light on the 
 following : — 
 
 ' Mr. Lowe,' said my friend Kendall, * was the cleverest man I have 
 ever read with. He was so near-sighted he seemed to depend very 
 little on his sight, and to know all his books by heart. He had the 
 widest Oxford acquaintance of any man of my day.' 
 
 "With pardonable pride, Lord Sherbrooke himself bears 
 out the truth of such statements by declaring that he was 
 ' popular as a tutor,' and that he retained his ' number up to 
 the last, and finished in November 1840 with four pupils in a 
 first class of six.' It will be remembered that he then men- 
 tions some of his more successful pupils, and recalls, with 
 evident satisfaction, that many came to him even from those 
 ' distinguished men ' Mr. Newman and Dr. Arnold. In his 
 later years Lord Sherbrooke was much pleased by the fol- 
 lowing passage in a private letter of Mr. J. A. Froude : ' I 
 remember Lord Sherbrooke well at Oxford before I went 
 out of residence. Indeed, I was almost his pupil. I asked 
 him to take me when I was going into the schools. To 
 his regret, I believe, and certainly to mine, he had no room 
 for me.' 
 
 There could hardly be stronger testimony to the high 
 esteem in which Eobert Lowe was held as a jirivate tutor, than 
 is afforded by the following extract from a letter written by an 
 old pupil but life-long political opponent, the Eight Hon. 
 Gathorne Hardy, Earl of Cranbrook : * I was his pupil and 
 had a great regard and esteem for him, as he was a man 
 of singular honesty and frankness. He gave great attention 
 to those who read with him, and it was wonderful that with 
 ten or eleven men at one time he saw each separately and 
 never flagged. At the same time he was reading on his own 
 account, and I remember his telling me that he was learning 
 a modern language (I think), Spanish. 
 
 ' A pupil who failed in attendance he would plainly tell 
 that he would not take his money unless he came, and when
 
 OXFORD 95 
 
 he saw that anyone had really no chance of honours, he would 
 frankly tell him so.' 
 
 Another of his pupils, Dr. Richard Congreve, the cultured 
 disciple of Auguste Comte, evokes a more sombre recollection 
 of this period of Lord Sherbrooke's Oxford career : ' I was 
 for a short time the pupil of Eobert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, 
 and I preserve a very grateful sense of the benefits derived 
 from his teaching. I remember his expression as he closed 
 the last lecture. " There," he said, " that is the last lecture 
 I shall give in this place, where I have been selling my life- 
 blood at 7s. 6d. the hour." ' 
 
 Dr. Congreve kindly reminds me that Charles Arnold, as 
 well as Arthur Hugh Clongh, read with Lord Sherbrooke 
 during a long vacation at Ambleside. 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke, as his old Oxford friends testify, was 
 never idle. He took pupils even through the vacation, and 
 in addition to his all but incessant labours with them, he was 
 often engaged on some difficult and independent branch of 
 study on his own account. It was in the Long Vacation, 
 spent with pupils at Festiniog in 1834, that Lowe fell headlong 
 over ' Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit,' escaping by a miracle with his 
 lifSi as he himself has so graphically narrated. It is surpris- 
 ing what a number of persons have written to inquire as to 
 the truth of this story, which has, evidently, in various forms 
 enjoyed a wide circulation. 
 
 The following letter, written on this memorable vacation, to 
 one of his oldest and most cherished friends, the Eev. W. Boyd, 
 now Archdeacon of Craven and Vicar of Arncliffe, Skipton, for 
 which I am indebted to the courtesy of the Dean of West- 
 minster, is eminently characteristic, and in my judgment 
 well worthy of preservation. Archdeacon Boyd was Lowe's 
 contemporary at University College. ' Greatly and deservedly 
 respected by him then and always,' writes Dean Bradley. It 
 is generally believed that Lord Sherbrooke once declined to com- 
 pete for a Fellowship in order that his friend might get it ;
 
 96 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 like other men who have been called cynics, he did such 
 acts of self-effacement for those who were dear to him. 
 
 Bobert Loioe to the Bev. W. Boyd. 
 
 Festiniog, Merionethshire : August 17, 1834. 
 
 Dear Boyd, — The idleness which prevented my writing to you 
 in the first instance has long been succeeded by that shame and re- 
 pugnance which invariably follows the neglect, though it does not 
 always secure the performance, of a duty. I have been living all the 
 vacation hitherto at a little cottage in the neighbourhood of Bar- 
 mouth, in a more secluded situation than I ever remember to have 
 been in before. This I may truly say was a subject of no uneasiness 
 to me ; the only effort being to leave it, as I was sometimes obliged 
 to do, to visit my family who were living five miles off en masse. I 
 am convinced practically that the mind, when not warped by habit 
 or prejudice, has the faculty of adapting itself to its situation, when 
 in the way of amusement of being as dissipated, and when m retire- 
 ment as solitary, as possible. 
 
 My studies have been divided between learning the alphabet and 
 forms of noun and verb in the Sanskrit grammar, and pursuing 
 German, without altogether forgetting my Hebrew. The Sanskrit 
 alphabet consists of fifty simple characters, which, by means of 
 initial and final consonants and vowels, and a compound and often 
 anomalous character for every double consonant, are multiplied to 
 upwards of a hundred. Over these difficulties, I am happy to say, I 
 have triumphed unassisted, though I cannot but applaud the wise 
 dispensation which conceals the future from our eyes, since, had 
 I known their magnitude e^ "px^s, it is more than probable I might 
 never have attempted them. The German, in which I hope you 
 also have been making progress, I find very easy and beautiful, 
 and a pleasant relaxation after my Oriental studies. 
 
 I have just removed, as you will see by my date, to Festiniog — 
 a beautiful village among the mountains in the north of Merioneth- 
 shire, where I mean to renew my acquaintance with Snowdon and 
 Co. I am not yet fully settled, owing to the crusade which is being 
 carried on against the grouse, who, few and diminishing yearly, 
 still linger in scanty coveys over the hills which their ancestors once 
 held undisturbed. 
 
 Thus far of myself. Now learn what I expect to hear from you 
 in return. In the first place, in the grand Tory festival,' which I 
 am delighted not to have attended, what part did you and yours 
 
 ' The Installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of the University 
 of Oxford.
 
 OXFORD 97 
 
 enact ? How did the week pass off, and how did you manage the 
 immense journey into the Hyperborean regions which you ai'e pleased 
 to inhabit ? 
 
 Were you not amused with the Hebrew ode ? It tickled my 
 fancy much — particularly where it said, ' The seekers of new things 
 hath he not loved,' to turn the language of the Patriarchs and 
 Prophets to the purposes of ephemeral politics, and to tune the harp 
 of Judah, before which the mighty trembled, to sound the notes of 
 flattery, was an indecorous species of desecration — a sort of adula- 
 tion which it well became Magdalen Hall to invent and Oxford to 
 patronise. 
 
 Have you read The Edinburgh Bevietv on the installation ? If 
 not, do. Please to let me kpow how your parsonical duties go on. 
 I shall be delighted and interested with any detail on the subject. 
 I am almost ashamed on looking back to see into what a tirade I 
 have been led, but you know how it is with me — Ccelitm non 
 animum mutant. 
 
 An accurate account of your studies, thoughts, intentions, and 
 imaginations, which must have been many in the interval which my 
 idleness has suffered to elapse, is but a small portion of what I ex- 
 pect to hear from you. 
 
 I see Palmer of Trinity, and Eichardson of Wadham, are 
 elected Fellows of Magdalen ; so much the better for somebody 
 else. I have written to congratulate the former on his success. 
 
 Pray present my compliments to your father and sister, who I 
 hope enjoyed their Newnham excursion as much as I did. Do not 
 suffer your mathematics to become obsolete, as I still look forward 
 to your triumphant return to Oxford. 
 
 Believe me. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 R. Lowe, Junr. 
 
 P.S. — I hope I have spelt the name of your village right. My 
 ideas have been confused by reading an account of a battle in which 
 it is spelt Ryetown.^ 
 
 It was in the year 1835 that Robert Lowe obtained a lay 
 Fellowship at Magdalen. This, in its way, was a provision 
 for life, and made him independent as to money. But three 
 months after this, he engaged himself to Miss Georgiana 
 Orred, whom he had met at Barmouth. This may well have 
 
 ' The above letter is addressed to ' The Eev. D. W. Boyd, Ryetown, New- 
 castle, Northumberland.' 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 seemed an unaccountable proceeding to his father, and gave 
 rise to an estrangement which was a source of much pain to 
 the son. His determination to marry carried with it the 
 impossibihty of retaining a Fehowship, and ultimately taking 
 Holy Orders, which the rector of Bingham desired. Robert 
 Lowe's resolve to abandon his Fellowship and read for the 
 Bar appeared a most ill-judged proceeding and greatly in- 
 creased the annoyance of his father who thus saw all his 
 plans frustrated. 
 
 It was an additional mortification to Lord Sherbrooke to 
 find that almost every member of his family coincided with 
 his father's views. It is pleasant, however, to learn that the 
 affection of his brother Henry remained unchanged through 
 all the troubles which ensued, as the following letter will 
 testify. 
 
 Robert Lowe to H. P. Lowe. 
 
 My dear Henry, — I never remember to have been more affected 
 by anything in my life than by your letter ; it has been so rarely of 
 late that I have met with any show of friendly feehng from my 
 relations that I had ceased to expect it, more especially from you, 
 whose every constituted notion of prudence is controverted by my 
 conduct on tliis occasion. I have found no one else Avho has deis:ned 
 to communicate with me on the subject who could disapprove 
 without condemning, no one who did not seem to forget their 
 originally kind feelings towards me in the strength of prejudice 
 and remonstrance. My aunts are, luckily for me, on my side. 
 Aunt Sherbrooke is, I hope, wavering, and could I have an inter- 
 view \\dth her might, 1 think, be made completely my ally. What 
 I write now for is to press you to come and see me at Magdalen. 
 You will find your quarters excellent and a bed at your service 
 as long as you like to stay. I can then talk this matter over 
 with you at our leisure and tell you many things of which you are 
 not aware. 
 
 Matters at present stand thus : my father has interdicted me the 
 Law, and refused to assist me in the prosecution of it. He says 
 he will not allow me to marry without 500/. a year of my o\\ti 
 besides her fortune. He has now driven me to extremity, and I have 
 offered to make, not five, but seven hundred a year by taking pupils 
 here. To this I am now waiting his answer ; it is not the kuid of
 
 OXFORD 99 
 
 life I should have preferred, but if I am not to go to the Law all 
 other professions are indifferent to me. 
 
 Your affectionate Brother, 
 
 RoBT. Lowe, Junr. 
 
 In later life, Lord Sherbrooke by no means regarded the 
 Bar as the ideal profession for one who could not discern the 
 faces of judge or jury. But at this period he could see no other 
 opening, being resolutely determined not to enter any profes- 
 sion for which he felt no true vocation. Having thus decided 
 on his own course in life, and being above all things a man 
 of the highest resolution and independence of character, he 
 sought no aid from his father or friends. But his marriage, 
 as will be shown, was from the first a singularly happy 
 one, and the constant companionship of his wife from this 
 time until her death seemed to him more than compensation 
 for all his subsequent trials. 
 
 The following letters, written to his brother Henry just 
 before his marriage, brimming over with almost schoolboy 
 spirits, give a lively account of his pursuits and aspirations 
 at this period. 
 
 From Bobert Loive to Henry Porter Lowe. 
 
 Oxford : June 10, 1835. 
 Dear Henry, — As you seem to have appreciated my last letter 
 fully, and withal express a wish for another, I see no objection to 
 gratify you, provided always that I can find enough to say to fill a 
 sheet. It gives me great pain to renounce the thoughts of a trip to 
 Spain, notwithstanding the lice, Carlists, and other plagues where- 
 with that miserable country is afflicted. I seem, however, much 
 more likely to conduct two or three men to Beaumaris to read and 
 boat than to indulge in any such vagaries. I had thoughts of East 
 Cowes, but the guardian of one of my griffins stood out so stoutly 
 against the place that I was obliged to change my hand and check my 
 pride, and propose Beaumaris as a kind of compromise. 
 
 As touches the law, I believe that the smallest sum for which it 
 is possible to exist at one of the Inns of Court is 150/. a year, but 
 
 11 2
 
 100 LIFE OF LOPtD SHERBROOKE 
 
 I have too good an opinion of your and my own notions of comfort to 
 believe that we could vegetate under 100/. a year more. My 
 Magdalen Fellowship (when got) will be a great assistance to me, 
 as it will put 170/. into my pocket towards defraying my expenses in 
 town. 
 
 The way of life I should pursue is to read about seven hours a 
 day, which I consider enough for a Chancellor, never to dine in hall, 
 seeing the dinners are exquisitely beastly, but to get into some club 
 or other — the Junior University, for instance— where one would 
 meet old acquaintances, read the papers, and dine. If you are really 
 in earnest in your intention of study, I should advise you to read, 
 mark, leani, and inwardly digest the first two volumes of Blackstone, 
 particularly the first part of the second, and to throw in the last 
 chapter of the fourth, which is a history of the English Law drawn 
 with a very masterly hand. I should also recommend to your notice 
 Hume, and Smollett, and Hallam in his Middle Ages and Consti- 
 hitional History of Eiigland, and Eobertson's Charles the Fifth. 
 Most of these books are written in a very attractive style, and all of 
 them treat of subjects which ought to interest every English gentle- 
 man, so that you could not possibly bestow your time better than 
 upon them, whether you go to the Bar or not. 
 
 Since I began this letter I have been to London to keep a term, 
 and seen Herbert, who inquired very kindly after you. The weather 
 was hotter than I could have supposed possible at Senaar, and I lost 
 so much bodily from heat, and pecuniarily from cabs, that I am but 
 the shadow of my former self in both respects. Went to see Malibran 
 act the Sonnambnla, which she did well. 
 
 Aunt Sherbrooke and Aunt Elizabeth are coming here to-night 
 on their way to London. I came down by the Worcester mail ; 
 night being the only time when a gentleman can travel in this 
 weather ; you will be happy to hear that it is accelerated, arriving 
 in Worcester at a quarter-past eight, and the Gloucester in that town 
 at half-past seven. 
 
 The jMunicipal Corporation Bill seems to have satisfied all sides, 
 which I rejoice at not a little, as it wall give the Tories a decided 
 minority in the next Parliament. If you happen to fall in with a 
 little book called Major Dotvning's Letters, read it by all means ; 
 you will find it one of the most amusing collections of slang you 
 ever saw. I have got a Cambridge man to oppose me at j\Iagdalen, 
 a certain Kickards of Trinity, a first-class man, but I do not think 
 he has much chance. If you mean to read Law, you must not do 
 it by halves, for it is a very repulsive study, and London ofi'ers 
 so many temptations to one to be idle tliat nothing but dogged 
 resolution can save one from it.
 
 OXFORD 101 
 
 Write soon and give me your views of Beaumaris and reading 
 places in general, and believe me your affectionate Brother, 
 
 RoBT. Lowe. 
 
 The second letter was written a couple of months after- 
 wards, when he had gained the Magdalen Fellowship, and 
 addressed to his brother at Bagneres de Luchon. 
 
 No. 1, Green, Beaumaris : August 6, 1835. 
 
 Dear Henry, — I have used you wretchedly, horridly, d — nably, 
 in not writing to you before, particularly as I have plenty to say. 
 I got the Fellowship without much trouble, cause why, there was 
 no opposition, seeing that three other horses who were to start were 
 drawn, and I had nothing to do but to show my paces in walking 
 over. I was settled at Beaumaris, and went up to Oxford for a 
 week, on the Saturday of which I was elected, left by the ' Union ' 
 at half-past eleven that night, met the mail in Birmingham, and 
 got to Beaumaris at nine in the evening. What would your dog 
 Frenchman say to that '? By-the-bye, the King of the French seems 
 inclined to avail himself of the infernal machine as an engine to 
 silence the Press, and thus tread out the few embers of liberty still 
 left to that deluded nation ; if that be so, I should feel almost 
 inclined to wish that the next twenty-five gun-barrels aimed at him 
 may be pointed with more precision. 
 
 I like Beaumaris of all things ; for bathing and sailing it is 
 almost perfect, and the mountain view is splendid. I miss the 
 mountain walks we had at Barmouth, but it is impossible to com- 
 bine them with the sea, and I am content with my part of the 
 alternative. 
 
 Excellent dinners, spoilt by jolting and eaten on an uncom- 
 fortable rickety table, and dignified by the name of picnics, are the 
 order of the day. I have made acquaintance with the Vicar, Dr. 
 Howard, and his family — very pleasant people ; and with Sir Richaid 
 Buckley, who lends us a six-oar, against which Mr. Lowe cautions 
 me thus : ' It is full of danger and destruction in salt water — cave 
 cave to ! ' 
 
 We ordered a play last night of some wretched comedians, who 
 acted in a barn, and collected an audience which must have rejoiced 
 the cockles of their hearts. They want me very much to pull in the 
 regatta, which I am very unwilling to do, but do not know very well 
 how to get out of it without appearing ill-natured. I am very much 
 amused with your whopping adventure, which put me in mind of the 
 ferryman at Ballachulish, only that the result in your case was more 
 
 VOL. I. * n 3 
 
 JTT»T> A-RY 
 
 a A ATT A BARBARA
 
 102 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 serious. My mind is clouded with a gentle envy when I read your 
 description of the Pyrenees ; I fancy I shall prefer them to the Alps. 
 
 We have a party of Cambridge men here who were fighting the 
 other night, first among themselves, and afterwards with some 
 Welsh sailors, waking me out of my first sleep, and confirming my 
 theory of Can tabs. There is one of them whose supernatural hideous- 
 ness is as impossible to describe as the Pyrenees themselves ; a 
 kind of man who, if he meant to make love effectively, ought certainly 
 to wear a mask. I like Beaumaris much better than Barmouth, 
 and am sure it would have pleased my sisters far more if they had 
 had the wit to know it. 
 
 I had to make a speech upon my election the other day, which 
 I did with considerable effect. You have no idea what a gentleman- 
 like arrangement it is to be the only candidate for a Fellowship ; it 
 does away so completely with all foolish doubts and difficulties. I 
 shall be very glad to hear more of your Pyrenean ideas, and will 
 promise to answer any questions you may ask in your next letter, 
 as I have mislaid your former one, and, I fear, answered it very 
 imperfectly. 
 
 Your affectionate Brother, 
 
 EoBT. Lowe. 
 
 In the March following (1836), Lord Slierbrooke married — 
 but a matter of such supreme importance must be dealt with 
 in a separate chapter. After their wedding tour, Eobert Lowe, 
 with his wife, returned to Oxford, bought a small house (16 St. 
 Aldate's), and for four more years he continued his wearing 
 drudgery as a private tutor. In the following year (1837) 
 he was appointed a master of the schools, as a ' little-go ' 
 examiner. His pungent comments on the duties of this office 
 will be found in the Chapter of Autobiography. 
 
 The year 1838, as Lord Sherbrooke himself declares, seemed 
 likely at one time entirely to have altered his course of life. 
 The Greek Professorship at Glasgow, with a salary of 1,500/., 
 a house, and only six months' work in the year, fell vacant on 
 the death of Sir Daniel Sandford. One can imagine how 
 tempting this must have seemed to the newly-married, over- 
 worked Oxford private tutor. The following particulars may 
 be added to his own graphic account of the contest, in which 
 he was worsted by Mr. Lushington.
 
 OXFORD 103 
 
 In the Life of Archhishop Tait, by the present Bishop of 
 Iiochester and Canon Benham, is given the correspondence 
 between the Archbishop and his brother, Mr. John Tait, on 
 the subject of this Glasgow Professorship. Tait himself was 
 anxious at first to secure the appointment, and he had two 
 very strong recommendations — he was a Scotsman, and he 
 had been a student at Glasgow. But he was an Episcopalian 
 in orders as an Anglican clergyman, and he declined to sub- 
 scribe to the Confession of Faith. He accordingly withdrew 
 his name from the applicants, and in doing so wrote to his 
 brother, ' I shall be sorry if they appoint an indifferent suc- 
 cessor to Sandford.' Subsequently the future Archbishop 
 wrote to the Principal of the University of Glasgow, formally 
 withdrawing from the contest, and enclosing a ' testimonial in 
 favour of another candidate, Mr. Piobert Lowe.' ' 
 
 The Bishop of Rochester has kindly looked over the late 
 Archbishop Tait's papers, but has not been able to lay his 
 hand on this testimonial. The following, however, was for- 
 warded to Glasgow by the Rev. R. Michell, Lowe's private tutor 
 and intimate friend ; and was probably signed by Mr. Tait 
 of Balliol, as well as by other distinguished members of the 
 Union : — 
 
 Apprehending that an objection may be raised to Mr. Lowe as 
 incapable, from the shortness of his sight, of keeping order in a large 
 class, we beg to state our conviction that such an idea is founded on 
 an exaggerated view of his physical defect, a defect which is far more 
 than compensated in him by a high and resolute spirit, and com- 
 mancUng, though conciliatory manners. In proof of this opinion we 
 beg to refer to a fact of which we were eye-witnesses. 
 
 Several years ago, at a meeting of nearly 200 members of the 
 Oxford Debating Society, the subject being one of local and personal 
 interest, the greatest disorder prevailed, so great as to baffle every 
 effort to repress it, and to threaten the dissolution of the meeting. 
 At this period Mr. Lowe took the chair, and by his decision and 
 vigour, by fining one member and threatening others by name with 
 the same punishment, he completely restored order, which was not 
 
 ' Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. i. p. C8.
 
 104 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 again interrupted. ~ We believe if lie was found capable of repressing 
 disorder at its utmost height, if his sight served him in this instance 
 to detect and punish the disorderly, that in a class where his 
 authority would be so much greater, and through the absence of 
 excited feelings the obstacles to contend against so much less, he 
 could not fail to command the respect and attention of his pupils in 
 the highest degree. 
 
 If, indeed, Archbishop Tait signed this testimonial, it was 
 a truly forgiving and Christian act ; for, as Lord Rherbrooke 
 has told us, it was none other than the future Head of the 
 Church whom, on the occasion referred to, he had fined 11, for 
 ' disorderly conduct.' 
 
 However that may be, Lowe was not successful. He ad- 
 mits — and we may well believe him — that it was a very bitter 
 disappointment. Hew^as thoroughly weary of the monotonous 
 drudgerj^ of his daily life at Oxford, and, as the following 
 playful letter, written at the time to the Eev. E. Michell, will 
 show, he was very sanguine of getting the Professorship. 
 
 Bobert Lowe to the Bev. B. Michell. 
 
 Glasgow : July 6, 1838. 
 
 My dear Michell, — What have you done with that there certifi- 
 cate ? I am afraid you must have forgot the direction, and therefore 
 write to make sure. It is 
 
 Kobert Findlay, Esq., 
 
 Glasgow Bank, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 
 I am getting on well here, the thing rests between Lushington 
 and myself, and I do not think my chance the worst of the two. He 
 has got two or three votes certain, but they are from the least influ- 
 ential and respectable members of the Faculty ; the better class 
 having fought shy, and shown full as much attention to me as to 
 him. The Principal, MacFarlane, will determine the point by 
 adding himself to one side or the other. I have pretty good reason 
 to suppose that he is not ill-disposed to me. Mr. Findlay's influence 
 is very great, and my testimonials have beaten Lushington's in a 
 much greater degree than 1 had ventured to hope. Pray send that 
 letter, if not already sent, as in the present state of affairs it is of 
 great consequence. I am ^\Titing from a Dodson and Fogg shop,
 
 OXFORD 105 
 
 kept by one of the young Findlays in Glasgow, and two Scots are 
 jabbering law within a yard of me, which must be my apology in case 
 
 this scrawl is incoherent. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 EoBEET Lowe. 
 
 In a second letter to Mr. Michell, written on his return 
 to Oxford, Lowe explains to his friend that he was beaten 
 purely by local faction. 
 
 Bobert Loive to Bev. B. Michell. 
 
 ■■ Oxford : August 8, 1838. 
 
 My dear Michell, — Georgiana tells me you are anxious to hear 
 from me the circumstances which led to my defeat at Glasgow. I 
 had succeeded beyond my hopes, and one of those who afterwards 
 opposed me, said they had put off the election on purpose to get such 
 a person as myself. This I knew from unquestionable authority 
 was the state of things the day before the decision ; three 
 electors had pledged themselves to Lushington before 1 came 
 forward, but all the rest (seven) meant to vote for me. My 
 supporters quarrelled among themselves on a point which I am not 
 at liberty to mention, but which had no connection with Lush- 
 ington or myself, but turned upon their own local factions 
 which in a self-elected body, as you well know, lie pretty deep ; 
 to spite the rest one part of them went over to Lushington, 
 and brought him in. Thus, after having triumphed over the united 
 Whig and Tory interest of Scotland, Sir G. Clerk and the Lord 
 Advocate, after having distanced Lushington in public opinion as 
 far as he did the rest of the candidates, the turn of a straw rendered 
 all my efforts futile. I soon made up my mind to the matter and 
 came back home on Monday, with a resolution to think no more 
 about it, which I have kept. 
 
 Very truly Yours, 
 
 KoBEBT Lowe. 
 
 Although Lord Sherbrooke bore his disappointment in a 
 truly philosophic spirit, far different to that in which poor 
 Mark Pattison tortured himself over the loss of the Rectorship 
 of Lincoln, yet how freshly the incident came back to him when, 
 as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he revisited Glasgow to be 
 Pi^sented with the freedom of the city in 1872 ! In the 
 brilliant speech of grateful thanks, which he delivered on
 
 106 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBEOOKE 
 
 that occasion, he remarked : — ' Gentlemen, I am also parti- 
 cularly happy that this honour has been given to me by the 
 city of Glasgow, because, long years ago, the dream of my life 
 was to connect myself much more nearly than I am ever 
 likely to do with this city. I had at one time some reason to 
 suppose that I might have been elected to the honourable 
 and distinguished office of Professor of Greek in your Uni- 
 versity. To fail in that object was the greatest disappoint- 
 ment that ever happened to me in my life, but years soften 
 everything, and I now can only remember that the place, I 
 doubt not, is much more worthily filled by a distinguished 
 and elegant scholar.' 
 
 It is somewhat suggestive to reflect that had Eobert Lowe 
 succeeded in this quest he would never assuredly have gone 
 to Australia, nor would he in all probability have entered the 
 arena of the House of Commons. The duties of such a 
 professorship would have been congenial — he was never really 
 an ambitious man, and its emoluments would have been 
 ample for his wants. It is therefore more than likely that for 
 the rest of his life he would have been known as Professor 
 Lowe, and the world would never have heard of Viscount 
 Sherbrooke.
 
 ^-.^ai/T^r:<y^:*:.. *n 
 
 £ 
 
 
 (yf ■yr/ui Die re , ( '/icj/nri- 
 ' ht}6.
 
 107 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MAKRIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 
 
 (March— August, 1S3G) 
 
 On March 29, 1836, Eobert Lowe was married by Arch- 
 deacon Wrangham, at Holy Trinity Church, Chester, to 
 Georgiana, daughter of Mr. George Orred, of Tranmere, 
 Cheshire. 
 
 The wedding-day was marked by an adventure which was 
 sufficiently serious to test the fortitude of the young couple. 
 Scarcely had the carriage in w-hich they started for Festiniog 
 left the city, when it was overtaken by a terrific snow-storm. 
 The horses, blinded by the fury of the gale, struggled along the 
 road, which at every step grew more difficult. Meantime the 
 occupants of the carriage, unable to open the windows, were 
 half- suffocated by the thick mantle in which they were 
 wrapped. Further progress was beginning to be impossible, 
 when, to the relief of the travellers, they reached a way-side 
 cottage. Here they were hospitably entertained till the storm 
 had spent itself ; and, in the morning, they continued their 
 journey. 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke, in his autobiography, devotes only a few 
 lines to this epoch of his life. But he takes occasion to testify 
 to the admirable qualities of the lady he had chosen for his 
 wife — and these were no mere conventional phrases. From 
 the day of their marriage they passed through many wearing 
 and anxious experiences, and often life seemed hopelessly 
 dark to them. But Mrs. Lowe never for a moment despaired.
 
 108 LIFE OF LOED SHERBEOOKE 
 
 Her faith in the great gifts and lofty purpose of her husband 
 never faltered, and her loyal, courageous spirit triumphed 
 over every difficulty. Writing of this time, Lord Sherbrooke 
 calls it an ' auspicious year ' — and speaks of the tour in 
 Switzerland which they made in the summer, part of which 
 was enlivened by the company of his tutor, Mr. Michell, and 
 of another Oxford friend. 
 
 Of this tour Lord Sherbrooke handed me a diary, and 
 a brief personal narrative, for the purposes of this work ; 
 from these I propose to make somewhat copious extracts, if 
 only to show the mixed multitudes of English folk who now 
 • do ' the Continent (with or without the assistance of Mr. 
 Thomas Cook) how very different were the conditions of 
 foreign travel half a century ago. 
 
 The Diary. 
 
 Monday, June 13, 1836. — Left Oxford at half-past eight and 
 reached London at two ; got down in Oxford Street, went to 
 Colonnade Hotel, called on the Biddulphs, drank tea with Mrs. 
 Howe, 16 Cadogan Terrace, Sloane Street, Chelsea. — Hot ! 
 
 Tuesday, 14^/i. — Went to Fenchurch Street in a 'bus for our 
 passport. It cost 7s. Qd. ; got it endorsed by the Prussian Consul, 
 Hebeler, for 5s. more. Went to the Exhibition at Somerset House.' 
 Liked Turner's Rome, and Juliet and her Nurse at Sunrise, and 
 Cortez reading an account of his atrocities to Pizarro. — Cortez is 
 much injured by posterity in being coupled with his ilhterate 
 and unscrupulous contemporary. Went to the British Institution ; 
 admired Guido's Annunciation. 
 
 At the Water-color exhibition which we saw on Monday, admired 
 Nesfield's View in Arran ; Evans's Irish Highlands ; Fielding's 
 Summit of Snozudon ; Vieio up Loch Leven, Fielding ; Lancaster 
 Sands, Cox ; View on the Doivns, Fielding ; Mill on the Conway, 
 De Wint. 
 
 ' In a private letter, Mrs. Chaworth Musters writes : ' One point that 
 shows the many-sidedness of my uncle's gifts was his appreciation and dis- 
 crimination of works of art. It seemed like an intuition, for we could never 
 imagine how he saw them. I have often been with him at the British Museum, 
 of which he was a trustee, and he has walked about with Sir Charles Newton, 
 looking at statues and works of Greek art, talking about them and criticising 
 them so ably.'
 
 MAERIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 109 
 
 Got 200Z. in bills of exchange from Coutts ; dined in the Colon- 
 ntade with Michell on Aldermanic fare : — white bait and beef-steaks. 
 Went to the Opera, Grisi Desdemona ; Eubini Otello ; Tamburini 
 lago ; La Blache Elmira. After all it was a heavy performance 
 and the audience not particularly brilliant. I was very tired, but 
 Georgiana insisted upon staying to see the ballet. It was dreadfully 
 hot. 
 
 Wednesday, 15th. — Left the Colonnade at six and drove to the 
 Custom House. Having been duly imposed on by coachmen, porters, 
 watermen, and other scum of the earth who frequent that locality, we 
 weighed anchor for Rotterdam. 
 
 In addition to his entries in this Diary, Lord Sherbrooke 
 re-wrote the following brief account of the first half of his 
 trip : — 
 
 Lord Slierhrooke's Account of his Trip to Rotterdam and Bonn. 
 
 It was on a beautiful morning, on June 15th, 1836, that 
 my hackney coach, having conveyed me through the deserted 
 Strand and uncrowded Fleet Street with a facility which, in 
 the middle of the day, could have been accounted for by 
 nothing less than a pestilence, or invasion, deposited me at 
 the Custom House. The great city was quiet, but a restless 
 activity swarmed on the banks of the river. The voluble and 
 amphibious race who inhabit these regions left me no time to 
 speculate on the architecture of the Custom House (which I had 
 leis ure enough to contemplate on my return) and I was glad 
 when I found myself free from their importunity, and safely 
 landed — if I may say so — on the deck of the 'Namona,' steamer to 
 Eotterdam. The rows of lighters gradually became less dense, 
 the water visibly clearer and the banks more distant ; I looked 
 up, and behold ! the sky was cloudless. Nature had done her 
 part and Man was no longer there to mar it. We had no 
 awning, but the black pennant of smoke which floated above 
 us flung its broad shadow on the deck, and the sun seen 
 through it was as completely shorn of his beams as through a 
 piece of smoked glass. 
 
 Some time after we had lost sight of land, we fell in with a
 
 110 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 fleet of butterflies, steering they did not seem exactly to know 
 where. This was quite an event to the boys on board, who 
 employed the remains of daylight in chasing them from one 
 end of the vessel to the other.' 
 
 Before daylight we had crossed the Brill, and on coming on 
 deck at four I saw land on each side ; but two streaks so 
 narrow compared with the bold rocks of the Foreland, or even 
 the level banks of the Thames, that it seemed more through 
 courtesy than necessity that we condescended to keep in the 
 middle of the channel, and refrained from forcing our way 
 over an obstacle apparently so insignificant. We anchored at 
 Eotterdam at 5 a.m., after a very short passage of only twenty- 
 two hours. 
 
 There is nothing in the appearance of Rotterdam from the 
 water to announce to the traveller the presence of a great 
 commercial city. A simple row of old houses, with a single 
 row of trees before them, with a spire or two rising behind, 
 and fields on each side, as green as plentiful moisture can 
 make, are all that is to be seen. 
 
 At the Hotel des Pays Bas, I was shown up the painted 
 staircase into a bedroom large enougJi for a troop of cavalry 
 to bivouack in ; having established myself in a corner of this 
 apartment, I proceeded to do all that ablution could to remove 
 that unutterable feeling of dirt and degradation which every- 
 one feels who has passed twenty-four hours on board a 
 steamer. This, and a copious libation of Dutch tea, which is 
 really excellent, sent me forth into the town tolerably well 
 satisfied with myself. 
 
 The canals that intersect the streets in every direction, the 
 rows of trees by their side, the splendid country houses of the 
 
 ' In the Diary at this point he adds : ' Soon after I had tumbled into my 
 berth, somebody tumbled out of his ; loud laugh from a gentleman who is 
 generally quite within the Hmits of becoming mirth, ami from all the circum- 
 jacent aspirants after repose. Last thing I heard was Michell quoting from 
 j'Eschylus — 
 
 ^irapms irapri^ets Ka] KaKocrrpwrovs — '
 
 MARRIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 111 
 
 merchants, with then' marble floors, and ornamental chimney- 
 pieces and ceilings, showed at a glance that the Dutch were far 
 beyond the English in the art of making the haunts of Com- 
 merce agreeable.' All was strange and striking, language not 
 only foreign but absolutely unintelligible ; the gay and flaunt- 
 ing appearance of the shops ; the ships unloading at the ware- 
 house doors ; the women, pretty, but of so difl'erent a class of 
 beauty from our island belles ; and the extraordinary archi- 
 tecture of the houses. 
 
 The beau-ideal of a Dutch house seems to be to put into it 
 as many windows and of as large a size as possible, to cross 
 and surround these with the greatest possible quantity of 
 heavy woodwork, and to cover this with the greatest possible 
 quantity of paint. The brush is never out of their hands ; one 
 coat is hardly dry before another succeeds, and negligent indeed 
 must be that householder who has not at least one painter in 
 full employment. 
 
 Having hired a carriage for twelve guilders, I drove to the 
 Hague. It is the fashion to rail against the ugliness of 
 Holland, but to me it was full of interest. (1) In Eotterdam 
 I saw for the first time the little mirrors disposed at the 
 windows to aft'ord the inhabitants a view of the passers-by, 
 an arrangement which generally rouses the indignation of 
 tourists against the idleness and curiosity of the Dutch. But 
 as I have seen the same thing in almost every large town in 
 Germany and Switzerland, I must ascribe this to the unfortu- 
 nate situation of Holland, which brings her in contact with 
 the English traveller before he has rubbed off a single prejudice 
 or acquired an idea beyond the manners of his own island. 
 (2) The crops are luxuriant to a degree unknown in England, 
 and the very cows and sheep seem conscious of their happiness, 
 revelling in the abundance which surrounds them. 
 
 ' ' Walked out in the town, presented a letter to Monsieur Labouchere, for 
 whom we had a letter of introduction ; found him just setting out for Amster- 
 dam ; his office was very splendid.' — Diary, Thursday, June 16, 1836.
 
 112 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 The ride to the Hague was diversified by a few church 
 steeples, tame storks, and summer houses projecting into the 
 middle of green stagnant ditches, with their wide unmeaning 
 windows open to the road. The Hague is a pretty town, with 
 streets so wide that they have almost the appearance of 
 squares ; its gallery of pictures is beyond all praise, and our 
 dinner at the old Doellen ^ gave us a very favourable idea of 
 Continental cookery. The palace in the wood looks like one 
 side of a street, the other of which has been knocked down. 
 
 Sailed from Eotterdam next morning for Nimeguen, but 
 had not gone a mile before the engme was deranged, and we 
 were obliged to wait an hour and a half while it was being 
 repau'ed. Notwithstanding many gloomy prognostications, 
 we arrived at seven in the evening. Lady Mary Montagu 
 compares this place to Nottingham. The comparison may do 
 well enough, but the ' smug and silver Trent ' is little honoured 
 by a comparison with the sluggish and turbid Ehine ; and 
 Nimeguen does not cover one-tenth of the ground of its 
 British prototype. But there is a river at Macedon and a river 
 at Monmouth, an eminence at Nimeguen and at Nottingham, 
 and that suffices. 
 
 The next day and night I look back to with unmitigated 
 disgust. The banks of the river are totally without interest, 
 the steamer small, crowded, and unprovided with berths, and 
 the heat intense, notwithstanding which the rain fell in tor- 
 rents all night and deprived us of the miserable satisfaction of 
 sleeping on deck.'- We did not emerge from this aquatic 
 
 ' ' Dined at the old Doellen most sumptuously, with eighteen dishes at 
 2 florins a head. Met with a mad old Dutchman in the coffee-room, with whom, 
 in an evil hour, I entered into conversation. The consequence was that he 
 teased us all dinner-time with his remarks ; he said, among other soitises, that 
 his ideas when he siDoke English were devotional, French martial, and Dutch 
 amorous.'— From the Diary. 
 
 ^ His campagnon de voyage seems to have preserved his cheerfulness even 
 under these depressing circumstances if we may judge by this entry in the 
 Diary: ' Saturday, IStJi,. — Breakfast on eggs as usual, which gave Michell occa- 
 sion to say that though our journey was not a triumph, it might fairly be called 
 an ovation.'
 
 MARRIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 113 
 
 black hole till one o'clock on the folio whig day, when Cologne, 
 its cathedral with the crane on the top, and the long bridge of 
 boats which connects it with Deutz, rose before our impatient 
 eyes. The revolving altar-piece of Rubens, the tomb of the 
 three kings, and the purlieus of this dirty, irregularly built 
 town were soon looked over ; and it was with great pleasure 
 that I left it by the packet for Bonn. The voyage from 
 Cologne is uninteresting, though there are two or three pretty 
 views of the Seven Mountains. Bonn is the seat of one of 
 those moral and intellectual abominations — a German univer- 
 sity, a fact of which it is impossible to remain in ignorance 
 for a single half-hour, so great is the anarchy and disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 Lord Sherbrooke's narrative ends here, so the Diary is 
 resumed from the entries at Bonn. 
 
 The Diary (continued). 
 
 Monday, June 'lOth. — Rainy morning, looked over the College, 
 and obtained a good view from the Telegraph. Went down to the 
 quay at half-past ten. The porters refused to let us have our luggage 
 unless we paid a thaler, ten groschen more than the tariff. This 
 we refused, and began to put the luggage into the boat ourselves. 
 Hereupon ensued a scrimmage, the porters pulling and blaspheming 
 in French and German while a number of students who Avere standing 
 by laughed immoderately. Michell and I were the principal actors in 
 the scuffle, which was carried on with varying success till it was 
 interrupted by a little vapouring peace-officer who, without entering 
 into the merits of the case, took part most violently against us ; 
 finally settled by Morgan paying the sum demanded. Digesting our 
 wrath as well as we could, we started. The first part of the Rhine 
 disappointed my expectations, moderate as they were ; but the latter 
 more open part, from Andernach to Coblenz, fully equalled them. 
 Arrived at the Belvue, Coblenz, at half-past six, and were so pleased 
 with this beautiful city that we determined to remain there a day. 
 Walked over the bridge on the Moselle. 
 
 Tuesday, 21s^. — Georgiana and I went a mile down the Rhine in 
 a rowing boat, which cost us a thaler, to an island from whence she 
 made a sketch. Returned at nine, and went to a banker, from whom 
 we got a twenty-pound note changed ; we received twenty-three 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 ]14 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 Fredericks d'Or, four Thalers, and ten Groschen, which sum, after 
 much calculation, we foimd to be right. The Frederick is worth 17s., 
 the thaler, 3s., the groschen l]c/. Coblenz (corrupted from the 
 Latin conflueyites) has one good street, a bridge of boats over the 
 Rhine and of stone over the Moselle, and two squares, in one of 
 which are trees whose leaves were almost entirely devoured by cater- 
 l^illars ; and in the other rose trees, in full flower, which, much to 
 the credit of the inhabitants, remain untouched. At one o'clock 
 set off for Ems on foot, the ancient Embasis, missed our road, and 
 meeting fortunately with a German labourer, were set right. The 
 country rises to a considerable elevation and then descends into the 
 valley of Ems which is watered by a largish river. We saw on our 
 walk four varieties of campanula and many other beautiful flowers ; 
 dined at the Englischer Hof, and returned in a pouring rain which 
 obliged us to take refuge in a Diligence, in which we found a young 
 Scotchman, an engineer residing at Bonn, who had been on a tour 
 to Wiesbaden. Drank tea in the speise-saal, where the smoking was 
 intolerable. 
 
 Wednesday, 22nd. — Were called at five o'clock, and discovered 
 to our sorrow that it was a rainy morning, so wet that we gave up 
 all idea of reaching Mainz. Went to bed again, did not breakfast 
 until ten o'clock ; after dinner went to see the fortifications of 
 Ehrenbreit stein. The view is chiefly worth seeing from the clear 
 idea it gives of the course of the Moselle and of the Rhine, above 
 and below the confluence ; otherwise hardly worth the trouble of the 
 ascent. Ehrenbreitstein is garrisoned by 1,200 men, or two bat- 
 talions. 
 
 Thursday, 23rfZ. — Steam to Mayence — hot day — bad company — 
 disappointed with scenery — dined on deck — Georgiana began to be 
 ill. Mayence is garrisoned by Austrians and Prussians, the former 
 have dark complexions and drab uniforms. The cathedral is hand- 
 some, but red. Sour claret for supper. 
 
 Friday, 2Ath. — Off at six. Reached Manheim at half-past twelve. 
 Michell lost his trunk by taking his time too much, and I forgot my 
 bandbox ; made our reclamation at the Bureau. Went in voiture 
 to Heidelberg and looked over the castle. 
 
 Sakirday, 25th. — Georgiana, though very sick, made three 
 sketches of the Castle ; and I, though nearly as bad, went with her. 
 We then took a walk on the other side of the river — very hot. 
 Michell got up to the top of the hill. 
 
 Sunday, 2Qth. — Hotter. Voiture to Carlsruhe ; time from 1 1 
 till 7, distance 36 miles. Fine town, regular streets, square with 
 orange-trees in it. 
 
 Monday, 21th. — To Baden ; pretty road. Town inferior to Carls-
 
 MARRIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 115 
 
 ruhe. Dined at the table cVhote at 4 — plenty of English. Disap- 
 pointed in the town ; very sick. 
 
 Ttiesday, 28th. — Parted with Michell. Left Baden at 8 ; dined 
 at Offenburg. Georgiana and I began to feel better. Slept at 
 Kissingen, which we reached at 11. 
 
 Wednesday, 29th. — Left Kissingen at 8, reached Freybourg 
 at half-past 11 ; saw the Cathedral, and bought a poem on it from 
 the commissioner at the inn. Left Freybourg at 1, and arrived at 
 Basle at 9. The coachman pulled up under a tree and cut us off a 
 large branch of cherries. 
 
 Thursday, '30th. — Georgiana sketched and I 'jewed' till 2, 
 when we started with the same cocher for Berne. G. sketched the 
 Chateau of Ankenstein. Slept at Courendelin. Both of us quite 
 recovered from our indispositions. 
 
 Saturday, July 2nd. — Having arrived at Berne at 10 the previous 
 night, and put up at the Falcon, shopped till 1 o'clock, got my 
 passport signed (by the Charge d' Affaires) for Italy. Looked at the 
 Alps ; Georgiana sketched the town from the Zurich road. 
 
 Sunday, 'drd. — Packed up, and arranged to leave a trunk be- 
 hind us. Dined on buns and cherries ; started for Thun in the 
 diligence, arrived before sunset. 
 
 Monday, ith. — Set off 6.30, walked along the side of the Lake 
 till we got a view of the end thereof. Very hungry and hot. Got 
 some bread and cheese, wine and kirschen wasser, at a little public- 
 house. Bathed in the Lake and swam out to look at a view, to 
 Georgiana' s horror. Got back at seven, hot and tired enough. 
 
 Tuesday, 5th. — Left Thun by the steamer at 10. G. drew 
 at the end of the Lake and I bathed, devoured by flies whose 
 stings draw blood. Walked to Literlaken, about two miles. Fine 
 sketch of the Jungfrau ; and picked out a sketch for next day. 
 Lost our way coming back. 
 
 Wednesday, 6th. — Went out to take the sketch at 7 ; I came back 
 at 11 and wrote journal and letters. Made various excursions on 
 the following days, among which was one to the Giesbach in a boat ; 
 got behind the Fall. 
 
 Ttiesday, 12th. — Left Interlaken for Lauterbrunnen on foot, 
 having sent our clothes to Meyringen. Blazing hot. Georgiana 
 sketched the Bosenstein. Arrived at Lauterbrunnen, and were 
 reposing after the fatigue of the walk when Michell, Tireman, and 
 Lakin walked in. They dined, and went back to Interlaken in the 
 evening. Michell would not let them go with us over the Wengern 
 Alp. Walked to the Staubach, which is like a bottle of ale foaming 
 over — none of the force or fury of a cascade. 
 
 I 2
 
 13 6 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 Wednesday, 13i/^. — Georgiana went with intent to sketch the 
 Fall, but was so dazzled by the sun as to give it up. Took 
 heart of grace and walked up the valley to look at the Fall of 
 Schniadribach, which we should have reached if it had not been for 
 an avalanche, which arrested our course when near it. Georgiana 
 sketched a fall which (so unjust is fame) is higher and fuller of 
 water than the Staubach. 
 
 Thursday, 14:th. — Set off at 6 and walked over the Wengern 
 Alp to Grindelwald. Dined on the Little Scheideck. Fine \dew of 
 the Eiger in a mist. Refused to pay anything to the proprietors 
 of the glacier. 
 
 Friday, 15th. — Georgiana sketched till 1 ; then she started 
 on horseback, and Mr. Scholey and I on foot, up the Faulhorn. 
 Quarrelled with the man who led the horse because he would not go 
 far enough Sconsed him of his potirboire ; my guide seemed half 
 inclined to take his part. Got to the top of the Faulhorn, and slept 
 there. There were a Frenchman, a Pole, and a Russian, and a 
 German school. 
 
 Saturday, IQth. — Saw the sunrise in our blankets — beautiful 
 view. When a mist came on, we descended to Rosenlaui, where we 
 were overtaken by the rain and forced to stay the night. The 
 Frenchman (who had told us he had climbed the Faulhorn in 4 hours 
 when he had really been 9) going down the mountam without a 
 guide lost his way, and, as John Bunyan says, I saw him no more. 
 
 Sunday, 11th. — Pretty place — glacier — precipice. Dog bit me, 
 whereupon I wrote the following : — 
 
 Dog of ungentle, churlish mood, 
 I will not shed tliy felon blood, 
 
 Though smarting fi'om thy bite ; 
 For since I choose to trust thy free 
 And fawning show of courtesy. 
 
 In faith, thou'st served me right. 
 
 I did but come awhile to view 
 Helvetia's hills of snowy hue, 
 
 And rocks by torrents rent ; 
 And if it were a fault, in sooth 
 It did not merit from thy tooth 
 
 So sharp a punishment. 
 
 But when from England others come, 
 Self-exiled traitors to their home, 
 
 Then up ! vindictive ciu", 
 And drain fi-oni out their vampire veins 
 The latest life-drop that remains 
 
 Of all they sucked from her.
 
 MARRIAGE AND CONTINENTAL TOUR 117 
 
 Walked on to Meyringen. Saw the Eeichenbach, and made 
 arrangements for sending our things to Stanz. I dismissed my 
 guide at Eosenlaui, who had come with us from Lauterbrunnen — 
 slept on a shakedown. 
 
 Monday, 18th. — Left Meyringen at 10; weather re-established. 
 Dined at Guttenen ; slept at Handeck, in the chalet on beds of hay. 
 Mr. Scholey walked about above, and nearly frightened Georgiana 
 into a fit. Curds, cream, &c. in abundance. 
 
 Tuesday, Idth. — Saw this most splendid waterfall, with its iris 
 in full beauty, whereupon I wrote these verses : — 
 
 Falls of the Aar at Handeck. 
 
 Fanned by thy whirlwind's everlasting play, 
 Crowned by thy iris, vestiu-ed in thy spray, 
 Throned on the reeling rock and quivering pine. 
 What charms, what terrors, mighty stream, are thine 1 
 Two rival floods, no inore astmder pent. 
 Leap raging down, on mutual rum bent, 
 Like foemen grappling with their latest breath, 
 Who meet in fight, but never part in death. 
 
 Breakfasted on chamois, walked to the Grimsel, dined there, and 
 walked to the glacier of the Rhone, where we slept. 
 
 Wednesday, 20tJi. — Walked over to Realp, an inn kept by the 
 Capuchins, with whom I talked Latin. 
 
 Tuesday, 26th. — Walked from Stanz to Stadt, thence in boat 
 to Lucerne — beautiful view. Bought Atala and a little drawuig- 
 book for Georgiana, who has become fond of drawing buildings, 
 
 Thursday, 28th. — I ascended the Rigi with Scholey, of whom 
 I took my leave at the top ; returned to Kussnacht, and walked with 
 Georgiana, whom I had left below, to Aar. 
 
 • ••■•■•• 
 
 Saturday, 'dOth. — Walked to the top of Mount Albis ; got into 
 the mud in the dark. Old Avoman udth whom Georgiana would not 
 shake hands. 
 
 Sunday, Slst. — Walked to Zurich. 
 
 Monday, August 1st. — Got a letter from Fred announcing his elec- 
 tion [to the Fellowship at Magdalen]. Went in the co2C2:)6 of the 
 diligence to Schaffhausen — saw the Fall. Walked to Dusenhofen in 
 the dark. 
 
 Tuesday, 2nd. — Walked to Stein. Georgiana sketched. Miser- 
 able hole, full of old nuns. Fell in with a retour, who took us to 
 Constance.
 
 118 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 The succeeding entries are in the main illegible ; they 
 merely record walking excursions. Then there is an entry, 
 ' Wesen — pen too bad,' with which the Diary closes abruptly. 
 
 They walked, as he records, 700 miles all over Switzerland, 
 which, as some facetious traveller remarked, would be a 
 very big country if it were only flattened out ; Mrs. Lowe 
 carrying her sketch-book and drawing materials, and he him- 
 self the wardrobe and money, ' which, being silver, was the 
 heaviest of all.' 
 
 It was during this tour that Lord Sherbrooke composed 
 those ' Swiss Sketches ' in verse to be found in his slender 
 volume. Poems of a Life. 
 
 These verses were written for the gratification of his wife, 
 and (together with fugitive pieces which from time to time he 
 had given to various friends) were subsequently printed for 
 private circulation. At a late period of his life this collection 
 was, by a mistake, published to the world in an uncorrected 
 form and without any explanation of its origin. The error 
 could only be partially repaired by calling in the first and 
 issuing a second corrected edition. In this volume will be 
 found most of the verses which he wrote, while his wife 
 sketched, during this very happy summer-time of 1836 in 
 Switzerland.
 
 119 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARIANS 
 
 (1841) 
 
 Newman himself tells us that the ' Catholic revival ' in the 
 English Church dates from July 14, 1833, when Kehle 
 preached the Assize Sermon, in the University pulpit, on 
 National Apostacy. This famous sermon, and the still more 
 famous Tracts for the Times following it, were the result of 
 the inevitable reaction, religious and political, from the 
 aggressive Liberalism which had passed the Reform Bill of 
 1832 and suppressed the ten Irish bishoprics, and which 
 threatened yet more portentous changes in Church and State. 
 Strangely, nothing in the whole Liberal programme so dis- 
 gusted Newman as the proposal to ' emancipate ' the Eoman 
 Catholics. 
 
 From the earliest time that Lord Sherbrooke began to 
 think, and had opinions of his own, he was, until the close of 
 his life, on all these points, a staunch Liberal. He saw 
 nothing but good in this early Reform movement, and was 
 a strong upholder of the policy of Grey and Brougham. 
 What was held to be a still more heinous offence in the Oxford 
 of his day — as it touched the college revenues— he was an 
 earnest advocate of the abolition of the Corn Laws. Mr, 
 Froude once told me that parents were chary about sending 
 their sons to Lowe, though he was admittedly the most suc- 
 cessful private tutor in Oxford, for fear he might instil 
 into their minds the ' heresy of Free-trade.' As to the
 
 120 LIFE OF LORD SIIEKBROOKE 
 
 Church, Lowe held, as against Keble, Pusey, and Newman, 
 that instead of being weak or oppressed, she was altogether 
 too powerful and dominant, especially at the University. He 
 was therefore opposed root and branch to the ' Oxford,' or 
 * Tractarian ' movement,^ the aim of which w^as to combat, 
 and, if possible, overthrow the rising tide of Eationalism and 
 Liberalism in England by the revival of mediaeval theology, 
 and the strenuous assertion of the power and authority of the 
 Church. 
 
 It may well be imagined that, to an intellect so essentially 
 masculine and positive as Lowe's, much of the Tractarian 
 propaganda, with its theological casuistry and mere word- 
 spinning (as he would regard it), seemed too utterly futile to 
 call for serious attention. In this he was plainly mistaken ; 
 for the mass of men are led much more by their emotions 
 than by their reason, and the Tractarian party alone, in 
 Oxford at this time, appealed to the deeper feelings and pious 
 sentiments of the rising generation. On this very point 
 Newman makes a most pregnant observation : — 
 
 The Roman Church stops the safety-valve of excitement of 
 Reason ; we, that of the excitement of feeling. In consequence, 
 Romanists turn infidels, and Anglicans turn Wesleyans.'-* 
 
 Meantime the leaven was working, and these earnest 
 young religious reactionaries were drawing some strange fish 
 into their net. 
 
 There was Lowe's late schoolfellow, the unfortunate 
 ' senior prefect,' W. G. Ward, who left Winchester an admirer 
 of Mill and Bentham, and, after he reached Oxford, was for a 
 while a religious Liberal of the school of Dr. Arnold. One 
 would have thought when this same Ward became an avowed 
 
 ' ' This title is surely to be preferred to " Oxloid Movement," which seems 
 to destine that ancient seat of learning never to move, except backwards.' — 
 Cardinal Manning, by A. W. Hutton, p. 252 n. 
 
 - From letter of the Eev. J. H. Newman to Rev. H. .J. Rose, in Letters and 
 Correspondence of J. H. Neioman, edited by Anne Mozley, vol. ii. p. 187.
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACT ARIANS 121 
 
 Newmanite, and began to play those fantastic tricks which at 
 length closed Oxford and opened Rome to him, that Robert 
 Lowe would have paused from his daily drudgery of ten hours' 
 tuition, and sprung into the fray. Probably he regarded his 
 old schoolfellow's transformations of faith as too constitution- 
 ally pantomimic to be amenable to rational criticism. Doubt- 
 less he heard of the ' movement ' from his more intimate 
 friend, Roundell Palmer (' Catholicus,' as he playfully styles 
 him) ; but what he heard evidently did not flutter his pulse. 
 Lord Selborne expressly bears testimony that ' he held him- 
 self aloof from the theological controversies by which the 
 minds of many Oxford men, resident and non-resident, were 
 much occupied.' 
 
 But Newman's Tract 90 was too much for Robert Lowe, 
 and he forthwith entered into the theological fray by pub- 
 lishing an anonymous pamphlet, entitled The Articles Con- 
 strued by Themselves. Ward promptly took up the cudgels, and 
 of course made Newman's position (as he doubtless intended) 
 absolutely untenable. Lowe retorted with great vigour, and 
 with but little consideration for the feelings of his fellow- 
 Wykehamist ; which, to do Ward justice, he never murmured 
 at, for he preferred a stout foe, who could hit out straight 
 and hard. 
 
 It is singular, when we consider the future eminence of 
 Lord Sherbrooke, no less than the marked ability displayed 
 in these short controversial pamphlets, that his share in the 
 fierce battle that raged round Tract 90 should have been 
 almost completely ignored. So far as I know, no writer on 
 this subject seems to have called attention to them except the 
 late Dean Church and Mr. Wilfrid Ward in comparatively 
 recent publications. Cardinal Newman himself, in his well- 
 known Apologia, in which he has so much to say of his own 
 tract, omits all reference to, what Lord Selborne describes as 
 ' perhaps the most sensible ' of all the replies which it evoked. 
 But this is not surprising, as Newman evidently desired to
 
 122 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 minimise Ward's position in the movement ; ' and it was 
 Ward who, without consulting him, had rushed into the fray, 
 and in his own pecuhar fashion joyfully admitted all the 
 charges brought against Newman and the party by their new 
 antagonist. 
 
 Mr. J. A. Froude, who was himself for a while a Newmanite, 
 and whose brother, Hurrell, was one of the actual founders of 
 the Anglo- Catholic party, has written, as only he could, on the 
 Oxford Tracts ; but he, too, makes no mention of Lord Sher- 
 brooke's trenchant criticism of No. 90. On calling Mr. Froude's 
 attention to this oversight, he frankly replied : ' I had forgot- 
 ten, or I never knew, that Lowe had written about Tract 90. 
 But his mental eyes were always wide open in those days, 
 however it might have been with his material ones.' It is 
 still more remarkable that Dr. Abbott, who has been devoting 
 so much time to Newmanism of late, should have apparently 
 overlooked a writer who in two short pamphlets anticipates so 
 much of his own work. 
 
 Newman's object in Tract 90 was to prove — or rather sug- 
 gest — that the Thirty-nine Articles may receive a ' Catholic ' 
 interpretation ; and that anyone holding ' Catholic ' dogma 
 and doctrine may, without undue reservation, subscribe them. 
 The Tract was published on February 27, 1841, and on the 8th 
 of March following the four senior tutors (of whom Mr, Tait 
 of Balliol, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was one) ex- 
 pressly accused its author, writes Dean Church, ' with suggesting 
 and opening a way by which men might, at least in the case of 
 Koman views, violate their solemn engagements to their 
 University.' ^ On the 15th of March the Heads of Houses con- 
 demned the teaching of the Tract — precipitately and unwisely, 
 thinks Newman's great Anglican advocate. Dean Church. 
 Newman replied with his accustomed subtlety, but hardly 
 with his customary success, by boldly stating that the 
 
 ' See Dr. Abbott's Cardinal Newman in the Anglican ChurcJi. 
 - Oxford Movement, p. 291.
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARIANS 123 
 
 Articles were ' written before the Decrees of Trent,' and hence 
 ' were not directed against those decrees,' but merely, he 
 maintained, against certain popular superstitions and vulgar 
 errors which had crept into the Eoman system by the six- 
 teenth century. War was now fairly declared, and everyone 
 in Oxford ranged himself on one side or the other. 
 
 Then it was that Eobert Lowe entered the lists. His first 
 pamphlet, The Articles Construedhy Themselves, is now extremely 
 rare. I believe there is not a copy even in the Library of the 
 British Museum. He chose two mottoes, which clearly enough 
 reveal the temper of mind he was in after reading Newman's 
 most famous pamphlet : — 
 
 For though I do verily believe the Church of England a true 
 member of the Church, that she wants nothing necessary to sal- 
 vation, and holds nothing repugnant to it ; and had thought that to 
 think so had sufficiently quahfied me for a subscription, yet now I 
 ^\a.inly see, if I will not juggle ioith my conscience and play with 
 God Almighty, I must forbear. . . . And I plainly perceive that if 
 I had swallowed this pill, however gilded over with glosses and 
 reservations, and wrapped up in conserves, of good intentions and 
 purposes, yet it would never have agreed with me. — Chillingivortli 
 to Sheldon. 
 
 This is the last remedy, but it is the worst. It hath in it some- 
 thing of craft but very little of ingenuity ; and if it can serve the 
 ends of peace, or of eternal charity, or of a fantastic concord, yet it 
 cannot serve the ends of truth and holiness and Christian simplicity. 
 — Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, chap. iv. rule 23. 
 
 The Articles Construed by Themselves has little of that 
 epigrammatic point and brihiancy which characterise almost 
 all the later writings or utterances of its gifted author. But, 
 from its own standpoint, it is a singularly able and convincing 
 piece of criticism. Lowe's chief point is, that in dealing with 
 the Articles as a rehgious test we can apply to them only 
 two principles of interpretation : the ' internal ' principle, by 
 which we construe the ' Articles by themselves,' and the 
 ' external,' by which they are construed (or more likely mis- 
 construed) according to the real or supposed opinions of the
 
 124 LIFE OF LOPtD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 framers, orthe personal convictions of the subscriber. Theformer, 
 he declares, is the only sound principle, and is his ; the latter, 
 which must lead to confusion and evasion, is Newman's. 
 
 In other words, he says, with regard to subscription to the 
 Articles the question is. Do we bind ourselves by what their 
 framers lorote, or by what we think they meant to ivrite. 
 ' Clearly by what they wrote, for it is to that we subscribe.' In 
 the following passage he vigorously traverses Newman's 
 favourite device of discussing the intention of the Keformers 
 who drew up the Thirty-nine Articles : — 
 
 By admitting this kind of evidence to explain the Articles we 
 shall replace clearness and distinctness by the utmost doubt and 
 uncertainty. The opinions of every eminent man of that eventful 
 period must be ransacked and laid open ; his private discourse, his 
 confidential letters, his isolated sermons, and controversial works 
 must be examined ; the danger must be incurred of ascribing to him 
 opinions which his more mature reason disavowed ; and this in a 
 period when the human mind, awaking from the lethargy of a 
 thousand years, found a boundless field of investigation open before it, 
 and was obhged, from the imperious necessity of deciding many 
 things, to make some hasty decisions, which it afterwards recalled. 
 It is also undeniable that the Keformers, as independent thinkers, 
 were struck, according to the varieties of their characters and modes 
 of thought, more forcibly with some abuses than others. The sale 
 of indulgences to one, the infallibility of the Pope to another, tran- 
 snbstantiation to a third, might appear the crying sin of Romanism ; 
 and who has not observed that it is the tendency of controversy to 
 confine its view wholly to the point debated, while all except that 
 are thrown into the shade, and passed over as j^ro hdc vice of httle 
 consequence ? 
 
 Coming to closer quarters with his astute opponent, he 
 next proceeds to demolish the basis of Tract 90, which he states 
 to be, ' that it is the duty of everyone to put such a construc- 
 tion on the Articles as may bring them into accordance with 
 his own opinions, if possible.' 
 
 Mr. Lowe writes : — 
 
 What the limits to this possibihty are it is not easy to say, but 
 an examination of the Tract will show what they are not. For 
 instance, it is possible (right ?) for him who believes that some
 
 ROBEllT LOWE AND THE TRACT ARIANS 125 
 
 General Councils are infallible to sign an Article which says that 
 General (clearly meaning that all General) Councils may err — that 
 is, it is possible (right "?) for him to subscribe one proposition and 
 believe its logical contradictory. 
 
 In this spirit he discusses each of the points specially raised 
 by Newman to show that the Articles by some ingenuity are 
 ' patient ' of a Catholic interpretation. He then sums up with 
 severity in these words : — 
 
 The principle which would interpret the Articles by reference to 
 our own belief is radically immoral, the true principle being, as was 
 shown above, to interpret them by themselves. Holding fast this 
 noble and honourable principle, I cannot condescend so far below 
 its dignity as to follow Mr. Newman through his exposition 
 of individual Articles. In some he has been more, in others less, 
 successful and ingenious ; but wherever he is wrong it has been by 
 design, wherever right by accident. The same stain which our 
 Articles tell us attaches to works done before faith (the want of a 
 right motive) vitiates every one of his comments, and renders the 
 elaborate work of this deep casuist and learned theologian absolutely 
 worthless as a practical guide to the conscience. Adopt his inter- 
 pretation if you can believe it to be the literal one — that will only 
 degrade your understanding and confuse your ideas ; but shun his 
 principles like a pestilence when he would induce you to dethrone 
 conscience from her tribunal, and set himself, strong in all the soul- 
 destroying arts of verbal subtlety and mental reservation, in her place. 
 
 This is, no doubt, very plain language, and will sound harsh 
 in the ears of many good and pious persons, to whom 
 Cardinal Newman, without any formal act of canonisation, is 
 already a saint. No thoughtful person would willingly wound 
 the susceptibilities of others, especially of those who are of the 
 salt of the earth. But if we are to understand the issues of 
 this great controversy, which has so profoundly affected the 
 present and the future of two religious communions in this 
 country, as well as the hopes, aspirations, and lives of thousands 
 of men and women, it is essential to keep the facts steadily 
 before our eyes, and to hold our personal sensibilities and 
 predilections somewhat in check. 
 
 No writer on the England of the nineteenth century who
 
 126 LIFE OF LOPtD SHERBEOOKE 
 
 aims to go below the mere surface of political parties and so- 
 called social movements but must pay respect, and even a 
 measure of reverence, to the name of Newman. However, as 
 with all men of distinct genius, his aims, character, and aspira- 
 tions have been most completely misunderstood and distorted 
 by his own followers. Mr. Froude seems to me alone to hit the 
 mark when he speaks of Newman as a born ruler of men, and 
 even compares him to Cfesar. At the first blush, the com- 
 parison seems extravagant, if not meaningless ; but this 
 is simply because we do not sufficiently realise that there are 
 rulers and warriors in the realm of mind and spirit, as well as 
 in the more material regions of kingdoms and principalities. 
 From the time that Newman, in his post of influence as 
 Vicar of St. Mary's and Fellow of Oriel, found himself in har- 
 mony with the views and aims of Hurrell Froude and John 
 Keble, he set his face like a flint to oppose and overthrow the 
 hated hordes of modern Liberalism, which were then besieging 
 fiercely both Church and University. To expect him, as 
 Charles Kingsley did, and as Dr. Abbott apparently does, to be 
 always strictly fair, and impartial, and above-board in his 
 battle with the enemy is like expecting the Duke of Wellington 
 (who was Newman's favourite hero) to unfold his plans to the 
 marshals of Napoleon in the Peninsula. Being a born ruler 
 of men, he fought the foe with any and every weapon he 
 could lay hands on, the more deadly and swift the better for 
 his purpose. With every desire to be frank and confidential 
 to his intimates, he told them no more than was essential for 
 them to know as soldiers and subalterns. 
 
 Newman, on one occasion, referred to Keble and Hurrell 
 Froude as the thinkers, and to himself as the rhetorician of 
 the party. This was a strange error for such a man to fall 
 into about his own position and source of influence : he was, 
 in reality, the great strategist of the Tractarians. He was 
 always cool, and, in a sense, calculating ; however the battle 
 fared, and whatever was said of himself, he never lost his head.
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARIANS 127 
 
 Nothing can be more suggestive than the letter he wrote to the 
 Rev. Sir WilHam Cope on the death of Charles Kingsley : — 
 
 I never from the first have felt any anger towards him. . . . 
 A casual reader would think my language denoted anger, but it did 
 not. I have ever felt from experience that no one would believe me 
 in earnest if I spoke calmly. . . . Rightly or wrongly this was 
 the reason why I felt it would not do to be tame, and not to show 
 indignation at Mr. Kingsley's charges. 
 
 One who could thus, for controversial purposes, affect a 
 righteous indignation against an opponent, while remaining 
 quite calm and unmoved, was certainly an intellectual strate- 
 gist of a high order. Indeed it amounted to genius, and 
 quite raised Newman, as a party leader, above such good and 
 exceptional men as Keble and Pusey, who, in culture and 
 knowledge, in social position, nay, even in the Christian 
 virtues, were his equals, and in some respects his superiors. 
 
 This, I may confidently assert, was the view of Newman 
 which Lord Sherbrooke held from the time when he was 
 brought into actual conflict with him as the leader of the 
 Tractarian party at Oxford. 
 
 It is, on the surface, rather singular that the widespread 
 feeling among pious persons of the innate wickedness of 
 anyone who could venture to oppose Cardinal Newman is 
 chiefly confined to members of the religious communion which 
 he abandoned. This is only on the surface singular ; for 
 the Newman these persons revere is the Newman of St. Mary's, 
 Oxford, and he must ever stand out as their leader and spokes- 
 man before a harsh and hostile world. Thus, Dean Church, 
 the very flower of Anglican culture, whose well-balanced mind 
 and temperament gave even to his controversial writings a 
 fine tone of courtesy and an exquisite grace and lucidity, 
 fairly frowns and darkens whenever anyone attacks or even 
 criticises Newman. Painful as it is to say so, the Dean sum- 
 marises this controversy over Tract 90 quite in the ordinary 
 partisan spirit, and altogether unfairly to Lord Sherbrooke : —
 
 128 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 The more distinguished of the combatants were Mr. Ward and 
 Mr. R. Lowe. Mr. Ward, with his usual dialectical skill, not only 
 defended the Tract, but pushed its argument yet further in claiming 
 tolerance for doctrine alleged to be Eoman. Mr. Lowe, not 
 troubling himself either with theological history or the relation of 
 other parties in the Church to the formularies, threw his strength 
 into the popular and plausible topic of dishonesty, and into a bitter 
 and unqualified invective against the bad faith and immorality 
 manifested in the teaching of which No. 00 was the outcome.' 
 
 It is instructive to contrast with this judgment of Dean 
 Church the opinion expressed concerning this Tract by no less 
 a personage than the late Cardinal Manning : — 
 
 ]\Ianning (writes Mr. A. W. Hutton) never got over the dislike 
 he entertained for Tract 90. It always seemed to him of doubtful 
 honesty. When, in the autumn of 1845, after his return from his first 
 visit to Dollinger at Munich, Mr. Gladstone, much perturbed by the 
 grave series of secessions from the Church of England, asked 
 Manning if any one principle could be found that would explain 
 them, the latter said, after reflection, * Yes ; tvant of truth.' At a 
 much later time he said that he thought he must have had in his 
 mind the impression of dishonesty produced by the shifty arguments 
 of the last Tract. - 
 
 If this be so, it is a pleasure to be able to record that on 
 one question, at least. Lord Sherbrooke and Cardinal Manning 
 were in complete agreement. But many good and pious souls, 
 who find the spiritual sustenance they most need in the beau- 
 tiful passages of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, in the per- 
 sonal revelations of the Apologia, and in the hymn, ' Lead, kindly 
 light,' will continue to brand anyone who seriously differs from 
 Newman as either hopelessly wicked or helplessly benighted. 
 
 No sooner was Lowe's attack on Tract 90 issued than 
 Newman's most intelligent and active-minded disciple,-"* W. G. 
 
 ' The Oxford Movement, p. 294. 
 
 - Cardinal Manning, by A. W. Hutton, pp. 252-3. 
 
 * Disciple is hardly the word. Waixl, as Newman himself said, was 
 ' never a Tractarian, never a Puseyite, never a Newmanite.' He chose to ally 
 himself with Newman, but was then and always purely a ' Wardite,' acting 
 always on his own initiative, and, as will be seen, to the undoing of the party 
 or parties specified.
 
 EGBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARTANS 120 
 
 Ward, again rushed into the fray. He issued a reply to Lowe's 
 pamphlet, entitled A Few More Words in Defence of Tract 90 
 (he had already published A Few Words). Newman, who 
 realised as no one else did the strength of the forces slowly 
 gathering against him, must have trembled at such unsolicited 
 and compromising support. With regard to the Articles, said 
 Ward, the thing to do is to subscribe them in a ' non-natural 
 sense.' This was precisely what Lowe had pointed out was 
 the real purport and outcome of Newman's teaching in 
 Tract 90. 
 
 Lowe replied to Ward with Observations Suggested hi) * A Few 
 More Words in Sujyport of No. 90.' He now placed his name 
 on the title-page and acknowledged the authorship of The 
 Articles Construed by Themselves. The motto, from his favourite 
 Sir Walter Scott, evidently passed over the head of Ward, and 
 pointed to Newman himself : — ■ 
 
 For he by spells of glamour bright 
 
 Could mahe a Ladg seem a Knight, 
 
 The cobwebs on a dungeon-wall 
 
 Seem, tapestry in lordly hall, 
 
 And Tjouth seem age, and age seem youth — 
 
 All ivas delusion, naught ivas truth. 
 
 Li the pamphlet itself, however, he promptly turns his 
 attention to his immediate antagonist : — 
 
 "O^ 
 
 The first thing that strikes us is, that a man may, according to 
 this view, conscientiously sign the Articles without ever having read 
 them ; that if he can satisfy himself that he was not intended to 
 he excluded, he is not excluded. The Catholics (1 use this term 
 in this and in my last pamphlet as opposed to and exclusive of Pro- 
 testants, not in its generic sense, in which Protestants claim to be 
 Catholics as well as they) — the Catholics prove this by Melanchthon, 
 by the Homilies, and other contemporary authorities. But the 
 disciples of Owen and Irving ^ see opened to them by such reasoning 
 a readier and shorter argument for admission into the Church of 
 England, an argument which, if they were blest by the teaching of a 
 
 ' Robert Owen, the Socialist, and Edwai'cl Irving, founder of the Catholic 
 Apostolic Church. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 180 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 moralist like Mr. Ward, they would not be slow to use. How 
 could they, two sects only founded in the present century, be 
 intended to be excluded by Articles drawn up nearly three centuries 
 ago? And, if so, how, upon Mr. Ward's principle, are they 
 excluded ? 
 
 As throwing some light on this controvers}', and particularly 
 on the tone adopted towards both Ward and Newman by their 
 vigorous assailant, the strange story of a clergyman named 
 Sibthorp is worth recalling. This gentleman, after a visit to 
 Dr. Wiseman at Oscott, suddenly joined the Church of Eome. 
 After a while he seems to have grown tired of it, and came 
 back to the English Church and to Oxford. Ward thereupon 
 wrote to a Eoman Catholic friend with whom he was in con- 
 fidential correspondence, ' By this time you have doubtless 
 heard of Mr. Sibthorp's step. How unspeakably dreadful ! It 
 makes one sick to think of it.' 
 
 And Ward himself was then an English clergyman ! Little 
 wonder that Eobert Lowe, whose ' mental eyes ' were now 
 thoroughly wide open, should bluntly tell him that his own 
 proper place was the Church of Eome. 
 
 Mr. Ward has given no reason for his rejection of my theory ; 
 nor am I aware that it is incompatible with his principles, as it is 
 drawn from grounds common to Protestant and Catholic : but it is 
 incompatible with his remaining in the Church, What matters it, 
 then, what its intrinsic merits may be ? 
 
 This may well close the account of this controversy. 
 W. G. Ward was indeed the enfant terrible of his party. He was, 
 personally, the most ingenuous and kindly-natured of men, as 
 the beautiful testimony of his steadfast friend, the late Arch- 
 bishop Tait, sufficiently proves ; but he was what politicians 
 call an ' impossible ' man. No one could work with him, and 
 while he alternately annoyed and amused his opponents, he 
 utterly decimated his friends and destroyed their cause. 
 
 Ward, more than any single person, brought about, or at 
 least precipitated, the collapse of the Tractarian movement.
 
 EGBERT LOWE AXD THE TRACTARIANS 131 
 
 and by increasing Newman's trials and difficulties, forced him 
 to quit Oxford and finally to join the Eoman Communion. It 
 ■was after surveying the wreck of fondly cherished hopes and 
 the ruin of long and anxious labours that Dr. Pusey declared 
 of the seceders to Eome : ' All had deteriorated except New- 
 man, who was too good to be spoilt, and Ward, who was too 
 bad to be made worse ! ' Like most clever sayings, this was 
 not altogether just ; but if Ward were a trial to Newman, he 
 was a veritable pestilence to Pusey. 
 
 After Mr. Lowe had left these shores and had taken up 
 the threads of his life again in Sydney, news came of his 
 quondam antagonist's marriage. Now W. G. Ward had been 
 a fanatical upholder of the sanctity of priestly celibacy, and 
 he was still in Holy Orders in the English Church, while his 
 wife was then a devoted follower of Dr. Pusey. This charac- 
 teristic proceeding brought down every form of ridicule on 
 the devoted heads of the Tractarians. To their horror and 
 disgust, too. Ward must needs marry just at the time that he 
 was on his trial at Oxford for publishing his Ideal of a Christian 
 Church, which, following Tract 90 and the controversy thereon, 
 had arrayed all the University authorities against the party. 
 The announcement of his approaching marriage turned a 
 tragedy into a farce; but we may well forgive the High Anglicans 
 for not joining in the laughter. Ward himself writes to his 
 fiancee : ' J. Keble is mnch pained, and Archdeacon Manning 
 extremely so. . . . None of the company wished me joy, and 
 Church's manner at entering was decidedly cool.' 
 
 The humour of the situation must have struck the brilliant 
 Oxford exile at the Antipodes. In a prominent column of the 
 Atlas, he inserted a notification of the marriage though his 
 Colonial readers must have been sorely puzzled to know the 
 reason, for it is hardly to be supposed that a single subscriber 
 had ever heard Mr. Ward's name. How true it is that * one 
 touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.' 
 
 Tract 90 and the consequent controversy mark the col- 
 
 k2
 
 132 LITE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 lapse, or rather the temporary echpse, of Anglo-CathoHcism at 
 Oxford. But certainly W. G. Ward, its stalwart defender, did 
 much more to bring this about than Eobert Lowe, who so 
 vigorously assailed it. To use Newman's own phrase, ' the 
 game was up.' But he alone of the three leaders recognised, 
 or at least admitted, it. It is, however, open to the followers 
 of Keble and Pusey to point to the present changed condition 
 of the English Church, and to maintain that they, and not 
 Newman, took the wiser course. The Tractarians as a party 
 were scattered and broken, and the rushing tide of Liberalism 
 swept in and carried everything, at least for the time, before 
 it. The struggle was maintained for some years, until Newman 
 sought refuge in the Church of Eome (1845). 
 
 Eobert Lowe had left Oxford, and was in London, study- 
 ing the intricacies of sj)ecial pleading under the late Sir 
 Barnes Peacock. The following letter written by him at 
 this time to the Eev. E. Michell, of Lincoln, will show' 
 how thoroughly Newman's pamphlets had aroused him to 
 action : — 
 
 Robert Lotve to Bev. B. Michell. 
 
 34 Burton Crescent (undated). 
 
 I have read Newman's last tract, which I think a fond thing 
 enough, and from which I am half-inclined to think he has a hanker- 
 ing for Popery after all, and not merely a speculative predilection 
 for Catholicism, as I used to think. Why, otherwise, he should 
 encumber his creed with purgatory, saint and image worship, and 
 similar gammon, I cannot imagine. I must go and talk to 
 Catholicus (that is, Eoundell Palmer) on the point. Rumours are 
 rife that you are going to do something dreadful at Oxford in tlie 
 way of an answer to Newman by Convocation. As a Ilampdenite, 
 I can only think of Acticon 
 
 ov a)/i(!(riT(H (TKvXaKfi ovs ffifxyj/aTo 
 fii((T7r('t(Tairro. 
 
 The hounds will gather at the huntsman's hollo, 
 And where he leads the obedient pack will follow. 
 
 But if he goes among them witliout his red coat he is very likely to 
 be torn in pieces. I shall be glad if such a vote is proposed, as it
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND THE TRACTARIANS 133 
 
 will give me an excuse, to myself, for revisiting Alma Mater, and 
 venting the concentrated venom of years in one vote.^ 
 
 This is, of course, not to be taken altogether litera%. 
 In writing to Michell and other intimate friends, it was 
 customary for Lowe to express himself at times in an uncon- 
 ventional or humorous way ; but beneath the fun there was 
 clearly a serious intent. 
 
 ' Speaking on the ' Oxford University Bill ' (May 1, 1854) then before the 
 Committee of the House of Commons, Lowe said : ' In 1836, eight hundred per- 
 sons were brought up to condemn a work of Dr. Hampden's, which not one- 
 tenth part of them had ever read. That same Convocation afterwards turned 
 on those of whom it was the obedient instrument in 1836, hke Actseon's dogs, 
 and came up with the same want of reflection, and the same heat and violence, 
 to condemn their doctrines.'
 
 134 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOIvE 
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 (1841-1842) 
 Called to the Bar — Emigration to Australia 
 
 EoEERT Lowe had matters to think of more nearly affectmg 
 his immediate future and that of his wife than the Tractarian 
 eontrovers3\ Not only did he fail to secure the Greek pro- 
 fessorship at Glasgow, but also a much smaller appointment, 
 the then newly-created Preelectorship of Logic at Oxford. ' I 
 really think,' he remarks, * if I had obtained it I should very 
 probably have shrunk from the plunge into the great world 
 which I was about to make.' 
 
 As he did not obtain it, he decided to take the plunge. 
 The little house, 16 St. Aldate's, was sold, and Mr. and Mrs. 
 Lowe removed to 34 Burton Crescent, Bloomsbury, a locality 
 never by any means fashionable, and far less so now than 
 then. 
 
 Throughout his period of hard work and estrangement 
 from his father, his aunt, Mrs. Sherbrooke of Oxton Hall, to 
 whose estate and name his elder brother afterwards succeeded, 
 was truly a friendly counsellor, a circumstance that he ever 
 remembered with gratitude. The following letter, written at 
 this crisis, lays open his plans, and is written in the manly, 
 hopeful, yet affectionate tone of a young man, about to embark 
 on a new, and perhaps perilous, enterprise, who craves for 
 sympathy and hearty good wishes, as well as for counsel and 
 admonition : —
 
 IN LONDON 135 
 
 Bohert Loive to Mrs. Sherhrooke, of Oxton Hall. 
 
 Friday : 16 St. Aldate's, Oxford. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Sberbrooke, — I think you will be pleased to hear 
 that 1 have at length fixed uioon a house in London. My choice is 
 34 Burton Crescent, a very good house, and at a very moderate rent 
 (for London). I have been greatly dismayed in looking out for a 
 house by the immense rents which are asked. I find it absolutely 
 impossible to obtain a house for less than lOOZ. a year, including 
 rates and taxes ; my present one is 851., which with rates and taxes 
 will be brought to about that sum. 
 
 Burton Crescent nearly touches Euston Square with one horn 
 and Tavistock with the other ; it is about three-quarters of a mile 
 from Lincoln's Inn, and its vicinity to the New Eoad [now Euston 
 Eoad] gives an easy approach to the more westerly and fashionable 
 parts of the town. 
 
 My residence at Dinan has been particularly agreeable this 
 summer ; my lodgings commanded a most beautiful prospect, and 
 the previous knowledge I had gained of the people and country 
 enabled me to enjoy the pleasures derived from both to the utmost. 
 As a specimen of the price of provisions, my wife, myself, and an 
 English maidservant lived very comfortably for three months for 
 24:1. I have also made some very kind and agreeable friends this 
 summer — a Mr. Leake, his wife, and daughters ; he was private 
 secretary to Lord Grey and has now a situation in the Treasury. 
 During the five days we were in London searching for lodgings we 
 dined with them there. ... As a set-ofl'to all this (which, however 
 shght in itself, to one so little favoured by fortune as I really looks 
 like prosperity), I have lost the dearest and kindest of my friends, 
 Mrs. Weguelin. She was the niece of Lord Sydenham, the Governor- 
 General of Canada, and daughter of a Mr. Thompson, who was 
 drowned in the Thames last year. . . . There was no one living 
 whom I more entirely loved and esteemed, and to whose society, a? 
 residing near London, I looked forward with more pleasure. Never- 
 theless, not as I will, but as God will. She was only twenty -five. 
 I have also made friends with another family, of the name of 
 Tyndall. I stayed in Guernsey ten days on my return from France, 
 and received from them during that time the greatest and most 
 miceasing kindness. 
 
 It is always difficult to form an opinion of what is going on 
 in France from the provinces ; but I believe from all I could hear 
 and learn there will be no war this time. I am now in Oxford, 
 finishing off my pupils. My wife is in Hampshire with her brother. 
 You have perhaps heard that my youngest sister-in-law is going to
 
 136 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 marry a Mr. Dunbar, eldest son of a Sir Archibald Dunbar, a Scotch 
 baronet. The wedding is fixed for November 5. 
 
 With duty and love to Colonel and Mrs. Coape, believe me always, 
 Most sincerely and gratefully yours, 
 
 RoBT. Lowe. 
 
 "Writing again to Mrs. Sherbrooke to thank her for the 
 present of a law dictionary, he remarks : ' I am now working 
 eight hours a day, and shall have hard work of it, as the 
 term is three weeks longer than usual, owing to the lateness 
 of Easter.' 
 
 Nor was Mrs. Lowe slow to recognise the kindness and 
 sympathy shown to her husband and herself by his aunt at 
 this their period of ' storm and stress.' Some passages in 
 her letter to Mrs. Sherbrooke are ver}' suggestive, revealing 
 her own character as well as his severe drudgery, borne so 
 uncomplainingly. ' His spirits,' she writes, ' are quite raised 
 to their old level again, and he is as joyous as he was some 
 years ago. I was not aware to its full extent how much he 
 disliked his present occupation, and how heavily it weighed 
 upon his mind, until I witnessed the relief the anticipation of 
 release from it is to him.' 
 
 The letter continues in that strain of splendid confidence 
 in her husband's power to overcome all difficulties, and to rise 
 to any eminence, however lofty, which characterises all Mrs. 
 Lowe's correspondence. ' He is reading law from morning to 
 night : it seems quite a delightful occupation. I am also glad 
 he appears to find the law so easy ; from the constant cultivation 
 to which he has subjected his mind, the difficulties of which 
 others complain appear trivial to him. He has already, I assure 
 you, from his memory been able to correct two old lawyers on 
 some law points. I look forward with the greatest assurance 
 to his some day becoming a great man, he unites such rare 
 industry with his abilities.' 
 
 After the young couple had left Oxford, Mrs. Sherbrooke 
 continued her good offices, and did all in her power to
 
 TN LONDON 137 
 
 o 
 
 reconcile the rector of Bingham to his son. The following- 
 letter, written evidently under great emotion, and in reply to 
 some overture of his aunt, reveals Lord Sherbrooke's character 
 in a truly noble light ; few have ever written at any time of 
 life so fine and manly a defence of their conduct and convic- 
 tions : — 
 
 Bobert Loiuc to Mrs. Sherbrooke. 
 
 Saturday : 34 Burton Crescent. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Sherbrooke, — We have had a visit from Henry and 
 Miss Fane ; she is certainly not a beauty, but seemed very lively 
 and good-natured. I was very sorry that the unfinished state of our 
 house, in which as yet there is only one room habitable, hindered 
 our seeing more of her. Henry dined with me on Friday, and 
 seemed to think that my father's feelings towards me had undergone 
 considerable modification, and, in fact, that he would be glad to hear 
 from me. I have paused for further and more precise information 
 before I take a step so important, and one which, if taken rashly, 
 may lead to such serious results. Unless my father can prevail upon 
 himself to abstain from going over again past topics of difference, 
 there would be but little profit in provoking a correspondence which 
 can lead to no good result. 
 
 It is not now, after all that I have done and suffered, that I am 
 inclined to be wanting in the resolution I have long taken never to 
 let hope, or fear, or any other motive, induce me to subscribe to any 
 statement derogatory to my character, never for the sake of an im- 
 mediate advantage to do my honour a lasting miscliief. I trust, 
 whatever may be the result of the overtures that have been made to 
 me, you will do me the justice to believe that I approach the subject 
 with every wish to conciliate, and that the concessions I am willing 
 to make are only limited by the duty I owe to my own character, 
 which I would not willingly lower in the opinion of my friends, and, 
 least of all, of myself. 
 
 Surely this resolute attitude redounds to Lord Sherbrooke's 
 honour. A more compliant and less sincere man would have 
 surrendered at discretion ; a more commonplace and vindictive 
 nature would have borne a lifelong grudge against those whom 
 he felt were dealing so harshly and unjustly with him. It 
 is given to few men, and those of the rarest and best of our 
 kind, to maintain their own self-respect with such dignity
 
 138 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 and modesty, such absence of self-assertion and vindictive- 
 ness. 
 
 He then goes on to tell his aunt of his troubles with work- 
 people at Burton Crescent, and of his final success with pupils 
 at Oxford. * You will be glad to hear that I only sent four 
 pupils up for their examinations at Oxford, and that they all 
 appeared in the first class — a thing which, as far as I know, 
 never happened to anyone before. So my star has set in 
 glory.' 
 
 In the Chapter of Autobiography, Lord Sherbrooke tells us 
 of his legal studies under Mr, Coulson and the late Sir Barnes 
 Peacock, and gives us, with his customary vigour of phrase, 
 his views on the iniquities of ' special pleading.' During his 
 residence at Burton Crescent he kept up an intermittent 
 correspondence with the Eev. E. Michell, who was now Fellow 
 of Lincoln and Logic Professor. 
 
 The friendship between Lowe and Michell seems not to 
 have weakened by time or distance. Years afterwards Lowe 
 regularly forwarded copies of his speeches delivered in the 
 Legislative Council, Sydney, to his old tutor at Oxford. 
 Mr. Michell was then Public Orator (1848), and Bampton 
 Lecturer (1849) ; but, despite these academic greatnesses, he 
 apparently took the keenest interest in his former pupil's on- 
 slaughts on colonial governors and grasping squatters. ' He 
 used to show these speeches to me,' writes the Rev. E. S. 
 Ffoulkes, ' and would return them to Lowe full of revisions 
 and annotations.' From such circumstances one gets a rather 
 different view of Piichard Michell to the jaundiced portrait of 
 him in Mark Pattison's Memoirs. But perhaps, like other 
 able men, Michell was a good friend and a good hater ; while 
 he liked Lowe, he disliked Pattison, and so showed quite 
 difierent sides of his character to each. 
 
 Of the many letters which Piobert Lowe wrote to 
 Mr. Michell from Burton Crescent and from Sydney, only a 
 few have been preserved ; but these are sufficient to show
 
 IN LONDON 139 
 
 how close was the mtimacy. To his old tutor and friend he 
 poured out, in a semi-humorous way, all his troubles, 
 financial, legal, and domestic. Of the mere business matters 
 on which he consulted Michell, and which were then of 
 such vital importance, there is no need to say anything 
 further than this : despite all his expenses and difficulties, and 
 the loss of his income as a private tutor, Lowe steered himself 
 clear of the shoals of debt. As Mrs. Lowe remarks, he seemed 
 to find the law comparatively easy, though its useless techni- 
 calities and obsolete procedure were by no means congenial to 
 his intellect. This allusion to the late eminent member of the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Sir Barnes Peacock, 
 is amusing : ' I am studying the noble art of Special 
 Pleading under the wings of a man named Peacock — who 
 is, indeed, covered with silver wings, and his feathers with 
 gold.' 
 
 Later on he writes to Michell joyfully, to tell him that tlie 
 breach between his father and himself is healed :— 
 
 I have not yet told you of what has happened in our family. I 
 have received from time to time different intimations from divers 
 quarters that my father was open to overtures to me. At first I 
 held back ; but the thing was so often and from so many quarters 
 repeated to me that I began to believe it, and wrote accordingly 
 a letter, not particularly conciliatory, which, to my infinite surprise, 
 was swallowed greedily, and we are now the best friends imaginable. 
 I have been staying in Notts, where we have been uncommonly well 
 received, and everybody has taken an immense fancy to my wife ; so 
 that they mean to compensate xpo''<^'' by TTocroj'. . . . My father lias 
 sent me lOOZ., and Mrs. Sherbrooke the same, so that lam richer 
 than ever I was before. ... 1 leave my conveyancer in May to 
 go to Mylne, of Balliol, an equity draughtsman, for a year, to pay 
 whom one of my 100/. will come in very handy. 
 
 Thus practically closed the unfortunate misunderstanding 
 between father and son ; but it by no means closed the latter's 
 troubles and anxieties. 
 
 Piobert Lowe was duly called to the Bar by the Honourable 
 Society of Lincoln's Inn in January 1842. But the dark
 
 140 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 clouds had not yet passed. The years of hard work told 
 then' tale on his unfortunate eyes, now rendered most acutely 
 pamful. Driven to despair, he consulted those wonderful 
 oculists, who examined his eyes and prophesied that he 
 would be completely l)lind in the space of seven years. It 
 may assist the narrative to repeat his own reflections on 
 receiving this dread intimation : — 
 
 It is not very difficult to imagine the bitterness of such a reve- 
 lation. To be told at eight-and-twenty that I had only seven 
 more years of sighi, and to think of the long night that lay beyond 
 me was bad enough ; but the reflection that the object which I had 
 struggled through a thousand difficulties with such intense labour 
 to attain was lost to me — was almost as bitter ! 
 
 He then proceeds to tell us that the impossibility of 
 doing anything at the English Bar before the night came 
 determined him, acting on medical advice, to emigrate to 
 Sydney ; and at the Bar of New South Wales try to make a 
 modest fortune in the aUotted seven years. Truly, as he him- 
 self says, ' strange advice ' ; for, of all climes in the world, 
 that of Australia has the most dazzlmg atmosphere. To such 
 eyes as Lord Sherbrooke's, which instinctively shunned the 
 light as being so intensely painful, one would have thought 
 that a single summer in Sydney must mean total blindness. 
 However, as the sequel shows, he managed to avert that dire 
 catastrophe. 
 
 In the midst of this fresh trouble he writes as cheerfully 
 as ever to Michell : — 
 
 It has been decided, with the consent of my father and friends, that 
 I am to go to Sydney, in Australia, to try my luck as a conveyancer, 
 an animal much needed in the Antipodes. It is rather a startling 
 resolve ; but my wife does not dislike it, and I see little prospect of 
 doing good here to decline a possible opening from any quarter. 
 
 I want you to find me some introductions to the people at 
 Sydney, as I know you have connections out there ; also to inquire 
 at Oxford, so as to get me as many as possible. The Bishop I should 
 like to know, and Dr. Lang, the head of the College.
 
 IN LOXDOX 141 
 
 It is strange that Lord Slierbrooke, then knowing nothing 
 of Sydney, should have singled out those two eminent but 
 mutually antagonistic Australian colonists. The Bishop was 
 Dr. Broughton, an estimable and, in a sense, almost great, 
 prelate, who owed his connection with Australia (originally 
 as Archdeacon of New South Wales) to the Duke of Welling- 
 ton. There is on record the Bishop's account of the decisive 
 interview with the great Duke, for the full apprehension of 
 which it is necessary to bear in mind that it took place in 
 1829, when Australia was indeed a terra incognita : ' He 
 told me that in his opinion it was impossible to foresee the 
 extent and importance of the Colonies ; and added, " There 
 must be a Church." I replied that I felt it my duty to accept 
 the office. . . . He said to me, " I don't desire so speedy a 
 determination. If in my profession, indeed, a man is desired 
 to go to-morrow morning to the other side of the world, it is 
 better he should go to-morrow or not at all." ' Dr. Broughton 
 sent his reply within a week, which was submitted to the 
 Archbishop and the King ; and hence he became the first 
 Bishop of Australia. Lord Sherbrooke always recognised 
 Bishop Broughton's ability and sincerity, but as he w^as a fol- 
 lower of Lord Eldon politically, as well as a disciple of Dr. Pusey, 
 they were destined to be in opposition. Dr. Lang was the most 
 energetic and public-spirited of Scottish colonists, but often so 
 wrong-headed and always so dogmatic that, though he became 
 one of Lowe's followers and a genuine admirer (your true Scot 
 hath ever a respect for character and ability), he too, at 
 times, w^as made to feel the lash, and to writhe under that 
 Socratic irony, the exercise of which in after years made its 
 possessor famous in the House of Commons. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe bore this last heavy blow of fate with e(j[ual 
 cheerfulness. She writes in the most sanguine and hopeful 
 strain to her aunt, Mrs. Whitley, widow of Mr. George Whitley 
 of Norley Hall : —
 
 142 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Eobert has quite determined upon going to Sydney to practise 
 as a barrister. This resohition has been formed from the opinions 
 expressed by the most competent judges on such subjects in London, 
 who beheve that 1,200Z. may be made the first year, and with large 
 annual increment. A gentleman in Sydney, manager of the Great 
 Loan Association, has Avritten to a nephew to state this, and urges 
 him as soon as called to the Bar to go out. . . . 
 
 This scheme has been formed on opinions we can rely upon, and 
 has the approval of a Mr. Senior,^ a Master in Chancery, who has 
 much to do with Australia ; also of the first Australian merchants 
 in London. Mr. Lowe finds the funds, and if we do not like it we 
 can return ; the means will be found. The Bar nov/ is so crowded 
 in England that one must wait for years. 
 
 After expressing her natural regrets at parting with all her 
 friends and relatives, Mrs. Lowe continues : — 
 
 We wish much to find a vessel that will stop at the Cape and also 
 Madeira. I should be enchanted to do this, and am sure should be 
 quite wild with delight to see a foreign tree. Only think of seeing a 
 palm ! I mean to take an immense number of sketch-books. I am 
 quite surprised to find Sydney so large a town ; we have seen a large 
 number of drawings that are to be used as a panorama. ... I am 
 now at Calverton with Lady Sherbrooke, and, after a visit or two 
 more, we return to town to begin packing. 
 
 They sailed on June 8, 1842, in the ship Aden, from Black- 
 wall. Shortly after the ship sailed, strangely enough, con- 
 sidering Lord Sherbrooke's after-connection with the Times, a 
 letter was written to him from that office making him an 
 offer of employment, which he would have gladly accepted 
 had he received it in time. 
 
 Sir Thomas Farrer adds that after the resolution to 
 emigrate was taken, Lowe learned that the solicitor to the 
 North Western Eailway Company had made up his mind to 
 give him the Junior Counsel's business for that Company. 
 ' Had I known this in time,' said Lord Sherbrooke to Sir 
 Thomas, * I should never have gone to Australia.' 
 
 ' Father of the well-known Nassau Senior.
 
 IN LONDON 143 
 
 Thus, owing to a succession of untoward circumstances, 
 ending in the * strange advice ' of the London ocuHsts and the 
 fact that an editor's or a soHcitor's letter was not written 
 quite soon enough, one of the greatest Englishmen of our 
 time became an Australian colonist.
 
 144 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII 
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 
 
 Letters for ' Home '—Fire at Sea— All but wrecked off Cape Otway — 
 
 Melbourne in 1842 
 
 The Antipodean tourist of the present day who journeys to 
 Melbourne or Sydney on board one of those superbly fitted, 
 steam-propelled floating palaces which land him at his distant 
 destination in something over a calendar month, can form 
 only a very imperfect picture of the voyage which Mr. and 
 Mrs. Eobert Lowe had resolved to undertake. 
 
 To a man or woman fond of the sea, and with the gregari- 
 ous instinct, a trip to Australia in a P. and 0. or Orient liner 
 is a by no means unpleasant experience. There is plenty to 
 see ; all kinds of people to converse, dine, and quarrel with ; an 
 infinite supply of ozone ; and, perhaps, less danger to life and 
 limb than besets the denizen of a crowded city every day of 
 his life. As a consequence of these manifold advantages, a 
 quasi-amphibious race is springing up amongst us, who spend 
 a great portion of their lives in what is known as ' globe-trot- 
 ting.' But it was a very different matter fifty years ago, when 
 a long voyage in a slow sailing-vessel often made the passenger 
 realise the truth of Dr. Johnson's famous dictum, that a man 
 in a ship was worse off than a man in jail ; for, said he, ' the 
 man in jail has more room, better food, and, commonly, 
 better company, and is in safety.' Fifty years ago a voyage 
 to the Antipodes made an epoch in a lifetime. 
 
 The fast-disappearing band of grey-headed colonists who
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 145 
 
 can still vividly recall the feelings with which they left their 
 native land for the remote terra incognita, realising that in all 
 human probability they would never return, can alone enter 
 into the feelings of the young English barrister and his wife 
 bound for Australia in the early ' forties.' It was on June 8, 
 1842, about seven o'clock in the evening, that they embarked 
 at Gravesend on board the Aden, accompanied by their English 
 servant, Martha. The beginning of the voyage was propitious : 
 a fair wind blew them out of the Channel, while in the 
 dreaded Bay of Biscay the weather was calm ; later, the wind 
 rose and drove them close under the rock of Lisbon, so that 
 they could see the houses on the beach and the grand entrance 
 of the Tagus, where Sir John Sherbrooke had found himself 
 under quite different auspices some thirty years before. 
 Thence they sailed for Sant Jago, passing Madeira at a 
 distance of some miles, sailing close by the Desertas rocks, 
 which Mrs. Lowe, who had an artistic eye, noted as ' forming 
 beautiful pictures.' She had also an artistic hand, and took 
 sketches of them and of the coast of Portugal to send ' home,' 
 as she subsequently did in the case of many an Australian 
 scene. 
 
 From these islands Eobert Lowe himself sent the follow- 
 ing letter, addressed to his mother : — 
 
 Bobert Lowe to Mrs. Loive, Bingham Bectory. 
 
 Sant Jago : July Gth, 1842. 
 
 My dear Mother, — Our voyage has been slow, but hitherto very 
 prosperous and smooth. Georgiana has suffered much from sickness, 
 and still continues to do so, but I do not think she is otherwise ill. 
 We got out of the Channel on the second day, were becalmed in the 
 Bay of Biscay, and obliged by foul winds to pass close under the 
 rock of Lisbon, which is a very fine sight, covered with vineyards 
 and mulberries. From thence to Madeira we had fair but light 
 winds. Madeira we left so far to the right that we could only see 
 the outlme, which is a noble one, higher and bolder than I expected. 
 There we caught the north-east trades, which carried us to 18° north 
 latitude, from which we have made a shift to steal on here, princi- 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 IJFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 pally by availing ourselves of the alternate land and sea breezes. 
 Ladies cannot land here, the only option being between jumping on 
 a, sharp rock, through the surf, and riding astride on the shoulders 
 of a naked negro. I nearly had a serious accident in attempting the 
 former way, but escaped vrith a good ducking and some sharp bruises. 
 The best idea I can give you of the town is that it is like a large 
 farmyard ; the grass is not dried up — it does not exist. The buildings 
 are low and mean and perfectly uniform — white walls and red tiles, 
 square doors and windows. The population sport every variety of 
 undress, from the full-dressed officer who is drilling the awkward 
 squad to the naked negro boys dabbling in the surf. We have 
 bought two goats, a quantity of oranges, pine-apples, bananas, 
 monkeys, turkeys, parrots, &c. Our party is, upon the whole, a 
 pleasant one. I have made good play with the attorneys, and am 
 in a fair way of not languishing long for want of practice. . . . My 
 •eyes are improved, in spite of the heat and the glare of the sea, and 
 of pretty diligent appMcation to my studies. With best love to all 
 our dear friends in England, beheve me, your dutiful son, 
 
 KoBEKT Lowe. 
 
 A subsequent compact seems to have been entered into 
 between the young couple to give their English friends a fuller 
 account of their experiences of the voyage at its termination. 
 The letter of Mrs. Lowe, it will be noticed, solves a question 
 which has been often asked, as to whether Eobert Lowe on his 
 voyage out saw anything of the small township founded by a 
 humble Tasmanian, one John Pascoe Fawkner, on the banks 
 of the river Yarra, destined to become the metropolis of the 
 colony of Victoria, in the political creation of which Lord 
 Sherbrooke, as the sequel will show, had no inconsiderable 
 share. 
 
 Before giving any extracts from this letter, it may be as 
 well to insert the following eminently characteristic epistle 
 from the pen of Kobert Lowe himself — the first letter sent to 
 his friends in England after his arrival in New South Wales. 
 It was written from Paramatta, to which ' large village,' as he 
 describes it, the pair of young colonists had gone as the guests 
 of the Governor, Sir George Gipps, and Lady Gipps. Para- 
 matta, or, as it was originally called, Piose-hill, was a favourite
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 147 
 
 place of residence of the earlier governors of New South 
 Wales. 
 
 Bohert Loive's Accotmt of the Voyage. 
 
 Oct. 11th, 1842. 
 
 I have undertaken to give an account of our passengers, leaving 
 the beauties of Nature and art to the eloquent pen of my wife. The 
 captain (to begin at the beginning) was vain, obstinate, conceited, 
 perverse, and profane ; told lies to that extent that he became a by- 
 word in the ship ; clean and neat in his own person, but dirty, 
 disorderly, and unsystematic to a degree in everything relating to 
 his ship ; liberal as far as the griping avarice of his owners permitted, 
 and good-natured enough when vanity and obstinacy were not con- 
 cerned ; a good navigator and bold seaman, who always carried on as 
 much canvas as the winds allowed, and sometimes more. ... A 
 purser pensioned off by the East India Company, and a daughter who 
 was the very pink of vulgarity, but a good-natured, well-behaved 
 girl, require no further notice, except to mention that they had a 
 violent prejudice against the Americans, and were seriously alarmed 
 for fear they should kiss the ladies all round. Mr. C, a good-hearted, 
 good-natured, honest Irishman ; his wife uppish and snappish, but 
 obliging withal. I sat next to her, and she used to disgust me by 
 eating pig's fry, curry, and fat salted pork all together for breakfast. 
 Mr. Y., indolent, selfish, avaricious, ill-educated, good-natured, and 
 good-lookmg ; his wife having many virtues and three faults — rouge, 
 gum, and pearl powder. Mr. W., a landowner in Van Diemen's 
 Land, a very good, gentlemanlike, and well-informed man, though 
 his religion was tainted with enthusiasm and illiberality. . . . The 
 rest were a set of young men, boisterous, good-humoured, and 
 ignorant, who smoked and drank, and played at cards and draughts 
 and singlestick, and swarmed up the rigging. One was a nephew 
 of Lord Bute's; two others, sons of a wealthy proprietor in Van 
 Diemen's Land, had been to England to be educated, an operation 
 which had been imperfectly performed. My employment during the 
 voyage was principally reading, but I am sorry to say that my eyes 
 latterly became so weak that I was obliged to give it up, as the 
 irritation of the nerves became so painful and incessant that I was 
 afraid if I persevered I should render them quite useless. Time will 
 show whether this is a temporary or permanent affection ; if the 
 latter, I have very little chance of doing anything good in the law 
 or any other profession. , . . 
 
 Judge Willis, whom I saw at Melbourne, once lived atEdwinstowe, 
 and knew all our Oxton friends quite well. 
 
 We had only two gales of wind on our voyage out, one off Tristan 
 
 l2
 
 148 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 d'Acunha, between Eio and the Cape, the other in Bass's Straits, 
 after lea%dng Port Phillip. The latter was really formidable, as it 
 came from the south-west, and blewso hard as to render it difficult for 
 us to carry any sail, which it was absolutely necessary to do to prevent 
 our running on a lee shore. I will write again by the next ship. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 EoBEBT Lowe. 
 
 Owing to the infirmity of bis eyesight, not only did Lowe 
 write few letters during this eventful period, but from the 
 same cause, as he himself frankly confessed, mere descriptions 
 of places and scenes were not his forte. These were left to 
 the facile pen of Mrs. Lowe, whose descriptive powers were 
 quite equal to the task, and who, it will be seen, gives some 
 particulars of the Melbourne of 1842 which may still be read 
 with interest, especially by the descendants of the early 
 colonists. 
 
 Her letter, giving a full description of the voyage out, 
 written from Paramatta, and therefore just after their arrival 
 in Australia, fully supx)lies her husband's descriptive omis- 
 sions. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe's Account of tlie Voyage. 
 
 The island of St. Jago is very mountainous, and at times, in 
 passing, theforms are splendid ; but they arenot more, 1 should think, 
 than 2,000 feet high. We ran into a bay ; here all was arid, not agreen 
 leaf to be seen, with a tremendous surf i-oaring night and day on the 
 beach. I was most anxious to land — 1 had never ceased to be ill, 
 and felt quite exhausted ; to my regret, I found it could not be. 
 Kobert went on shore with a large party of passengers ; they had to 
 clamber on the shoulders of naked black men, and hold fast by their 
 woolly heads, Eobert got a bad fall on the rocks, but did not suffer 
 from it afterwards. The island, they say, has fine valleys some 
 miles in the interior, but Eobert, from his hurt and the intense 
 heat, did not venture into the island. The natives, who are a very 
 handsome tribe of blacks, mulattos, and Portuguese, came on board 
 the Aden laden with oranges, pine-apples, bananas, cocoa-nuts, 
 tamarinds, pumpkins, monkeys, turkeys, guinea-fowl, parrots, &c. 
 Great was tlie rush, as you may fancy, for them. On entering the 
 bay we saw a ship at anchor called the Dandalia. The captain and 
 surgeon of this sloop paid the Aden a morning call, and in-vited as
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 149 
 
 many of the passengers as might wish to go on board the next day. 
 We all liked the idea much, and accepted the invitation with the 
 greatest pleasure. In the evening, as the moon rose, we heard a 
 plashing of oars and the notes of a guitar, accompanied by a very 
 fine voice : we found the officers from the American sloop were sere- 
 nading us. After singing several songs, amongst the number ' Allan - 
 a-Dale ' (all the songs English composition), they boarded the Aden 
 and joined the gentlemen in the cuddy ; afterwards several came on 
 the poop to join the ladies. I was astonished to find them so 
 agreeable, and really like gentlemen ; but I must say the most 
 agreeable were the captain, a Scotchman, and the purser, an Irish- 
 man, naturalised Americans. The next day they sent their boat 
 for us, capitally manned, and we boarded. The sloop was in excel- 
 lent order, carried 26 guns ; all things so clean and neat, with an 
 excellently fitted-up cabin like a drawing-room, also a large dining- 
 room. We walked all over the sloop, and then had cake and wine. 
 Eobert was quite pleased with the officers, and they appeared just 
 as much pleased with him. They talked about America and England, 
 and much political economy. They were quite American in one 
 particular — much inclined to run down England and exalt America. 
 Some of the officers returned with the party to the Aden to dinner. 
 Eobert and Mr. C. went back with them again, and returned by 
 moonlight. I thought they would never have made a parting. 
 During the evening we had a scene of the greatest confusion on 
 board : the captain was detained on shore ; many of the sailors, 
 steerage passengers, and intermediate passengers got drunk ; the 
 boats with the supplies were nearly swamped, bringing bundles of 
 turkeys and fowls, dead and living, tied together, the boats so full of 
 water it was impossible to endeavour to save them ; oranges and all 
 the fruits afloat, loaves of sugar melting ; pigs, grunting and squeaking, 
 hauled up the side of the vessel, two beautiful goats and their kids 
 half dead ; the ship a Babel of tongues, blacks, whites, and mulattos, 
 all mingled, quarrelling and bargaining ; the steward of the vessel 
 drunk, and our good-natured first mate in despair. At length the 
 captain arrived in a dreadful ill-humour ; then came the English 
 Consul, who was to supply the ship with several boatsful of fruit and 
 poultry, &c. ; he and the captain quarrelled about prices, the captain 
 declaring the Consul had cheated him. After sundry very forcible 
 execrations on each side, the English Consul was ordered to descend 
 to his boat or his departure was to be hastened by summary means ; 
 accordingly, he and his blacks went, but, alas ! they took all the 
 good things with them, and away went, to our great disgust, the 
 delicious pine-apples, oranges, &c. 
 
 I have a sketch of St. Jago coloured. I assure you I deserve no
 
 150 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 small credit for my sketches, for I took them in spite of my horrid 
 sickness. I was ill for six weeks, and became so weak I could 
 scarcely move. We sailed during the night ; I think we left on July 
 8. We were now to make all speed, but the winds soon left us, and 
 we floated upon a sea as smooth as a lake. Here I began to grow 
 better. I sat on deck all day, and took my meals there ; I was not 
 able to sit for a moment in the cuddy. I had two companions in 
 the same state, but we began to get well together. The flying fish, 
 dolphins, and now and then a whale, began to appear ; the heat great, 
 but under the a-svning I never found it too much, We had fine sun- 
 sets, but made no progress ; we had to run to South America, and 
 lay becalmed several days only two hundred miles from Eio Janeiro. 
 We began to fear a scarcity of fresh provisions, ha\dng ninety-seven 
 persons on board. All wished the captain to put into Eio ; he would 
 not, but talked in a vague manner of the Cape. We were thirteen 
 weeks from the time we left London before we passed the latitude 
 of the Cape. Here again a strong remonstrance was made to the 
 captain about the provisions ; but our next destination being Port 
 Phillip, where weAvere to land half our passengers forA^an Diemen's 
 Land and Port Phillip, he would go on ; greatly we apprehended the 
 Avinds faihng us again, but they proved fair, and we reached Port 
 Phillip having provisions left for two days more. 
 
 One of the steerage passengers died of a low fever off Rio, and 
 one of the sailors had the fever also. The passenger died on a 
 Saturday evening from exhaustion, and on the Sunday he was con- 
 signed to the deep ; he was laid on a plank, wrapped up in a sailcloth. 
 One of our passengers read the Funeral Service over him. All were 
 assembled. It was a painful scene ; his poor brother, who was with 
 him, was in deep affliction ; all felt it much. A little boy of five 
 years old was quite melancholy all day after, and asked me most 
 anxiously and repeatedly if I really thought the man was gone to 
 God. He said they told him his body would lie in the sea, but his 
 soul would go to heaven ; he sat with me during the service, and 
 cried when they put the body overboard. I am quite fond of the 
 little boy. 
 
 We had a most awful alarm when about six hundred miles from 
 the Cape. Much had been said on the subject of the fearful care- 
 lessness on board about fire : the boys and men were allowed to go 
 down into the hold with candles in lanterns not locked ; they were 
 in the constant habit of taking these candles out of the lanterns ; the 
 captain would attend to no remonstrance on the subject. About 
 eleven o'clock on August 30 one of the children Martha took care of 
 came pale as death into the cuddy, whore I was sitting alone ; the 
 child could not speak, but pulled me on deck ; there I heard a
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT 151 
 
 subdued whisper of ' Fire ! ' afterwards a sudden cry, ' The hold is on 
 fire!' 
 
 All rushed forward. The deck was prepared to be flooded, and 
 leathern pipes were thrown overboard and buckets filled. It was 
 truly awful, a heavy sea running ; no boat could have lived an hour, 
 even had our boats been tolerable (we had but two small and one 
 large, none seaworthy). Most providentially the fire had no time to 
 spread, and was at once got under, the alarm having been given the 
 moment the fire took place. I was glad to see the captain was so 
 much frightened himself he could scarcely speak, and he afterwards 
 sent a message into the cuddy to say we might rely upon it that in 
 future the lanterns should be locked. The sailmaker and a boy caused 
 the fire by dropping the candle into a bundle of straw whilst looking 
 for stores, which, by the way, were never to be found when wanted, 
 so much carelessness prevailing in every quarter. Could I have 
 smiled at such a moment, I should have done so when I saw several 
 of the boys balancing themselves with the greatest care, the vessel 
 pitching, carrying water in pie-dishes, soup-plates, and coffee-pots, 
 &c., losing most of the water by the way, endeavouring to add to 
 the flood pouring through the great pipe. Shortly after this event 
 the steward drank so dreadfully that he became mad, and was obliged 
 to have a strait-jacket put on ; this proved to be delirium tremens, 
 and he partially recovered. We were dreadfully crowded all the 
 voyage, having at least ten too many cabin passengers, which, 
 perhaps, may in some measure account for this catastrophe. 
 
 Many years afterwards Lord Slierbrooke jotted down in 
 his autobiographical sketch that lively description of his 
 voyage in the Aden in which, it will be remembered, he 
 relates, as well as this incident, another of an almost equally 
 alarming character. 
 
 It is somewhat amusing to compare his terse and epigram- 
 matic account, beginning, ' Of all the descriptions of a long 
 voyage,' with Mrs. Lowe's more flowing and discursive narra- 
 tive. After relating the incident of the fire, with the amusing 
 account of the 'little Jew-boy with the cracked pie-dish,' Lord 
 Sherbrooke, it will be remembered, tells the story of the narrow 
 escape the Aden had of going ashore at Cape Otway, adding, 
 *I had afterwards the satisfaction of giving a vote in the 
 Council at Sydney for erecting a lighthouse on this dangerous 
 headland.'
 
 152 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Let us turn again to Mrs. Lowe's letter. Her account of 
 primitive Melbourne as it appeared to the eyes of the voyagers 
 in 1842 will in all probability interest the dwellers in that 
 city in 1892. 
 
 We reached Williamstown on Friday, October 1, having passed 
 the longitude of the Cape on September 27. The harbour is quite 
 an inland sea with low banks. We went up the river Yarra to 
 Melbourne in a small steam-vessel, thQ river narrowing by degrees 
 and very deep. On each side were native woods, now and then 
 opening, and long, low rises of ground seen through these openings 
 of a dull green, dotted over with dark-coloured trees like old stunted 
 thorns ; cattle grazing in large herds, and here and there settlers' 
 cottages, Math immense dogs sleeping at the doors. The huts, as I 
 should call them, built of wood, with a little window on each side of 
 the door. The banks of the river sloped in many places to the water, 
 and large stones were on the banks ; now and then dense wood on 
 swamps, the trees with heavy green tops, covered with white flowers, 
 but not high. Nearer Melbourne the hills rise high ; blue mountains 
 are seen, with hea\^ native forests between them and Melbourne; but 
 I hear when on the spot you only find it dotted with trees hke a park. 
 There are also immense open plains ; the scenery is much varied. 
 
 The town of Melbourne is built on a rising ground, of red brick, 
 the streets wide and well laid-out, and some of the buildings sub- 
 stantial and handsome ; the streets unpaved with deep ruts, no foot- 
 path by the sides. The Inn was tolerable, with a ginshop opening on 
 the one side. We walked to Mr. Latrobe's, the Superintendent, to 
 deliver a letter ; there was a front gate, a di'ive, and an attempt 
 at an English garden, the land before the house sloping to the river, 
 and lightly covered with the native trees, with lovely wild flowers 
 blooming beneath them, the scarlet geraniums growing magnificently. 
 The land is valued at enormous prices in and close to the town ; rent 
 absurdly high. We went into a baker's shop during a shower, and 
 entered into along discourse with the people — Irish emigrants ; they 
 paid 1001. per annum for their miserable shop ; it had but a bake- 
 house, one bedroom, sitting-room, and shop. I could see through 
 the rafters. Bread, llcZ. for 4 lb. ; 12 eggs, Is. dd. ; sheep, 6.s. each ; 
 fowls, 125. a pair ; milk, Gd. a quart. Manufactured goods an immense 
 price. I have sketches, which I will send. We left Melbourne at 
 nine o'clock the next morning, and sailed away in the evening. 
 
 Although in his own correspondence of this period he 
 entered into no particulars about early Melbourne, Lord 
 Sherbrooke recorded in later years his impressions of this
 
 THE VOYAGE OUT- 153 
 
 flying visit, which, for the convenience of the reader, are here 
 repeated from the Chapter of Autobiography : — 
 
 ' At last, after a voyage of nearly four months, we found 
 ourselves, not in Sydney, but in Melbourne — that is to say, with 
 still 500 miles to go. The state of Melbourne was at this 
 time very peculiar : it was in the by no means enviable 
 position of being a dependency of a dependency, governed by 
 a colony which was not permitted to govern itself. A good deal 
 had been done in the way of building, but some cause, to us 
 unknown, had arrested its progress in mid-career. The place 
 seemed stricken with paralysis. Everything was at a stand- 
 still. Everybody wanted to sell, and nobody wanted to buy. 
 No purchaser would look at a house unless it was at the 
 corner of a street. In the middle of the main street were two 
 considerable rivers, facetiously named by the inhabitants, after 
 their rulers and governors, the Williams and the Latrobe. 
 We were told that someone had been drowned in one of these 
 urban streams not long ago. 
 
 ' To regret that I have no money has been to me durmg 
 the whole of my life a by no means uncommon sensation. 
 But I never remember experiencing it so poignantly as on 
 this occasion. It required no very strong foresight to be 
 aware that here was an opportunity such as no one could 
 expect to see twice. For a very few thousand pounds a man 
 might have possessed himself of property which in a few years 
 would repay him much more than tenfold ; and why, oh why 
 had I not got it ? ' 
 
 These reflections on the inevitable rise and progress of 
 Melbourne, as they passed through his mind at the time, 
 certainly redound to the sagacity of Lord Sherbrooke. But 
 those who are acquainted with the early colonial annals know 
 how desponding many of the old settlers were wont to be at 
 those periods of depression which, no less than periods of 
 inflation, mark the career of all such communities. When 
 the Californian gold fever broke out, many were glad to
 
 154 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 sacrifice their holdings in Melbourne — which it was currently 
 believed was then going to the dogs — and get away as fast as 
 they could out of the colony. I remember in after years 
 walking round one of these city blocks in Melbourne, on 
 which Lord Sherbrooke appears to have cast longmg eyes, 
 with a gentleman who said : ' This all belonged to my father, 
 but he thought the place was ruined, and sold it for a few 
 pounds to get away. It is now worth several hundred pounds 
 a foot.' He was of Semitic extraction, and the recital of the 
 story evidently affected him deeply. 
 
 Mr. David Syme, the well-known Australian economist, in 
 an article in the Melbourne Hevieiv some years ago on ' The 
 Unearned Increment of Land in Melbourne,' gave a number of 
 striking instances of the enormously enhanced values of city 
 freeholds. These enhanced values mark the material pro- 
 gress of a community. But clearly those early proprietors 
 who sold out must have feared something in the shape of an 
 unearned (decrement ; or there would be no such cases of 
 miscalculation, which are almost as common in transactions 
 in land as in any other kind of commercial speculation.
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 
 IN SYDNEY 
 
 Port Jackson — Sir George Gipps at Paramatta — W. S. Macleay at Elizabeth 
 
 Bay — Condition of Sydney 
 
 In opening the narrative of Lord Slierbrooke's career as an 
 Australian colonist, it may be as well to make a few preliminary 
 remarks as to the plan of this portion of the book. It is true 
 that the period of time embraced in this section covers little 
 over seven years, but those years were the golden years of his 
 prime. He arrived in Sydney on October 8, 1842, and was 
 therefore in his thirty-second year. 
 
 In making his home in New South Wales from 1842 to 
 1850, Lowe found himself a member of a strange, chaotic 
 colonial community, then in the very act of emerging from an 
 Imperial penal settlement into a free, self-governing British 
 State. During almost the whole of this time he was an active, 
 indefatigable, public man, desirous above all things to assist in 
 this beneficent social and political revolution. In other words, 
 as I shall hope to show, he helped most materially to lay the 
 foundation of what is destined to be a great and ever-expanding 
 English-speaking nation, spread over an entire island-continent 
 almost the size of Europe. 
 
 It is a trite remark that Englishmen, as a rule, cannot be 
 brought to feel an interest in colonial questions ; but I am 
 fortunate in having for my central figure an Englishman whose 
 name is sure to secure me a hearing on these themes in the 
 mother-country. My difficulty is rather with the colonial
 
 156 LITE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 public. Australians, it must be confessed, take only a languid 
 interest in the brief annals of their own community. Pro- 
 mising young communities, like promising young men, rarely 
 indulge in retrospect, and heed, for the most part, only the 
 present or the immediate future. 
 
 With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, 
 Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream. 
 Still from the hurrying train of life fly backward, far and fast, 
 The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. 
 
 Despite this colonial habit of mind, it will be the purpose 
 of the succeeding chapters to show what a dominant part the 
 late Lord Sherbrooke took in bringing about — (1) the system 
 of self-government which now obtains throughout Australia, 
 Tasmania, and New Zealand ; (2) the cessation of criminal 
 transportation to New South Wales ; (3) the creation of the 
 colony of Victoria ; (4) the establishment of the prevailing 
 system of national unsectarian education ; (5) the settlement 
 of the people on the public lands and the growth of a genuine 
 yeoman class. 
 
 But before plunging into the vortex of early colonial 
 politics, it is only proper to give Mrs. Lowe's description of 
 the far-famed harbour of Port Jackson, on the shores of which 
 she was now about to make her home. Sydney Harbour, as 
 it is popularly called, seems to arouse the enthusiasm of the 
 most critical travellers ; both Mr. Froude and Mr. Anthony 
 TroUope were excited by it to the highest flights of their 
 respective prose styles. The only exception known to me is 
 the Hon. Harold Finch-Hatton, who declares in his Advance 
 Australia ! that he ' never saw anything more forlornly ugly in 
 the w^ay of scenery.' The people of Sydney, it is said, never 
 forgive a slight offered to their harbour ; in which regard they 
 can have no possible ground of grievance against Mrs. Lowe. 
 
 We reached the Heads of Port Jackson on Saturday, at two 
 o'clock. These Heads are quite barren, of golden-coloured rock, here 
 and there marked with deep brown, 365 feet high ; the water rolls
 
 IN SYDNEY 157 
 
 against them, tlie lighthouse on the highest point. The vessel lay- 
 to a short time for the pilot, and a wild-looking boat with New 
 Zealanders rowing brought him. The vessel, every sail spread, 
 suddenly wheeled round an immense barren rock, and there was 
 Port Jackson, lying in beauty not to be described or imagined, before 
 us. We were close to land — I could almost have dropped a stone upon 
 it. Bays, promontories, almost in fantastic confusion, on every side ; 
 rocks, trees, thrown in every exquisite form together ; houses, cottages 
 of white stone, some half-hid in trees, others on rocks in every bay 
 and on every promontory, were here. The bay is immense, like a 
 large lake bounded on every side by rocks, which look as if they 
 had been formed for beauty alone ; and Nature has adorned them, 
 with the most exquisite taste, with trees, some of strange leaf and 
 form, but wonderful in beauty ; here and there trees of golden-yellow ; 
 the rock white stone, stained with rich red and brown, strange and 
 fantastic species of (I suppose) cypress-trees and lignum vitae, and 
 bright and lovely flowers. We tacked first to one side of this 
 wonderful spot, then to the other, until my rapture rose almost into 
 a delirium of delight. Again we turned a spot with a sudden whir], 
 and there was Sydney, and fine shipping before it — Sydney, built on 
 a rocky promontory of white stone, the new Government House, 
 superb, of stone, one side, and through a deep vista formed by pro- 
 montories fading into distance the Paramatta river opens. I must 
 describe with my pencil if I can ; I cannot with my pen. 
 
 To Robert Lowe himself, from his unfortmiate infirmity, 
 the glories of Sydney Harbour, under what to him must have 
 been a blinding glare of light, could not have been so entranc- 
 ing. Not that he was insensible to the superb position of the 
 city which was about to become his home, for a little later 
 on he records : ' We took a small house in Macquarie Street, 
 overlooking the Domain and the beautiful salt-water lake, as 
 we should call it in England, which forms the peerless harbour, 
 which will, I believe, always place Sydney at the head of the 
 Australian colonies.' 
 
 He also notes a strange atmospherical phenomenon which 
 occurred shortly after their arrival, in the shape of a dense 
 fog which lasted for three days, during which the thermometer 
 stood steadily at 115°. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe continues her narrative of the first incidents
 
 158 LIFE OF LOED SHERBPtOOKE 
 
 connected with their landing in the colony, introducing us to 
 that high-minded, excellent man, but unfortunate governor, 
 Sir George Gipps, whose relations with Lord Sherbrooke will 
 be found largely to have affected the colonial career of both. 
 
 After the Aden had been moored alongside the Circular 
 Quay, Eobert Lowe sent on shore one of their letters of intro- 
 duction to Sir George Gipps, whose wife was a distant relative 
 of Mrs. Lowe. At this time the Governor and Lady Gipps 
 were livmg at Paramatta, which was then the Viceregal 
 country residence. Mr. Lowe relates how Sir George and 
 Lady Gipps came to the Aden about ten o'clock on the next 
 (Sunday) morning in an eight-oared barge, and how he and Mrs. 
 Lowe were rowed up the river which has since become famous 
 as the course on which, instead of on the Thames or the Tyne, 
 the aquaitic championship of the world is now decided. 
 
 Like everybody (except Mr. Finch-Hatton), Mrs. Lowe 
 was still further enchanted with the scenery, which, as they 
 approached Paramatta itself, reminded her more of England 
 on account of the evident signs of careful cultivation : — 
 
 Paramatta is a large village. This house we are in is a large 
 English villa, with enormous orange-trees in full bloom on each side 
 of the door. Sir George, Lady Gipps, and I took a ride of fourteen 
 or fifteen miles yesterday ; a manservant and a mounted soldier with 
 a long, dangling sword accompanied us. Robert was in Sydney, 
 where I have not yet been. To-day we all ride. I like Lady Gipps 
 extremely. They send their Government men to convey our furniture 
 and all etceteras to the Government House, to be put aside till we 
 want them ; and we are to stay as long as we like, but we do not 
 mean to be too troublesome. 
 
 Nothing could be brighter and more cheery than Mrs. 
 Lowe's earliest letters home, so full of her first vivid impres- 
 sions of the place : — 
 
 I am sure I shall delight in this country. The Harbour is like 
 an immense inland lake, with bays that would take weeks to 
 explore, rocks rising direct from the water, and stick flowers grow- 
 ing upon them. To me, as yet, it is a laud of enchantment, and 
 neither Eobert nor I find it too hot. I am astonished and charmed
 
 IN SYDNEY 159 
 
 with Sydney ; it is built on a broad promontory of roclv of some 
 elevation ; the streets are up and down hill, and the buildings put 
 me in mind of Leamington and Cheltenham, built of white stone 
 so beautiful as to resemble marble. I never saw such stone in 
 England. The streets are very wide and long, with large and very 
 handsome shops, the Norfolk pine growing about large white stone 
 villas in the very centre of the town, and gardens redolent with 
 orange flowers and also with flowers I know no name for. 
 
 Tuesday we turned our horses' heads down the steep banks of a 
 ravine (had not Sir George led the way I dare not have ventured) ; 
 we broke our way through trees, little bushes, and over fallen trees 
 and immense slabs of rock until we reached the bottom. Here 
 cultivation began : first a little field, then some cows ; we turned 
 a rock and saw the most perfect picture of a bark cottage, sur- 
 rounded with orange and lemon trees, and immense standard 
 peaches, ripe lemons covering the trees. The surrounding scenery 
 magnificent ; rock with great towering trees rising out of it, many 
 riven with storms, others fallen and decayed from old age, vines 
 hanging in fantastic forms. The man and his family had cleared 
 and planted this spot fourteen years ago. 
 
 As might be expected, Eobert Lowe himself, acting on the 
 terrible warning of the London oculists— who, in advising him 
 to become a colonist, it will be remembered gave him only 
 seven more years of such dim vision as he was born with — 
 lost no time in sight- seeing or rhapsodising. He quickly 
 formed his own judgment as to the commercial soundness of 
 Sydney, despite its great temporary depression, and in writ- 
 ing home to his friends undertook to pay them eight per cent, 
 upon money put out on mortgage on unexceptionable security. 
 He was evidently quite clear on this subject, for he personally 
 guaranteed the regularity of the payments and the goodness 
 of the security. He then gives his own impression of the 
 city :— 
 
 ' Sydney is very well built of white sandstone, and nobly 
 situated ; the shops are good, the streets wide and cheerful, 
 the houses built in the bungalow style, with verandahs and 
 shingle roofs. Sir G. Gipps is very kind to us ; his carriages, 
 horses, and boats are at our disposal. I went down to Sydney 
 yesterday by the steamboat, and had a boat with four prisoners
 
 160 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 to row it at my disposal, to go on board the ship and about 
 the harbour. Eent is a Httle fallen, owing to the bad times ; 
 and horses are very cheap, which I rejoice to hear, as they are 
 almost a necessary of life in this hot country. I never was so 
 tired as yesterday, walking about Sydney from ten to five. I 
 am quite at sea about a house at present, but hope to hear 
 something soon. The weather is becoming hot, but the 
 mosquitos have not yet attacked us.' 
 
 Paramatta, which the Lowes were now visiting preparatory 
 to settling down as active denizens of the metropolis, is chiefly 
 known to the modern tourist for its luxuriant orange-groves. 
 It is really situated at the end of an elongated arm of Port Jack- 
 son, which received the native name of the Paramatta Piiver. 
 A great deal of the early history of the original penal settle- 
 ment misnamed Botany Bay was centred at Paramatta. Hence 
 the existence of the reformatory establishment for female 
 convicts, which Mrs. Lowe depicts somewhat coideur de rose, I 
 fear, in the next letter she wrote to her English friends : — 
 
 Sydney : Nov. 5, 1842. 
 I will endeavour to give you an idea of all we have been doing- 
 since my last letter, which I shall find difficult, as so many new 
 sights and objects present themselves daily. Before we left Para- 
 matta Lady Gipps took me with her to see the factory where the 
 women who have been transported are confined ; they are princi- 
 pally hopeless characters, many being returned assigned servants. 
 It is an enormous prison, with large yards, beautifully clean and 
 airy ; I never saw any Union poorhouse or prison of any description 
 so well arranged. The women are classed according to their abili- 
 ties, and employed in washing and needlework, which are both sur- 
 prisingly well done, considering that it is forced employment. There 
 is also a large school, where the children are employed and taught. 
 These poor unfortunates are children born in the factory, the 
 mothers being returned assigned servants who have misconducted 
 themselves. Poor things ! they are indeed truly the children born 
 in sin. I could fancy their countenances bespeak their origin. The 
 women when refractory are placed in solitary cells, partially dark, 
 but extremely well aired. Sir George Gipps has done more than 
 any governor for these prisons ; his management appears most judi- 
 cious. From the factory we went to the Orphan School. I was
 
 IN SYDNEY 161 
 
 extremely interested on seeing two aboriginal cliildren, one about 
 ten years old, the other eighteen months. The elder, the matron 
 told me, is quite as clever, if not more so, than the generality of the 
 children, and reads, and sews, and speaks English. We enjoyed 
 ourselves much whilst at Paramatta. Sir George and Lady Gipps, 
 when we had been there a fortnight, were to make an excursion up 
 the country, and were so kind as to invite us to remain until their 
 return ; but Robert thought he ought to be in Sydney, as the Courts 
 were open, so we tore ourselves away the day they set off. 
 
 So ended their first brief holiday in the New World. 
 Eeturning to Sydney, they occupied lodgings until the house 
 they had decided on taking in Horbury Terrace, Macquarie 
 Street, was ready for them. In the meantime Mrs. Lowe 
 records, with affectionate pride, that ' Kobert has already had 
 several briefs, and made 14L, which I think a great deal.' 
 
 The chief citizens, instigated no doubt by the example of 
 His Excellency the Governor, now began to call upon the 
 new arrivals, who in quick succession made the acquaintance 
 of the judges, the Bishop (Dr. Broughton), the Colonial 
 Secretary (Mr., afterwards Sir Edward, Deas Thomson), 
 Mr. John Hubert Plunkett, Mr., afterwards Sir Eoger, 
 Therry, and other leading lights, nearly all of whom, it must 
 be confessed, subsequently found themselves in anything but 
 amicable relations with the brilliant and independent-minded 
 man who had come amongst them, but who was not framed 
 by nature to be a member of any coterie. Mrs. Lowe 
 assures her friends in England that they would be asto- 
 nished to see what splendid houses some of these people 
 live in, ' built of white stone, and well furnished.' After re- 
 ferring to dinner-parties with these great ones of the little 
 colonial world, it is amusing to notice that she is ' glad to 
 say all the respectable attorneys have called ! ' Altogether, 
 Mrs. Lowe seems to have been very favourably impressed at 
 first with all classes of people in Sydney, and even mentions 
 that the shopkeepers are not only agreeable in manner, but 
 full of information. She was probably right in attributing 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 this immediate social recognition in Sydney to the Governor's 
 previous hospitality at Paramatta. But if, among these local 
 notabilities, there were any capable of entering into and en- 
 joying the social intercourse of a man whose brilliant scholar- 
 ship and wit afterwards gained for him an almost unique 
 position in London, then Eobert Lowe hardly needed even a 
 Viceregal recommendation. 
 
 There was at least one such colonist worthy to be Lord 
 Sherbrooke's intellectual companion, with whom from the 
 outset he established a firm and lifelong friendship. Pro- 
 bably there were others ; but for no one in Australia did he 
 entertain such warm feelings of personal regard and affection 
 as for Mr. William Sharpe Macleay. He was certainly, as 
 Lord Sherbrooke often said, a remarkable man to discover in 
 such a remote community. Of an old Scottish family, educated 
 at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, William 
 Macleay 's devotion to science had earned for him the friend- 
 ship of Cuvier before he followed his father, the Hon. Alexander 
 Macleay (the old Colonial Secretary, and Speaker of the first 
 Legislative Council), to Sydney. The Macleays were a most 
 distinguished as well as most worthy famil3\ No less than four 
 of them have left their mark on the history of New South 
 Wales. Assuredly they should find a place in such a work as 
 Mr. Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius ; for we note in all 
 these Macleays alike the highest mental and moral qualities, 
 coupled with great capacity for public affairs, and each with 
 an inborn love of scientific research, which made them a 
 family of naturalists. The brother of W. S. Macleay was also 
 a lifelong friend of Lord Sherbrooke. I allude to Sir George 
 Macleay, one of the heroes of Australian exploration, who ac- 
 companied the undaunted Captain Sturt in his memorable 
 expedition to discover the course of the Murrumbidgee and 
 Murray rivers in 1830. 
 
 In one of her letters Mrs. Lowe gives a charming picture 
 of the Australian naturalist's home, near Sydney, which must
 
 IN SYDNEY 163 
 
 have greatly astonished her English correspondents at the time, 
 and may be still read with pleasure, if only as a proof that 
 the much-despised ' Botany Bay ' was not wholly, even in 
 those days, a land given over to convicts and savages.' 
 
 Mrs. Loioe's Description of W. S. Macleay's Home. 
 
 A few days ago I saw one of the most perfect places I ever saw 
 in my life, belonging to Mr. Macleay. How I longed that Mrs. 
 Slierbrooke could but see tbis splendid sight. The drive to the 
 bouse is cut tbrougb rocks covered with the splendid wild shrubs 
 and flowers of tbis country, and here and there an immense 
 primeval tree ; the bouse is built of wbite stone, and looks like a 
 nobleman's place. Mr. IMacleay took us through the grounds ; they 
 were along the side of the water. In tbis garden are the plants of 
 every climate — flowers and trees from Eio, tbe West Indies, the 
 East Indies, China, and even England. Tbe bulbs from tbe Cape 
 are splendid, and, unless you could see them, you would not believe 
 how beautiful tbe roses are here. Tbe orange-trees, lemons, citrons, 
 guavas, are immense, and tbe pomegranate is now in full flower. 
 Mr. Macleay has also an immense collection of plants from New 
 Zealand. I must not omit some drawbacks to this lovely garden : 
 it is too dry, and the plants grow out of a wbite, sandy soil. I must 
 admit a few English showers would improve it. As we went along 
 tbe wild walks, cut tbrougb tbe woods, tbe native trees, covered 
 with flowers, tbe views of rock, trees, and water were enchanting. 
 Tbe bays are innumerable, and resemble tbe Scotch salt-water 
 lochs. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe's letter is full of her earliest Australian impres- 
 sions, ranging from descriptions of native moths and butterflies 
 to the speculations then rife in Sydney as to the new colony 
 of New Zealand. She seems to have gathered that the latter 
 would end in failure, hut she had not then acquired sufficient 
 
 ' The beautifully situated home of the scholar and naturalist is now no 
 more, and on the site of its grounds stand the villas and houses of a ' genteel ' 
 suburb. Sir George Macleay, when showing me a picture of the house and 
 grounds, said : ' My brother would never have consented to its demolition ; but 
 Sir Henry Parkes thought fit to tax the land exorbitantly, with the view of 
 "busting up" such estates near Sydney, and I at length was forced to sub- 
 divide it, and let it out on lease. But my brother,' he added, ' however much 
 it might have added to his income, would never have allowed a tree or shrub 
 to be removed.'
 
 164 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBEOOKE 
 
 colonial experience to know that the well-to-do residents of an 
 old colony are always prone to indulge in evil prognostications 
 with regard to new and possibly rival settlements. Having 
 themselves passed through the pioneermg stage, and at last 
 achieved something like Old-World comfort and a fixed abode, 
 they are the first to proclaim that the newly-acquired territory 
 is either too barren for cultivation, or that it is so fertile that 
 the land can never be profitably cleared. So we may pass all 
 this over without further comment. 
 
 It is more to the purpose that New South Wales itself, 
 about the time of the arrival of the Lowes, was passing through 
 one of its very worst periods of commercial depression. In 
 the history of all colonies these periods constantly recur ; and 
 when the}^ pass, and what are called ' the good old times ' — - 
 that is, periods of reckless speculation and exorbitant prices — 
 come again, the colonists forget them like a dream. On 
 account of the direct effect this protracted commercial depres- 
 sion, which set in about 1841, exercised on the fortunes of 
 Eobert Lowe, I have taken some pains to inquire into its 
 causes and extent. First as to its extent. From February 
 1842 to the end of 1844 there were 1,356 cases of sequestra- 
 tion under the new insolvent law in Sydney, and 282 in 
 Melbourne, which was then merely the chief town in a district 
 of the same colony. This gives a total of financial wrecks for 
 the colony of New South Wales, within a period of less than 
 three years, of 1,638. These sequestrated estates represented 
 a total of indebtedness amounting to 3^ millions sterling.^ 
 If we bear in mind that the entire population was then only 
 162,000, these figures will give a most vivid j)icture of what 
 are colloquially called the bad times, during which the young 
 English barrister arrived in Sydney w'ith a view of making an 
 independence for himself and his wife before the alloted seven 
 years of eyesight had run out. The major portion of litigation 
 on which lawyers thrive, it must be admitted, is a luxury, not 
 ' Westgarth's Australia Felix, p. 180.
 
 IN SYDNEY 165 
 
 •a necessity, of social existence. When money is rolling in, or, 
 what is practically the same thing, when credit is good, men 
 will dispute over any fancied right or wrong ; and the Law 
 Courts become a very Babel of bustle and business. But when* 
 as a consequence of this extravagant living and reckless specu- 
 lation, comes the Nemesis in the shape of a peremptory note 
 from the banker that outstanding bills must be met — which 
 always happens at the time when there is nothing to meet 
 them with — then men no longer are so eager to fight out 
 their battles before a judge and jury. They become mean 
 of spirit, and absolute Uriah Heeps in the way of bearing 
 indignities, and the attorneys and barristers languish ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 The commercial depression in Sydney between the years 
 named seems to have been more like a thorough catastrophe 
 than any event of the kind in the annals of the colony. As a 
 rule, these so-called bad times, as the late Mr. Westgarth used 
 to point out, should in reality be termed good times, for they 
 are the periods when reckless expenditure and rash specula- 
 tion receive a salutary check, and when people suddenly wake 
 up to the necessity of living within their means. But the 
 disease in the body politic which culminated in the crisis of 
 1841-44 in New South Wales, was deep-seated, and the colony 
 sustained a check from which it did not completely recover 
 until the era of the goldfields. 
 
 In the meantime, many of the leading merchants and 
 squatters were irretrievably ruined. So general was the 
 collapse, and to such an extent did the mere commercial 
 gamblers and spendthrifts drag down the more solid and 
 reputable colonists that, as Mr. Westgarth — who was then a 
 settler in Port Phillip— truly remarks, 'we find many names 
 intimately associated with the early history and recent splen- 
 dour of the colony ' in this appalling and indiscriminate herd 
 of bankrupts. Thus, as he sadly observes : ' Many years of 
 labour and care terminated in ruin, and a perceptible gloom
 
 166 LIFE OF LOPtD SHERBROOEE 
 
 overspread the population on the occasion of so general a 
 distress and so melancholy a revolution of fortunes.' 
 
 Under such a state of things we are not astonished to learn 
 that most of the private carriages in Sydney were given up by 
 their owners, ' either from necessity or a sense of propriety.' 
 As there were few or no private i^urchasers many of these 
 once well-appointed equipages descended in the social scale^ 
 like their owners, and became common public conveyances. 
 
 In the very midst of all this gloom and wreckage Kobert 
 Lowe settled down in Sydney to what he elsewhere calls ' the 
 wretched trade of an advocate.' I do not find that he was 
 unduly depressed by this deplorable condition of things ; nor 
 was he, like so many of the older settlers, haunted by the 
 apprehension that the colony was irretrievably ruined. 
 
 It, of course, materially affected his practice and profits at 
 the Bar, but, looking at the matter in a general light, he no 
 doubt fully concurred with Sir George Gipps, who in a letter 
 to Lord Stanley about this time shrewdly pointed out that 
 ' the debts were those merely of one individual to another, and 
 not of the colony collectively.' 
 
 From the time that he first caught sight of early Melbourne, 
 then likewise in a state of lamentable depression, Eobert Lowe 
 seems to have been firmly impressed with the idea that 
 Australia was inevitably destined to be the permanent home 
 of a great and prosperous community. The following letter 
 from his own pen, one of the very few which he wrote ' home' 
 during his Australian exile, as well as giving an account of his 
 prospects and position at that time, will also, from the general 
 observations it contains, help to complete the sketch of Sydney 
 in the early ' forties ' : — 
 
 Bobert Lowe's Imp-essions of Australia. 
 
 January 17, 1843. 
 
 We have now been some months in this colony, and though 
 the vividness of first impressions may in some degree be impaired, I 
 am able to give you a more complete and coherent account of every-
 
 IN SYDNEY 167 
 
 thing than was possible at first. We are at last settled in a home 
 after most herculean labour in arguing and bargaining. It is a 
 very cheap one for this country, onhj 130Z. a year. It is all front, 
 with a very pretty view of Port Jackson, the Heads and the light- 
 house. The air is excellent, and the mosquitos not nearly so bad 
 as in lower situations. They are not really as tormenting as the 
 midges were in Scotland. Our establishment consists of Martha, 
 who is every day improving in health from this most excellent 
 climate, a man-servant and a kitchen-maid. The man-servant we 
 would gladly have dispensed with, but in this town where there are 
 no water-pipes, the carrying water ourselves is a great economy, and 
 a man is wanted to clean out and take care of my chambers. Our 
 furniture is all unpacked and arranged ; it has come, upon the whole, 
 exceedingly well, and had it not been for the abominable carelessness 
 of the abominable man who packed it, we should have had no losses : 
 the Aden was so extremely dry in the hold. The drawings are quite 
 safe and all my books. In this country, where the rooms are not 
 papered, but the walls and ceilings are left in stucco, a few pictures 
 framed are something more than ornamental. 
 
 The weather has been on the whole very pleasant ; during the first 
 two months no rain fell, and very considerable injury was done to the 
 crops and fruit, although more rain fell during the year than in Eng- 
 land ; yet from the peculiarity of the country, the absence of river 
 drainage, and the presence of immense masses of sandstone rock which 
 reflect the heat of almost a tropical sun, one day of fine weather 
 does more to dry than two or three of rain do to moisten it. At 
 Sydney, also, from its proximity to the sea, a very strong land or sea 
 breeze is continually blowing, which assists the drying influence of 
 the sun. The heat is seldom or never overpowering, and the 
 mornings and nights are uniformly cool. On Sunday, January 8, 
 the thermometer was 118° in the shade and 142° in the sun, yet we 
 bore this perfectly well, and have often been more uncomfortable on 
 a summer's day in England. We spent a few days at Government 
 House, Paramatta, last week, the pears in some parts of the garden 
 had literally been baked on one side on the trees by the hot wind, 
 presenting not only the appearance, but the taste of the oven. A 
 standard nectarine tree laden with fruit is a beautiful sight ; we are 
 just in the height of the peach and nectarine season, and enjoy our- 
 selves accordingly. A bushel of delicious nectarines is to be bought 
 for 3s., as fine in flavour as any I ever ate in England. The peaches 
 are as good as the general run of this fruit in England. 
 
 I am sorry to say that my eyes have grown so much worse, indeed 
 so nearly useless to me, that I have been obliged most unwillingly 
 to place myself under medical advice, and to debar myself from reading
 
 168 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBHOOIvE 
 
 and writing altogether. Mr. Bland,' who is my doctor, attributes my 
 inability to read, not to weakness of the eyes, but to an incipient tic 
 douloureux which has been coming on for several years and which 
 threatens, if not corrected, to be of a most severe description, 
 menacing not only my sight, but eventually life. He entertains 
 great hopes of being able to subdue this disorder, and has taken 
 tolerably stringent measures for that purpose, by cupping, calomel, 
 belladonna, &c., and a very strict regimen and low diet. I think he 
 has done me some good and trust he may do more. I have got a 
 very good clerk, who does literally all my reading and writing. I pay 
 him 2Z. a week. 
 
 This visitation is the more difficult to bear as, professionally 
 speaking, I have been getting on exceedingly well, having made 
 at least lOOZ. since my arrival in the colony. Times are ex- 
 tremely bad here ; there have been upwards of GOO insolvencies 
 in ten months, and law business has much diminished even since 
 my arrival, but if my health will only permit, I do not fear getting 
 my share. I am the junior barrister at this Bar, which is an 
 advantage, and have already been concerned in one case for the 
 defendant in which the plaintiff received a verdict for 1,200/. I 
 have as yet had no opportunity of making a speech. "We have now 
 had more chance of seeing what the society here is. Upon the 
 whole I think it very good, people are so much more liberal, so much 
 less bigoted and narrow-minded than in England.- The ladies are 
 not handsome, and those educated in the colony stupid, but of the 
 rest everybody has seen something beyond the common routine of 
 daily life in England and is rendered more agreeable accordingly. 
 
 The rest of the letter is concerned with the political out- 
 look of the colony, and is exceedingly characteristic, as are 
 the views expressed of the social condition of the people. 
 
 We have just received our new Constitution, and everybody is very 
 busy about the contested elections. The franchise is 20/. per annum, 
 a qualification in this country of high rents far lower than that of 
 England, amounting, indeed, to universal suffrage, and that in an 
 ignorant, lazy, vicious, and degraded community, the very last in the 
 world who ought to enjoy it. . . . The result might have been very 
 different had a better class of emigrants been sent out, for the free 
 
 ' The political colleague of Wentworth, afterwards defeated by Lord Sher- 
 brooke for the representation of Sydney. 
 
 -' Lord Sherbrooke lived to modify this opinion. Doubtless he did not find 
 the pecuhar bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the Oxford clericals, but these 
 human weaknesses cropped uj) in a different guise.
 
 IN SYDNEY 1G9 
 
 population is to the convict in the proportion of 25 to 3. But the 
 majority of the persons sent out here have been selected for their 
 uselessness in their mother country, as if there were any inherent 
 virtue in the Southern Hemisphere which could turn incorrigible 
 rogues into industrious labourers. Anyone with the wish and power 
 to work may, even in these bad times, soon rise to independence. 
 Stone-masons earn 9s. per day, very inditi'erent carpenters 7s., so 
 there is no lack of inducement to emigration, but these people all 
 seem to consider that to work was the only thing for Avhich they 
 were not sent out, and they are uniformly dissatisfied with their lot, 
 and wish themselves back in England, although they allow they 
 live in plenty and independence here, and would be starved or go 
 into a workhouse there. 
 
 My total inability to write with my own hand, and the con- 
 stant occupation which getting into our house has necessarily 
 afforded to my wife, must be my excuse for not writing sooner. 
 I trust it is not an excuse I shall have to offer again, but I have 
 no idea how long a time may elapse before I am permitted to use 
 my eyes again. 
 
 With best wishes to all my kind and dear friends in England, 
 
 Believe me theirs very truly, 
 
 Egbert Lowe. 
 
 This was written, as he says, three months after his 
 arrival, and so forms a fitting introduction to his future active 
 life and pubHc career in the colony. But we now come to a 
 very sad interlude, which is, indeed, foreshadowed in the 
 close of this letter.
 
 170 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A PERIOD OF GL005I 
 
 Threatened Blindness— Bush Wanderings— Tribute to W. S. Macleay — 
 
 Eeturn to the Bar 
 
 In writing the conclncling lines of the foregoing letter, Robert 
 Lowe little dreamt that within less than a month all his 
 bright hopes of professional success would have flown, and he 
 would be warned by his colonial doctors that unless he entirel}^ 
 ceased to use his eyes he would almost immediately become 
 stone-blind. It is difficult to imagine a harder fate for a man 
 conscious of such great mental powers, and with so much 
 intellectual activity. He had been driven from England l)y 
 the warnings of eminent medical authorities, who had declared 
 that he might preserve his partial and painful eyesight as a 
 colonist in Australia ; now, within a few months of his arrival, 
 he was told that unless he abandoned his profession he must 
 inevitably become blmd at once. Considering the mental 
 torture that these fallacious and equally dogmatic verdicts 
 must have caused the patient, it is not to be wondered at that 
 in after years he should have recorded a severe condemnation 
 of such empiricism ; for, despite these prognostications, as all 
 the world knows. Lord Sherbrooke contrived to achieve success 
 in his profession, and eminence as a statesman, without any 
 material injury to his dim eyesight. In later years, reviewing 
 this frightful experience in Sydney, it will be remembered, he 
 made these comments : — 
 
 ' The prophecies of my three Job's comforters Qiis London
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 171 
 
 doctors] had made me very nervous about my eyes. I suffered 
 somewhat from the glare of an Austrahan summer, Sydney 
 being one of the most dazzKng places in the world, and in an 
 evil hour I consulted a doctor. He cupped me and advised 
 me that it was absolutely necessary that I should discontinue 
 my practice, which was rapidly increasing. I doubt if I should 
 have been so docile to my Sydney iEsculapius if his opinion 
 had not tallied with the opinions of the London doctors. The 
 time is come, I said to myself, sooner than I thought, and if I 
 do not wish to be wholly blind I must give up my business. 
 This was the lowest ebb of my fortunes. It really seemed as 
 if I was destined to sink into a situation in which I should 
 look back with regret on the position it had cost me so much 
 trouble to quit. To make the thing complete I was forbidden 
 to read, so that all that remained to me was to forget what I 
 had learnt, enlivened by the joyless dignity to starve.' 
 
 This enforced idleness accounts for the apparent failure in 
 the early part of his career in Sydney, which astonished 
 Mr. David Blair, the compiler of The CyclopcBdia of Australasia. 
 But the fact that for the next six or eight months the 
 name of Kobert Lowe did not appear in the Law Reports 
 does not mean, as Mr. Blair supposes, that the colonial 
 attorneys were slow to recognise Lord Sherbrooke's abilities ; 
 but that he had been compelled by mistaken medical advice 
 to abandon the pursuit of his profession altogether. How he 
 contrived to exist during these succeeding months of com- 
 pulsory and anxious inactivit}' is related very fully in the 
 affectionate letters which Mrs. Lowe sent ' home ' regularly. 
 Some of these are very interesting, giving, as they do, de- 
 scriptions of the various places to which she accompanied him 
 with a view of whiling away the time that would otherwise 
 have lagged so heavily. From the first of these letters we 
 see that the colonial doctors were very peremptory in their 
 injunctions, and left the patient no choice unless he had elected 
 utterly to ignore their advice and to take the consequences.
 
 172 LIFE (3F LOEl) SIIEEBROOKE 
 
 Sydney : February 9, 1843. 
 
 My clearest Mother, — I cannot say with how much pain I write 
 to tell you that Robert cannot go on with his profession. Dr. Bland 
 and Mr. a Beckett say if he persists he will lose his sight. Besides 
 tic douloureux there is inflammation of the iris ; he has been cupped 
 four times, has had leeches applied, and is now decidedly better. 
 We must console ourselves as well as we can with the hope held out 
 that if he refrain from reading and all study, in about twelve months 
 he may be able to use his eyes again, but they say he can never 
 pursue his profession. This disappointment is perhaps the greatest 
 he has ever experienced ; he had made a splendid beginning and 
 was making about 1,000Z. a year. We had looked forward with so 
 much pleasure to the idea of being able to say how well we were 
 doing. At present we have scarcely formed a plan for the future 
 and are most unwilling to return home until we find nothing more 
 can be done. I have some hopes that Sir George Gipps will give 
 Robert something ; he is most kindly disposed to us, but there is 
 little to give — all preferment is so jealously guarded in England. I 
 cannot tell you how kind everyone is to us, and how high an opinion 
 they entertain of Robert. There are some Oxford men here who 
 have talked much about him, indeed he never goes into any society 
 without the people being at once impressed with the highest opinion 
 of his abilities. Poor Robert ! I fear he is doomed to disappointment, 
 I know not how it is, but every effort seems to fail, and now, when 
 all promised so well, it is indeed bitter. 
 
 After a few remarks upon the beauty of the country, and 
 the healthfulness of the climate, Mrs. Lowe continues : — 
 
 My greatest difticulty at present is to find amusement for Robert. 
 You may imagine the privations he endures with his love of reading 
 and the constant habit of employing every spare moment over a 
 book, now to be forbidden ever to read a line — I mean this literally. 
 He does not read even the most trifling note. At times my spirits 
 almost fail me, but Robert's good temper and happy disposition 
 support us both. He bears this last trial much better than I do. 
 We mean to see all we can of this country, but the times are very 
 bad, though people hope the conclusion of the war with China will 
 relieve them by opening a new trade. 
 
 Then with messages to Lady Sherbrooke, the widow of Sir 
 John Coape Sherbrooke, and other friends, the writer sadly 
 closes by remarking that she is ' not in spirits to write any 
 description of persons or things.'
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 173 
 
 By the next outgoing ship she wrote to her mother-in-law 
 in the same sohcitous and affectionate strain. 
 
 Sydney : February 19, 1843. 
 
 I write again as soon as possible that I may tell you we think 
 Eobert's eyes better, biit his cure can only be a work of time. Mr. 
 Arthur h Beckett ^ thinks rather more favourably of his case than 
 Dr. Bland, and says he may be capable of making some mental 
 exertions in a year or two. Robert has asked Sir George Gipps to 
 give him some appointment that will not require much eyesight, a 
 Police Magistracy, or something of that nature ; this will be worth 
 about 500Z. a year. We have also some other things in view, but 
 they are too remote and indefinite to write about, our plans change 
 daily, and I might write page on page were I to tell all we hope, 
 fear and think. I fear it would be but an annoyance at this distance. 
 Before we resolve upon returning home, we intend to be quite sure 
 that we can do nothing here. Sir George and Lady Gipps are kind 
 beyond measure, and I think we may hope that if Sir George can 
 help us, he will. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe goes on to relate that Captain Bell, of the 
 Hazard, a twenty-gun sloop then stationed in the harbour, 
 had promised to take them to Hobart Town on his return from 
 Norfolk Island, where he was about to convey Sir George 
 Gipps, who had received orders from Lord Stanley to examine 
 and report upon the system there pursued with the convicts. 
 Though Mrs. Lowe appeared to be most anxious for this trip, 
 it does not seem to have taken place, nor did Lord Sherbrooke 
 ever set foot in Tasmania. 
 
 The letter continues sadly : — 
 
 I cannot bear to see him sitting hour after hour doing 
 nothing, and change of air and scene are particularly recom- 
 mended. We are also thinking of making an excursion to 
 Illawarra ; a most splendid district ; we passed it on the coast, 
 about a hundred miles before we reached Sydney. But this 
 will in a great measure depend upon the possibility of letting 
 our house whilst we are away. Lady Gipps has promised to mount 
 us, and we are to go with her to Botany Bay ; we are also to have 
 
 ' Arthur Martin a Beckett, F.E.C.S., Staff Surgeon to the British Legion in 
 Spain, arrived in Sydney 1838 ; afterwards member of the Legislative Council ; 
 died in Sydney, 1871.
 
 174 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 the barge and take long excursions about the harbour. This we are 
 to do whilst Sir George is absent ; when he is at home, Lady Gipps 
 does not like to be away during the very few hours in the day she 
 can be with him — he has so much to do. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe carried out her plan of accompanying her 
 husband to various j)laces up country with a view of occupy- 
 ing his time and thoughts. They went to Illawarra and 
 stayed in a cottage at Wollongong, the chief town of the district. 
 There the clergyman took them in hand, providing them with 
 horses, and escorted them to a cattle station in the kangaroo 
 grounds where they were most hospitably welcomed by a Scotch 
 squatter and his sisters. Mrs. Lowe was very enthusiastic 
 about the beauties of Illawarra, which she compares to 
 Westmoreland. From Wollongong they were in the habit of 
 taking daily walks into the bush and conversing with the 
 small settlers, which I fancy the disabled barrister found more 
 congenial than much of the society small talk of Sydney. As 
 a rule, these settlers at this time, unlike the bulk of the 
 emigrants who remained in Sydney, appear to have been 
 thoroughly happy and contented with their lot. But in 
 Illawarra, as in the metropolis, the presumably wealthier class 
 of colonists (i.e. those who were wealthy ' on paper ') were suffer- 
 ing from the great commercial depression to which I have before 
 alluded. These had been existing on borrowed money, for 
 which they were paying in some cases 15 per cent., and as a 
 consequence, when the crash came, their properties had to be 
 sacrificed. One landowner near Wollongong, who had refused 
 14,000Z. for his land only three years before, was glad enough to 
 get 4,000/. for it. Such was the story they heard on every side. 
 Among these more or less unsuccessful squatters they came 
 across a nephew of Professor Wilson (Christopher North), who 
 was off to try his fortunes in China. 
 
 Meantime Mrs. Lowe writes : — 
 
 I think Robert is really better — he never reads ; being in the 
 open air is of great service to his nerves. The palpitation is much
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 175 
 
 reduced about the temples. I flatter myself tliat at the expiration 
 of a year he will again be able to read moderately. Our plans for 
 the future are quite unformed, we do not 'mean to make a hasty de- 
 cision. To employ Eobert's mind without fatigue is the first great 
 object. You cannot believe how patient and cheerful he is under 
 all he has undergone, he never repines or gives way to low spirits. 
 I read to him as much as I possibly can. 
 
 However bad the times may have been with these Aus- 
 tralian comitry gentlemen, they displayed no lack of kindly 
 hospitality towards the travellers. Pressing invitations came 
 from all sides ; and this, one is glad to say, has always been a 
 featm'e of the squatter class. 
 
 Perhaps enough has already been said concerning the 
 deplorable financial state of the country, but Australians, and 
 particularly Victorians of the present day, will peruse with some 
 astonishment such an account as the following description of 
 their territories in the year 1843 ; and yet, as their current 
 history shows, the old tale is ever being retold : — 
 
 You will hear no doubt of the crash of the Bank of Australia, 
 the directors have been discounting bills to an enormous extent. 
 What the consequence will be to this country no one can tell. The 
 securities are in land, and it is said that at least 300,000Z. worth of 
 land will be at once thrown into the market and make land unsale- 
 able. At Port Phillip, even land of the best quality will not now sell 
 at all, though it has been under cultivation. This district (Illawarra) 
 is the only part of the country where land is of any value. 
 
 These observations on men and things, in which Mrs. Lowe 
 indulged in her correspondence, are, during this period, fre- 
 quently interrupted by painful comments on the subject that 
 was ever present to her mind : — 
 
 ' We should enjoy ourselves so much if Piobert were well. 
 I am never free from apprehension about him, and it pains 
 me bej'ond measure to see him unable to read.' 
 
 Towards the end of the month they were back again in 
 Sydney, staying at Government House as the guests of Sir 
 George and Lady Gipps, who had kindly invited them to
 
 176 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 remain until they could regain possession of their own house 
 in Macquarie Street, which they had let. Mrs. Lowe, even 
 after the subsequent rupture between her husband and the 
 Governor, always recognised the kindness shown them during 
 this trying time, especially by Lady Gipps. They were now 
 again in the midst of such fashionable society as Sydney could 
 then boast. The Viceregal party used to cross over to the 
 North Shore, and ride into the country — the party numbering 
 generally Sir George and Lady Gipps, Sir Maurice O'Connell 
 (Commander of the Forces), Captain O'Connell, Mr. Parker,' 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Eobert Lowe. 
 
 This was alternated with trips to Paramatta, where they 
 accompanied the Viceregal party to the races. However 
 pleasant this kind of life might be to a fashionable flaneur, it 
 must have been torture to such a man as Robert Lowe. He 
 was again in the hands of his Sydney doctors, who were try- 
 ing their nostrums upon him. 
 
 The Lowes next went to Bathurst, in a somewhat adven- 
 turous fashion, for they drove there in their own little car- 
 riage with one horse. After they passed Penrith and crossed 
 the Emu Plains, they had to face the ascent of the Blue 
 Mountains. 
 
 Here (writes Mrs. Lowe) all appearance of cultivation ceases. 
 The road was surveyed and executed under Sir Thomas Mitchell's 
 directions. The mountains are composed principally of sand rock, 
 and form the most tremendous precipices I ever saw. The gum-tree 
 covers the mountains in endless forests, and a more absolute scene of 
 desolation imagination cannot conceive ; I can scarcely term it 
 beauty. The valleys are silent, no water to be seen or heard, and 
 very few birds ; now and then parrots of brilliant plumage fly across 
 the road with a wild scream. We traversed scenery such as this I 
 have attempted to describe for four days, and then reached Macquarie 
 Plains. 
 
 ' Private secretary to Sir George Gipps, afterwards Sir Henry Watson 
 Parker, third Prime Minister of New Soutli Wales; married in 1840 the 
 youngest daughter of Captain John Macarthur of Camden Park, the introducer 
 of the merino sheep into Australia.
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 177 
 
 Here they stayed with Mr. Lawson, who bears an honoured 
 
 name in conjunction with Wentworth and Blaxland in the 
 
 annals of pioneering exploits in New South Wales, and then 
 
 pushed on to the station of General Stewart, some three miles 
 
 from Bathurst. Mrs. Lowe, after a while, from an artistic point 
 
 of view, disparaged these vast bush solitudes, whose monotony 
 
 invariably strikes the traveller from other lands. On their 
 
 journey back an adventure befell them, which I had perhaps 
 
 better give in her own words. 
 
 In returning to Sydney we endeavoured to cross Mount Lambie. 
 Here we found the road fearfully bad. About half-past four o'clock 
 we stuck fast hopelessly in an immense pool of water. I remained 
 with the carriage whilst Eobert proceeded on foot to an inn about 
 two miles and a half distant in search of help. I scrambled to the 
 bank and there waited Eobert's return. A heavy rain began to fall 
 and night came on. In about two hours I heard steps and Robert 
 appeared with three men and a horse. With great difficulty they 
 extricated the carriage, and I had to mount the horse without a 
 saddle to reach it, the roads were so deep in mud. We slept at a 
 little inn and returned next day to Macquarie Plains, remained the 
 night at Mr. Lawson's and returned by the old Sydney road, which 
 was surveyed and laid down by Major Lockyer, which I think a 
 much better line than Sir Thomas Mitchell's. We regained the 
 high road at Solitary Creek, went on to the foot of Mount Victoria, 
 and then turned off the road to Megalong to stay a few days with 
 Dr. Palmer. 
 
 This hospitable squatter organised a kangaroo hunt for their 
 amusement, and they were further greatly entertained by the 
 blacks of the district, who climbed the trees in native fashion 
 and pulled out opossums and squirrels by their tails, which 
 caused them some diversion. They stayed several days at 
 Dr. Palmer's, who, at parting, presented Mrs. Lowe with two 
 pretty little parrots, and in due course they reached Paramatta 
 ' with only one broken spring.' 
 
 This expedition certainly seems, in the recital, rough and 
 somewhat dangerous for a lady ; and one might think accom- 
 panied also with some peril to her companion with his defi- 
 cient eyesight. But Mrs. Lowe expressly states that ' Eobert 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 enjoys himself beyond measure in these expeditions, and he 
 gains much benefit ; his eyes are decidedly better and his 
 general health good.' 
 
 Back again in their own house in Sydney, they were still 
 quite undecided as to what they should do. The doctors per- 
 sisted in their opinion that the least exertion would bring 
 back at any moment the affection of the nerves of the eye. 
 Eeading and writing of any kind were still absolutely for- 
 bidden. It was indeed a period of anxiety as well as of 
 gloom. The older colonists, with pleasant country residences, 
 were pressing in their kindly invitations ; and amongst other 
 noted homesteads where Mr. and Mrs. Lowe stayed during 
 this interval was Camden, the home of the Macarthurs, per- 
 haps the most historic country house in all Australia. 
 
 They accepted Mr. James Macarthur's invitation, and he 
 met them at Paramatta with his carriage and drove them to 
 Camden. Here they were most hospitably entertained, and 
 saw all that could be done by art towards making an Australian 
 homestead in the bush present the appearance of an English 
 nobleman's country seat. 
 
 By this time it may be surmised that these wanderings 
 had begun rather to pall ; at any rate, mention of them in 
 Mrs. Lowe's letters is less frequent and less enthusiastic. 
 She now often writes as one full of forebodings of the ruin 
 that seemed to be impending over the entire colony. Perhaps 
 their own melancholy situation caused her unconsciously to 
 deepen the shadows of the picture. 
 
 There was, however, yet another of these ' up-country ' 
 excursions on which Piobert Lowe was unaccompanied by his 
 energetic and devoted helpmate ; and of this, at her express 
 request, he dictated a brief account which was slipped into 
 one of her letters and forwarded to friends in England. On 
 this occasion he was visiting his friend, Mr. Barker, a squatter 
 in the county of Argyle, which he himself subsequently re- 
 presented in the Legislative Council.
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 179 
 
 This is his own account of his experiences and reflections 
 on this occasion : — 
 
 September 8, 1843. 
 
 Having agreed to accompany my friend, Mr. Barker, to his 
 estabKshment near Goulburn, in the County of Argyle, about 150 
 miles S.W, of Sydney, I am now to give an account of my expedition. 
 We travelled in a very light carriage with large wheels drawn by 
 two thoroughbred horses, so that the journey was neither so slow 
 nor so laborious as that to Bathurst. Barker is a very agreeable 
 companion, possessing great power of observation and a very com- 
 plete knowledge of the country, its pursuits, and its inhabitants. 
 The first day we travelled to Camden, a village built on the land 
 of the Macarthurs and to which they have presented a new church 
 with a very ambitious spire. It is situated on the banks of the 
 Nepean river. The surrounding country is very rich and fertile, and 
 requires nothing but the subdivision into small farms to become 
 extremely productive. The road from thence to Goulburn has 
 carefully avoided every fertile and improvable spot, a peculiarity 
 observable in all Sir Thomas Mitchell's roads. About two miles 
 from Goulburn you emerge from the eternal forest of white gum-trees, 
 the ugliest and the most useless of the class, upon Goulburn Plains, 
 which really do deserve the name, for they stretch without an inter- 
 vening eminence to the Australian Alps on the one side, and the 
 rivers which empty themselves into Lake Alexandrina on the other. 
 These plains or table-lands, lying 2,000 feet above the level of the 
 sea, are situated near the point where the eastern and western waters 
 di\'ide, and possess consequently a much more temperate climate 
 than the neighbourhood of Sydney. 
 
 Here you no longer see the orange-tree, the banana, or Indian 
 corn, but their place is supplied by European fruits and productions. 
 The mornings and evenings are agreeably cool even in the height of 
 summer, whereas in Sydney the hours between sunrise and ten 
 o'clock, when the sea breeze generally begins to blow, are the most 
 oppressive in the day. Mr. Barker's station is situated on the 
 banks of the Wollondilly, which runs through a long, narrow valley 
 formed by hills of volcanic origin, whose undulating slopes, thinly 
 dotted with trees, sometimes advancing and sometimes retiring, 
 have forced the river into an undulating channel, and form, when 
 covered with cattle, a very pleasing pastoral landscape. We found 
 everything going wrong, the sheep dying of catarrh induced by the 
 neglect of the overseer in folding them on marshy ground, and 
 everything conducted in the most wasteful and irregular manner. 
 This is too often the case in Australia, where the evils of absenteeism 
 are quite as great as in Ireland, or perhaps more felt, as everything 
 
 n2
 
 180 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 here depends upon the personal care and intelHgence of the pro- 
 prietor. We returned to Sydney in about three weeks. During 
 my stay I acquired some insight into sheep-farming, and am quite 
 certain that, if conducted with proper care and economy, it is a very 
 lucrative business at the present prices ; but neither this, nor the 
 many other resources of this country, will save the greater number 
 of the proprietors of land and stock from that ruin which their 
 reckless speculation and grasping ambition have brought upon 
 them. 
 
 It was during these enforced wanderings in the bush that 
 the Lowes fell in with an old Oxford friend, Henry Denison, 
 the younger brother of the Bishop of Salisbury, whom Sir 
 Francis Doyle describes as being 'in his first youth a sort of 
 Admirable Crichton.' The race is not always to the swift. 
 Denison all but broke his neck by a fall from his horse in 
 Australia, and the brilliant Oxonian became a paralysed 
 wreck. Mrs. Lowe writes : . ' Mr. Denison's health is so bad 
 that the medical men here advise him to return home. He 
 has promised the first time he is in Notts to call on Mrs. 
 Sherbrooke.' 
 
 Throughout all this trying time, in which he had so much 
 leisure to brood upon his great misfortune, Eobert Lowe 
 never seems to have uttered a word of complaint or repining. 
 Almost any other man in the course of a narration like the 
 foregoing would have expatiated on the terrible deprivation 
 which thus sent him a broken and beaten man wandering 
 aimlessly in a strange land. It was, however, no part of his 
 manly philosophy ever to make others miserable by the recital 
 of his own woes. This, like every other high virtue, had its 
 own reward ; making him, at any rate, despite his affliction, 
 a thoroughly companionable man. To some extent this 
 enforced leisure, in which he saw much of the country and its 
 remote and isolated settlers, must have influenced for good 
 his subsequent career in New South Wales. 
 
 These bush wanderings must have l)rought him into 
 social contact with many persons who would not have had
 
 A PERIOD OF GLOOM 181 
 
 opportunities of conversing with him, and discovering his 
 remarkable gifts, if he had continued in the active exercise of 
 his profession in Sydney. It may be safely said that he 
 never passed a night under a squatter's roof without im- 
 pressing and delighting his host by his wonderful knowledge 
 and acumen, and his brilliant powers of conversation. In 
 these early days, many of the pioneer squatters were them- 
 selves men of remarkable individuality, and in some cases by 
 no means deficient in mental culture. Years afterwards, in 
 an address delivered in London, Lowe spoke of them as 
 * gentlemen who formed the real aristocracy of the Australian 
 colonies, men whose boast it is that there runs in their veins 
 some of the best blood in England.' ^ 
 
 Kobert Lowe, as already recorded, had greatly impressed 
 the governor. Sir George Gipps, with his ability and capacity 
 for public affairs ; this fact, and his personal acquaintance 
 with the squatters and isolated settlers, had a direct bearing 
 on his career in the colony. It is with evident pleasure that 
 Mrs. Lowe records the high opinion which Sir George Gipps 
 had at this time formed of her husband's abilities. 
 
 Sir George (she writes) is constantly asking his opinion on all 
 sorts of subjects, particularly questions of difficulty arising from the 
 working of this new Legislative Council. This is a very high com- 
 pliment from Sir George Gipps, who is notorious for never asking 
 or caring for other people's opinions. He will scarcely listen, even 
 so much as politeness requires, to those of his Government officials. 
 
 But for all this the days began to hang heavily, and it is 
 plain that Lowe had practically abandoned all hopes of a 
 colonial career. Mrs. Lowe sorrowfully admits that he 
 is not likely to do much good in Sydney ; and adds that 
 they are greatly tempted to throw it all up and return to 
 England. 
 
 ^t>^ 
 
 ' Speech on the Austrahan Colonies Bill, at the rooms of the Society for 
 the Eeform of Colonial Government, June 1, 1850. By Eobert Lowe, Esquire, 
 late Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
 
 182 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBEOOKE 
 
 This mournful ex^istle was written on October 8, 1843, but 
 on the 30th of the same month another was sent, which 
 revealed the silver lining of the cloud. Eobert Lowe had been 
 absolutely idle for eight months and a half, and during that 
 time he had neither read nor written a line. He now decided 
 to resume, with great precautions, the practice of his profession. 
 It is not stated whether this was done with the approval of 
 the two Sydney doctors, but it may shrewdly be suspected 
 that the patient had decided on this course without further 
 consulting them. He therefore procured the assistance of a 
 clerk for his chambers, who was also to live at his house, 
 so that he might be always at hand. He gave a distinct 
 promise to his wife that if he felt the slightest symptoms of a 
 relapse, either in regard to his eyes or his general health, he 
 would then and there give up all idea of ever again practising 
 at the Bar. With this she contented herself, reflecting that, 
 * if he does little, this will be an amusement.' With the in- 
 creasing badness of the times, and the fact that he had to 
 make a fresh start as a junior, there was very little likelihood 
 of any distressing amount of legal business coming in his 
 way. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe seems to have cherished the hope that Sir 
 George Gipps would yet find some suitable post for the man 
 of whose capacity he entertained so high an opinion. Lady 
 Gipps had told her that Sir George declared that ' Mr. Lowe 
 was the cleverest man in the country.' This raised her hopes 
 to the altitude of a temporary judgeship in Norfolk Island or 
 a police-magistracy somewhere in the back blocks of New 
 South Wales. But the revenue of the colony was falling 
 wofully, so that retrenchment was the order of the day ; and 
 under these circumstances Sir George Gipps was the very 
 last man in the world to make a post for any friend, however 
 deserving and capable he might be. 
 
 These weary months recurred to Lord Sherbrooke's
 
 A PEEIOD OF GLOOM 183 
 
 memory with vivid intensity when, some years ago, he sat 
 down to record the events of his past Hfe. 
 
 Then it was that he paid the fine tribute to the memory 
 of W. S. Macleay : ' However, in this the lowest ebb of my 
 fortunes, I found several alleviations. The principal was the 
 extraordinary good fortune which gave me the acquaintance 
 and, I am proud to say, the friendship of Mr. William 
 Macleay. He had been Secretary at Paris for claims of 
 English subjects and afterwards had been a Commissioner 
 for the Extinction of the Slave Trade at Cuba. He was an 
 excellent classical scholar, he knew more of modern history 
 and biography than any one with whom I was ever acquainted, 
 and in addition to all this he was a profoundly scientific man ; 
 thoroughly conversant with zoology, botany, and entomology. 
 He was an excellent companion, with a store of caustic wit 
 which reminded me continually of the best part of Scott's 
 Antiquary. It fell to my lot to do him some slight service 
 for which he never knew how to be sufficiently grateful. It 
 would have been a good find to meet with such a person 
 anywhere, but in a remote colony it was a good fortune for 
 which one could not be too thankful. I have not seen, and 
 shall not see, his like again.' 
 
 Such is Lord Sherbrooke's tribute to William Sharpe 
 Macleay, his most cherished Australian friend, who fully re- 
 turned his affection, and whose admiration for his great 
 abilities, indomitable courage, and personal worth was un- 
 bounded. At his death in Sydney in 1865, William Macleay 
 bequeathed 1,000Z. to Lord Sherbrooke and a like sum to his 
 wife as a mark of his friendship and esteem. It is not difficult 
 to imagine what a solace the conversation of so cultivated a 
 man must have been to one who felt that, despite his own 
 great powers and grasp of mind, his career, from impending 
 blindness, was about to close before it had well begun. Lord 
 Sherbrooke, it will be remembered, goes on to refer to the 
 bush w^anderings of this gloomy period, and, with regard to
 
 184 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 the loveliness of Illawarra, pathetically describes it as a place 
 ' where a man might pass his time with no other regret than 
 that of being totally useless.' But now, in defiance of doctors 
 and specialists, he determined to go back to his law-books 
 and to active life in Sydney, be the consequences \;'hat they 
 might.
 
 185 
 
 CHAPTEE XI 
 
 THE CKOWN NOMINEE 
 
 (1843-1844) 
 
 Lord Stanley's ' New Constitution '— Eicharcl Windeyer, the ' Popular Member ' 
 — W. C. Wentworth, the 'Australian Patriot' — Lowe's Maiden Speech in 
 the Council — His Stand for Free-Trade — Becomes a Personage in Sydney 
 
 Under the new ConstitutioD, which the late Earl of Derby, then 
 Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary of State, had bestowed 
 upon New South Wales in the year 1842, the old Legislative 
 Council, which had heretofore consisted entirely of officials 
 and Crown nominees, became largely a representative body. 
 It consisted of thirty-six members, of whom two-thirds were 
 elective, on a franchise of a 20L rental or a freehold of 200^. in 
 value ; furthermore, there was a property qualification for 
 members of 2,000L or a yearly value of 1001. 
 
 In addition to these twenty-four ' popular ' representatives 
 there were six salaried government officials, who might be 
 regarded as a kind of Cabinet, and six Crown nominees. The 
 Governor no longer presided, nor had he any direct voice 
 or vote in the Council. In the Viceregal speech which 
 inaugurated this, the first Parliament in Australia (August 3, 
 1843), Sir George Gipps thus explained the constituent 
 elements of his new Council : ' The Legislative Council,' he 
 said, ' is composed of three elements, or three different classes 
 of persons : the representatives of the people, the official 
 servants of Her Majesty,' and of 'gentlemen of independence 
 — the unofficial nominees of the Crown.'
 
 186 LIFE OF LORD SIIEPtBROOKE 
 
 Unfortunately Sir George Gipps, who was a soldier rather 
 than a politician, too quickly forgot his own distinctions 
 between the salaried Government officials and the Crown 
 nominees. It would seem that Sir George, having nommated 
 these latter * gentlemen of independence ' to their seats in the 
 Council, fully expected them to vote on all occasions with his 
 salaried officials and to assist them in every way to thwart the 
 ' representatives of the people,' who under this hybrid scheme 
 formed a permanent but ineffective Opposition, as, despite their 
 overwhelmmg majority, the Governor could always veto any 
 measure which he considered inopportune or undesirable. 
 
 Some three months after the opening of the Legislative 
 Council, the Speaker (the Hon. Alexander Macleay, elected in 
 his 77th year) announced that he had received a letter from 
 ' Richard Jones, Esq.,' resigning his seat ; and further that 
 His Excellency the Governor ' had been pleased to appoint 
 Robert Lowe, Esq., Barrister-at-Law,' in his stead. Mr. Lowe, 
 having been introduced to the Speaker by the Colonial Secre- 
 tary (Edward Deas Thomson) and the Attorney-General 
 (John Hubert Plunkett) took the oaths and his seat. 
 
 The Sydney Morninrj Herald — then the only daily news- 
 paper in Australia — seemed perturbed at this intrusion of a 
 mere nonentity into the sacred precincts of this infant Parlia- 
 ment. In its issue of November 10, 1843, appears the following 
 serious little article, which, in the light of subsequent events, it 
 is difficult to read without a smile : — 
 
 Who is Mr. Lowe, the new member of Comicil ? is a question 
 that has been asked i^retty often within the last forty-eight hours, 
 . and it does not say much for the Governor's choice that it should 
 have to be asked. All that is known of Mr. Lowe in the colony is 
 that he is a junior barrister, who arrived here about fourteen months 
 ago, and that, in consequence partly of ill-health and partly of want of 
 success, it was understood some six months since he had determined 
 upon retiring from the profession. He is a gentleman of very 
 superior scholastic attainments, and was, until very shortly before 
 he left England,' a Fellow and tutor of one of the Oxford colleges. 
 We are at a loss to conceive what claims Mr. Lowe had to be made
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 187 
 
 a Councillor ; he has had no colonial experience, he has no stake in 
 the colony, and we must express our surprise that the Governor 
 should have passed over all the old colonists to confer the office on 
 a gentleman who is almost a stranger. 
 
 The Herald had not long to wait before its queries were 
 answered. Although it was then the month of November, the 
 year had not run out before the voice of the new nominee was 
 very familiar in the ears of the older members of the Legisla- 
 tive Council ; and when he thought fit, in the following year, 
 to resign his seat, Eobert Lowe had undoubtedly established 
 his position as one of the leading public men in the colony of 
 New South Wales. 
 
 After the weary months of gloom and disappointment 
 described in the preceding chapter, this unforeseen introduction 
 into public life was naturally highly gratifying to Mrs. Lowe. 
 
 In a letter to her mother-in-law, written the day before her 
 husband actually took his seat in the Council, she thus refers 
 to the event in her usual frankly unreserved and therefore 
 interesting style. 
 
 Sydney : November 7, 1843. 
 
 My dear Mother, — I write to you with so much pleasure in being 
 able to tell you that Sir George Gipps has appointed Robert a 
 nominee member of the Legislative Council. I assure you this is a 
 high honour, and delights him greatly, it also inspires me with an 
 additional overflow of vanity (which pray forgive) regarding Robert's 
 abilities. 
 
 Sir George has placed him in the Legislative Council, he ex- 
 pressly says, to strengthen the Government, and looks forward to 
 his being of great use. This appointment will give Robert an 
 opportunity of bringing himself before the public, and will be of 
 great use to him as a barrister. I shall have so much pleasure in 
 sending the Sydney papers, as I know with what great interest and 
 dehght you will read his speeches. Now, my dearest mother, 
 does not Robert overcome every obstacle and impediment ? Even 
 with the disadvantage of having had to retire from the Bar for 
 a time, m a new place, amongst new friends, and with no real 
 opportunity of displaying his talents, he has been able to impress 
 everyone with the highest opinion of them and of his character. Sir 
 James Dowling [the Chief Justice], Judge Stephen,' all whose opinions 
 
 ' The present veteran, Sir Alfred Stephen, now in his ninety-first year—
 
 188 LIFE OF LOKD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 are worth caring for, speak of him in the highest terms. He has 
 been in Sydney but twelve months and Sir George has conferred on 
 him the highest honour in his power to bestow, nor has there been 
 the least private friendship in this. Sir G. G. is notoriously a man 
 who has never even stretched a point for a private friend. This 
 appointment has no remuneration attending it, but much honour. 
 Robert's speeches will be printed and sent home with the Proceedings 
 of the Legislative Council ; his name will thus be often before the 
 Home Government, and may thus prove of immense advantage. 
 There have been already very many fiery debates in the Legislative 
 Council, and are likely to be more. 
 
 How true it is that hope fulfilled is disappointment. In 
 less than a year from the evening when he made his first bow 
 to the Speaker, Eobert Lowe felt compelled to send in his 
 resignation, simply because he could see no ' honour ' in being 
 the nominee of a man with whom he gravely differed on 
 almost every question of public policy, though, of course, this 
 divergence was not apparent either to Sir George Gipps or 
 himself when the seat was conferred upon and accepted by 
 him. 
 
 Then, although it was doubtless true, as Mrs. Lowe pro- 
 gnosticated, that her husband's brilliant speeches were ' printed 
 and sent home,' it may be doubted whether the Ministers 
 at St. Stephen's or the chief officials in Whitehall were able 
 to peruse those outspoken and often vehement diatribes with 
 pleasure or even equanimity. Their unlooked-for result, how- 
 ever, was to make the erstwhile nominee of the Governor 
 one of the foremost, and for a time the most popular man 
 in the community — but this is anticipating the chapter of 
 events. 
 
 Sir George Gipps, in selecting Eobert Lowe as one of the 
 Crown nominees, did so simply to strengthen himself in the 
 Council. The Governor was a shrewd and able man ; though 
 it will be admitted on all hands that if he expected Lowe to 
 become either a lackey or a tool, he could hardly have made 
 
 formerly Chief Justice and late Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales — 
 a near kinsman of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and of Mr. Leslie Stephen.
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 189 
 
 a worse selection. But the Government officials in the 
 Council were now confronted by a number of popular repre- 
 sentatives, each of whom has left his mark in the annals of 
 Australia. Dr. Lang, in his History of New South Wales, 
 expresses astonishment at the ' great superiority of the first 
 Legislative Council to those that have succeeded it ; ' and 
 questions whether ' it has ever been surpassed by any legis- 
 lature out of England in the British Empire.' To support 
 his assertion he mentions the names of Lowe, Wentworth, 
 Windeyer, and Cowper : to which in fairness should be added 
 his own. 
 
 If from this list we omit Lord Sherbrooke's name altogether 
 as that of a man quite apart, and in no sense a normal colonial 
 member, and substitute for it that of Sir Edward Deas Thom- 
 son, then the principal Crown official, it may be safely declared 
 that no subsequent Australian Legislature can present such a 
 galaxy of really able parliamentarians. 
 
 It would seem from a letter of Mrs. Lowe's, written at this 
 time, that the ' popular ' representative whom Sir George Gipps 
 most feared was Eichard Windeyer, ' the Joseph Hume of the 
 House,' as Dr. Lang styled him. 
 
 Pilchard Windeyer was an English barrister who had been 
 on the staff of the Times and the Morning Chronicle,^ He 
 originated Todd's Parliamentary Companion, and as a friend 
 of Colonel Perronet Thompson took part in the Anti-Corn- 
 law agitation. He emigrated to Sydney in 1835, and became 
 leader of the Australian bar. As a public man, his inflexible 
 honesty and ability made him alike respected and feared. 
 
 ' There is a barrister,' writes Mrs. Lowe, ' a Mr. Windeyer, 
 an undoubtedly clever man, who has a strong party opposed to 
 the Government — and the Home Government also ; this man 
 
 ' Disraeli, when starting the Eeprescntative, informed Murray that he had 
 engaged S. C. Hall ' and a Mr. Windyer, sen., both of whom we shall find 
 excellent reporters and men of business. The latter has been on the Times.' 
 {Memoir of John Murray, vol. ii. p. 206.)
 
 190 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 is a popular member — to oppose him, and to conquer if pos- 
 sible, is to be Robert's main point.' 
 
 Again, how little it was foreseen that the popular member 
 and the Crown nominee would, after a very short time, discover 
 that they were meant to be allies rather than enemies ! 
 
 Whatever the local press may have thought of the new 
 nominee member, Sir George Gipps, as we have seen, had 
 enjoyed special facilities for forming an independent judgment. 
 In his despatch to Lord Stanley (November 10, 1843), Sir 
 George, after announcing Mr. Lowe's appointment, describes 
 him as ' a barrister of England and of New South Wales .... 
 Mr. Lowe has been but a short time in the colony, but he 
 was for many years a distinguished member of the University 
 of Oxford, where he was a Fellow of Magdalen College and 
 for some time one of the examining masters. He is a man 
 of first-rate abilities and a fluent speaker.' 
 
 On these points the new member did not suffer either the 
 Legislative Council or the colony to be long in doubt. At the 
 time that he took his seat, the leaders of the Opposition were 
 very busy with a Bill which some of them, and notably Mr. 
 Windeyer, seemed to think a panacea for the terrible com- 
 mercial depression under which New South Wales still con- 
 tinued to languish. Having acquired through Lord Stanley 
 a certain measure of autonomy, such men as Wentworth and 
 Windeyer would naturally want to exercise to the utmost the 
 self-governing powers placed in their hands as popular repre- 
 sentatives of the Council. It is highly significant of the 
 general state of financial collapse that these ingenious pioneer 
 legislators of the colony should, in this second session of their 
 first Parliament, have devoted their energies almost entirely 
 to monetary measures. 
 
 Eobert Lowe's first speech was in opposition to a measure 
 introduced by Richard Windeyer, called the Monetary Confi- 
 dence Bill, which was designed to relieve the general bank- 
 ruptcy by the creation of a State bank together with a system
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 191 
 
 of land debentures. A select committee of the House had 
 been appointed, and such financial and banking experts as the 
 colony could then boast had been examined by it. ~ The report 
 of this select committee is of itself a most interesting docu- 
 ment, but unfortunately far too lengthy to reproduce on the 
 present occasion. Like all experts, these early colonial 
 bankers gave diametrically contradictory opinions with regard 
 to Mr. Windeyer's proposed measure. That gentleman, who 
 was then admittedly the most brilliant advocate at the Sydney 
 Bar, introduced his Bill in a speech of great length and of 
 marked ability. If anyone out of mere curiosity cares to 
 turn to the reports of this prolonged debate on the Monetary 
 Confidence Bill, they will, I am sure, be amazed at the general 
 breadth of knowledge and superior dialectical skill displayed 
 by the chief speakers. It used to be a favourite line of argu- 
 ment, with those who are of opinion that the British Empire 
 would be welded together in a firmer and more satisfactory way 
 if the Colonies were directly represented at Westminster, that, 
 by becoming members of such an Imperial Parliament, the 
 colonial representatives would learn to take large and imperial 
 views and would cease to be engrossed in mere petty and 
 parochial debates. Let anyone who cherishes such a delusion 
 turn from a report of an average night in the House of 
 Commons to this discussion in the first, and only partially 
 representative. Parliament of New South Wales. Why, 
 Windeyer's speech alone would be sufficient to make the 
 reputation of many an aspirant to the Chancellorship of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 The fact is, if you want resounding eloquence and far- 
 reaching and imperial views of men and thmgs, you have only 
 to collect half-a-dozen needy geniuses bent on the reformation 
 of the world and the alleviation of their own pecuniary troubles. 
 Truly, Windeyer and his chief supporters used every argumen- 
 tative art in support of their favourite panacea. They were 
 also in an evident majority, and it required some courage for
 
 192 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 a new and untried man to rise and endeavour to disprove or 
 discount the five or six hours' eloquent oratory of the mover of 
 the Bill — backed up as he would inevitably be by the over- 
 whelming Wentworth. 
 
 Eobert Lowe, however, rose at once and delivered his 
 maiden speech in Parliament. He succeeded in enchaining 
 the attention of the Assembly, and sprang at a bound into 
 the front rank as a debater. It is not too much to say that 
 he met and fairly defeated Windeyer on every point. On 
 the third reading of the Bill, Lowe again spoke with the 
 same force and brilliancy ; and besides that, his speech dis- 
 played a grasp of the whole subject of colonial finance, as 
 well as an intimate knowledge of the social and commercial 
 state of the colony, surprising in one who had been a resident 
 for so short a time. 
 
 William Cliarles Wentworth, I have been told by one who 
 witnessed the scene, looked up like a fighting cock who had 
 long been lord of the domain, but who finds himself unex- 
 pectedly confronted by a rival. Like all men of really great and 
 original mind he at once detected and appreciated ability in 
 another. Lowe's speech might have been perhaps somewhat 
 too academic in tone — fitted at times better for the Oxford 
 Union than for the Sydney Legislative Council — and he was 
 certainly not overburdened with colonial experience ; he 
 had been, moreover, at too evident pains on this his first 
 appearance to prepare his case against Windeyer and his re- 
 doubtable supporter. But Wentworth, by the very manner of 
 his reply, showed that he recognised in the new-comer a foe- 
 man worthy of his steel. Like a skilful and practised debater 
 he began by smiting his opponent where his armour was 
 thinnest. Lowe, he said, had no doubt done his best in sup- 
 port of the authority which had given him his seat in the 
 Council. He had spoken eloquently at the dictation of his 
 constituent. He fully acknowledged that ' the efforts of the 
 hon. member fromHorbury Terrace [Lowe's Sydney residence],
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 193 
 
 smelling of the lamp as they did and highly considered as they 
 were, were nevertheless efforts of no small merit.' 
 
 Wentworth, whose great boast it was that he was a native of 
 New South Wales — he was really born in Norfolk Island, which 
 was then, however, under the rule of Sydney — was not likely to 
 let his opponent off lightly for the crime of being what they 
 call in Australia a ' new chum.' In his customary vigorous 
 and antithetical way, he declared that ' all the opposition 
 emanated from persons who were comparative strangers to the 
 land, ignorant of its wants, ignorant of its history, ignorant, in 
 short, of everything connected with it.' This was no doubt 
 intended quite as much for Sir George Gipps as for his eloquent 
 mouthpiece. Dr. Nicholson (now Sir Charles Nicholson, 
 Bart.), a worthy pioneer settler, then one of the members for 
 the district of Port Phillip, said that ' the peroration of the 
 speech of the member from Horbury Terrace was very beauti- 
 ful.' While the leading journal, which only a few days ago 
 had wanted to know who Mr. Lowe was, remarked, the morn- 
 ing after the debate, that ' Mr. Lowe spoke in a strain of elo- 
 quence to which even the learned member for Sydney (Went- 
 worth) was constrained to ascribe no small merit.' 
 
 On the division, Mr. Windeyer's Bill was carried against 
 the Government by fourteen votes to seven ; but Governors in 
 those days were not what we English understand as Constitu- 
 tional monarchs, for they held the powers of the Czar of Eussia 
 or the President of the United States. Accordingly Sir George 
 Gipps promptly vetoed the measure, and that was the end of it. 
 
 In the next attempt to remedy the ills of the colony by 
 legislation, the new nominee member assumed the initiative, 
 A select committee had been appointed to inquire into the 
 working of the Insolvency Act, then in force in New South Wales. 
 The committee, which consisted of Dr. Nicholson (the mover) , 
 Mr. Charles Cowper (seconder) , and Messrs. Lowe, Plunkett, 
 Therry, and Wentworth, were indefatigable in the examination 
 of witnesses and the collection of evidence. So serious was 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 the crisis that the most influential men in the community gave 
 evidence. 
 
 A report had been drawn up in which, among other thmgs, 
 the aboHtion of imprisonment for debt under final process was 
 recommended. At the same time the Chief Commissioner of 
 Insolvency was to be invested with more extensive powers of 
 committal for acts of glaring dishonesty on the part of insol- 
 vents. A^oluntary assignments in trust for creditors were also 
 advised. This class of legislation, which the Council felt itself 
 impelled to undertake with some degree of precipitancy, shows 
 how very serious the condition of the colony still was towards 
 the close of 1843c In the attempt to amend the Insolvency 
 Act, Robert Lowe, new as he w^as to the colony and the 
 Council, certainly took the principal part. ' In bringing up 
 the report of the committee,' writes Mr. David Blair, ' he 
 earnestly and eloquently urged the abolition of imprisonment 
 for debt ; a measure which subsequently became law, and was 
 the chief distinction of the first session of the Council. 
 
 A week after this triumph a very important debate took 
 place on the Tariff, in which Eobert Lowe gave eloquent expres- 
 sion to his free-trade proclivities, which had already made him 
 feared and famous at Oxford. The debate in the Council which 
 took place on December 22 was on a motion of Wentworth's 
 to increase the duty on flour from Is. 5d. to half-a-crown per 
 hundredweight. Mr. Lowe said he was altogether opposed to 
 the proposition. He also objected to the manner in which it 
 had been sprung on the Council. He had been told that all 
 his speeches smelt of the lamp ; but he wished that ' on this 
 occasion he could have had an opportunity of consulting that 
 lamp.' Not only had the lion, member for Sydney not given 
 any notice of this proposition, but he had endeavoured, and 
 had nearly succeeded, in lulling the vigilance of the committee 
 and carrying his measure unopposed; for during the whole 
 of the session he (Wentworth) had declared his aversion to 
 all protective and to all prohibitory duties. It was true that,
 
 TPIE CROAVN NOMINEE 195 
 
 even among the supporters of the proposal, there were differ- 
 ences of opinion as to whether it was protective, or merely for 
 the sake of the revenue. As a matter of fact, the effect would 
 be to tax the bread of the poor for the supposed advantage of 
 a class : already in this city there were hundreds who could 
 with difficulty procure a loaf, and the committee would now 
 take a slice from that loaf. The Legislature had been called 
 upon to relieve those people ; they had assisted them. But it 
 would be mockery now to adopt a measure which would render 
 all that they had before done of no avail. He would remind 
 the House of the fearful consequences of the Corn Laws in 
 England. ' Already civil war threatened the kingdom, class 
 had been raised up against class, discord and discontent uni- 
 versally prevailed, and matters were fast approaching to a 
 crisis which, if the fullest concessions were not made, would, he 
 feared, involve the Monarchy, the aristocracy, the British Con- 
 stitution — all that an Englishman held dear, in one common 
 ruin. He would have the committee pause before they sowed 
 the seed of similar disasters for future generations. This 
 colony had been held up to the world as the refuge for all that 
 was disgraceful to humanity ; let not this Council be held up 
 as the receptacle for antiquated and foolish notions which had 
 been hunted out from every portion of the civilised globe.' 
 
 This speech thoroughly aroused Wentworth, who, from his 
 former easy ascendency in the Council, had grown somewhat 
 careless of his reputation as a parliamentary debater. To a 
 mind like his, essentially broad, and at the same time comba- 
 tive, the advent of such a speaker as Lowe, who never debated 
 even a local or parochial matter without referring to general 
 principles, was sure to act as a stimulant. It is curious also 
 to notice in this debate that Wentworth in his reply to Lowe 
 practically proclaimed himself a Protectionist. In this matter 
 the ' Australian patriot,' to give him his popular title, proved 
 himself the forerunner of the fiscal policy which has been 
 
 o2
 
 196 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 accepted by all the Australian colonies, with the exception of his 
 own. No one could possibly read this debate without seemg 
 that if, in after years, under responsible government, Went- 
 worth had been called upon to shape a policy as Prime Minister 
 of New South Wales, it would have been on Protectionist 
 lines. 
 
 This was the first occasion on which Wentworth and Lowe 
 were fairly matched in an exciting public debate. The older 
 and more experienced man — Wentworth was twenty years 
 Lowe's senior — was elaborately sarcastic in referring to the 
 brilliant oratory of the hon. member from Horbury Terrace, 
 which, although it was ' destitute of the lustre generally com- 
 municated by its previous preparation, was still an effort of 
 much talent.' 
 
 The leading colonial journal, however, seemed to consider it 
 of a higher order and, on the whole, more effective than Went- 
 worth's own, ' with its usual mixture of elegance and vulgarity, 
 of good sense and coarse abuse.' Lowe's, on the other hand, 
 received unmixed laudation. 
 
 The session closed on December 28 ; and certainly, in the 
 marvellously short interval from November 8, when he took 
 his seat, the new nominee member had succeeded in making 
 his presence felt in a very marked degree. His triumphs in 
 the Council of course affected his status in the community. 
 At the annual Christmas examination of the students of 
 Sydney College, * Pi. Lowe, Esq., M.C (writes a contemporary 
 chronicler) ' examined the first Greek class, and selected a 
 difficult chorus from the beautiful Greek play.' The other 
 distinguished visitor who presided on the occasion was Judge 
 (now Sh* Alfred) Stephen. Among the pupils were younger 
 branches of Wcntworths and Stephens, and names such as 
 Garrick — familiar enough to the Australians of the present day. 
 
 Robert Lowe had emerged from a mere person, and become 
 a leading personage of Sydney. Mrs. Lowe, who watched his
 
 THE CROWN NOMINEE 197 
 
 return to active pursuits with delight, and yet with trepidation, 
 writes ' home ' to friends : ' He scarcely ever reads a line, and 
 I watch him with the most zealous care, for fear he should 
 be tempted to use his eyes. He is so happy now it does me 
 good to look at him.'
 
 198 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE XII 
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 
 
 Trial of KnatchbuU — Lowe and Judge Burton — Dr. EUiotson of the Zoist — 
 
 ' Mr. Lowe's Ethics ' 
 
 Lowe's immediate success as a member of the Council natu- 
 rally directed attention to him as a practising barrister. He 
 had now actively resumed his practice ; but his income from 
 that source was not at first large, for the widespread ruin and 
 general depression had — to use his own happy phrase — 
 * effectually dried up the sources of litigation.' Nor was 
 Eobert Lowe ever at any time the actual leader of the Sydney 
 Bar. In the first place, he never sought more business than he 
 could manage without risk to his eyesight, the imperfect nature 
 of which was in itself a terrible drawback. Anyone who has 
 had experience of a law court may form an idea of the difficulty 
 he must have experienced in getting through the work of a 
 busy day before a judge and jury, with all kinds of papers and 
 documents to be referred to for the examination of witnesses 
 and the sifting of evidence. Such a strain alone must have 
 been exhausting, both mentally and physically. Still, despite 
 this almost insuperable difliculty, he managed to secure a fair 
 share of briefs, and his reputation as an advocate grew year by 
 year, until he certainly became, if not the leader, one of the 
 leading practising barristers in the colony. Nor should it be 
 lightly assumed that his rivals were men of inferior calibre. 
 Wentworth, who was an intellectual giant in any field in 
 which he chose to exercise his powers, had, it is true, retired ;
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 199 
 
 but there were a number of other men then in active practice 
 in Sydney by no means to be despised, of whom Richard 
 Windeyer and the present Sir Archibald Michie, of Melbourne, 
 may be mentioned. 
 
 In the beginning of 1844 Eobert Lowe was retained for the 
 defence in a famous murder trial, which I should have pre- 
 ferred to have passed over, as a matter better buried in oblivion, 
 but for the recent, and generally distorted, accounts of it which 
 have appeared both in England and Australia. 1 allude to 
 the trial of John Knatchbull for the murder of Mrs. Jamieson, 
 which took place in Sydney on January 6, 1844. 
 
 In that popular and entertaining work, Oxford Memories, 
 by the Eev. James Pycroft, there is, in conjunction with 
 various scattered reminiscences of Lord Sherbrooke, an account 
 of this trial, and of the miserable but well-born murderer, 
 which seems to have attracted some attention, especially in 
 Austraha, where it has formed the basis of more than one 
 sensational narrative. Mr. Pycroft declares that Knatchbull 
 was a schoolfellow of Lord Sherbrooke's at Winchester, and that 
 his first offence was the embezzlement of a chronometer, of 
 which he accused a fellow- officer, he being then in the Navy. 
 The accused man managed eventually to bring home the charge 
 to the real culprit, who was tried and transported for the 
 offence. 
 
 In Australia, says Mr. Pycroft, ' he was at one time the 
 assigned servant of a friend of mine ; and before that, while 
 in barracks, another of my friends officially employed there 
 said he remembered that Knatchbull once came to him, and 
 volunteered for the office of flogger, to accompany him daily on 
 his rounds to administer lashes, as the poor wretches were 
 sentenced on daily complaints ; and a most savage fiogger he 
 was.' 
 
 Mr. Pycroft goes on to relate that Knatchbull obtained a 
 ticket-of-leave, and that he was kindly treated by an old 
 woman, whom he poisoned to possess himself of her supposed
 
 200 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 riches, but that all he obtamed was 3s. 6(L Most of this 
 story, despite its circumstantiality, is quite inaccurate. 
 
 It is, however, only too true that a seafaring man on a 
 ticket-of-leave, known as John Fitch, but who was in reality 
 John Knatchbull, murdered Ellen Jamieson in her own shop 
 in Sydney by cleaving her skull with a tomahawk, and that 
 he was most eloquently, though ineffectually, defended by 
 Eobert Lowe. The trial took place in the Supreme Court, 
 Sydney, on January 25, 1844, before Mr. Justice (afterwards 
 Sir William) Westbrooke Burton. The evidence against the 
 accused was so clear that his counsel did not attempt to dis- 
 prove the murder, but set up a plea of ' moral insanity.' 
 
 The evidence against Knatchbull at the coroner's inquest 
 on the body of the murdered woman was indeed so over- 
 w'helming that the public verdict was given against him before 
 the actual trial took place. The chief witness was a neighbour, 
 who saw him prowling about the door and then enter the shop. 
 
 'I ran over,' he said, 'and found the door locked, and 
 heard some strokes given, as of someone breaking a cocoa-nut 
 with a hammer.' 
 
 He swore that he saw the prisoner inside at the window, 
 and then gave an alarm to the ' old watchman,' and asked 
 him for assistance ; but he declined, saying, ' Well, what is 
 that to me ? ' 
 
 Assistance, however, was procured, the back door was 
 broken open, and the murderer was secured literally red- 
 handed. Then the tomahawk was found under the bed, and 
 the man with whom Knatchbull was lodging up to the night 
 of his apprehension swore that the weapon was his property, 
 and had been abstracted from his back j'ard, to which the 
 accused had had access. Furthermore, there was found upon 
 him the pocket of the deceased woman's dress, containing 
 some seventeen pounds in silver and bank notes. 
 
 The prisoner, being called on for his defence, stated that 
 he had particularly to request the jury not to be led away by
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 201 
 
 anything they had heard out of doors ; as a jury of free-born 
 Englishmen, he trusted they would give him a fair trial. The 
 coroner briefly summed up, and the jury, after a minute's 
 consultation, returned a verdict of Wilful Murder against John 
 Fitch alias Knatchbull, who was committed to take his trial. 
 
 The greatest of criminal lawyers might well have felt, 
 under the circumstances, that it was a hopeless case to defend. 
 It was here that the dialectical genius of Lowe came into 
 requisition ; and it may fairly be doubted if any counsel ever 
 set up a more ingenious or a more convincing plea for a man 
 whom he was compelled at the outset to admit w^as guilty of 
 the terrible crime with which he was charged. After solemnly 
 telling the jury that if, after all, ' the slightest doubt should 
 arise in their minds as' to the prisoner's guilt they would be 
 bound to throw all the benefit of that doubt into the scale of 
 mercy,' he continued somewhat in this strain : — 
 
 It was not his intention, he said, to enter into any circum- 
 stantial details, for the duty which devolved upon him that 
 day was of a very different kind, and he should endeavour to 
 show that, even supposing, for the sake of argument, that the 
 statements of all the preceding witnesses had been true, ' the 
 prisoner was still one of those persons for whom laws had not 
 been made, and who, although for the peace and welfare of 
 society he ought to be placed under the most severe restraint, 
 ought not to be held responsible for his actions.' It was not 
 for the good of society, continued counsel, that the life of any 
 man who could not be held legally responsible for his actions 
 should be taken ; and he must most earnestly impress it upon 
 the minds of the jury that 'they did not sit there merely as 
 the avengers of blood.' It was not, he went on, because a 
 murder had been committed, with the terrible particulars of 
 which the evidence for the Crown had rendered them so 
 familiar, that they necessarily were called upon to avenge 
 that murder by delivering a verdict which would deprive 
 another fellow-creature of life ; for if any circumstances should
 
 202 LIFE OF LOED siierbrook:e 
 
 have arisen ^Yllicll might reasonably lead them to the conclu- 
 sion that the prisoner (provided he committed the crime at 
 all) had laboured at the time under a condition of mind 
 which rendered him unable to control his own actions — had 
 acted 'mider an invincible and miavoidable necessity ' — they 
 would be doing justice to their country by at once acquitting 
 him upon that ground of the crime laid to his charge. He 
 (Mr. Lowe) would briefly state his own views as to the state 
 of the prisoner's mind, and would leave it to the jury to 
 determine how far he was accountable for his actions. 
 
 The human mind was so divided m its various faculties 
 that it was not necessary, to constitute insanity, for the person 
 labouring under that misfortune to betray a loss of all his 
 intellect ; for one faculty might have been impaired, vitiated, 
 or indeed totally destroyed, without affecting the strength of 
 the others, and it was very common to find that a person 
 who was perfectly insane on some points was on most others 
 fully possessed of his mental powers. ' Insanity was generally 
 accompanied by a delusion of some kind or another, but 
 there was still a species of insanity which was unaecompanied 
 by such a delusion. Thus, an insanity affecting the intellect 
 of the patient was invariably attended by the frenzied delusions 
 which the disordered state of the intellect could not fail to 
 produce ; while an insanity of the tuill — the other grand 
 division of the human mind — might be unattended by any 
 such outward symptoms of frenzy, and yet might urge on the 
 unhappy person labouring under its influence, with an irre- 
 sistible and overwhelming force, to the commission of crimes 
 which in themselves were of the most atrocious nature, but 
 which under such circumstances could not be said to entail 
 any actual guilt upon the unfortunate perpetrator.' ' 
 
 ' The similarity between this line of metaphysical defence and that adopted 
 by the Chief Justice of Victoria in defending an Irish barrister and man of 
 letters, who some years ago committed a murder in the streets of Melbourne, 
 must strike all old colonists resident in that city at the time.
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 203 
 
 In the same metaphysical strain, Mr. Lowe asserted 
 that, in the opinion of the most competent inquirers into the 
 problems of psychology, the human mind could only be affected 
 by the existence of disease in the brain ; and * if disease existed 
 in that portion of the brain wherein the human will had its 
 seat, while the other portion of the brain, in which the intellect 
 of the patient resided, was free from any such disease, it 
 naturally followed that the person so circumstanced might, 
 with a full knowledge of what he was doing, feel compelled — 
 irresistibly compelled — to crimes which, if a perfectly free 
 agent, he would be the last to commit.' 
 
 ' Such,' continued the learned counsel impressively, ' was 
 the unhappy state of the prisoner at the bar ... He was of 
 good birth, and began life with such fair prospects that he 
 was promoted to a high station — to the rank of a commander 
 in the British Navy — for his gallantry in the service of his 
 country, and it could hardly be credited that, with these fair 
 prospects, with the high parliamentary interests that the 
 prisoner undoubtedly possessed — with every motive, in short, 
 to induce a continuance in probity of action — he should be 
 plunged into such self-created vicissitudes unless labouring 
 under some mental infirmity which paralysed his better nature. 
 The impulse under which the prisoner had acted (if really 
 guilty of the crime laid to his charge) might be almost desig- 
 nated as one of a childish nature, for no man in possession of 
 his faculties would have perpetrated such an offence, with 
 almost a certainty of immediate detection, of which certainty, 
 it was clear from the nature of the evidence adduced by the 
 Crown, the prisoner must have been fully conscious. It was 
 clear that a man who had so acted must have been under the 
 influence of an uncontrollable desire ; for if any determined 
 and more experienced ruffian had been bent upon the crime, 
 he would have taken much better care to secure himself from 
 detection. It had not come out in evidence, but it was true, 
 that the prisoner was to have been married on the following
 
 204 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 morning, and it \Yould be for the jury to determine whether 
 any sane man would prepare to clasp the hand of the bride at 
 the altar by imbruing his own in the blood of another woman ; 
 and whether, if a want of money was supposed to be the motive 
 which actuated him, he had not a much readier mode of sup- 
 plying that want by discounting some of the bills which were 
 found upon his person. . . . He regretted that he was not in a 
 position to call witnesses to testify to the state of the prisoner's 
 mind. It was no great boon that he asked for this un- 
 fortunate man, for even if acquitted upon the ground of 
 insanity, he must be confined for life in a lunatic asylum, as 
 a rightful protection to society against one with so dangerous 
 a disposition. He (Mr. Lowe) was aware of the narrow imagi- 
 nation of our forefathers, which would limit the attention of a 
 jury to the simple fact whether a person charged did or did 
 not commit the crime of which he was accused ; but he could 
 only hope for the dawning of a brighter day, when their 
 attention might be extended also to a full inquiry into the 
 motives which led to that crime.' 
 
 In a most eloquent peroration he earnestly besought the 
 jury to temper justice with mercy ; and in that spirit he asked 
 whether they could believe that a man with the great' advan- 
 tages originally possessed by the prisoner could have fallen 
 step by step into the lowest depths of degradation unless urged 
 on by some resistless demon of insanity — by whom (if guilty 
 of the crime now laid to his charge) he had been incited to its 
 perpetration. If they found the prisoner guilty of the crime, 
 and yet believed him to have been driven by this insane and 
 irresistible impulse, the ends of justice would no more be 
 answered by making such an irresponsible being expiate his 
 offence on the scaffold than by the public execution of a savage 
 animal. 
 
 The judge before whom this case was tried — Mr. Justice 
 Burton — was an extremely conscientious man, of good ability 
 as well as high character, but an orthodox Churchman, not
 
 AT TPIE SYDNEY BAR 205 
 
 given to metaphysical subtleties. In his summing-up he ex- 
 pressed the gravest dissent from the line of argument adopted 
 by the brilliant advocate. It was the first time, he said, that 
 he had ever heard the doctrine broached in a Court of Justice, 
 that a man was not to be held accountable for crime because 
 he had been impelled by an overpowering internal impulse. 
 Mr. Justice Burton then summed~up very strongly against the 
 prisoner, whom the jury declared guilty, and who was there- 
 upon sentenced to death. 
 
 There is a very curious sequel to this sensational trial. 
 The Zoist, a ' Quarterly Journal of Cerebral Physiology and 
 Mesmerism,' had just been started in London under the 
 auspices of Thackeray's friend, Dr. EUiotson, to whom the 
 great novelist dedicated Penclennis. It was altogether a re- 
 markable publication, on many subjects greatly in advance of 
 the time ; it seized upon the report of the Knatchbull trial 
 and reproduced it verbatim, as showing the inefficiency and 
 barbarism of capital punishment. In the original article with 
 which the editor of the Zoist prefaced this report, he gave a 
 picture of the criminal career of Knatchbull much fuller, and 
 painted in much darker colours, than the more recent sketch 
 by the Eev. James Pycroft. But for all that, Dr. EUiotson 
 argued that Knatchbull's crime was so evidently the result of 
 a debased cerebral organisation, that to hang him was a mere 
 wild act of revenge on the part of society, which was itself 
 responsible for the murder of the unfortunate Mrs. Jamieson. 
 It is not feasible to reprint here the long train of argument by 
 which this apparent paradox was sustained. But the writer 
 was fairly in ecstasies with the line of defence taken by 
 Knatchbull's counsel. 
 
 ' We felt great pleasure while perusing the speech of Mr. 
 Lowe. It is consolatory to find one voice held up upon the 
 side of mercy in a colony where crime is so frequent and where 
 there is a constant arrival of the worst characters from the 
 mother country.'
 
 206 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 The Zoist then went on to express its surprise and satis- 
 faction that the brilHant barrister should have drawn his 
 arguments ' from our science ; ' adding that he ' laid down the 
 doctrine of philosophical necessity with clearness and precision.' 
 It quoted with marked approval several of the more tellmg 
 appeals from the speech ; and then it lashed with unmeasured 
 scorn the pious remark of Judge Burton in his summing-up, 
 that if * wickedly-disposed men will yield step by step to the 
 approaches of the evil one, they must expect to be led at last 
 by the tempter to that precipice down which it was his desire 
 to cast them.' 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine what reply Dr. Elliotson made 
 to the Sydney judge. ' It appears to us,' retorted the editor, 
 ' that if a being is seduced by a power which he did not call into 
 existence, and over which he has no control, then there is a 
 very urgent reason presented why he should be exonerated 
 from the consequences of his offence.' 
 
 By the time that the Zoist reached Sydney, Eobert Lowe had 
 a paper of his own, the Atlas. He accordingly reproduced the 
 article from Dr. Elliotson's journal, which seems to have had 
 the same disquieting effect on the Sydney Morning Herald as the 
 Vestiges of Creation, and later on the Origin of Species, had on 
 the favourite family journals in England in the last generation. 
 But the Herald of that day had a political as weU as a re- 
 ligious object in view, as Eobert Lowe, who had in the mean- 
 time resigned his seat as a Crown nominee in the Council, was 
 then standing for the pastoral constituency of St. Vincent. He 
 was accordingly attacked as an impious person, who might 
 undermine the faith and morals of even its hardy squatters. 
 The Herald in effect revived the question, which Judge 
 Burton originally started, of the irreligious character of Mr. 
 Lowe's defence of Knatchbull. It was opposed, they declared, 
 to the * first principles of Christianity.' This led to a corre- 
 spondence, the essential portion of which is quite worth re- 
 producing. The correspondence was headed : —
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 207 
 
 The Ethics of Mr. Lowe. 
 To the Editors of the STjclncy Morning Herald. 
 
 Gentlemen, — Will you oblige me by referring to the report of 
 my speech on the trial of Knatchbull for murder, which, I believe, 
 will be found in the Herald of January 25, 1844, and by pointing 
 out what doctrines it contains opposed to the first principles of 
 Christianity, and what those principles of Christianity are to which 
 you consider those doctrines to be opposed '? 
 
 I am. Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Egbert Lowe. 
 Horbury Terrace : March 24, 1845. 
 
 The editors, little suspecting the practice their antagonist 
 had had in theological disputation at Oxford with Newman and 
 Ward, promptly took up the challenge. They pointed out that 
 Mr. Lowe had opposed the principle of man's free agency, 
 which they considered to be the ' first principle of the Christian 
 religion.' ' It is opposed likewise,' they added, ' to the whole 
 tenour of that sacred history which is designed to exemplify 
 and demonstrate the depths of human depravity, and to 
 
 assert Eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to man.' 
 
 The reply to this fresh attack has been described as a 
 masterpiece of polemical discussion ; it is certainly a very 
 characteristic rejoinder. With the omission of a few paragraphs 
 not essential to the argument, it reads as follows : — 
 
 ' You bite against a file ! Cease viper.' 
 
 Sir William Draper to Junius. 
 
 To the Editors of the Sydney Morning Herald. 
 
 Gentlemen, — When I asked you to point out the doctrine of 
 Christianity to which my speech was opposed, I expected to be 
 referred to something held by Christians in common, and not to the 
 doctrine of the Wesleyan Sect ; for it may be, gentlemen, that I am 
 not a Wesleyan Methodist, and, not to keep you in further suspense, 
 the fact is that I am a member of the Church of England. You 
 are not ignorant of this, but you probably are ignorant of the 
 Articles of that Church. I therefore beg to subjoin a copy of her
 
 208 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 tenth Article, and to refer you to the eleventh, twelfth and seven- 
 teenth, which will, I apprehend, show clearly that though you may 
 consider the foundation of the whole system of Divine Government 
 to be man's free agency and consequent responsibility, the Church 
 of England, whose Articles I have repeatedly subscribed, does not. 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 Had I foreseen that, in defiance of all usage and all principle, 
 the arguments used to persuade a jury were to be fastened upon me 
 as my own opinions, and used against me for electioneering pur- 
 poses, I would have reported the speech myself. There are many 
 things in that report I never said, but I am in the habit of attach- 
 ing so little weight to what falls from counsel in argument, that I 
 should have thought it ridiculous egotism to meddle with it. 
 
 This last touch is very characteristic. Nothing seems to 
 have aroused Lowe's contempt at any time more than when a 
 political opponent, or a newspaper, expected him to support, 
 on the hustings or in Parliament, the opinions which he may 
 have expressed as an advocate in a court of law. He was 
 never enamoured of those arts and artifices which are so 
 useful for the winning of verdicts, and spoke of them as ' the 
 tricks of this wretched trade.' 
 
 It was an aspiring wish of the Arian Milton [he adds in allusion 
 to the Herald's quotation] to ' justify the ways of God to man ; ' but 
 it is a wish which can never be accomplished ; the existence of evil 
 will meet the presumptuous speculator at every turn and fling him 
 back into the shallow nothingness of his nature. ' Dangerous it 
 were,' says the eloquent and judicious Hooker, ' for the feeble brain of 
 man to wade far into the doings of the Most High, whom, although 
 to knoAV be life, and joy to make mention of His Name, yet our 
 soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He 
 is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him 
 is our silence, when we confess without confession, that His glory 
 is inexplicable. His greatness above our capacity and reach.' 
 
 ' He is above and we upon earth, therefore it behove th our words 
 to be wary and few.' 
 
 And now, gentlemen, I have done with you. I ask you for 
 principles, and you give me inferences. I ask you for Christianity, 
 and you give me Methodism. You are now at full liberty to inter 
 this slander l)y the side of his deceased brotlier of last week, and as 
 you seem rather at a loss for something to use against me at the
 
 AT THE SYDNEY BAR 209 
 
 present time, I will take the liberty of suggesting a few topics 
 myself. 
 
 I ride a very ugly horse, that clearly proves me an Atheist, for 
 who else could be so insensible to the beauties of the noblest animal 
 of the creation. I live in a very small house, which clearly shows 
 I must have a contracted mind, and I am sometimes knoAni to play 
 at billiards, which shows a strong though, it may perhaps be expe- 
 dient in candour to admit, not quite fully developed propensity for 
 gambling. 
 
 I am. Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 EoBEBT Lowe. 
 
 There was a yet more personal and pathetic sequel to this 
 case. In the issue of March 9, 1844, the Sydney Morning 
 Herald printed this brief report in its law notices : — 
 
 Before Sir James Doivling, Chief Justice. 
 
 IN THE MATTER OF THE ORPHANS JAMIESON. 
 
 In this case Mr. Lowe applied by petition to be appointed 
 guardian of these infants, at the same time expressing his willing- 
 ness to give such security as the Court might require. The appli- 
 cation being unopposed was granted by the Court. 
 
 The two little orphans of the murdered woman — a bo}' and 
 girl — were taken by Mr. and Mrs. Lowe and carefully brought 
 up by them in their own home. Writing to Mrs. Slierbrooke 
 of Oxton, at the close of 1845, when they were living in their 
 own delightful house at Nelson Bay, some few miles out of 
 Sydney, Mrs. Lowe makes this touching reference to the 
 children : ' The little boy and girl, whose mother Knatch- 
 bull murdered, are still with us. The little girl is a great 
 favourite with Eobert ; she reads for him if I am engaged, 
 and is not only clever but an exceedingly good child. The 
 boy, just four years old, is quick and can read a little. They 
 give no trouble, and the servants are very fond of them. The 
 little girl carries my notes and messages, the boy goes with 
 her, and she is as steady and sensible as a grown-up person ; 
 her father died a year before her mother, to whom she seems 
 
 VOL I. p
 
 210 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 to have been much attached. The poor Httle thing is quite 
 premature in mind, which I have no doubt may be attributed 
 to her having known so much early sorrow. She talks to 
 the little boy and comforts him if he cries, as if she were his 
 mother.' 
 
 The sequel of the story is a sad one, and hardly encouraging 
 to philanthropists. Mr. and Mrs. Lowe brought them to 
 England, and they continued to live with them until the girl 
 died at the early age of thirteen. An excellent appointment 
 was obtained for the boy, but he abandoned it without reason, 
 and, after various vicissitudes, went out to New Zealand and 
 served for a while in the colonial forces against the Maoris. 
 Like the proverbial bad coin, he came back and was a source 
 of much trouble and anxiety to his benefactors. It was in 
 reference to him that Lord Sherbrooke made the remark : 
 ' What evil that I have done has ever been visited upon me 
 like this one good action '? ' 
 
 The story thus simply set forth may, perchance, sound 
 strange to a world which has proclaimed Lord Sherbrooke 
 to be a cynic, a hard man of logic, unemotional and without 
 human feeling. Talking over the matter with Sir John Simon 
 (who had often seen the young Jamiesons), I made some 
 such natural observation as this, when he went on to tell me 
 of many another ' nameless, unremembered act,' which to his 
 knowledge Lord Sherbrooke had performed. * He was not 
 only,' he added impressively, ' the clearest-headed man I ever 
 Jinew, but the best- hearted.'
 
 211 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 Chairman of Committees — The Chaplain — Dr. Lang and State Churches — 
 Breach of Privilege — Duelling in Sydney — Anti-Corn-Law Speech — Parallel 
 between Canada and Australia — Eeport on Education 
 
 The foundation of Parliamentary Government in Australia 
 was laid by the ' popular ' or representative members of Lord 
 Stanley's Legislative Council, of whom Puobert Lowe became 
 the virtual leader. Through their action the colonists were 
 taught not to be satisfied until they had achieved the rights 
 and privileges of self-governing Englishmen. But to us the 
 most singular side of the story is that the achievement should 
 have been won in great measure by the action of a young 
 English barrister, who, at the outset at least, was merely the 
 nominee of the Governor. If, however, we investigate the 
 proceedings of this single and only partially representative 
 Chamber during its earlier sessions, we shall find that 
 Eobert Lowe did more to secure to colonists the civil and 
 political rights of Englishmen than any other member of 
 the Council. 
 
 As soon as the session of 1844 opened (May 28th) the 
 Colonial Secretary proposed a gentleman as Chau-man of Com- 
 mittees without salary. Mr. Lowe promptly objected to the 
 election of a chairman unless a salary were placed on the 
 Estimates. In the clearest way he pointed out that by such 
 appointments they were laying, well or ill, the foundations of 
 their parliamentary system. It was essential that the chair- 
 
 I' 2
 
 212 LITE OF LORD SHEKBROOIvE 
 
 man should always be in attendance, and the Council could 
 not exact such attendance from an unpaid officer. He there- 
 fore moved an amendment that an address be presented to 
 the Governor, recommending that an item be placed upon the 
 Estimates to meet the salary of the Chairman of Committees. 
 This amendment was duly seconded, but on being put to the 
 vote was lost. Dr. Lang, who subsequently became one of 
 the great champions of Australian autonomy, supported the 
 Government. 
 
 Two nights afterwards a discussion took place which throws 
 some light on a question which has often been asked as to 
 why public prayers are dispensed with in opening the pro- 
 ceedings of Australian legislatures. It will be seen that the 
 question was settled in what may be termed an agnostic 
 spirit through the irreconcilable views of avowedly religious 
 persons, each of whom would have his own form of prayer 
 or none at all. The subject was introduced by Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir Charles) Cowper, who moved ' That public prayers 
 to Almighty God be offered up daily at the opening of this 
 Council as soon as the Speaker shall have taken the chair ; 
 and that a chaplain, who shall be a clergyman of the Church 
 of England, be appointed by the Speaker to perform this 
 duty.' The Anglicanism of this motion was regarded as an 
 outrage by Dr. Lang, who, as well as being a legislator, was 
 the leading Presbyterian minister in Sydney ; a man whose 
 theology was of the old Covenanting type, to whom prelacy 
 was almost as abhorrent as Popery. After him rose a 
 Mr. Eobinson, then member for Melbourne, who belonged to 
 the Society of Friends; he also objected to Mr. Cowper's 
 motion, though he admitted that the prayers of the Church of 
 England were very beautiful; but he equally objected to 
 Presbyterian prayers. After this Quaker gentleman had had 
 his say, Piobert Lowe got up and made an admirable and 
 quite delightful speech. He said he had not had an oppor- 
 tunity of speaking on this subject last session, l)ut having
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 21 
 
 o 
 
 been brought uj) under the ' hallowed shade of the Church of 
 England,' he should like to say a few words on the subject 
 now. The speech of Mr. Eobmson, he declared, showed how 
 very easy it was to carry the principle contended for by 
 Dr. Lang to an absurdity. The ' honourable and reverend 
 member ' thought he had gone far enough to avoid offence to all, 
 yet he must now be convinced that it would be difficult indeed 
 to stretch the resolution sufficiently to satisfy all the vagaries 
 of the human mind. The Council should therefore adhere to 
 the one principle, that the majority shall bind the rest. At 
 the same time he (Mr, Lowe) objected to the system of the 
 United States of clerical elections, and preferred that the 
 appointment of chaplain should be vested in the Speaker. 
 He thought the words ' clergyman of the Church of England ' 
 in Mr. Cowper's resolution might be omitted ; although he did 
 not anticipate a time when the members of that Church would 
 be in a minority in that Council. Whatever their own par- 
 ticular views were, however, they could not do better than 
 entrust the appointments to the hands of the Speaker. 
 
 Other leading members spoke, but despite the fact that 
 two-thirds of the Council belonged, like Mr. Cowper, to the 
 Anglican communion, his motion was lost ; and no subse- 
 quent legislature in Australia, I believe, has ever appointed 
 a chaplain or instituted a particular form of public prayer 
 for the opening of its proceedings. It will be seen that 
 Eobert Lowe was in favour of such an appointment under 
 certain conditions, but it may be gravely doubted whether it 
 would much tend to edification while men's minds are so 
 divided on the subject of religion. At the same time, had the 
 two-thirds majority of the Council belonged to any other com- 
 munion than that of the Church of England, they would no 
 doubt have forced their own chaplain and their own form of 
 prayer on the Council. 
 
 Lowe next took a prominent part in the debate on a 
 motion of Dr. Lang, who had asked for a committee ' to con-
 
 214 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 sider whether any and what changes are necessary m regard 
 to the Presbyterian Church Temporahties Acts of this colony 
 in consequence of the recent disruption of the Church of Scot- 
 land.' 
 
 Under the former Governor, Sir Eichard Bourke, three 
 State churches instead of one had been endowed in 
 the colony — the Church of England, the Church of Eome, 
 and the Church of Scotland. This was generally regarded 
 as the acme of statesmanship ; but no line of policy, 
 however perfect, could long satisfy so restless a spirit as Dr. 
 Lang, who was of that aggressive Puritan type which the 
 genius of Thomas Carlyle loved to idealise. Having been the 
 chief means of destroying the monopoly of State endowment 
 formerly enjoyed in New South Wales by the Church of 
 England, Dr. Lang had grown tired of the new condition of 
 things, although he himself, as chief j)astor of one of the 
 favoured communions, received direct pecuniary benefit. The 
 Government, he said, should not support religious error — 
 meaning the two other endowed churches. So, anticipatmg 
 the Free Kirk movement in Scotland, he had declined the 
 emoluments from the State and was actively agitating for 
 what is known as the voluntary system. To complicate his 
 position and aggravate his temper, he had recently been 
 deposed by the local Presbyterian Synod. Hence his action 
 in the Legislative Council with regard to the Presbyterian 
 Church Temporalities Acts. 
 
 * The debate,' remarks Mr. Piusden, the historian of 
 Australia, ' was chiefly remarkable for the castigation which 
 Mr. Robert Lowe administered to Lang.' After observing 
 that he intended ' to call the attention of the Council to what 
 it was they were asked to do — to the ground on which they 
 were asked to do it — and to the quarter from whence that 
 request came,' Lowe turned upon Dr. Lang and fairly de- 
 molished him in a manner not unfamiliar in after years to 
 the House of Commons.
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PAELIAMENT 215 
 
 The Legislative Council had actually presumed to pass this Act 
 during the absence of the hon. gentleman — during the absence of 
 him, the Senior Minister of the Church of Scotland. Presumptuous 
 indeed ! Would they indeed, it was argued, pass an Act regulatmg 
 the Church of England in the absence of the Bishop ? He (Mr. Lowe) 
 very much feared that the hon. gentleman had lost sight of the 
 principles of Presbyterian equality, or had a strong leaning to Pre- 
 lacy when he found him arrogating to himself the powers of Bishop, 
 
 almost of Pope, under the modest name of Senior Minister 
 
 They were much obhged to him for furnishing them with an epoch, 
 an era, which would no doubt be as memorable in the Australian,, 
 as the Hegira Avas in Mahometan history. He had informed them 
 that he sailed for London on the very day of the passing of the 
 Church Act. Thus, then, would it stand in chronology : 1836 — 
 Church Act passes — -Dr. Lang flies, not from Mecca to Medina, but 
 from Sydney to London, a feat which has been executed before and 
 since by the same nimble personage. And now, in the eighth year 
 of this Hegira, comes again our Australian Mahomet — not, like his 
 Arabian prototype, girt with his Alls and Omars, but alone in his 
 might, to subvert the institutions of the infidel. 
 
 This speech hit Dr. Lang on all his most vubierable points, 
 and must have been greatly relished by the other ministers 
 of religion in the colony, especially those of his own persua- 
 sion. Dr. Lang was himself a past master in the art of 
 caustic personal abuse, so telling on the hustings ; hut these 
 were the taunts of a scholar and a gentleman, and the clever 
 men in the House — the Wentworths and Windeyers on his 
 own side, as well as the Crown officials — revelled, he knew, in 
 every thrust. ' Ever afterwards,' writes Mr. Kusden, ' Lang's 
 language towards Lowe was that of obsequiousness, if not 
 servility. Never before had he been known to lick the hand 
 that smote him, though he often snarled at benefactors.' 
 
 To my mind this displays a personal bias against Dr. 
 Lang as well as a radical misconception of his character. He 
 was a man of undoubted courage, w4io knew not the meaning 
 of fear. But he was of that aggressive type of Scots dominie 
 whose chief delight is to contradict, and, if possible, ' put down,' 
 other people. Such men are very loth to admit any kind of
 
 216 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 superiority in others ; but they become the trusty clansmen 
 of him who proves his chieftainshii? by the ordeal of personal 
 combat. 
 
 Dr. Lang crossed swords no more with Kobert Lowe. As 
 he proudly records, he sat with him (one ought, perhaps, to say, 
 in the language of the Conventicle, tmdcr him) on the Select 
 Committee on Public Education. By his change of front on 
 this subject, Lang acknowledged the presence of a mind far 
 superior in grasp and culture, and quite equal in straight- 
 forwardness and honesty, to his own. 
 
 At the close of this biting oration Lowe made an allusion 
 to a quondam ally of Dr. Lang, a certain Alderman Macder- 
 mott, which led to the question of breach of privilege being 
 raised for the first time in an Australian legislature. So irate 
 was the alderman when he perused his morning newspaper 
 that he sent a challenge to Mr. Lowe, who declined to meet 
 him, chiefly on the ground that as a member of the Council he 
 was responsible solely to that body for his words. He there- 
 fore refused either to apologise or to fight a duel. It may 
 sound somewhat strange to hear of duelling in connection 
 with the annals of such a colony as New South "Wales. But 
 in no British community was the practice more rife, and the 
 curious in such matters would find much to interest them in 
 the accounts of duels fought by prominent public men in the 
 colony, from 1801, when Lieutenant-Colonel Patterson fought 
 Captain Macarthur, down to the encounter between Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir) Alexander Donaldson and Sir Thomas Mitchell in 
 1851. 
 
 There was probably no one on whom this practice could 
 entail greater annoyance, not to say danger, than it did on 
 Eobert Lowe, who possessed one endowment and one defect 
 which seem to have irresistibly impelled other men to chal- 
 lenge him — a sharp and witty tongue, and very imperfect 
 eyesight. 
 
 I do not propose in this narrative to give details of all the
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 217 
 
 cases when he was called out. More than one kmdly old 
 colonist has asked me gravely whether I believed that these 
 challenges came from persons who really meant, if they got an 
 opportunity, to murder an almost blind antagonist. I feel 
 no doubt on the pomt ; and it affords one of the strongest 
 illustrations of the essentially immoral nature of duelling. 
 Such discreditable stories were best forgotten. This challenge 
 of Macdermott, however, really marks an epoch in the con- 
 stitutional history of Australia, and the circumstances must 
 therefore be related. 
 
 Macdermott had been blackballed by the Committee of 
 Management of the Australian Library ; a proceeding which 
 for some reason so disgusted Dr. Lang that he threatened to 
 bring the matter before the Legislative Council on the ground 
 . that the Library was in the receipt of State aid, and should 
 therefore not have dared to blackball any proti'ijc of his. 
 This struck Lowe as a characteristic instance of Dr. Lang's 
 arrogance ; and so he referred to it in the debate on the 
 Church Temporalities Acts, without any feeling of malice 
 towards Macdermott, of whom, in fact, he had not the slightest 
 personal knowledge. But a night or tAvo afterwards, a Dr. 
 Macfarlane called at his house stating that he was the bearer 
 of a letter from Macdermott, which ran as follows : — 
 
 8 George Street, Sydney : 
 Friday evening, June 28, 1844. 
 
 Sir, — My attention has been directed to a paragraph in the 
 Sydney Morning Herald of to-day, in which you are represented 
 as having alluded to me. I beg to inquire with what object such 
 allusion was made. My friend. Dr. Macfarlane, who will deliver you 
 this letter, will receive your reply. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 H. Macdekbjott. 
 To — TiOwe, Esq., 
 
 Horbm-y Terrace, Sydney. 
 
 While his unwelcome guest waited, Mr. Lowe glanced at 
 the contents of the missive, and at once expressed his opinion
 
 218 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 that in sending such a letter Macdermott had been guilty of 
 a breach of privilege ; and then, bowing Dr. Macfarlane out of 
 the door, he requested him to say that he declined to send any 
 answer whatever. The next day about noon, on returning to 
 his chambers in Elizabeth Street, he found his nocturnal visitor 
 and a gentleman, who turned out to be a Captain Moore, 
 awaiting him ; the latter stated that his instructions were 
 to demand an immediate apology or to propose ulterior 
 measures. Mr. Lowe declined either, but condescended to 
 give his explicit reasons for so acting. In the first place he 
 said that, as a member of the supreme Legislature of the 
 colony, he was entitled to full liberty of speech in that Legis- 
 lature — a privilege he intended strenuously to maintain so 
 long as he had the honour to occupy a seat in the Council. 
 He went on to say that, even if this obstacle were removed, he 
 could not think of meeting Macdermott, as he was not his social 
 equal. Macdermott, I may say en passant, had been a private 
 or sergeant in a line regiment. But only those who have no 
 knowledge of the ethics of duelling will fail to see that, in 
 urging this objection, Mr. Lowe was using an argument that 
 would appeal to all duellists of the old school, who never for a 
 moment imagined that anyone but a gentleman had any 
 honour to avenge. 
 
 After gravely listenmg to these objections Captain Moore 
 again insisted on an apology, which Mr. Lowe again refused 
 to make. Then the captain waxed wroth, whereupon he and 
 his friend were desired to vacate the office. They, however, 
 said they were not going to be turned out, whereupon Mr. 
 Lowe said : ' If you will not go, you will not prevent me from 
 leaving,' and accordingly left his chambers, which they shortly 
 afterwards vacated. After this unpleasant scene he conferred 
 with one or two leading members of the House, and they 
 agreed with him that the only course was to obtain a warrant 
 and have these parties bound over to keep the peace. Mac- 
 dermott and his two friends were therefore apprehended and
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIA3IENT 219 
 
 brought before the Mayor of Sydney. Mr. Lowe was him- 
 self summoned to attend at the PoHce Office to support his 
 case, and a very graphic account he gave of the proceedings 
 in his subsequent speech on the Breach of Privilege question 
 in the Legislative Council. There can be no doubt that 
 public sympathy, as it is loosely termed, was on the side of 
 Macdermott ; however, the case was so clear that the Mayor 
 bound the parties over in 200/. personal security, and two 
 sureties of 1001. each. 
 
 Mr. Lowe, however, was wanting in neither moral nor 
 physical courage, and he determined at whatever cost to his 
 personal popularity to pursue the matter until he had placed 
 the whole question of the privileges of colonial members of 
 Parliament on a firm and satisfactory footing. In his admir- 
 able speech in the Legislative Council (July 3, 1844), in which 
 there is not a single trace of personal feeling, he placed the 
 subject before his fellow members with great force and 
 clearness. His argument, in brief, was that in a matter of 
 this kind, the Legislative Council possessed the same powers 
 as the House of Commons, and could therefore corhmit any 
 person for insulting a member. In support of this, he par- 
 ticularly referred to a decision of the Privy Council in 1836 
 relative to the Legislature of Jamaica, in which one Augustus 
 Hardin Beaumont was the appellant, and the Speaker of the 
 House of Assembly, the Provost Marshal, and a number of 
 constables and gaolers, were respondents. He went at length 
 into this case, quoting the entire speech of Mr. Baron Parke 
 in pronouncing the judgment of the Privy Council. 
 
 All the leading members of the Council took part in the 
 debate, and it was finally decided by a majority of fifteen to 
 thirteen that the Attorney General should prosecute Macder- 
 mott and his friends in the Law Courts. This subsequently 
 fell through, and as the proceedings were needlessly protracted, 
 public interest in the matter gradually died out. 
 
 At the request of a large number of citizens, the Mayor
 
 220 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 called a public meeting, and resolutions were passed against 
 the appropriation of public money for the purpose of the 
 prosecution. For the time Lowe was the most unpopular 
 man in the colony ; and the Council, for the action it had 
 taken, shared the opprobrium. But Eobert Lowe cared 
 little for popularity at any time. It was ever the law of 
 his intellectual being to be guided and actuated by broad 
 general principles. As a member of the first Colonial Parlia- 
 ment, he conceived it to be all important that there should be 
 absolute freedom of debate. Those who cheered his opponent 
 and petitioned the Mayor cared for none of these things ; but 
 his unpopularity was as shortlived as a passing cloud, and in 
 a year or two he became the veritable idol of the people of 
 Sydney. 
 
 I should certainly not have been tempted to dwell at any 
 greater length on these old and, happily, forgotten personal 
 quarrels, had not an Australian gentleman, Mr. Bloxsome, now 
 of Exmouth, kindly sent me the following interesting personal 
 narrative of the first duel in which Mr. Lowe was involved in 
 Sydney. These are Mr. Bloxsome's own words : — 
 
 * I had the pleasure of Mr. E. Lowe's acquaintance during 
 the whole of his career in N.S.W., though I was only a lad 
 at the time. One circumstance is indelibly impressed upon 
 my memory, namely, that I and a schoolfellow named Bell, 
 in company with my late father (whose guest Mr. Lowe was 
 at the time), pulled him across Sydney Harbour from the 
 North Shore to fight a duel one morning, either in the 
 year 1844 or '45. The duel was to have taken place with Mr, 
 E. Broadhurst, a barrister in Sydney, and I well remember 
 hearing my father say that Mr. Lowe said to him as we were 
 pulling them over in the boat : " They think because I can't 
 see that I can't fight ; but they will find that they are mis- 
 taken." The duel did not take place, owing to the mismanage- 
 ment of Mr. Broadhurst's second, Mr. Horace Flower. Mr.
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PAELIA3IENT 221 
 
 Lowe's second was Captain O'Connell, eldest son of Sir Maurice 
 O'Connell, Commander of the Forces in N.S.W. We landed 
 Mr. Lowe and my father at Woolloomooloo Bay, close to " Tar- 
 mon's," the residence of Sir Maurice O'Connell. My father' 
 said to us lads : " Now, boys, go over to Eobinson's Baths 
 the other side of the Bay, and wait until we come." We, not 
 knowing the errand they were on, waited and waited in the 
 boat until ten o'clock at night, having had nothing to eat all 
 day, and it was not until that hour that Mr. Lowe found it 
 useless waiting any longer, so we all returned to my father's 
 house on the North Shore.' 
 
 It maybe added that Captain O'Connell shortly afterwards 
 published in the newspapers an account of this affair, which 
 in the main coincides with Mr. Bloxsome's recollections. On 
 showing this letter at the writer's special request to Lord 
 Sherbrooke some few years ago, he characteristically observed 
 with a smile : ' My antagonist must have had a higher opinion 
 of my prowess even than I had myself, as he never appeared 
 on the scene.' 
 
 It need hardly be observed that such incidents must have 
 been very alarming to Mrs. Lowe, who, in fact, grew more 
 and more fearful lest some catastrophe should befall him. 
 
 Duelling remained in fashion in Sydney well on to 1850. 
 Like all customs, good or bad, it died a lingering death. We 
 may date its decline from the year 1847, when Mr. (afterwards 
 Sir Charles) Cowper publicly declined to meet Mr. Boyd, a 
 well-known squatter, who had challenged him. The Sydney 
 Morning Herald devoted a leading ai'ticle to the praise of Mr. 
 Cowper, on the ground that he had made a stand against a 
 senseless and often sanguinary custom. 
 
 Later on in the Session Mr. Lowe, still a Crown nominee, 
 delivered a very important speech in support of his own motion 
 ' that Petitions to Her Majesty and both Houses of Parliament 
 be adopted by this Council humbly praying that they will be
 
 222 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 pleased to admit corn, the produce of the Austrahan colonies, 
 on the same footing as Canadian corn.' 
 
 This takes us at a bound to the period of the Corn Laws 
 in England ; and it is curious to note the spectacle of 
 Eobert Lowe in a remote dependency waging war against 
 the Protectionism of Sir Eobert Peel, Lord Stanley, and 
 Mr. Gladstone, then President of the Board of Trade. Mr. 
 Lowe was exceedingly severe on these eminent English 
 statesmen for making a difference, in this matter of the duty 
 on corn, between one colony and another. 
 
 'In Australia there was a whole population of British 
 origin ; the greater part of the Canadian population was alien 
 in language and in blood. We had not yet raised our hands 
 against the mother country ; Canada had been recently the 
 scene of rebellion. Canada had never contributed to the 
 welfare of the mother country. Canada had only created 
 expense. This colony, on the other hand, produced an export 
 every year increasing in quantity and becoming more valuable 
 to the mother country by enabling her more successfully to 
 compete in her woollen manufactures with the whole world. 
 If England persisted in this Joseph- and-his-brethren sort of 
 system, she would retain perhaps numerous dependencies, 
 but she would never become the vast united empire which she 
 ought.' 
 
 The conclusion of this speech can hardly fail to interest 
 certain leading English statesmen even at the present day. 
 
 ' Simple, however, as the question might appear to us here, 
 and just, as we might imagine, was the claim we urged, that 
 claim had been discussed in the House of Commons, 
 and had l)een rejected. On looking over the debate as 
 reported in the papers, he (Mr. Lowe) was surprised at the 
 manner in which Mr. Gladstone had opposed it ; he almost 
 blushed at the amount of sacrifice which Mr. Gladstone, the 
 liberality of whose views was so well known, had made to 
 party feeling. . . .
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 22 
 
 o 
 
 ' The interests of the colony were never considered, and the 
 question itself was only discussed with a view to the amount 
 of grain this colony was likely to export in proportion to the 
 amount required by Great Britain. . . . 
 
 ' One of the speakers in the House of Commons, suggested 
 that, however small the effect at first, Australia might export 
 largely after a time and then the interests of the landowners 
 would be affected. This was in truth the only reason ; they 
 forgot that we were Englishmen, and claimed to be placed on 
 a general footing with themselves.' 
 
 Mr. Lowe was very much in earnest on this question of 
 the duty on Australian corn ; and drew up with his own hand 
 a petition to the House of Commons, which I transcribe not 
 only as a curiosity of colonial political literature, but also as 
 an interesting document for the future historians of Canada 
 and Australia : — ' 
 
 Mr. Lowe's Parallel between Canada and 
 New South Wales. 
 
 To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of 
 
 Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled : — 
 
 The humble petition of the Legislative Council of NeAv South 
 
 Wales in Council assembled, 
 Humbly showeth : 
 
 That your petitioners have learned with feelings of bitter disappoint- 
 ment that your Honourable House has recently refused to 
 extend to them the privilege accorded to Canada of importinii- 
 corn and flour at a nominal duty into England. The wool, 
 the staple export of this colony, is exposed to the rivalry of the 
 whole world, and by its competition has been the means of 
 keeping down the price of the raw material of a most important 
 English manufacture, whereas the heavy duty on Baltic timber, 
 imposed for the protection of Canada, has been felt as a grievous 
 tax on the British householders and shipowners. 
 
 That your petitioners have contributed nearly a million of money 
 for the coercion of prisoners of the Crown, an object of a purely 
 British character, and upwards of another million to introduce 
 the starving poor of the British Isles into New South Wales as 
 advantageous to the mother country as to the colony, while the
 
 224 LIFE OF LOPtD SHERBROOKE 
 
 recent rebellion in Canada has cost vast sums to tlie British 
 ■ Treasury, and been followed by the loan of 1,500,000/. for the 
 use of the colony under a Parliamentary guarantee. 
 
 That the Crown Kevenue was surrendered to Canada in considera- 
 tion of a civil list of 75,000/. in a population of a million and a 
 half, whereas a civil list of 81, GOO/, has been imposed on a 
 population of 170,000, and the revenues are not only not 
 surrendered, but are threatened to be increased, by a strain of 
 the royal prerogative, to treble the present amount. 
 
 That Canada enjoys the responsible government, while the Colonial 
 Office will not even suspend its decisions to give your petitioners 
 a hearing. 
 
 That the contiguity of Canada to the corn-growing States of 
 America affords great facility for smuggling grain, which the 
 isolated position of Australia renders impracticable. 
 
 That this is a settled, Canada a conquered colony. That the 
 population of one is British ; of the other, to a great extent, 
 French. That the laws and manners of England prevail in the 
 one, and those of France in a great part of the other ; and that 
 in none of these points are your petitioners conscious of any 
 inferiority to the Canadians. 
 
 That the quantity of corn which your petitioners would be likely 
 to import, though of immense consequence to them, would be 
 utterly insignificant to so large a market as that of the United 
 Kingdom. That if the agriculturists of England are sensitive 
 as to the admission of foreign corn, the constituents of your 
 petitioners also have their sensibilities, and great as is the loss 
 which they incur by exclusion from your markets, they feel yet 
 more keenly the ignominious badge of inferiority which the 
 decision of your Honourable House has affixed to them. 
 
 Your petitioners therefore humbly pray, that your Honourable House 
 will admit wheat, maize, and flour the produce of Australia, 
 into the United Kingdom on the same terras as wheat and flour 
 the produce of Canada. 
 
 Eobert Lowe liad already taken the first step towards 
 making practically his own the great question of public educa- 
 tion in Australia. Still as a Crown nominee, but exercising, 
 as he did throughout, the greatest jiossible independence of 
 action, he moved for a select committee to inquire into and 
 report upon the state of education in the colony. 
 
 The select committee was duly appointed, and as its 
 labours have been productive of results of far-reachin<4 and
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF PARLIAMENT 225 
 
 historical importance, the names of its members should be 
 given. As the question of education is so intimately mixed 
 up with that of religion, it may be as well to show how the 
 various religious denominations were represented on what was 
 known as Mr. Eobert Lowe's Select Committee. Of the ten 
 members, iive belonged to the Church of England, viz. — 
 Eobert Lowe, Charles Cowper, Eichard Windeyer, Dr. Nichol- 
 son, and Leas Thomson ; two to the Church of Eome : 
 J. H. Plunkett, the Attorney General, and Eoger Therry ; 
 two to the Church of Scotland : Sir Thomas Mitchell and 
 Dr. Lang ; and one to the Society of Friends : Joseph Phelps 
 Eobinson. Mr. Lowe himself acted as Chairman and was, in 
 a very especial sense, the life and soul of the entire com- 
 mittee. The report of this committee, upon which the edu- 
 cational systems of the various colonies have in the main 
 been based, is here given in the Appendix. We are now 
 nearing the close of Eobert Lowe's career as a Crown nominee 
 in the Legislative Council of New South Wales. 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Report of Robert Lowe's Committee on Public Education 
 
 Extract from the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council , 
 
 No. 17 
 (Friday, June 21, 1844) 
 
 G. Education :— Mr. Lowe, pursuant to notice, moved that a Select 
 Committee be appointed to enquire into, and report upon, the State of 
 Education in this Colony, and to devise the means of placing the educa- 
 tion of youth upon a basis suited to the wants and wishes of this com- 
 munity. 
 
 Question put and passed, and the following Connnittee appointed 
 accordingly : — 
 
 Mr, Lowe j Mr. Therry 
 
 Mr. Cowper Mr. Windeyer 
 
 Dr. Lang 
 Sir T. L. Mitchell 
 Dr. Nicholson 
 ]Mr. Robinson 
 
 The Attorney General (Mr. Plun- 
 kett) 
 
 The Colonial Secretary (Mr. Deas 
 Tliomson) 
 
 VOL. I. t)
 
 226 
 
 LITE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 List of Witnesses Examined 
 
 James Robert Wilshire, Esq. 
 
 George Allen, Esq. 
 
 Rev. Ralpli Mansfield 
 
 Henry Macderraott, Esq. 
 
 William Augustine Duncan, Esq. 
 
 Rev. James Fullerton, LL.D. 
 
 Rev. Robert AUwood, B.A. 
 
 Mr. Edward M'Roberts 
 
 The Most Rev. John Bede Folding, 
 D.D., Roman Catholic Arch- 
 bishop 
 
 AYilliam Timothy Cape, Esq. 
 
 Mr. Peter Steel 
 
 Mr, James Cosgrove 
 
 Mr. Bartholomew Peter ScanneU 
 
 Mr. John Hnnter Baillie 
 
 The Lord Bishop of Australia 
 
 The Rev. John Saiinders 
 
 The Rev. Robert Ross 
 
 Mr. Peter Robertson 
 
 The Rev. John M'Kenny 
 
 Charles Kemp, Esq. 
 
 William Macarthur, Esq. 
 
 The Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed on the 
 21st June, 1844, to enquire into and report upon the State of Education 
 in this Colony, and to devise the means of jplacing the education of youth 
 upon a basis suited to the ivants and -wishes of the community, have 
 agreed to the following report. 
 
 Your Committee have examined a number of witnesses embodying 
 every shade of religious opinion, and have thus, they believe, brought the 
 question of education, with all its attendant difficulties, fully and fairly 
 before the Cotmcil. The present state of education in this colony 
 your Committee consider extremely deficient. There are about 25,676 
 children between the ages of four and fourteen years ; of these only 7,642 
 receive instruction in public schools, and 4,865 in private ones, leaving 
 about 13,000 children, who, as far as your Committee know, are receiving 
 no education at all. The expense of public education is about \l. per 
 head ; an enormous rate after every allowance has been made for the 
 necessary dispersion of the inhabitants of a pastoral country, and the 
 consequent dearness of instruction. While your Committee admit that 
 this deficient state of education is partly attributable to the ignorance, 
 dissolute habits, and avarice of too many of the parents, and partly to the 
 wants of good schoolmasters and school books, they feel bound to 
 express their conviction that a far greater portion of the evil has arisen 
 from the strictly denominational character of the public schools. 
 Many of these schools have indeed attained a considerable degree of 
 excellence under the management and inspection of the clergy, and it 
 would be most unjust to charge upon them those defects in the state of 
 public education which your Committee believe are the natural result of 
 the plan by which that education has been regulated. 
 
 The first great objection to the denominational system is its expense ; 
 the number of schools in a given locality ought to depend on the number 
 of children requiring instruction which that locality contahas. To admit 
 any otiier principle is to depart from those maxims of wholesome economy 
 upon which public money should always be administered.
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII 227 
 
 It appears to your Committee impossible not to see that the very 
 •essence of a denominational system is to leave the majority uneducated 
 in order thoroughly to imbue the muaority with peculiar tenets. It is a 
 system always tending to excess or defect, the natural result of which is, 
 that wherever one school is founded, two or three others will arise, not 
 because they are wanted, but because it is feared that proselytes will 
 be made ; and thus a superfluous activity is produced in one place and 
 a total stagnation in another. It is a system impossible to be carried out 
 in a thinly inhabited country, as many of its firmest advocates have 
 admitted to your Connnittee, and being exclusively in the hands of clergy, 
 it places the State in an awkward dilemma of either supplying money 
 whose expenditure it is not permitted to regulate, or of interfering 
 between the clergy and their superiors to the manifest derangement of 
 the whole ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 It has, indeed, been suggested to your Committee that a denominational 
 system might be allowed to continue in Sydney and the larger towns, 
 while a general one was adopted for the County Districts, but yoiir 
 Committee cannot yield to this suggestion ; convinced as they are of the 
 superiority of a general to a denominational system, and conceiving, for 
 reasons to be stated hereafter, that the present denominational schools 
 may place themselves under the Government Board of Education, and 
 thus continue to derive support from the public fimds, without the slightest 
 stu-render of principle, j^our Committee have thought it better to recom- 
 mend that one uniform system shall be established for the whole of the 
 Colony, and that an adherence to that system shall be made the indispens- 
 able condition imder which alone public aid will be granted. 
 
 Yoiu- Committee have had imder their consideration two Greneral 
 Systems of Education : the British and Foreign System, and Lord Stanley's 
 system of National Education ; the first of these appears to them to be 
 surrounded with insurmountable difficulties. These difficulties are stated 
 in Mr. Secretary Stanley's letter to the Duke of Leinster of October 1831. 
 ' The determination to enforce in all their schools the reading of the Holy 
 Scriptures, without note or comment, was undoubtedly taken with the 
 purest motives ; with the wish at once to combine religious with moral 
 and literary education, and at the same time not to rmi the risk of 
 wounding the peculiar feelings of any sect by catechetical instruction or 
 comments which might tend to subjects of polemical controversy. But 
 it seemed to have been overlooked that the principles of the Roman 
 Catholic Church were totally at variance with this principle, and that the 
 reading of the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment, by children 
 must be peculiarly obnoxious to a Church which denies even to adults 
 the right of Tuiaided private interpretation of the sacred volume, in articles 
 of religious belief. These views are borne out by the experience of this 
 colony. Wlien the British and Foreign System was proposed in 1839, it 
 was not supposed the Roman Catholics could join in it, and it was 
 intended that a separate system should be established for them. Your 
 Committee are not prepared to recommend a renewal of this project,
 
 228 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 which would perpetuate that which they are most anxious to avoid — the 
 denominational character of public education. 
 
 Yom' Committee have decided to recommend to the Council Lord 
 Stanley's system of national education, the only plan sufficiently compre- 
 hensive to include both Protestant and Catholic. This system was 
 devised to carry out the recommendation of a committee of the House of 
 Commons in 1828, ' that a system should be adopted which should afford 
 if possible a combined literary and a separate religious education, and 
 should be capable of being so far adapted to the views of different 
 religious persuasions as to render it in truth a system of National 
 Education for the lower classes of the community.' The key-stone of the 
 system is a Board comj)osed of men of high personal character, professing 
 different religious opinions. This Board exercises a complete control over 
 the schools erected imder its auspices, or which, having been already 
 established, place themselves under its management and receive its 
 assistance. The following are the conditions under which aid is 
 granted : — 
 
 1. The ordinary school business — during which all the children of 
 whatever denommation they be are required to attend, and which is 
 expected to embrace a competent mimber of lioiu-s in each day — is to 
 consist exclusively of instruction in those branches which belong to a 
 literary and moral education. Such extracts from Scripture as are pre- 
 pared under the sanction of the Board may be used, and are earnestly 
 recommended by the Board to be used diu-mg those hours allotted to this 
 ordinary school biisiness. 
 
 2. One day at least in each week (independently of the Smiday) is to 
 be set apart for the religioixs instruction of the children, on which day 
 such pastors, or other persons as are approved of by the parents or 
 guardians of the children, shall have access to them for that purpose, 
 whether those pastors have signed the original application or not. 
 
 3. The managers of schools are also expected, should the parents of 
 any of the children desire it, to afford convenient opportunity and facility 
 for the same purpose, either before or after the ordinary school business 
 (as the managers may determine), on other days of the week. 
 
 4. Any arrangement of this description that may be made is to be 
 publicly notified in the schools, in order that those children, and those 
 only, may be present at the religious instruction, whose parents and 
 guardians approve of their being so. 
 
 5. The reading of the Scriptm-es, either in the Authorised or Douay 
 Version, is regarded as a religious exercise, and as siich is to be confined 
 to those times which are set apart for religious instruction ; the same 
 regulation is also to be obserAed respecting prayer. 
 
 The following passage from the Eighth Report of the Commissioners of 
 National Education in Ireland, being their report for the year 1841, will also 
 tend to explain the natm'e of the religious instruction imparted under this 
 system : ' It seems still to be sup2)0sed that we prescribe the studies to be 
 pursued ia all national schools, and that we exclude the Scriptures ; but
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII 229 
 
 the reverse is the fact ; it belongs not to us, but to the local patrons of 
 each to determine the course of instntction to be given therein, subject only 
 to a power in us to prohibit the use of any books which we may deem 
 improper, and so far are we from prohibiting the i;se of the Scriptures that 
 we expressly recognise the right of all patrons to have them used for the 
 purpose of religious instruction in whatever way they may thinlc proper, 
 provided that each school be open to poor children of all commimions, 
 that due regard be had to parental right and authority ; therefore that no 
 child be compelled to attend, or be present at any reUgious instruction to 
 which his parents or guardians object, and that the time for giving it be 
 so fixed that no child be thereby in effect excluded, directly or indirectly, 
 from the other advantages which the school affords. We may add that in 
 very many of the national schools religious instruction is given day by day, 
 as it may be in all if the patrons think proper, by means both of the Holy 
 Scriptm-es and of the approved Catechisms of the Church to which both the 
 children receiving it belong ; but the times for reading the Holy Scriptures 
 and for Catechetical instruction are so arranged as not to interfere with 
 or impede the scientific or secular business of the school ; and no child whose 
 pai'ents or guardians object is requu-ed to be present or take part in those 
 exercises. Still further to show how luiwarrantable it is to represent 
 us as excluding instruction by means of the Holy Scriptures, we request 
 yoiir Excellency's attention to the following extracts from the preface to 
 the Scripture lessons which we have published. These selections are 
 offered not as a siibstitute for the sacred volmne itself, but as an intro- 
 duction to it, and they have been compiled iti the hope of their leading to 
 a more general and more profitable perusal of the Word of God.' 
 
 ' The Board of Commissioners earnestly and unanimously recommend 
 these lessons to be iised in all schools receivmg aid from them. And 
 to the religious instructors of the children they cheerfully leave, in com- 
 municating instruction, the use of the sacred volume itself, as containing 
 those doctrines and precepts, a knowledge of which must be at the 
 foundation of all true religion. The Law of the Lord is unspotted, con- 
 verting souls ; the testimony of the Lord is faithful, giving wisdom to 
 little ones.' 
 
 Yom^ Committee would beg to lay before the Council one more passage 
 extracted from a communication from Lord Stanley to the Synod of 
 Ulster : ' His Majesty's Government fully recognises the right of all who 
 choose it to read the Sacred Scriptures, but the exercise of this right in the 
 case of infants must be subject to the control of their parents and natural 
 guardians, and in point of time in the national, as in all other schools, 
 it must be limited by the appropriation of certain hours to certain other 
 branches of study.' 
 
 From these extracts yoin:* Committee think it will be manifest that the 
 national system is not fairly open to the charge of neglecting religious 
 instruction. It teaches in the ordinary school hours as much of the truths 
 of religion as can be imparted, without entering on controverted subjects, 
 and it offers every facility and encoiu-agement in its power to induce the
 
 230 LIFE OF LOPtD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 teachers of the different denommations to fill tip the outline by com- 
 mmiicatinf,' to the children those peculiar doctrines which the nature of a 
 general system forbids it to teach. Your Committee cannot but hope that 
 religious teachers of all denominations will feel that this is the direction 
 in which their activity can be most profitably employed, and that they are 
 far more likely to contribute to the spread of true religion and the dis- 
 semination of their own opinions, by co-operating than by competing with 
 this system, which, as it teaches nothing hostile to any sect, and excludes 
 none from teaching their own doctrines, deserves the hostility of none. 
 
 It has been the good fortune of this system to disarm many opponents 
 and to convert them into its advocates. As an example of this your 
 Committee have much pleasm-e in referruag to the evidence of the 
 Rev. Mr. Saunders (p. 95) who, with others, opposed this system in 1836, 
 and who now most earnestly recommends it. Of the secular instruction 
 communicated imder this sj'stem, your Committee do not think it neces- 
 sary to speak at large. The school books have been compiled with the 
 most admirable care and judgment, and will save much trouble to those 
 in whose hands the management of the system shall be placed. 
 
 Your Committee have appended to their report (see Appendix) several 
 docimaents with the -view of giving the Covuieil the amplest information in 
 their power, and they feel well convinced that the more the plan is 
 examined the more favourably will it be viewed. 
 
 Your Committee also trusts that that part of the Protestant commimity 
 which would have preferred the British and Foreign System will ap- 
 preciate the spirit of fairness and impartiaUty to all parties which has 
 actuated them in their present recommendation, and will rather join in 
 promoting a scheme which falls somewhat short of their wishes, than 
 throw obstacles in the way of the only practicable scheme of general 
 instruction. Yoiu' Committee also trust that Christians of aU denomina- 
 tions will feel that the adoption of this sj'stem will tend to soften down 
 sectarian feelings, and to the promotion of union, toleration, and charity. 
 ' In order to carry out their recommendation, your Committee think that 
 a Board should be appointed by the Governor, of persons favourable to the 
 plan proposed, and possessing the confidence of the different denominations. 
 For the success of the undertaking must depend upon the character of the 
 individuals who compose the Board : and upon the security thereby afforded 
 to the comitry that while the interests of religion are not overlooked, the 
 most scmpulous care shall be taken not to interfere with the peculiar 
 tenets of any description of Christian pupils.' 
 
 To this Board it wiU probably be necessary to attach a salaried 
 secretarj^ ; they should be invested with a very wide discretion as to the 
 arrangements necessarj^ for carrying the system into effect, and all funds 
 to be henceforth applied for the purpose of education should be adminis- 
 tered by them. When such a Board is once constituted, it will be easy 
 for them to select from the mass of valuable information and suggestion 
 contained in the evidence appended to this Report principles to guido 
 them m the execution of their duty.
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII 231 
 
 Yonr Committee are unwilling to forestall the deliberations of this 
 Board, but they venture to express a hope that, notwithstanding the 
 evidence of many witnesses to the contrary, no compulsion will ever be 
 employed to induce parents to send their children to school. Such a 
 measm-e is hostile to the liberty of the subject and would infallibly rouse 
 a spirit of determined opposition. 
 
 Your Committee are not prepared to recommend the establishment of 
 local Boards of Education, conceiving that a central Board with an 
 efficient system of inspection will produce results more uniform and 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The foundation of a Normal or Model School in Sydney, for the training 
 of schoolmasters, appears to your Committee to be an indispensable step ; 
 and the establishment of some general principle, or proportion, according 
 to which the funds of the State are to be advanced, will merit their most 
 serious attention. 
 
 Your Committee trusts that measures will be taken to counteract the 
 spread of ignorance beyond the limits of location by the appointment of 
 itinerant preachers, and by the distribution of books of a moral and 
 religious tendency, free from sectarianism. They would also call attention 
 to the suggestion made by several of the witnesses with regard to the 
 establishment of Industrial schools, which, if practicable, would seem to 
 be the fittest training that coidd be devised for an Australian settler. 
 
 Your Committee would also express their opinion, that if it is intended 
 that education should be valued, it must not be gratuitous, at least to those 
 who can pay for it. 
 
 Yoiu: Committee trusts that the liberality of the Legislature will not 
 allow this important object to fail for want of the requisite pecuniary aid. 
 This aid, they hope, will not exceed by a very large amomit the sum now 
 annually devoted to education, and they feel fully convuaced that no 
 money can be expended by a State to better advantage than that which 
 is appropriated to svich a purpose. 
 
 Your Committee think that this Board should be incorporated, in order 
 that all property required for educational purposes may vest in them, by 
 which the trouble and expense necessarily attending the vesting of pro- 
 l^erty in trustees will be avoided. 
 
 ROBERT LOWE, Chairman. 
 
 Legislative Council Chambers, Sydney : 
 August 28, 1844.
 
 232 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 CKEATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 
 
 Eobert Lowe's ' Separation ' Speech — Eesigns his Seat as Crown Nominee — 
 Sir C. Gavan Duffy's Comments on Irish and Victorian ' Home Eule ' — 
 Lowe's alleged ' Pedantry ' — Account of the Eupture with Sir George 
 Gipps 
 
 At this period the whole of Eastern AustraUa was known as 
 New South Wales. What are now the separate colonies of 
 Victoria and Queensland were then the Port Phillip and 
 Moreton Bay districts of New South Whales. From the 
 time that Sir Thomas Mitchell went south, and explored 
 what he termed ' Australia Felix,' a steady influx had set in 
 of younger sons of good English families and impoverished 
 Scottish and Irish country gentlemen ; these settled on the 
 rich pasture-lands in various parts of Port Phillip, and became 
 the pioneers of the present colony of Victoria. 
 
 In this first Australian Parliament — the old Sydney 
 Legislative Council — the district of Port Phillip had a re- 
 presentation of six members, of whom no less than three 
 were citizens of Sydney — a city not only hundreds of miles 
 distant, but, from the lack of means of communication, 
 practically in another continent. So radically dissatisfied 
 were the people of Port Phillip, and especially the citizens 
 of the rising towns of Melbourne and Geelong, with being 
 politically a mere adjunct of Sydney, that the one qualifica- 
 tion they insisted on from anyone aspiring to represent them 
 in the Legislative Council was that he should vote straight 
 on the Separation question. They demanded at once, not
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTOEIA 266 
 
 only Home Eule, but its logical outcome, entire separation 
 from New South Wales. These six Port Phillip members 
 therefore, were, in a very strict sense, delegates ; but among 
 their number were men of first-rate political capacity, notably 
 Dr. Lang, who has already been mentioned, and Dr. (now 
 Sir Charles) Nicholson. Dr. Nicholson, indeed, succeeded the 
 Hon. Alexander Macleay, and became the second Speaker of 
 the infant Parliament. 
 
 Dr. Lang — John Dunmore Lang — has a claim to be con- 
 sidered the political parent both of Victoria and Queensland. 
 At all events he was the most prominent public man of 
 Sydney who restlessly urged, and was mainly instrumental 
 in achieving, autonomy for those provinces, now grown into 
 great Australian States. 
 
 Such a line of conduct was intensely unpopular in official 
 circles in Sydney- — which no doubt gave it additional zest in 
 Dr. Lang's eyes. For some time a movement had been gain- 
 ing ground for what was called the ' financial separation ' of the 
 Port Phillip district from the mother colony. The argu- 
 ments in favour of this step were very forcibly brought before the 
 Council by Mr. John Phelps Piobinson, a member of the Society 
 of Friends, then one of the representatives of Melbourne. 
 Finally matters came to a head, and on August 20, 1844, 
 Dr. Lang proposed, and Mr. Eobinson seconded, a resolution 
 for the separation of Port Phihip from New South Wales, and 
 its erection into a distinct and independent colony. 
 
 In moving this resolution Dr. Lang, who had evidently 
 primed himself for the occasion by an exhaustive study of the 
 history of colonisation from the time of the Greeks, delivered 
 an oration whose report spread over many columns of the 
 Herald. This speech was no doubt intended to be a monu- 
 mental effort ; but, as a matter of fact. Dr. Lang was one of 
 those highly-effective popular orators, idolised on the hust- 
 ings, with their ready retorts and vulgarly humorous allusions, 
 who generally fail on a great occasion before a select or
 
 234 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 educated audience. Much of his speech was clearly beside 
 the mark, and it was so interminably long and ill-arranged 
 that, despite his vigorous delivery, it must have wearied the 
 Council. 
 
 The seconder of the resolution was the Quaker member, 
 Mr. Eobinson, who stuck close to the financial aspects of the 
 question, and showed how much Port Phillip contributed to 
 the general revenue, and how little she got out of it in the 
 way of public works. There was an ominous silence on the 
 Government benches. It is true that the Colonial Secretary, 
 Mr. Deas Thomson, from an unflinching sense of duty, 
 rose and attempted something in the nature of a tentative 
 reply to the Port Phillip separatists. Dr. Bland, one of the 
 popular Opposition members for Sydney, also opposed the 
 resolution as premature. Dr. Nicholson ably supported his 
 colleagues, Lang and Eobinson, and maintained the desira- 
 bility of a much more extended subdivision of the Australian 
 provinces. Then there was another ominous pause, when 
 suddenly the far too independent Crown nominee rose, and 
 made his breach with Sir George Gipps absolutely final by 
 delivering a really memorable speech against the Government, 
 and in favour of the separation of Port Phillip. After a few 
 preliminary sentences, in which he disclaimed agreement 
 with ' the theory of endless provincial subdivision ' which 
 Dr. Nicholson had mooted, Eobert Lowe uttered the famous 
 declaration : — 
 
 As a general rule, the interests of the Colonies are 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. I cordially agree in the abstract truth of 
 the motto prefixed to the article in the newspaper of this morning, 
 that ' Union is strength,' ' and I would extend that principle to 
 the whole Colonial Empire of Great Britain. I hold and believe 
 that the time is not remote when Great Britain will give up the idea 
 
 ' The Sydney Morning Herald, which strongly opposed the separation of 
 Port riiillip.
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 235 
 
 of treating the dependencies of the Crown as children, to be cast 
 adrift by their parent as soon as they arrive at manhood, and sub- 
 stitute 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. 
 
 Nevertheless, he went on to argue, the separation of Port 
 Phillip from New South Wales was inevitable, though he 
 dreaded ' that the result might be a war of tariffs and 
 restrictive duties, which he held in utter horror and aversion.' 
 Delivered in a mere provincial assembl}^ this speech rose to 
 truly Imperial heights. Unhke most eloquent speeches, it 
 bore fruit, for in a very few years the new colony of Vic- 
 toria — named by its own wish after the Queen — came into 
 being. 
 
 On going to division, Dr. Lang's motion was lost by 19 
 votes to 6, the minority consisting of the five Port Phillip 
 delegates and Mr. Lowe. 
 
 On the rejection of his motion, it occurred to the inde- 
 fatigable Dr. Lang, that as the Port Phillip members were 
 unanimous, a most effective petition on the subject might be 
 sent to the Queen. This he accordingly drew up, and he 
 and all his colleagues signed it. Lord Stanley sent back a 
 favourable reply ; but some subsequent delays ensued owing 
 to a change in the English Ministry, and the transformation 
 of the district of Port Phillip into the colony of Victoria was 
 not proclaimed until July 1, 1851. 
 
 To the Sydney Moniing Herald the speech and vote .of 
 Mr. Lowe on this occasion were quite unaccountable. That 
 respectable journal could only attribute it to his intention of 
 offering himself for a Port Phillip constituency. Of course, 
 this motive had nothing whatever to do with his conduct ; but 
 every thoughtful Victorian must have a feeling of regret that 
 this distinguished English statesman, who played so leading a 
 part in obtaining the creation of the colony, did not, when
 
 236 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 he became a representative member, sit for one of the Port 
 PhilHp constituencies. 
 
 Pieferring to this subject of the separation of Port PhiUip, 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, then a Victorian colonist, thus 
 characterised Lord Sherbrooke's action : — 
 
 The motion was supported by the representatives of the district, 
 but opposed by all the members for New South Wales, with a 
 single exception, but a memorable one — that of Eobert Lowe, 
 who is now employing his great powers upon a more conspicuous 
 stage. ^ 
 
 But in a more recent allusion to this circumstance Sir 
 Charles, in an article in advocacy of Irish Home Eule, clearly 
 insinuates that Lord Sherbrooke, as the former supporter 
 of Port Phillip separation, was inconsistent in his opposition 
 to Mr. Gladstone's present Irish policy : — 
 
 Eobert Lowe, then a practising barrister in Sydney, who was 
 not a political pedant in colonial affairs, considered the union between 
 Port Phillip and New South Wales an injustice and a grievance, 
 and voted for its immediate repeal.^ 
 
 This seems to imply that it is political pedantry to decline 
 to support Irish Home Eule if one has strongly upheld the 
 policy of dividing a colony into two. But from his valuable 
 Victorian and Irish experiences Sir Charles, of all men, 
 should recognise that there is no analogy between the two cases. 
 Port Phillip demanded, with complete unanimity, through her 
 six delegates, not merely Home Eule, but absolute separation 
 from New South Wales. Eobert Lowe, though a New South 
 Wales member and a Crown nominee, swayed by the justice of 
 the claim, supported it, as his speech shows, on the broadest 
 of Imperial lines. W^ill Sir Charles Duffy tell us, as he 
 quotes this colonial illustration of the benefits of Home Eule 
 to Victoria — Does Ireland, or does she not, demand complete 
 separation from England as Port Phillip did from New South 
 
 ' Melbourne Eevieto, October 1876. 
 
 - ' An Australian Example,' by Sir C. Gavan Duiiy, K.C.M.G. {Contemporary 
 Eeview, January 1888).
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 237 
 
 Wales ? If not, then there is no analogy at ah between her case 
 and that of Port Phillip. Eobert 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 inde- 
 pendent 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 Eule pohcy 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, Eobert Lowe presented the Eeport 
 of the Select Committee on Education (see Appendix, Chapter 
 XIII.), and moved that it be printed, and taken into con- 
 sideration 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 Avill not be in my power to take charge of the Eeport 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 in- 
 tention 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 Eeport be printed was put and 
 carried. Thus ended for the time being Lowe's connection 
 with the Legislative Council of New South AVales. His 
 resignation of his seat as a Crown nominee took place on
 
 238 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 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 entree. 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. Accord- 
 ingly, 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 
 w^as not the way to achieve a salaried post in the Council — 
 and for what other reason Mr. Lowe had entered the Council 
 they were at a loss to see. 
 
 Mr. Eoger Therry, the chief courtier of Sir Eichard 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 in- 
 dependent 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
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 239 
 
 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.' 
 
 AVhen, in the year 1845, Mr. Lowe sought to represent 
 the constituency of St. Vincent and Auckland, the Sydney 
 JSIorning 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 dicta- 
 torial, but I cannot be both. 
 
 He then reviews his conduct while sitting in the Council
 
 240 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 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 sin- 
 cerely 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 1 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 pubHc conduct during the brief time that he sat as a 
 Crown nominee in the first AustraHan 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. Li 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, W^entworth, 
 Windeyer, Cowper, Lang, all have long since passed awa}^ ; and 
 to these we must now add Lord Sherbrooke himself. Under
 
 CREATION OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 241 
 
 the circumstances, one touches as hghtly 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.' ' 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Speech delivered by Robert Loive in the Debate on the Seioaration of 
 Port Phillij). Legislative Council, Sydney, August 20, 1844. 
 
 Mr. Lowe said that far different from his friend, Dr. Nicliolson, 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 agi'eed 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 cir- 
 cumference, 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 fearftil that a separation might be at- 
 tended 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 jiu-isdiction 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 
 
 ' See Australia and the Empire, chap, i., ' Robert Lowe in Sydney.' 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 LIFE OF LORD STIEPtBROOKE 
 
 not natural, it was not reasonable, that any community of Englishmen 
 should remain content with such a state of things — they would be despicable 
 if they did so. It was the essence of a good Executive Government that it 
 should be well acquainted with the concerns of its subjects, and they with 
 it ; that it should act upon public opinion, and be reacted upon in its tiurn. 
 How were these conditions of good government realised for Port Phillip '? 
 The Executive knew little of the province, the province less of the Execu- 
 tive. The very arrangements of the post, which only gave a few hours for 
 answermg a letter, rendered it impossible that due consideration shoulel 
 be given to matters of urgency. The system might now be able to be 
 improved, but it had prevailed for years. The representation assigned to 
 Port Phillip in that Council was a still gi'eater evil. If Lord Chatham 
 was right in saying that the idea of virtual representation was contempt- 
 ible ; how much more contemptible was the actual representation of Port 
 Philhp. He did not scruple to say it was no representation at all ; he 
 granted the ability of these gentlemen, but what was their local knowledge ; 
 they did not profess to possess it. Representation in his opinion meant 
 something more than the sending persons to vote and speak in a popular 
 assembly ; it meant the power and opportunity of sending persons well 
 acquainted with the wants and wishes of the community, of which they 
 formed a part, and able to turn that knowledge to the best accomit in 
 every emergency that arose. That power, that opportunity, was denied 
 to Port Phillip. Suppose that Port PhiUip were separated from this colony 
 and annexed to Canada, with the right of sending six representatives to 
 its Assembly. They might, no doubt, find six Canadians who would take 
 the office on themselves, but was that representation ? And if not, what 
 w'as the practical difference between Canada and Sydney '? 
 
 The last and most intolerable evil he would mention was that Port 
 Phillip was the dependent of a dependency ; was governed by a viceroy's 
 vicegerent ; was saddled with a double evil of two absentee governments. 
 Did the Council adopt his language, they would say to Port Phillip : ' We 
 have eaten too long the bitter bread of dependence to wish to have de- 
 pendents of our own ; we have felt too long the evil of having our money 
 spent on British objects, to wish to spend the money of others ; we have 
 felt too long the evil of being governed by strangers from England, to wish 
 to intrude strangers upon you.' 
 
 If they hold this language, they would be indeed applying the golden 
 rule of Christianit}^ which is true in politics as in morals. He believed 
 with the Colonial Secretary that Separation would be eventually carried, 
 and he did not believe that any vote of that House would either accelerate 
 or retard it ; but they also had justice to ask, they also had grievances to 
 redress. And if they failed in their petition, the}' would have the bitter 
 reflection that they were only receiving back in their bosom the same 
 measure which they had meted to their brethi-en.
 
 243 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Sir Richard Bourke and Lord Stanley's Irish National System —Attitude of 
 Dr. UUathorne —Robert Lowe becomes its chief advocate — First Speech to 
 the people of Sydney — Roger Therry and M. Guizot — Mr. Lowe and the 
 Council checkmated 
 
 On the base of the statue of Sir Eichard Bourke in Sydney 
 may be read these words : — 
 
 He established rehgious equahty on a just and firm basis, and 
 sought to provide for all, without distinction of sect, a sound and 
 adequate system of national education. 
 
 It is true enough that he ' sought,' l)ut through no fault 
 of his own he failed to ' provide ' such an unsectarian system 
 of national education, which was avowedly based on Lord 
 Stanley's Irish scheme. Sir Eichard was Governor-General 
 of New South Wales and its dependencies from 1831-1837, 
 when he was succeeded by Sir George Gipps. 
 
 It is not a little astonishing to find that the chief sup- 
 porter of this plan of unsectarian education, which Sir Eichard 
 Bourke first tried to introduce into Australia, should have 
 been the Eoman Catholic Vicar-General, Dr. UUathorne, after- 
 wards Bishop of Birmingham. It was also supported then, 
 and afterwards in the time of Sir George Gipps, by the two 
 leading Eoman Catholic laymen in the colony, Mr. Eoger 
 Therry and Mr. John Hubert Plunkett, both of whom were 
 originally sent out to Australia as high officials by the English 
 Whig Government, then in alliance with Daniel O'Connell. 
 Plunkett was a high-minded gentleman of strong religious
 
 244 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 convictions ; so that his unwavering support of a system of 
 education now denounced as ' godless ' is almost as note- 
 worthy as that of Dr. Ullathorne himself. It was doubtless 
 the co-operation of these three leading Eoman Catholics ^ 
 which aroused the suspicious ire of Dr. Lang, and other 
 influential Protestant public men in the colony, who contrived 
 to defeat the well-laid plan of Sir Eichard Bourke. 
 
 It was inevitable that such a body as the newly constituted 
 Legislative Council, under Sir George Gipps, should revive 
 the subject of public education. All that was wanted was a 
 popular leader, who had now turned up in the person of 
 Eobert Lowe. Unfortunately, after procuring the select 
 committee and presenting its report (which was, in a very 
 special sense, his own), Lowe felt himself compelled to resign 
 his seat. This was a severe loss to the cause of which he was 
 the champion. After Lowe's retirement from the Council, 
 Mr. Eobinson, the Quaker member for Port Phillip, moved 
 a series of resolutions, based on the report of the select 
 committee, in favour of establishing a national unsectarian 
 system of education to be controlled by a Board whose 
 members should represent the various religious bodies. It 
 was on the occasion of this debate that Dr. Lang, who had 
 been converted from sectarianism, spoke, he tells us, for 
 three hours, ' during the whole of which time Mr. Lowe was 
 present in the House.' 
 
 But if Eobert Lowe's voice was silent within the walls of 
 the Council, it was raised for the first time, and most effec- 
 
 ' Mr. Kusclen's more subtle explanation of this compact is, that Sir Richard 
 Bourke was actuated by the i^olicy of his Whig masters in Lord Melbourne's 
 Cabinet : ' In his speech to the Council in 1833, he (Sir Eichard) was able to 
 say that he had it " in command from the Secretary of State to represent their 
 wants " ; and to promise the co-operation of that functionary in giving assistance 
 to Koman Catholic schools, and appointing additional Eoman Catholic chaplains. 
 Thus early did the Whigs bid for support in Ireland by offers of colonial 
 patronage. . . . Between .January 1832 and December 1835, they paid " outfit 
 and passage " for nine Eoman Catholic priests and catechists. In the same 
 period, they paid outfit and passage for one clergj-man of the Church of 
 England.' — History of Australia, vol. ii. pp. 14 1-5.
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 245 
 
 tively, on this education question, at public meetings in the 
 city of Sydney. The first of these meetings was convened by 
 the Mayor, Mr. J. W. Wilshire, at the request of a number of 
 citizens, and took place on September 2, 1844, at the Sydney 
 theatre. Lowe's experiences on his first attempt to address 
 a mass meetmg in the colony were by no means pleasant. 
 In fact, he and most of the speakers were refused a hearing. 
 The following attempt to report him on this occasion will 
 convey some notion of his rowdy audience : — 
 
 Mr. Lowe came forward to move the first Eesolution [hisses]. 
 As Chairman of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council 
 [cries of imvilc(je ! i^rivllegc /] appointed to inquire into and report 
 upon the subject of education, he had thought that it was only right 
 to come forward and to propose a Eesolution which was one step 
 towards the carrying out of the recommendations of that Committee, 
 which had been submitted to the public in various ways, and which 
 he had no doubt that those present were prepared to discuss with 
 him. [Uproar.] 
 
 After several other persistent attempts to obtain a hearing, 
 he was completely howled down. 
 
 One or two Eoman Catholic priests and a journalist of 
 that persuasion here mounted the platform, and secured some 
 degree of tranquillity for a time. Mr. Lowe, despairing, 
 however, of a hearing, concluded by simply moving the 
 resolution : — 
 
 That it is the duty of the State in every Christian community to 
 provide the means of a good Common Education to be conducted 
 agreeably to the principles of the Christian religion. 
 
 The only speaker who succeeded that evening in getting 
 a hearing was the Eev. J. M'Encroe, a well-known Eoman 
 Catholic priest, who denounced at great length the judge and 
 packed jury who had tried Daniel O'Connell — which, as the 
 Mayor mildly pointed out, had no very direct bearing on the 
 subject in hand. 
 
 The inevitable result of this disgraceful proceeding was 
 to enlist on the side of Mr. Lowe the sympathies of that
 
 246 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 large but undemonstrative body of people who happily exist 
 in every British community, but who do not turn up at 
 public meetings, nor under excitement revert to the harsh 
 noises of primeval man. Several letters in the press, written 
 evidently by this better type of citizen, attest the general in- 
 dignation that was felt at the ungracious reception accorded 
 to Mr. Lowe and his friends. But the Mayor of Sydney — to 
 the end of the chapter a strong supporter — was not the man 
 to rest content with this abortive effort, and accordingly he 
 convened a second meeting, which was held on the following 
 Saturday afternoon at three o'clock in the theatre of the 
 School of Arts. The chief speaker was again Mr. Lowe, and 
 on this occasion he experienced an enthusiastic welcome and 
 was accorded a most respectful hearing. This speech may 
 therefore be considered as his first public address to the 
 people of Sydney. It was in every sense worthy of himself 
 and of the occasion. The following synopsis furnishes the 
 best commentary on the report of the select committee, and 
 will show the great difficulties which he and his colleagues 
 were contending against in a sparsely populated pastoral 
 country like New South Wales — ' sown,' as it had been, with 
 the ' rotten seed ' of convictism — in their efforts to preserve 
 the rising generation from lapsing into unadulterated savagery. 
 After explaining at some length the object and practical work- 
 ing of Lord Stanley's system, Mr. Lowe thus proceeded : — 
 
 Such a system was especially adapted to a community like that 
 of New South Wales, not only from its fairness to all, but on account 
 of its ductility and plasticity, which Avould enable it to adapt itself 
 to the great variety of religious denominations into which the people 
 were divided. The system which was now proposed required no 
 compromise, unless, indeed, it should be argued by any that rehgious 
 instruction alone should occupy all the hours of every day which 
 were passed in the school by the child. He had himself been at 
 school in former years, and he knew well that if he had attempted 
 to devote the whole of his time, day after day, to reading the Bible 
 instead of attending to his other studies, he should have been well 
 flogged — and well he would have deserved it, and the only objection
 
 THE EDUCATIOX QUESTION 247 
 
 which anyone could urge against the system was that the Bible was 
 not the subject of everyday study. He thought it an advantage that 
 the schools should be under the control of a Board rather than 
 under that of isolated and antagonistic clergymen. Twenty-one 
 witnesses have been examined by the Select Committee, seven of 
 whom were in favour of a Denominational System, while fourteen 
 advocated a general system of education. Among these seven, too, 
 it must be recollected, there were those who had been called, not so 
 much to ascertain what system might best be introduced, but what 
 terms they were willing to accede to ; such were the Lord Bishop of 
 Australia (Dr. Broughton), Archbishop Folding and Mr. M'Kenny, 
 the head of the Wesleyan Connexion. The Committee did not 
 expect that these witnesses would assent to any proposition of a 
 general system ; they wished only to ascertain their opinions as to 
 the state of education in the colony — to hear from them the means 
 they would suggest to remedy evils the existence of which all 
 acknowledged, so that they might lay the matter before the Council, 
 fully and fairly, exhibiting all the dangers and all the difficulties 
 against which we have to contend. But the evidence of the two 
 most important witnesses in favour of Denominational education 
 did not militate much against the general unsectarian system which 
 the committee proposed. 
 
 Mr. Lowe then proceeded to read from the official records 
 of the Legislative Council the report of the evidence of Dr. 
 Broughton, the English Bishop, and — what was more to the 
 point — that of the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dr. Folding. 
 When we bear in mind that Dr. Folding, unlike the former 
 Vicar-General, Dr. Ullathorne, was an avowed enemy of the 
 general, or unsectarian, system, his admissions in favour of 
 Lord Stanley's Irish scheme are well deserving of reproduction. 
 Dr. Nicholson, a member of the special committee, asked if 
 the Archbishop were acquainted with the Irish system of edu- 
 cation. The Archbishop replied that he was ; and he was then 
 requested to state his views of that system. 
 
 ' I think,' he said, ' it is a system well devised for the circum- 
 stances under which Ireland is placed. It is not, I acknowledge, the 
 system I would adopt, nor do I believe that any person in my situa- 
 tion would adopt it voluntarily. Still, there are advantages 
 attending it. The bringing up of the children together — the ex- 
 clusion of books which misrepresent religious tenets ; which teach
 
 248 LIFE OF LORD SHERBEOOKE 
 
 children to hate, and to hold others in contempt by reason of such 
 misrepresentation ; which teach them practically that a lie loses the 
 odiousness of its character in such matters, and perjury its dreadful 
 wickedness ; and the abstraction of the food of religious prejudices, 
 which tend so much to sour society and to alienate men from each 
 other. These are advantages which cannot be estimated too highly.' 
 
 On the platform, supporting the Mayor and Mr. Lowe, was 
 a remarkable and motley group, including Dr. Lang, Mr. 
 Eoger Therry (still staunch to the cause of unsectarianism) , and 
 Mr. Lowe's old duelling antagonist, Alderman Macdermott. 
 By far the most important speech after Lowe's was that of 
 Eoger Therry. He was a somewhat subtle and obsequious 
 person, a man as fond of office as a cat is of the fire. During his 
 varied career he had seen much of men and things, had written 
 a ' Life ' of Canning, and was a kinsman as well as an early friend 
 of Daniel O'Connell. As was always said of him in the colony, 
 Therry was a legal Vicar of Bray in the skill and tenacity with 
 which he stuck to lucrative office. It is therefore greatly to his 
 credit that he remained staunch to his convictions on the edu- 
 cation question, though the head of the State to whom he looked 
 for promotion, as well as the head of his Church, was opposed 
 to the policy of Sir Eichard Bourke. Eising after Mr. Lowe at 
 this great public meeting, Mr. Therry read an extract from a 
 private letter which he had received in 1836 from Sir Eichard 
 Bourke, which showed how determined that able Governor had 
 been to introduce into the colony Lord Stanley's L'ish system. 
 
 In that letter Sir Eichard observed : ' The principal 
 feature in the Irish plan, namely, the separation of literary 
 and moral from religious instruction, will suit the mixed creeds 
 of our population. The subject of general education in this 
 increasing colony is that upon which / am most anxious. I 
 have set my heart on laying a good foundation ivhilst I am in 
 office. I dread much, even in this reforming age, the blighting 
 influence of religious intolerance.' 
 
 Mr. Therry then became autobiographical, and told the 
 meeting that in 1822 he was the Secretary of the National
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 249 
 
 Society of Education in Ireland, and that from that time he 
 had become convinced ' that in a community of mixed creeds 
 the only system that could succeed was one that adoi)ted as 
 its leading principle the affording the same facilities for edu- 
 cation to all classes of professing Christians, without any 
 attempt to interfere with the peculiar religious opinions of any 
 or to countenance proselytism.' 
 
 Mr. Therry then went on to prove that many of the Irish 
 Bishops, such as his friend the well-known Dr. Doyle, were 
 strongly in favour of Lord Stanley's plan. 
 
 In the course of his really excellent speech, Mr. Therry 
 gave what he truly regarded as a striking instance of the spread 
 of toleration, an instance which I venture to think very few 
 modern readers have ever met with, and which therefore I 
 quote in his own words : — 
 
 Look to India, and see how the spirit of toleration and Christian 
 charity has advanced there. An officer of the name of Martin, who 
 had risen from the position of a private soldier to the rank of a 
 Major- General in the British Army, left on his death the whole of 
 his property (which was very considerable) towards the endowment 
 of a public school. It was the wish of the Bishop of Calcutta, Dr. 
 Wilson, to found this school on the express doctrines and discipline 
 of the Church of England ; but finding such was not the design of 
 the founder, that truly excellent and Christian bishop applied him- 
 self, in the spirit of that charity which hopeth all things and 
 believeth all things, to ordain the establishment, so that while it 
 afforded sound practical education to all sects of Christians, it should 
 offer no offence to the opinions of any. 
 
 Mr. Therry brought his speech to a conclusion by the 
 following words of a great French politician, which were 
 loudly cheered by the whole meeting : — 
 
 It is desirable (says M. Guizot, with his usual wisdom), it is 
 desirable that children whose parents do not profess the same 
 religious opinions, should early contract, by frequenting the same 
 school, those habits of natural good-will and tolerance which grow 
 into sentiments of justice and union when they become fellow-citizens. 
 The strife and struggle of the world, do what we will, must always 
 give rise to differences and dissensions enough. Let us not promote
 
 250 LIFE OF LORD SHERBEOOKE 
 
 and augment them — let us not embitter the conflict when come it 
 must — by artificial distinctions and divisions in the education of the 
 young. Depend upon it, that everything which tends to unite us, 
 whom all evil passions tend to separate, in affectionate good-will 
 towards each other, is a great advantage— is a great blessing ; but it 
 is to little purpose that we inculcate fellowship and union to 
 persons of mature years, if we insist on teaching children severance, 
 and alienation, and distrust. 
 
 Truly a strange and memorable speech to issue from the 
 lips of the * lay champion of Catholicism in the colony,' as 
 one of the subsequent speakers described Mr. Therry. It will 
 serve to show that we have retrograded rather than advanced 
 both in England and in Australia (to say nothing of Ireland) 
 if we bear in mind that fifty years ago these were the views 
 held by the three leading Eoman Catholics in Australia — Dr. 
 Ullathorne, Mr. Plunkett, and Mr. Eoger Therry. 
 
 Despite the activity and vigour of Mr. Lowe and others 
 outside, and of Mr. Therry and the leading members inside 
 the Legislative Council, the friends of a general system of 
 State education were doomed to further disappointment. 
 Mr. Eobinson, the Quaker member, sturdily moved reso- 
 lutions in favour of the adoption of Mr. Lowe's Eeport ; after 
 much debate Wentworth succeeded in carrying, by thirteen 
 votes to twelve, the following Address to his Excellency the 
 Governor : — 
 
 That it is advisable to introduce Lord Stanley's system of 
 National Education, with this modification, that instead of the 
 clergy and pastors of the several denominations being allowed to im- 
 part religious instruction in the schools, the children be allowed to 
 be absent from school one day in every week, exclusive of Sunday, 
 for the purpose of receiving such instruction elsewere, but that all 
 Denominational schools now in existence, having schoolhouses 
 already built, Avhich have been or shall be within the next twelve 
 months conveyed in trust for the pui-pose of the school, and having 
 now, or which shall have within the next twelve months, an average 
 attendance of fifty scholars, shall be entitled to aid from the Board. 
 
 Sir George Gipps dealt very diplomatically with this 
 Address — that is to say, while expressing a general agreement
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 251 
 
 with it, he contrived promptly to shelve it. The persistent 
 Mr. Eobinson, with the assistance of Wentworth, then suc- 
 ceeded in carrying another Address, by twenty-two votes to 
 five, requesting Sir George to place 2,000/. on the Estimates 
 to initiate the general system of State education. The 
 Governor, on the plea of national bankruptcy, vetoed it, 
 according to Dr. Lang, at the direct instigation of Bishop 
 Broughton (see Note A) . 
 
 So ended for the time being the struggle for a com- 
 prehensive system of National Education, in which Eobert 
 Lowe, both in the Council and before the country, bore the 
 leading part. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 In Defence of Bislwp Broughton. 
 
 On the principle a^idi alteram partem, the following extract from an 
 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, of September 18, 1844, is here 
 appended. Bishop Bronghton, as head of the Anglican Church, was the 
 chief opponent of the State system of nnsectarian education, advocated by 
 Lord Sherbrooke, when in New South Wales, and by most of the leading 
 colonial public men from his day to that of Mr. George Higinbotham 
 and Mr. Wilberforce Stephen in Victoria, and Sir Henry Parkes in New 
 South Wales : — 
 
 ' We are not afraid to say that we are persi;aded that much of this 
 new-fashioned zeal for the Irish systemarisesfi-omjealousy of the Chmrch 
 of England. We wonder, then, that it should not have occurred to those 
 who are actuated by this feeling that the liberalised regulation is exactly 
 calculated to place the working of the system, in most jiarts of the colony, 
 in the hands of that Church. According to the Census of 1841, the Church 
 of England throughout the colony numbered thirty-six members to ten of 
 the Church of Scotland, forty to ten of all other Protestants, twenty to 
 ten of Koman Catholics, fourteen to ten of all other religions. Such being 
 its immense ascendency in point of numbers, to say nothing of its known 
 ascendency in point of wealth and intelligence, the upper classes belonging 
 chiefly to its communion, would there not be every reason to expect that 
 in very many places the local patronage of schools would natiuraUy and 
 inevitably fall mto the hands of the clergy and laity of the Church of 
 England ? In the north of Ireland, it appears to have fallen into the 
 hands of the Presbyterians, because they are there the majority of the 
 population ; in the south, into the hands of the Roman Catholics, for the 
 same reason. And if such be the plastic natiure of the system in Ireland, 
 taking whatever form may be impressed upon it by local majorities,
 
 252 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 would it not be equally yielding in New South Wales, and thus become 
 moulded and fashioned by that very Chvu'ch of which its advocates are 
 already so jealous.' 
 
 That Bishop Broughton took the decided stand he did against the 
 introduction of Lord Stanley's Irish system mto New South Wales is, I 
 take it, proof positive that he considered it would not give his Church any 
 such ascendency in education matters. As well as being a very upright 
 and excellent man, he was not wanting in political slurewdness. His 
 policy has been followed by aU the Anglican bishops in AustraHa, even 
 including Dr. Moorhouse.
 
 253 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 THE ' ATLAS ' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 Condition of the Colony— Appearance of the ^<7as— Lowe's Articles and 
 Verses — Attacks Colonial Office — Satirises Sir George Gipps and Roger 
 Therry — Songs of the Sq_uattcrs — Principal Contributors 
 
 The next act in the Australian career of Lord Slierbrooke 
 reveals him in the role of a journalist. He resigned his seat 
 in the Council in August 1844, and all through September 
 was very prominent at the great public meetings held in 
 Sydney on the education question. Politically, the colony 
 was in what is termed a state of transition, and the minds of 
 men were much agitated on public questions. 
 
 Financially, New South Wales was still in a deplorable 
 state ; but the Governor was resolved that he, and not the 
 Council, should provide the much needed remedy. Sir 
 George Gipps, like many leading English statesmen of the 
 day, was a disciple of that eccentric genius, Edward Gibbon 
 Wakefield, the most gifted but most misleading theorist who 
 ever bent his mind to the solution of colonial problems. It 
 was in obedience to the teachings of Wakefield that the 
 Imperial Parliament in 1841 (when Austraha, as we have 
 seen, was in a state of general insolvency) passed an Act 
 fixing the minimum price of land at 11. an acre. This caused 
 interminable disputes between the Governor and the Legis- 
 lative Council. Sir George's subsequent land policy led to 
 the establishment of the ' Pastoral Association of New South 
 Wales.' Piobert Lowe had joined this body just before he
 
 254 LIFE OF LORD SHEKBROOKE 
 
 resigned his seat in the Council. He had devoted a great 
 deal of time to the study of the land question, and was 
 accounted the most active member of Mr. Charles Cowper's 
 Select Committee appointed to report upon all grievances 
 connected ^Yith the lands of the territory. He had, indeed, 
 made himself as familiar with the agrarian as he was with 
 the education question in the colony. 
 
 But what was the use of all this knowledge, as he had no 
 longer a seat in the Council ? It was this consideration, 
 doubtless, which led him, then a busy barrister in ex- 
 cellent practice, to assist in founding the Atlas, a * Sydney 
 Weekly Journal of Politics, Commerce, and Literature.' The 
 first number appeared on Saturday, November 30, 1844, and 
 opened with an exhaustive essay, entitled * The Present 
 Condition and Future Prospects of New South Wales.' This 
 article, which was probably a joint production, was in effect 
 the manifesto of the pastoral tenants and settlers, who 
 were quite at the mercy of the Sydney executive — or, in 
 other words, of Sir George Gipps. But the Atlas was by no 
 means devoted merely to the advocacy of land reform. Not a 
 question bearing on the prosperity or future greatness of Aus- 
 tralia but was treated in its attractive columns, sometimes in 
 weighty and eloquent prose, often in light and pungent verse. 
 
 I have before me as I write the late Lord Sherbrooke's 
 bound volumes of * marked," or ' office ' copies of the Atlas, 
 which reveal to those who are acquainted with the initials the 
 names of all the chief contributors to this remarkable journal. 
 In the earlier issues a very large proportion of the leading 
 articles were from that powerful pen which, in after years, in 
 the columns of the Times, appealed often with irresistible 
 force to the statesmen and reading public of Europe. Most 
 of these Atlas * leaders ' were devoted to local and ephemeral 
 topics, which would no longer interest even the immediate 
 descendants of the old pioneer squatters of New South Wales, 
 who so keenly relished them when they first issued from the
 
 THE ' ATLAS ' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 255 
 
 press. But by its treatment of what might be called Anglo- 
 colonial problems the Atlas may fairly claim to have been second 
 only in importance to the Legislative Council itself in achieving 
 self-government for Australia. 
 
 The prevailing ' note ' of the Atlas during the short period 
 that the late Lord Sherbrooke directed its style and policy 
 was its outspoken common-sense. He never allowed it to 
 rave, and though he freely used both invective and ridicule, 
 the journal was never hysterical. Take the following plea for 
 Australian self-government, and observe how fairly the balance 
 is held between the mother-country and the colony : — 
 
 The grand object to be attained, then, is legislative power com- 
 mensurate with our knowledge and our wants. We can only ensure 
 it by steadily and temperately showing that we understand and 
 shall not abuse it. It is galling, no doubt, to be treated as an infant 
 after the period of infancy has passed away ; but it is not a pleasant 
 display to see a child kicking itself out of its mother's arms merely 
 because it is conscious of legs and convinced that it can run alone. 
 Let us show that we have that high qualification for civil liberty 
 which consists in putting moral chains on our own passions. Let 
 our representatives have patience, while they steadily and respect- 
 fully press in the direction of the great object ; the granting of 
 which by the mother-country will be the surest means of strengthen- 
 ing and continuing those ainicable arrangements which both parent 
 and child must be anxious to retain. 
 
 These are wise words ; and it may not be out of place to 
 remind the rising generation of Australians, who have merely 
 reaped the reward of the labours of their forefathers, that 
 the great men who really won for them their civil and political 
 rights were patriotic Englishmen, profoundly stirred by the 
 noble traditions of our common race ; and that, however 
 much they may have quarrelled with Governors and Downing 
 Street officials, their loyalty to England and to English insti- 
 tutions was the mainspring of all their actions. 
 
 The number of leading articles written by Mr. Lowe for 
 the Atlas during the time of his virtual editorship' — that is, 
 from its foundation up to May or June 1845 — is simply
 
 256 LIFE OF LORD SIIER13R00KE 
 
 astonishing. As a rule, in each number he wrote two or three 
 long opening articles, in every one of which there is a vigour 
 of expression and a depth and originality of thought which 
 place the composition on quite another plane to that of the 
 mere semi-mechanical work of the practised hack leader- 
 writer. 
 
 Take the series of articles dealing with the different phases 
 of the relations between England and the Colonies ; they are 
 to this day as fresh and instructive as when they were written. 
 Many years afterwards, when the recent Chief Justice of 
 Victoria (Mr. Higinbotham), as Attorney- General of that 
 colony, carried on a bitter controversy with the late Lord 
 Cardwell, then Colonial Secretary of State, it will be still 
 remembered in Australia what effective use he made of the 
 phrase ' Government by despatches ' ; nor can any true 
 Victorian have forgotten his discovery that the affairs of 
 the colony, supposed to be self-governing, were not really 
 controlled by the local Ministry, nor by the Governor, nor 
 even by the Colonial Secretary, but by ' a clerk named Eogers.' 
 This was Mr. Higinbotham's way of saying that the late Lord 
 Blachford, then Sir Frederick Eogers, chief clerk in the 
 Colonial Office, was the ultimate ruler of Victoria. But Mr. 
 Lowe had made a number of similar discoveries twenty years 
 before Mr. Higinbotham, and had explained the matter to the 
 people of New South Wales in equally epigrammatic language. 
 Eead the article on * Eesponsible Government ' in the Atlas 
 of December 28, 1844 :— 
 
 Let us see what are the Unks in the chain. The Governor, who 
 knows little, and cares less, about the colony — whose interest is in 
 every respect anti-colonial whenever the interests of the colony and 
 the Empire are supposed to clash — is responsible to the clerks of the 
 Colonial Office, who care as little as he, and know even less about 
 us than himself. The clerks are responsible to the Colonial Secre- 
 tary,^ who, equally unknowing and uncaring, is besides, for our 
 special benefit, a first-rate debater, whose head is full of Corn Laws, 
 
 • Then Lord Stanley, the late Earl of Derby.
 
 THE 'ATLAS' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 257 
 
 and Factory Bills, and Repeal of the Union, whose mornings are 
 spent, not in going through that twentieth part of the business 
 allotted him as Colonial Minister which it is possible for the most 
 laborious of human beings to accomplish, but in excogitating sound 
 pummellings for Cobden, stinging invectives for O'Connell, and 
 epigrammatic repartees for Lord John Russell. This functionary is 
 in turn responsible to an Assembly chosen for a great number of 
 reasons — for wealth, for family connections, for moderate opinions, 
 for extreme opinions — for every conceivable reason except one — 
 their knowledge of colonial affairs. 
 
 In an article entitled ' Colonial Loyalty,' which appeared 
 on January 25, 1845, Mr. Lowe put the matter in still clearer 
 and more forcible terms : — 
 
 There are forty colonies belonging to Great Britain, all more or 
 less misgoverned. . . . Let us trace a despatch from this colony 
 and its answer. The despatch is opened by Mr. Gardner (the clerk 
 in Downing Street for the Australian group). If it does not strike 
 him as of any consequence, he puts it into a pigeon-hole, and it is 
 heard of no more ; if otherwise, it is forwarded to Mr. Secretary 
 Stephen, who is generally the tiltima linea rerum. Few, very few 
 are the des^^atches which he deems it necessary to submit to Lord 
 Stanley's eye. When this event does happen, his Lordship, not 
 having seen the despatches to which this is the sequel, requires to 
 be crammed as to the previous transactions, in which process the 
 most ample scope for false colouring is afforded. Thus the Under- 
 Secretary may be, and frequently is, made the tool of his clerk, and 
 the Principal Secretary the tool of his Under-Secretary. Now let 
 our readers attentively consider this system, and then ask themselves, 
 by whom are they governed. Say they receive the fortieth part of 
 the little time which Lord Stanley can spare for the Colonies, a 
 fortieth part of the whole time of Mr. Stephen, and perhaps a third 
 or fourth part of the time of Mr. Gardner, who, it must be remem- 
 bered, reads the despatches from the Governor, suppressing such as 
 he pleases, and writes the answers to them under very brief direc- 
 tions, when under any. Is it not transparent that we are governed, 
 not by the responsible Secretary of State, nor yet by the irresponsible 
 Under-Secretary, but by the doubly irresponsible, because utterly 
 unknoAvn and obscure. Clerk ? 
 
 " • • J • m • • 
 
 Is not the result (Mr. Lowe continued) such as might 
 naturally be expected from such a system ? That the Secretary 
 knows nothing about us, except as much cram as may be necessary 
 
 VOL. I, s
 
 258 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 to make a speech to an inattentive assembly a shade more ignorant 
 than himself ; that the Under-Secretary knows just enough of us to 
 adopt some crude and impracticable theory, like the one-pound-an- 
 acre scheme, or the civiHsation of the aborigines, to which he adheres 
 with the desperate tenacity of ignorance and presumption ; and that 
 the clerk, our real governor, who is utterly unknown and irre- 
 sponsible — who will not be praised if we are governed w^ell, nor 
 blamed if we are governed ill— should take it as easy as possible, 
 and content himself with echoing back the despatches he receives, 
 sometimes enlivening the matter by an occasional abuse of the 
 Governor for something perfectly right, just to shoio he has an 
 opinion of his oivn. 
 
 This subject of the government of remote colonies by- 
 means of despatches from Downing Street seems at times to 
 have struck Mr. Lowe in such a ludicrous light that he could 
 no longer argue the matter in pungent leading articles, but 
 was compelled to fly for relief to parody and metrical skits. 
 His old schoolfellow, Edward Cardwell, who, in after years, 
 held the seals of the Colonial Office, figures amusingly in 
 one of these parodies. 
 
 LAW FOR A DEPENDENCY 
 
 Referre sermoncs Deoruui et 
 Magna modis iter are parvis. 
 
 Scene : Downing Street. Time : noon. Lord Stanley discovered 
 reading the advertisements in the Times. To him enters Mk. 
 Caedwell. 
 
 Lord Stanley. Oh ! Mr. Cardwell, I have sent for thee 
 Because they tell me that thou art a man 
 Quick in debate, and prodigal of words. 
 And one to help thj' party at a pinch. 
 Sit down, I pray. 
 
 Mr. Cardivell. I humbly thank your Lordship, 
 And, as you do desire me, take my seat. 
 
 Lord Stanley. Fain would we have thy services, young man. 
 But at this time there is no office vacant. 
 Nor dare we make a new one, lest Young England 
 Should say we are corrupt. 
 
 Mr. Cardwell {risiny). Then, my Lord, 
 
 I think I have no further business here ; 
 And so I take my leave.
 
 THE MTLAS' AND ITS CONTPJBUTORS 259 
 
 Lord StanJcij. Stop, Mr. Cardwell. 
 
 "We cannot make a vacancy, 'tis true, 
 Nor a new office, but we can revise one. 
 And will, for yon. Know, then, the Colonies 
 Say they'll no more be governed without law. 
 Justice they shall not have — bxit law they must. 
 And so we want a lawyer sage and subtle. 
 By whose advice to act ; but ere I give you 
 This high appointment, 30U must let me try 
 ■ Whether you understand the law or no ; 
 For ignorance I hate ; and Mr. Stephen 
 With the first lawyers in the land is even. 
 Here, take an instance. You have doubtless heard 
 That New South Wales has got a Constitution : 
 Such an Assembly, I should think, was never 
 Seen since the time of Romulus — all thieves— 
 Several who have not yet received their pardons ; 
 And Stephen says they voted it a breach 
 Of privilege to pick a Member's pocket 
 While in debate engaged. 'Tis sad to think 
 The spurious Liberalism of tlie age 
 Should give such rascals power. 
 Mr. Cardwell. Sad indeed ! 
 
 Lord Stanley. Well, sir, these rascals have presumed to make 
 A law about their filthy sheep and cattle, 
 For which we've written them a sharp Despatch, 
 Whereon I would interrogate you briefly. 
 
 Mr. Cardwell. My Lord, according to my utmost knowledge 
 I ready am to answer. 
 
 Lord Stanley. Tell me, then. 
 
 If any difference exist in law 
 Betwixt the pledge of personal estate and alienation ? 
 
 Mr. Cardwell. Very great, my Lord. 
 
 If personal estate or goods be sold. 
 Possession ought to follow the transaction ; 
 Or if the seller still do keep the goods 
 It is, so Twyne's case says — a badge of fraud : 
 But if the property be only pledged. 
 Possession in the pawner does not give 
 The slighest badge of fraud ! 'Tis true, if bankrupt 
 The mortgagor become, his assignees 
 Will have a preference o'er the mortgagee, 
 Because the property does still remain 
 Within the order and disposing power 
 Of him they represent. 
 
 Lord Stanley {rising sternly). Sir ! I intended 
 To have promoted you to mighty honour, 
 
 s 2
 
 260 IJFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 But, finding you so grossly ignorant 
 
 Of the first axioms of the legal science, 
 
 I do repent me of my former piu-pose. 
 
 Sir, had you been a lawyer, you'd have known 
 
 That mortgages of personal estate 
 
 Are held by English law in j)erfect hate. 
 
 For law, indeed, we do not greatly care. 
 
 Save that injustice must not be too bare. 
 
 Away, young man ! and seek your special pleader ; 
 
 If you talk thus you'll never be a leader. 
 
 At times the Colonial Office is let alone, and theology 
 takes the place of politics in the pillory. On these occasions 
 the devoted followers of Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman were 
 often handled in unceremonious fashion. Now and then a 
 little sweet is mixed with the bitter. There is an article on 
 'Early Closing of Shops in the City' {Atlas, January 4, 
 1845), in which the present Duke of Eutland is very hand- 
 somely dealt with. The article strongly advocates the early 
 closing movement, and commends to the attention of the 
 wealthier classes of Sydney ' the example of Lord John 
 Manners and his friends, who have, indeed, on this occasion 
 nobly vindicated a humanity above their rank.' 
 
 The Atlas boasted a * Poets' Corner.' Sometimes this 
 little nook was filled by one of those * Swiss Sketches ' written 
 on the honeymoon tour ; but just as often a set of satirical 
 verses would appear dealing with Sir George Gipps and his 
 entourage. These skits were often composed by others, but 
 unless signed they were invariably attributed by the Sydney 
 public to Mr. Lowe. He was, indeed, popularly credited with 
 writing the whole of the jDaper every week ; so that, an 
 announcement appeared one morning over the leading article 
 stating that the ' entire contents of the journal are not by 
 one hand.' 
 
 However, it is quite true that the Atlas ow^ed its vogue 
 and popularity chiefly to Lowe's satirical epigrams and skits 
 in verse. It is not that these verses were always so very 
 witty or clever, but they were invariably so aj^t. For instance,
 
 THE 'ATLAS' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 2G1 
 
 when Mr. Koger Therry, who had basked in the smiles and 
 favour of Sir Eichard Bourke, had at length succeeded in 
 getting into the good graces of Sir George Gipps to the ex- 
 tent of securing the judgeship in Port Phillip, Mr. Lowe made 
 very merry in the ' Poets' Corner ' of the A tlas. Therry, like 
 Mrs. Gilpin, had a frugal mind, and prior to starting for Mel- 
 bourne advertised the sale of his furniture and effects, includ- 
 ing the portrait of his former patron. Sir Eichard Bourke. 
 The subject, it must be admitted, was a tempting one, and in 
 its next issue the Atlas suggested the following 
 
 Inscription for the Portrait of Sir Richard Bourke. 
 
 Here goes the Portrait of Sir Richard Bourke, 
 For whom I long did all the dirty work ; 
 His way of ruling was a perfect see-saw — 
 The voice of Jacob, and the hand of Esau. 
 Unlike our dear Sir George, whose accents sweet 
 "With his mild deeds in dulcet concert meet. 
 
 He's got a Statue and a long Inscription — 
 Here goes his phiz to pay for my subscription ! 
 But, sainted Gipps ! should limner e'er incline 
 To trace on steel those lineaments divine, 
 I'd never sell that superhiunan face — 
 Never ! — tiU someone else had got your place ! 
 
 Eoger Therry, notwithstanding his support of Eobert Lowe's 
 education policy, was ever the favourite subject for such satiric 
 shafts. There was no malice in this whatever, but, to a 
 man of the late Lord Sherbrooke's singular independence of 
 character, all forms of flunkeyism appeared supremely 
 ridiculous as well as contemptible. In the Poems of a 
 Life there may be found a most ludicrous parody of the 
 well-known song, ' Love Not,' the whole point of which was 
 lost on the London critics, simply because they were not ac- 
 quainted with the circumstances which called it forth and the 
 men whom it so happily ridiculed. 
 
 It seems that through the influence of Mr. James Mac- 
 arthur, of Camden (a mighty local magnate), Eoger Therry
 
 262 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOIvE 
 
 had been returned as a member of the Legislative Council. 
 To placate Sir George Gipps he steadily voted against the 
 popular, or representative party, and supported the Crown 
 officials ; by which means he obtained the Port Phillip judge- 
 ship. Macarthur had made himself very unpopular by 
 nominating a mere place-hunter at such a crisis in the affairs 
 of the colony ; so that when the seat again fell vacant, one 
 of the candidates was supposed to serenade ' The Lord of 
 Camden ' with this ludicrous parody : — 
 
 Vote not, vote not for me, I pray ; 
 
 There's fatal weakness in vour vaunted powers ; 
 My foes will laugh, my friends will slink away, 
 
 Soon as they hear that you are one of ours. 
 Vote not ! vote not ! 
 
 I hnow the value of yotir hate, and smiled. 
 Vote not ! vote not ! 
 
 Vote not, vote not ! Oh warning vainly given ! 
 
 Oh, why be generous at another's cost ? — 
 Against your vote alone I might have striven. 
 
 But when you tised your influence all was lost. 
 He votes — all's lost ! 
 
 In some humorous lines addressed to ' Humbug,' one 
 fears that Eoger Therry is once more depicted : — 
 
 The Covurt of Sydney deigns to place 
 
 Me in the very highest place, 
 
 Amid an amiable choir, 
 
 While Envy grinds her teeth with ire. 
 
 Oh, Humbug ! thou whose diUcet note 
 
 So long has gurgled from my throat ; 
 
 Thou who canst strike, if such thy wish, 
 
 A patriot mute as any fish. 
 
 Or turn — let none the transit gi'udge — 
 
 A briefless bungler to a judge, — 
 
 'Tis all thy doing, Humbug — all. 
 
 That I am liked, if liked at all ; 
 
 That passers-bj- the finger point, 
 
 And look one over joint by joint, 
 
 Whisp'ring, with reverential awe— 
 
 ' There goes the man wot knows the law ! '
 
 THE 'ATLAS' AXD ITS CONTRIBUTORS 263 
 
 As I have already said, it was a popular belief at the time in 
 Sydney that all the satires in prose and verse in the Atlas were 
 from the pen of Mr. Lowe. This was altogether a delusion. The 
 Atlas, indeed, could boast a staff of brilliant young men, many of 
 whom afterwards attained to the highest positions in the colony. 
 There was Mr. (afterward Sir James) Martin, who in later years, 
 as Chief Justice of New South Wales, so greatly impressed 
 Mr. Froude. James Martin, who was then a youthful solicitor 
 in Sydney, became a regular contributor to the Atlas, and 
 after a while its editor. Another contributor was a clever 
 young barrister, Mr. (now Sir Archibald) Michie, who, mi- 
 grating a few years later from Sydney to Melbourne, attained 
 to high office in Victoria, and was for some time Agent - 
 General in London. If I am not mistaken. Sir Archibald Michie 
 never altogether relinquished journalism, but held for years 
 the post of Melbourne correspondent of the Times. Another 
 extremely clever young writer in the Atlas, Mr. William 
 Forster, lived to become Prime Minister of New South 
 Wales and afterwards its Agent-General. Lowe's intimate 
 friend, William Macleay, was also an occasional contributor ; 
 so, too, was Mr. G. W\ Eusden, the Australian historian. 
 There were at least two other contributors to the Atlas whose 
 names are quite strange to the present generation of Aus- 
 tralian colonists — James Lethbridge Templer, a man of good 
 West-country family, who wrote rattling rhymes against Sir 
 George Gipps ; and John Eichard Hardy, an English Univer- 
 sity man, who was a police magistrate, and was made the 
 first Gold Fields Commissioner in Australia at the Turon. 
 Mr. Eusden tells me that Templer was killed by his horse 
 rushing against a tree ; he was much liked, a scholar and a 
 gentleman. At times in the ' Poets' Corner ' a string of senti- 
 mental verse would appear over the unknown signature, 
 ' H. Parkes.' This aspiring young poet was then a toy-seller 
 in Sydney, but has since been several times Prime Minister 
 of New South Wales, was the friend of Tennyson, and is a
 
 264 LIFE OF LORD SIIEIIBROOKE. 
 
 G.G.M.G. They were for the most part ambitious young men, 
 who gladly enough enlisted under the banners of so dauntless 
 a chieftain as Eobert Lowe. 
 
 Sir Thomas Mitchell, the explorer, was likewise a con- 
 tributor to the Atlas. Unlike most of its writers, he was a 
 man past middle life, and in the very meridian of his fame. 
 As far back as 1811 (the year of Eobert Lowe's birth) he had 
 fought in the Peninsula ; already he had received the D.C.L. 
 of Oxford, and had been knighted for his achievements as an 
 Australian explorer. Sir Thomas Mitchell's connection with 
 such a journalistic firebrand as the Atlas did not ingratiate 
 him with Sir George Gipps, with whom, indeed, he had already 
 come to an open rupture. He had been elected one of the 
 members for the Port Phillip district in the Legislative 
 Council, but as he held a Government appointment. Sir 
 George Gipps intimated to him that he was expected to 
 vote with the Crown officials. Sir Thomas Mitchell accord- 
 ingly resigned his seat, and devoted some of his leisure to the 
 expression of his disgust in the congenial columns of the 
 Atlas. But his one ambition in life was to lead exploration 
 parties into the trackless interior, and here Sir George Gipps 
 was able to have more than ample revenge by refusing to 
 furnish the money for such expeditions. This state of 
 things supplied Mr. Lowe with the subject of a pleasing little 
 ballad, which he entitled ' The Two Knights ' : — 
 
 There was a knight in Payniiu Land — 
 
 Viceregal state had he ; 
 And all the men that there did stand 
 
 Must do him fealty. 
 Tliere came to him an errant knight — 
 
 ' To the moimtains let me go,' 
 That there I might essay my might ; 
 
 But the otlier knight said ' No.' 
 
 It was in the Atlas that Lord Sherbrooke originally 
 published his * Songs of the Squatters,' which give a graphic,
 
 THE 'ATLAS' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 265 
 
 but by no means enchanting, picture of the Hfe of a pioneer 
 settler. They deal, too, with all the points of dispute then 
 raging between Sir George Gipps, the Council, and the Crown 
 tenants, and it was this which made them so popular when 
 they first appeared in Sydney, and so unintelligible to English 
 readers when collected and published in a small volume a few 
 years ago in London. As an evidence of their early popularity, 
 it may be mentioned that in an admirable but long-since for- 
 gotten work by Samuel Sidney, entitled The Three Colonies 
 of Australia , there is an entire chapter devoted to these 
 ' Songs of the Squatters.' Several of those quoted — though 
 the writer of the book was not aware of it— were from the 
 pen of Mr. Lowe. 
 
 These light and amusing verses naturally lose much of 
 their point in being detached from the columns of the news- 
 paper to whose more serious articles they formed a sort of 
 humorous commentary. The modern reader who turns them 
 over is, as a rule, quite ignorant of the events to which they 
 refer ; he knows nothing of Sir George Gipps, or his District 
 Councils, or Border Police ; nor can he realise the dread 
 powers of that terrible personage, the Commissioner of 
 Crown Lands, who had the fate of the pioneer squatter very 
 much in his hands. But the readers of the Atlas could 
 thoroughly appreciate the point of such verses as these : — 
 
 The Commissioner bet me a pony — I won ; 
 So he cut off exactly two-thirds of my run ; 
 For he said I was making a fortune too fast, 
 And profit gained slower the longer would last. 
 
 He remarked, as devouring my mutton he sat, 
 That I suffered my sheep to grow sadly too fat ; 
 That they wasted waste land, did prerogative brown, 
 And rebelliously nibbled the droits of the Crown. 
 
 ' The Squatter to his Bride ' gives anything but an idyllic 
 picture of early bush life. But to this day many of the 
 old pioneer bushmen regard it as unrivalled in its fidelity,
 
 266 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 and its grim hiimonr has amused more than one genera- 
 tion : — 
 
 Foiir Irandred miles off 
 
 Is the goal of oiu- waj' ; 
 It is done in a week, 
 
 At bnt sixty a day ; 
 The plains are all dnsty, 
 
 The creeks are all dried, 
 'Tis the fairest of weather 
 
 To bring home my bride. 
 The blue vault of heaven 
 
 Shall curtain thy form, 
 One side of a gum tree 
 
 The moonbeam must warm ; 
 The whizzing mosquito 
 
 Shall dance o'er thy head, 
 And the guana shall squat , 
 
 At the foot; of thy bed ; 
 The brave laughing jackass 
 
 Shall sing thee to sleep. 
 And the snake o'er thy slumbers 
 
 His vigil shall keep. 
 
 In the same grimly playful strain he depicts the domestic 
 arrangements of the rude and primitive homestead, winding 
 up with this absolutely appalling statement to the truly 
 feminine mind : — 
 
 So fear not, fair lady, 
 
 Your desolate way, 
 Your clothes will arrive 
 
 In three months with my dra3\ 
 
 Mrs. Lowe naturally took a keen interest in the new 
 journalistic venture. In the following letter will be found a 
 reference to the Aflas, and also a minute and interesting 
 account of the daily life of the most distinguished of its 
 founders : — 
 
 Sydney: Jan. 20, 1845. 
 
 .... We live much as at home. Eobert and I never were, 
 nor ever will be, fond of early rising, so we get up about half-past 
 seven, or eight o'clock — unless we were to rise at five o'clock we 
 should gain little. The heat begins as soon as the sun has risen, and 
 continues great till ten o'clock, when the sea-breeze gets up, and in
 
 THE 'ATLAS' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS 267 
 
 the shade it is dehcious. At ten o'clock Robert walks off to his 
 chambers, which are at the end of this street ; it is not above five 
 minutes' walk. There Anthony Pope, his clerk, is Avaiting for him, 
 and his labom's begin. Anthony reads and writes law, and Robert 
 •sits in an American rocking-chair at his ease, dictating. Robert is 
 getting more and more employment in the Courts, and is also very 
 busy in politics. He has quite a levee of people. Between three and 
 four he comes home, and we ride on horseback. Horses are cheap 
 beyond all idea. You can buy a very nice one for 7/., and their keep 
 is also very reasonable. My horse runs in the pony-carriage, and I 
 often drive myself. We ride frequently from 12 to 20 miles towards 
 the Heads or Botany Bay. This exercise seems requisite here. I 
 find I cannot walk far. I think at one time I walked too much, and 
 brought on swelling and pains in my knees, which proceeded, they 
 said, from the nerves in the back ; so 1 took the warning, and have 
 not walked much since. In summer the heat is so great the 
 ground feels quite hot to the feet ; but it is delicious to ride or drive. 
 Everyone here has some sort of conveyance ; the rich, nice carriages, 
 and the poor, gigs and little pony-carriages. You would admire the 
 wild, uncultivated plains and marshes towards Botany. Close to the 
 sea the trees grow again and the shrubs are lovely. The sea is 
 most wonderful in colour ; under the horizon it is the deepest lilac 
 purple, and fades towards you through every shade of blue into the 
 loveliest sea-green with white breakers on a golden shore. The 
 coast in parts rocky, in others with green grass down to the beach. 
 After our ride we dine ; at seven o'clock Anthony comes again and 
 reads for Robert. When he leaves I read and write, and then we 
 go to bed. We sometimes dine out, but refuse evening parties, ex- 
 cept the large ones at the O'Connells'. We also have little dinner- 
 parties at home ; beef, mutton, wine, and poultry are so cheap that 
 it makes very little difference having a few persons to dinner. Wo 
 are now feasting on peaches and nectarines ; I have an enormous plate 
 of them before me, and stop every now and then to eat. I draw, and 
 play on the harp, and sing as usual, but not so much as I used to do. 
 I have more trouble with servants than at home. Poor little Mary 
 and Bobby (the children of Mrs. Jamieson) are very good, and give 
 no trouble. Bol)by gave some symptoms of original sin the other 
 day, and Robert whipped him, which had a most excellent effect. 
 We intend, if possible, to find a house two or three miles from Sydney. 
 Robert could ride backwards and forwards, and I think the change 
 of air would be beneficial to him. As he gains health, his eyes 
 always strengthen. They are much better, and I never hear him 
 now complain of pain. He had a habit of putting his hands to his 
 temple and pressing it, from feeling pain ; I now never see him do 
 this. But I do not tell him I think his eyes are stronger, for fear he
 
 268 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 should read again to himself. He also often sits in an evening with- 
 out his spectacles, unless I remind him ; formerly he never used to 
 forget them .... 
 
 I am forwarding the Atlas newspaper to yon. Kobert writes in 
 it, and you will see a series of Swiss poetical sketches,^ which have 
 given great delight here. Sir Thomas Mitchell expresses himself 
 quite charmed with them. Some were written in Switzerland, some 
 here ; ' The Eagle' I think you know of old 
 
 In a letter to her mother-in-law about the same time, Mrs. 
 Lowe excuses her remissness as a correspondent by saying that 
 her pen finds much employment in Robert's service. This arose 
 partly from his large access of business, and partly from his 
 contributions to the Atlas. In a postscript she adds : ' Pray 
 forward the Atlas to Mr. Biddulph, and tell me what he 
 thinks of it, as regards the talent it displays. The politics 
 are difficult to judge of unless on the spot.' 
 
 We can now picture Eobert Lowe, barrister-at-law and 
 journalist, of Sydney, no longer a mere ' new chum,' but a 
 seasoned colonist, his professional income displaying an 
 agreeably rising tendency ; while his fame and importance as 
 a public man had increased rather than diminished by his 
 surrender of his seat as a nominee member of Council. Then, 
 as he tells us, he was regarded as a toady if he voted with the 
 Government, and as a traitor if he voted against it ; while 
 now, through the columns of the Atlas, he could express his 
 opinions freely on every subject under the sun, with the 
 delight and approval of the great mass of his fellow-colonists. 
 
 ' See Poems of a Life, by Viscount Sherbrooke.
 
 269 
 
 CHAPTEE XYII 
 
 MEMBER FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 
 
 Sir George Gipps and the Legislative Council— District Councils— Quit-rents — 
 Lowe stands for St. Vincent and Auckland — Address to the Electors — 
 Eeturned unopposed — Speech from the Hustings — Schedules A, B, C^ 
 Takes his Seat in the Council 
 
 The rupture between the Governor and the Legislative Council 
 had daily increased since the evening when Mr. Lowe found 
 himself compelled to resign his seat as a Crown nominee. It 
 had become a case of war to the knife. Sir George Gipps 
 was an Engineer officer who had served m the Peninsula 
 with distinction ; he had been wounded at the siege of 
 Badajoz. Then he had acted as secretary to the Royal Com- 
 mission appointed to deal with the grievances of the rebellious 
 Canadians (1835). Here it was he first displayed his rare 
 talent for drawing up official documents in terse, lucid, and 
 intelligible language. He was appointed Governor-General 
 of New South Wales at the most critical point of her history, 
 just as she was emerging from a penal dependency into a 
 self-governing colony. 
 
 In his new post Sir George Gipps revealed a singular 
 mingling of the military autocrat with the Piadical doctrinaire. 
 He quickly made up his mind that all the ihs of the colony 
 (including its bankruptcy) could be cured by means of 
 district councils. At his suggestion this scheme of district 
 councils had been embodied in the Imperial Act of Parliament 
 by which Lord Stanley conferred a semi-representative 
 Parhament on New South Wales. Briefly, the scheme 
 amounted to this : that the colony should be divided mto
 
 270 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 districts, and that each district should elect a council to 
 decide on the amount of money required for public purposes 
 for the year, half of which should be contributed from the 
 colonial treasury, and the other half raised by a levy on the 
 local property holders. 
 
 If any district declined to elect a council, the Governor 
 had power to appoint one ; and in default of a local treasurer, 
 the Colonial Treasurer — who was the Governor's nominee — 
 could, under his warrant, raise the amount by the forced sale 
 of property in the district. In a sparsely populated pastoral 
 country, possessing, it may be, countless flocks and herds, 
 but with little or no ready money, it is easy to see how 
 thoroughly unworkable this scheme of district councils must 
 have been ; and also, how it might be turned into an 
 engine of oppression in the hands of an autocratic Governor 
 whose power was practically unchecked. Mr. Sidney, in his 
 Three Colonies of Australia, pertinently observes : — 
 
 When Sir George Gipps attempted to introduce his district 
 councils, he found the colonists unprepared to travel for miles to 
 elect a councillor, or pay five or ten pounds per annum for roads 
 over which they never travelled, and bridges a hundred miles from 
 their farms, and indignant at suddenly finding their property at the 
 mercy of the Colonial Treasurer, the irresponsible officer of the 
 Governor. The colonists determined to resist the district councils 
 scheme. The Governor was determined to enforce it. It was his 
 darling child ; he had conceived it wliile looking out from his study 
 on the dense population of a different state of society, and he was 
 not the man to be beaten by circumstances. 
 
 Mr. Lowe, as usual, ' dropped into poetry ' on the subject 
 in the columns of the Atlas. He wrote a kind of irregular 
 ballad with the title ' District Councils, or the Brazen Yoke.' 
 
 A statesman made a yoke of brass, 
 
 A heavy yoke to bear. 
 And said : ' I want some slavish ass 
 
 This brazen yoke to bear.' 
 
 It was not so much the scheme itself — though he thought 
 it singularly unsuited to a primitive pastoral community —
 
 MEMBER FOR ST. VIXCEXT AND AUCKLAND 27 i 
 
 but the arbitrary power with which it invested the Governor, 
 that drove Kobert Lowe into the camp of Wentworth and the 
 squatters. In addition to the question of district councils, he 
 also objected to Sir George Gipps's action in the matter of 
 exacting ' quit-rents ' — a tax long in abeyance. It had fallen 
 into abeyance for years, partly by reason of the widespread 
 bankruptcy of the pastoral settlers, and partly because the 
 Government had been unable any longer to furnish them 
 with * assigned servants ' — that is, convicts on ticket-of-leave, 
 who were farmed out to the squatters and other employers. 
 Now, on a sudden. Sir George Gipps demanded the whole 
 of the arrears of quit-rents from these unfortunate pastoral 
 tenants of the Crown. As most of these were in a state 
 of insolvency, this meant that Sir George Gipps or his agent 
 would step in and sell off the homesteads, cattle, sheep, and 
 all improvements. 
 
 To make this demand for the arrears of such a tax was a 
 most pedantic and impolitic course of action on the part of 
 the Governor. He was a strictly honourable, and even a 
 kindly man, but his object was to show the Home authorities 
 that under his regime New South Wales could meet, out of its 
 own revenue, most, if not all of the expenses of its civil and 
 military establishments. This was not only impolitic, but the 
 height of folly ; for as long as England chose to regard New 
 South Wales as an Imperial penitentiary — a kind of huge 
 Newgate-over-the-Sea — it was only just that she should pay 
 all the expenses of its maintenance. 
 
 On this question of ' quit-rents ' Mr. Lowe wrote some 
 verses in the Atlas of a much more serious character than 
 are most of his ' Songs of the Squatters.' He thus depicts 
 the feelings of one of these pioneer squatters on suddenly 
 finding himself sold up : — 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Oh ! kindly spoke the ruler then ; 
 He gave me land, he gave nie men ; 
 And I was happy and content,
 
 272 LIFE OF LORD SILERBROOKE 
 
 My heart unsealed, my brow luibent ; 
 I loved the cot beneath the trees, 
 The glorious light, the healthy breeze, 
 And blest the hour and blest the hand 
 That pointed to that glorious land. 
 Another, and another came. 
 And then a man, his very name 
 Blisters my lips like burning flame ; 
 True to his masters he might be, 
 But fatal was that man to me. 
 
 He told me that the land they gave 
 
 Freely to give they never meant ; 
 That I was but a wretched slave. 
 
 That toiled to pay them yearly rent ; 
 He said for twenty years 'twas due — 
 Alas ! his cruel words were true, 
 And I, fond wretch, I never knew ; 
 And I had braved the noontide ray, 
 
 The red sirocco's sultry kiss. 
 The watchful night, the toilsome day — 
 
 Had laboiu-ed, struggled, spared for this. 
 
 They sold my cattle, sold my farm, 
 And left me with this withered arm 
 And broken heart to stem the tide 
 Of woe, with none but God to guide ; 
 I was a man of iron frame 
 When to this glorious land I came, 
 But now am bowed by toil and shame, 
 
 And grown before my season old, 
 For he — I will not speak his name — 
 
 Has sold me like a slave for gold. 
 
 These lines are very unsparing towards Sir George Gipps ; 
 but it was, as I have said, a time of war to the knife between 
 the Governor on the one side, and the 'popular,' or repre- 
 sentative members of the Council, backed up by almost the 
 entire non-official community, on the other. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it was not likely that the 
 popular party would be long content to see such a champion 
 as Eobert Lowe without a scat in the Council. There was 
 some talk of finding him one of the Port Phillip constituencies, 
 for which he would have been an ideal representative, if only
 
 MEMBEll FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 273 
 
 on account of his views on the Separation question. Then 
 it was rumoured in the inner political coteries that the 
 mighty Macarthur, of Camden, would atone for his sins in 
 having placed such a time-server as Therry in the Council 
 by nominating the ultra-independent Mr. Lowe. On this 
 subject the following characteristic letter appeared in the 
 Press : — 
 
 In the speech of Dr. Sherwin at Berrima on Monday, the 24 th 
 ultimo, occurs the following passage : ' They (the Messrs. Macarthur) 
 have cast a slur upon the county of Camden which it richly de- 
 serves ; they were ready to hunt through the county for a stranger 
 in the person of Mr. Lowe, who would have accepted the patronage 
 of the Messrs. Macarthur if they would elect him free of expense to 
 himself.' 
 
 Whether the county deserves this slur or not, the Messrs. 
 
 Macarthur have not cast it upon them ; they never offered me their 
 
 patronage, and, had they done so, there is no conceivable conjunction 
 
 of .circumstances under which I would have accepted it. 
 
 I am. Sir, your obedient Servant, 
 
 KoBEET Lowe. 
 Horbury Terrace : March 1, 1845. 
 
 However, a vacancy was soon found in the resignation of 
 the member for the Southern counties of St. Vincent and 
 Auckland. Mr. Lowe's address to the electors gives such a 
 terse statement of his views on the questions then agitating 
 the colonial public mind (except the education question, which 
 had been altogether shelved for the time being by the veto of 
 the Governor), that it may very well find a place here : — 
 
 To the Electors of the Coimties of St. Vincent and Auckland. 
 
 Gentlemen, — Captain Coghill having, before sailing for England, 
 resigned his seat in the Legislative Council, I have been invited to 
 offer myself as a candidate for the honour of representing you. I 
 therefore beg to sohcit your support. 
 
 My opinions on most of the subjects which at present agitate the 
 public mind are pretty well known, and I will therefore recapitulate 
 them very briefly. I am decidedly opposed to district councils, 
 which appear to me un-Enghsh and oppressive, superfluous in those 
 
 VOL. I. r
 
 274 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 countries which can afford to pay for them, and ruinous in those 
 which, like New South Wales, cannot. 
 
 I look upon the grinding exaction of quit-rents as a most dis- 
 creditable perversion of the Eoyal Prerogative, and the high mini- 
 mum price of land and exorbitant rent demanded for sections as 
 founded on a mistaken policy, which loses all by grasping at too 
 much. I am friendly to the squatters, considering that upon their 
 success alone can the prosperity of the agricultural interest be 
 securely based. When in Council I endeavoured to promote that 
 prosperity by preparing an address to Parliament praying that the 
 British market might be opened to the grain of this colony as it has 
 been to that of Canada ; if this be done, a limit will be established, 
 below which the price of agricultural produce cannot fall. I am 
 most anxious to carry out the retrenchment commenced in the 
 public expenditure, and to obviate, as far as it can be done by law, 
 the difficulties of individuals. With this latter object, and also with 
 a view of striking at a pernicious system of credit, I proposed the 
 abolition of imprisonment for debt, by which I believe many persons 
 have been saved from insolvency. 
 
 Should it be my fortune to represent you, I will take care to the 
 best of my power that your district shall have its fair share of the 
 very slender means of local improvement which an expensive 
 Government and a falling revenue place at the disposal of the 
 Council. 
 
 Before the day of election arrives I shall do myself the honour 
 to solicit personally your suffrages. 
 
 Till then believe me. Gentlemen, 
 
 Your most obedient humble Servant, 
 
 Robert Lowe. 
 
 He was triumphantly returned, no one having the temerity 
 to oppose him. 
 
 Accordingly, on April 15, 1845, at noon, Colonel Mackenzie, 
 J. P., proposed Mr. Piobert Lowe as a j&t and proper person to 
 represent the counties. Dr. Bell seconded the proposition. 
 No other candidate appearing, the returning officer declared 
 Mr. Lowe duly elected, and the announcement was received 
 with the usual manifestations of popular approval. Mr. 
 Lowe then came forward, and addressed his new constituents 
 as follows : — 
 
 Gentlemen, Electors of the Counties of St. Vincent and Auck- 
 land, — I am so fully aware of the important business which requires
 
 MEMBER FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 275 
 
 your attention this day that I will study to be as brief as possible in 
 returning you my cordial and heartfelt thanks for the honour which 
 you have just done me. I am, as has been truly said by one of my 
 calumniators, a stranger to this county, not possessing a foot of 
 
 land or a head of stock within it We are now arrived at a 
 
 great crisis : two roads are before us ; the one will lead us to a 
 higher and more durable prosperity than we have ever enjoyed, the 
 other to still increasing misery and calamity, till we are blotted out 
 of the list of colonies, like the unhappy islands of New Zealand and 
 Van Diemen's Land,^ by the misgovernment of the Colonial Office. 
 For myself. Gentlemen, I have nothing to hope from a seat in the 
 Council — it will not add anything to the very moderate income 
 which I derive from my profession ; but I desire it because I wish 
 to save you, or at least to endeavour to do so, from the ruin with 
 which you are threatened by the Executive Government. When I 
 entered the Council as a nominee of the Crown I considered that I 
 had undertaken a trust for the benefit of the people, for the faithful 
 execution of which I was answerable to God and man, and I 
 foolishly believed on so discharging it I should be carrying out the 
 wishes of the Government which sent me there. Such a novice was 
 I in colonial government, that I actually believed the interest of the 
 Crown coincident with that of the people. The only apology which 
 I can make for this error is the ignorance which then generally pre- 
 vailed concerning most questions at issue between this colony and 
 the mother-country. But, Gentlemen, when I found the Governor, 
 by a stroke of his pen, in defiance of the unanimous remonstrances 
 of the country and of the lessons of reason and experience, bent 
 upon annihilating the pastoral interests of the country, I was un- 
 deceived — ^I could not support that Government. 
 
 When I saw a system of district taxation introduced, and 
 persevered in after remonstrances from the Council, in which I had 
 the honour to bear a part, both by speech and vote — and introduced, 
 not, as I believe, for the sake of the mockery of self-government 
 under which their destructive nature was concealed, but for the 
 sake of fastening more firmly on the colony the enormous annual 
 expenditure of ninety thousand a year for police and jails, and of 
 taxing the land already sold — God knows how dearly ! — for the 
 purpose of making the remainder saleable by the erection of roads 
 and bridges— I would not, I could not, support that Government. 
 While they were playing this disgraceful thimble-rig, while they 
 were shifting this imposition from the ordinary revenue to the local 
 taxation, I would not play the part of a confederate, and wink and 
 connive at this trickery. When I saw the Government, straining 
 
 ' Let it be remembered this was spoken in 1845. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 to the utmost that prerogative which is only entrusted to the Crown, 
 for the good of the people, living upon the grantees of land, much 
 of which had been dearly earned by naval and military service, and 
 upon the accumulated arrears of quit-rent, which it was well 
 understood would never be demanded, every feeling of justice and 
 humanity revolted at it, and I could not support that Government. 
 When I found that an enormous expenditure, utterly disproportionate 
 to the means and wants of the colony, instituted from bribing voters 
 in England at our expense by sinecure or half -sinecure offices, de- 
 nounced by the Council, denounced by the judges of the land, and 
 defended by none but its recipients and their hangers-on, was to be 
 perpetuated, I could not support that Government. It has been said 
 of me, and repeated time after time with a disgraceful pertinacity, 
 notwithstanding my repeated and public contradictions, that I 
 entered the Council pledged to the Governor. Gentlemen, had I 
 done so, had I been capable of accepting a trust for your benefit, 
 and delegating the exercise of that trust to another, I should be 
 unworthy to stand before you as your representative this day ; but 
 it was not so, and when I resigned my seat, it was not because I 
 was pledged, but because I would not give anyone the opportunity 
 of taunting me with employing a power I derived from the Governor 
 systematically to thwart his measures. 
 
 As to your local matters, Gentlemen, I will endeavour, by 
 making the tour of the county before I return to Sydney, to make 
 myself better acquainted with them. I shall be very grateful for any 
 information which any of you may at any time communicate to 
 me on the subject ; at the same time, great as the claims of your 
 district are on the ground of former neglect, I can, I fear, do but 
 little for you. It is a penalty which must be paid by those who 
 return members to represent the colony, that they will receive little 
 in the way of patronage from the Government. Hope nothing from 
 this Governor ; his whole attention is taken up by scraping to- 
 gether, by every discreditable expedient, a revenue which, being 
 emancipated from the control of the representatives of the people, 
 may serve the purposes of the Colonial Office. For you he cares 
 nothing, and will do nothing. Gentlemen, the sorrow which I feel 
 on taking leave of you is considerably alleviated by the reflection 
 that I shall probably very shortly come here again on the same 
 errand. The differences between the Governor and the Council 
 are concentrated, are brought to a point ; each party thoroughly 
 understands where and why they disagree, and collision has become 
 unavoidable, and even desirable. Fire and gunpowder, the moment 
 before their meeting, do not more certainly portend an explosion 
 than the day which shall once more place the Governor and the 
 Council face to face. Whether he will shrink from the conflict,
 
 ^MEMBER FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 277 
 
 and seek some other land which, though he cannot find as flourish- 
 ing, he may render as wretched as this, or whether he will dissolve 
 the Council, and thus give the constituencies a chance of riveting 
 their own fetters, I do not know ; but in the meantime your eye 
 will be upon me, and if the latter event happens, as I rather think 
 it will, you will, I trust, see no reason to give me a reception less 
 cordial than that with which you have honoured me to-day. 
 
 There is but one further point in this trenchant speech 
 from the hustings calling for explanation. When Mr. Lowe 
 so strongly denounced the ' disgraceful thimble-rig ' in refer- 
 ence to the finances of the colony, he had in his mind 
 the reservation of the sum of 81,600L a year which, by the 
 Imperial Act of Parliament conferring a qiiasi-hee Constitution 
 on New South Wales, was withdrawn from the control of the 
 Legislative Council. This reservation was comprised under 
 three schedules, A, B, and C, by which the salaries of the 
 Governor and judges, the cost of gaols and judicial establish- 
 ments, were fixed, as well as the endowment to the three State 
 Churches of 30,000Z. a year. I should say, four established 
 Churches, or sects, for the Wesleyan Methodists had by this time 
 contrived to get access to the public purse. The following was 
 the Civil List removed from the control of the Council by 
 special Imperial Act— 
 
 A. Salaries of Civil Officers . . . £33,000 
 
 B. Treasurer's and other Departments . 18,600 
 
 C. Support of Eeligion .... 30,000 
 
 £81,600 
 
 ' Schedules A, B, C ' hardly sounds like a theme for the 
 Muses ; but Eobert Lowe contributed nothing to the Atlas 
 that more tickled the fancy of the early pioneer colonists. It 
 went straight, as Bacon says, ' to their business and bosoms.' 
 As these playful rhymes ai-e thoroughly intelligible to any 
 reader who takes an interest in early colonial affairs, they 
 are here reproduced in full.
 
 278 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 Schedules A, B, G 
 
 Fair Sisterhood with sweet, aUimug faces, 
 Third of the Muses — total of the Graces : 
 Schedules— beloved alike of Gods and Men ; 
 Though Patriots cavil at you now and then, 
 As if your forms were hideous to behold, 
 And only loved, like ancient dames — for gold. 
 Who would not wish, secure from Fate's alarms, 
 To slumber sheltered in your circling arms ? 
 Blest by your love, and basking in your smile, 
 No other Schedule shall he ever file. 
 Nor shall Insolvency, relentless dame, 
 Daughter of Tick and Misery, shriek his name. 
 Learnmg hath charms, but what is like to thee, 
 Thou most delightful form of A B C ! 
 Children of Stanley, hail in glory trine, 
 Where trans^Dort and seciu-ity entwine ; 
 For not alone the claiming coin is sweet. 
 But knowing nothing can that claim defeat. 
 A drought may come — the land may retrogi-ade— 
 The cattle die in thousands — still they're paid. 
 AVool may fall cent, per cent., a losing trade, 
 And 'whelm the land in ruin — still they're paid. 
 Embarrassed Banks refuse to give their aid 
 To sinking settlers— still the Schedule's paid. 
 The Governor and smugglers make a raid 
 Against the Customs' revenue — still they're paid. 
 The broken compact has the land betrayed, 
 But what of that ? — the Schedules must be paid. 
 And when Australia low in dust is laid. 
 This be her epitaph — it's all been paid ! 
 If, 'mid a triad so divine, the Muse 
 Might just presume a favom-ite to choose, 
 I'd rather not be put in Schedule A — • 
 In that the Comicil has too much to say : 
 And though it's safe beyond their greedy clutch, 
 It makes one nervous when they talk so much. 
 C has advantages, I'll not denj- — 
 It's all so snug, so quiet, and so sly ; 
 And it would suit my fancy to a T 
 If Stanley's honour were but pledged to C. 
 Tlie poet's burning wish were just to clear 
 Five lumdred pounds in each and every year; 
 But if with castle-building e'er I meddle, 
 I'll wish myself within the second Schedule ;
 
 MEMBER FOR ST. VINCENT AND AUCKLAND 279 
 
 For it alone has got a copious margin, , 
 
 And a good salary will bear enlarging. 
 Where'er I turn, whatever berth I see, 
 I'll stick to Eiddell's ' berth in Schedule B. 
 Others with labour more or less are troubled, 
 He'd still do nothing, if his work were doubled. 
 
 Eobert Lowe was now once more a member of the 
 Legislative Council. But there could be no longer any question 
 of the complete independence of his position ; he had, in fact, 
 secured his unopposed election, mainly by his avowed and un- 
 compromising hostility to the interference of Downing Street 
 in the domestic affairs of the colony, through its eminently 
 active and efficient servant. Sir George Gipps. 
 
 The session did not open till July 29, 1845, when we read 
 in the official records that Mr. Eobert Lowe was introduced to 
 the Speaker by Mr. Windeyer, member for Durham, and Mr. 
 Benjamin Boyd and Dr. Nicholson, members for Port Phillip ; 
 whereupon he took the oaths and his seat as member for St. 
 Vincent and Auckland. 
 
 We may well suppose that Mrs. Lowe did not allow her 
 
 English friends to remain in a state of ignorance with regard 
 
 to these stirring events. 
 
 I am sure (she writes) you will be glad to hear that Eobert has 
 become a very prominent pubhc character, and is said to be by 
 far the best speaker in the Legislative Council. This is rather a 
 stormy position in the present state of politics here ; party spirit is 
 running tremendously high, and Eobert is the leader on the popular 
 side. The whole weight of the Government is opposed to him and 
 his party ; there is nothing the Government would not do to put 
 Eobert down. From his power of speaking and his general know- 
 ledge, and also knowledge of constitutional law, they find him a 
 dangerous opponent. Their hatred is great in proportion to their 
 dread. The Government newspapers abuse him beyond measure, 
 and you would suppose from them that he was the most fearful 
 
 ' The Colonial Treasurer, of whom in the Atlas, in a satirical ' Defence of 
 the Treasury Bench,' Mr. Lowe cruelly said : 'If he may not have all the 
 reputation of the others, it is owing to his having so little to do, rather than to 
 his not doing that little well. He is said, indeed, to sign his name with con- 
 summate skill and with considerable velocity.
 
 280 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 character. They go so far that, instead of being angry, I cannot 
 help laughing. I have ahnost entirely given up going out, except 
 to a few houses. I fear Sir Maurice O'Connell is to be recalled ; his 
 family will be a great loss to this place. The affairs of this country 
 would soon be in a flourishing state would Lord Stanley and Sir 
 George permit ; the price of wool has risen immensely, and people 
 might now do really well ; but as long as this question of the Crown 
 lands hangs over the country no confidence is felt, and people fear 
 to invest. 
 
 Notwithstanding this state of things, Mr. Lowe prospered 
 and made judicious investments in city property in Sydney, 
 which were almost immediately profitable. He, in fact, from 
 the very first, saw that the financial depression must pass 
 away, and that no amount, even of the most scientific 
 political bungling, on the part of the Secretary of State, or 
 the Governor and his local executive, could permanently 
 retard the prosperity of New South Wales.
 
 281 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII 
 
 AT NELSON BAY 
 
 At, Nelson Bay — Mrs. Lowe's description of Nelson Bay — Sir Thomas 
 Mitchell— W. S. Macleay— Sir Alfred Stephen— Letter to Eev. E. Michell— 
 Success in Court and Council — Wentworth's Dinner — Lowe's Imperialist 
 Speech — Alexander Macleay's Pension — Wentworth's offer for the Si3eaker- 
 ship — Lowe's views on Dignity and Dining 
 
 It was at this time that Eobert Lowe purchased a small 
 estate at Nelson Bay, adjoining the far-famed Coogee, on the 
 shores of the South Pacific. 
 
 In a letter to her mother Mrs. Lowe writes : — 
 
 Eobert is quite well and making for himself much fame and a 
 little money, which is a good thing and certainly more substantial. 
 I still hope fame may in the end be turned into gold. The colony 
 is progressing, and if wool continues steady in price, is likely to 
 improve much. Our friend, Sir Thomas Mitchell, is on the point 
 of setting off on an expedition of discovery to Port Essington ; he 
 thinks he shall make discoveries of importance to this country, and 
 will then write a new book. He says he will call one of the 
 mountains after me. 
 
 I have been most unfortunate lately : a few days ago my horse 
 threw me. I had a knapsack into which I put flowers, curiosities, 
 &c. ; it fell from my saddle, startled the horse, and I fell also, with 
 my face to the ground, and cut my lip open and bruised my cheek- 
 bone badly. I sent for a surgeon, who sewed up my lip, put leeches 
 on my temple, and I am now pretty well again and have very little 
 pain left. 
 
 We have bought a little estate of forty-two acres, four miles from 
 Sydney, on the sea ; it is lovely beyond conception. We have given 
 only. 420/. for it ; it is fenced — and the foundation of the house laid 
 and roads cut — the value of the improvements about 200L
 
 282 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 We are finishing the house ; it was sold by an unfortunate 
 mortgagee in England, put up to public auction, and by a lucky 
 chance fell to us ; 4,000/. was refused for the land four years ago. 
 I shall make some drawings of the views. The scenery resembles 
 Jersey, but is far more beautiful — the vegetation is so lovely. We 
 have a beautiful bay to ourselves — I may say it is our own — the 
 trees line the shore with drives through them ; we have a waterfall 
 of sixty feet, and this runs through a fine valley : it is a most 
 romantic spot and just suits my tastes. 
 
 These views of their favourite home in the New World 
 always hung on the walls of Lord Sherbrooke's house in 
 Lowndes Square ; they were really beautiful, and gave his 
 English friends, accustomed to the low, leaden skies and 
 murky atmosphere of London, a most fascinating vision of 
 the shores of the South Pacific. 
 
 There is a sequel to the story not quite so entrancing to 
 those most nearlj^ concerned. After returning to England, 
 Lord Sherbrooke, by the advice of his agent and friends in 
 the colony, was induced to dispose of this property for a 
 sum which would represent but a very small fraction of its 
 present value. 
 
 No doubt from the point of view of health this removal 
 to Nelson Bay w^as a very excellent change. Mr. Lowe 
 had now not only such an increase of practice that he was 
 compelled to devote much time to it, but there was also the 
 never-ending work of a popular leader in the Legislative 
 Council ; of one, too, who, having put his hand to the plough, 
 was not likely to turn back. It is true that his general 
 health was extremely good, and that his eyesight had per- 
 ceptibly improved — an improvement which he declared began 
 from the moment that he shook off his medical advisers. 
 But to one conscious of such peculiarly delicate organs, there 
 must have always been the dread of a catastrophe. He had 
 himself found it essential to use his eyes only by means of 
 those light-excluding goggles, which at this time he devised, 
 and through which light was only admitted from the pin's
 
 AT NELSON BAY 28S 
 
 point in the centre. He also thought it wise to devote some 
 portion of each day to active out-of-door exercise. In the case 
 of so busy a pubHc man this desideratum could only be obtained 
 by fixing on a place of residence which demanded a walk, or, 
 better still, a ride on horseback to and from the city daily. 
 Being very fond of horse exercise, Mr, Lowe chose that means 
 of getting from Nelson Bay to his chambers and the Legis- 
 lative Council. 
 
 Very soon their residence was completed, and although they 
 were now cut off from all general society, their picturesquely 
 situated sea-side home was a favourite resort of a select 
 few. Mr. T. B. Boulton, the artist, formerly of Sydney, has 
 sent a few notes, which give a pleasant picture of the select 
 circle which gathered by 
 
 The splendour and the speech 
 Of thy lights and thunders, Coogee, 
 Flying up thy gleaming beach. 
 
 ' I was a frequent visitor at their charmmg residence near 
 Coogee Bay in view of the Pacific Ocean ; and enjoyed the 
 lively and brilliant conversations on all subjects, but 
 particularly those on science and poetry. Many were their 
 pleasant guests, but chief of all was the late W. Sharpe 
 Macleay, whose descriptions and remarks charmed everyone. 
 Indeed, I have heard Mr. Lowe say that he knew the best 
 talkers in England, but not one of them was his equal in 
 conversational power, Mr. Lowe I also met at Elizabeth 
 Bay, the residence of Mr. Macleay, and on one occasion, at 
 dinner, Mr. Lowe was speaking of an eclipse of the sun, and 
 said the disc was very nearly obscured, but he could not 
 distinguish the colours of the corona, when one of the guests 
 at table, Mr. Stuart A. Donaldson, asked, " What is a disc ? " 
 to which Mr. Macleay, taking up a plate which he held 
 before him, replied with great vehemence, " That is a disc," 
 to the great amusement of all the other guests. . . . One
 
 284 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 day as I was reading under the shade of one of the beautiful 
 honeycombed sandstone rocks, I observed Mr. L. and Mr. M. 
 walking on the shore, when two hulking " larrikins " 
 suddenly appeared on the scene, and they were at once 
 warned that it was private property, and that they had no 
 business there — to which they said they should go where they 
 liked. Mr. Lowe at once picked up a bamboo which had been 
 washed up by the lazy tide (being seconded by Mr. Macleay), 
 and applied it with such effect on their backs that they 
 roared out and soon " made tracks." . . . His memory was 
 wonderful, and I well recollect meeting him when on the 
 Bathurst circuit at Kirconnel (Dr. Palmer's), when he took one 
 of the children on his knee and repeated some of his nursery 
 rhymes. Some years after, on the same circuit, he stayed again 
 at the Doctor's, and took the same child on his knee and asked 
 her if she remembered the rhyme, but she had forgotten it, 
 on which he repeated it, and half a dozen more ; but it did 
 not signifiy if it was in his childhood or yesterday, everything 
 seemed stereotyed on his brain. . . . One day as he was 
 walking along Macquarie Street with Mr. Charles Cowper, 
 the conversation turned on some political question, and he 
 quoted a passage from Hallam's Constitutional History, which 
 Cowper said he had quoted wrongly. He replied, " I know 
 I am right." The other disputed the point, and said, " I 
 only read it yesterday." Mr. Lowe said, " I don't care if 
 you read it an hour ago, I know my quotation of the passage 
 is correct, though I have not read it since I was at Oxford ; 
 but to prove it, here is the Librar}^ so let us go in and refer 
 to the work." He asked for the volume, turned up the 
 page, and was found to be right to the letter. 
 
 * Not only did Mr. Lowe ride from his seaside home to his 
 office and back, but he usually travelled by the same means 
 when on circuit ; Mrs. Lowe, who was an excellent horse- 
 woman, very often accompanying him. On one occasion she 
 rode in one day along the coast and through the bush —
 
 AT NELSON BAY 28-3 
 
 for in those days there were no roads — from Woollongong to 
 
 Coogee. 
 
 * Mr. Lowe's own love of these excursions on horseback 
 once gave him that very unpleasant experience which every 
 Australian storyteller seems to have made the subject of a 
 tale. He was literally "lost in the bush." So lasting an 
 impression did this make on Mrs. Lowe's mind, that she often 
 described it as the most miserable experience of her life in 
 Australia. 
 
 ' It seems that he went on circuit to Maitland and thought 
 he would ride to Sydney, through the most difficult country 
 in the colony, intersected by swamps, rocks, and the river 
 Hawkesbury. As might have been expected, he lost his track, 
 and, having got off to walk by the side of his horse, then lost 
 him also. As the expected hour of his return had long gone 
 by, Mrs. Lowe was in the utmost anxiety, which was not 
 lightened by the fact that the people by whom she was sur- 
 rounded as workpeople were all convicts, some of whom she 
 despatched as a search party with no feeling of confidence. 
 Intelligence at length arrived that he was safe at a farmer's 
 on the Hawkesbury, but that he was in a sad plight and had 
 greatly suffered ; indeed, he paid dearly for his temerity, for 
 it took at least a month to bring him to his ordinary con- 
 dition.' 
 
 After the breach with Sir George Gipps, the Lowes wisely 
 determined to give themselves up to their few intimate friends, 
 avoiding mere social acquaintances and indiscriminate enter- 
 tainments. Neither of them entered Government House 
 again during Sir George Gipps' s regime ; though the following 
 ' item of intelligence ' in the local press would seem to show 
 that the relations between Lowe and the Governor were not 
 wholly broken off : — 
 
 Fashionable Movements. — On the day of the prorogation of 
 the Legislative Council [November 13, 1845], the Governor visited
 
 286 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 the grounds of Robert Lowe, Esq., M.C, at Nelson Bay, and inspected 
 the cottage now building there. 
 
 In one of her letters to England Mrs. Lowe describes her 
 new home with all the glow of genuine enthusiasm. She 
 always enjoyed the climate of New South Wales, though after 
 the first two years its sultry and languid summers seriously 
 affected her health. But she writes thus in the year 1845 : — 
 
 You can form no idea of the beauty of this climate : our winters 
 are delicious ; the finest October day you can recall to mind is only 
 a faint resemblance of the weather here. I fear I shall look with 
 horror on the leafless trees when I return home ; all the native 
 trees are evergreens, and most beautiful ones. The flowers are 
 splendid ; the only fault is, they are all on bushes, so the ground 
 is never coloured by them. 
 
 It must be frankly admitted that Mrs. Lowe's letters of 
 this period are not very complimentary to the society of 
 Sydney. But she thoroughly appreciated the high qualities 
 of the one or two intimate friends whom they saw frequently 
 at Nelson Bay. Of these she specially mentions three : Sir 
 Thomas Mitchell, W. S. Macleay, and Sir Alfred Stephen. ' Sir 
 Thomas Mitchell ' (she writes), ' whose work on this country 
 I dare say you have read, is a great friend of Eobert's. We 
 have also a very clever man here, Mr. William Macleay, who 
 is a well-known naturalist, so that, though I am inclined at 
 times to abuse the society of this place, there are still some 
 very agreeable exceptions who would be considered an acqui- 
 sition anywhere.' 
 
 The work of Sir Thomas Mitchell alluded to by Mrs. Lowe 
 was Australid Felix, a book which, in a very special sense, 
 may boast the rare distinction of having added a province 
 to the Empire ; for it was its admirable descriptions of the 
 rich pasture lands of Port Phillip which caused the influx of 
 pioneer settlers into what is now the colony of Victoria. 
 Apart from his fame and achievements as an explorer. Sir 
 Thomas Mitchell had all the acquirements and tastes of a
 
 AT NELSON BAY 287 
 
 scholar ; he was fond of literature, and had published a 
 translation of Camoens's Lusiad. Mr. William Macleav, 
 most \Yelcome of guests at Nelson Bay, has already been 
 mentioned more than once. With these Mrs. Lowe couples 
 the name of Sir Alfred Stephen, who, at a very early stage of 
 their intimacy, would seem to have formed the highest opinion 
 of Lord Sherbrooke's capacity and character. He was already 
 Chief Justice of the colony, a position he held for many years, 
 and, though nine years Lord Sherbrooke's senior. Sir Alfred is 
 still living in Sydney in his ninety-first year—' a beautiful old 
 man, whom it was a delight to have seen,' writes Mr. Froude 
 in his Oceana. 
 
 Sir Thomas Mitchell, Sir Alfred Stephen, William Sharpe 
 Macleay, and the future Lord Sherbrooke, sitting together 
 as they frequently did at Nelson Bay, all in the full vigour 
 of their rare conversational powers, would have been con- 
 sidered a distinguished group in any city in the world. Lord 
 Sherbrooke always declared, though in after years he was 
 intimate with the cleverest and most cultured men in Eng- 
 land, that he had met no one whose conversation was more 
 varied and more charming than William Macleay's. With 
 such companions, one could not be said to be out of the only 
 world worth living in — the world of ideas — and the leisure 
 hours which Eobert Lowe enjoyed with these old colonial 
 friends, within sight and sound of the ' wide Pacific,' were 
 amongst the happiest of his life. 
 
 The following letter, written at this time, shows that he 
 was then in friendly relations with his only possible political 
 rival in Australia — the late William Charles Wentworth. 
 
 Bobert Lowe to the Bev. B. MicJiell, B.D., Oxford. 
 
 Nelson Bay, Sydney : November 30, 184G. 
 
 My dear Michell, — Never a very good correspondent at any time, 
 the absence of common topics and the weakness of my eyes have 
 reduced my efforts in that line to almost nothing. I trust that you 
 and yours are wending, on the quiet road of Oxford, your way of
 
 288 LIFE or LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 life with as few annoyances and as many pleasures as are consistent 
 with the condition of humanity. My prospects are very good. I 
 have as much practice as I can well get through, and am rapidly taking 
 the lead at the Bar, which I assure you is no easy task in this 
 colony. I have got a beautiful place on the shores of the Pacific, 
 about five miles from Sydney ; am saving money and investing it at 
 good interest, so that in a few years it mil be within my option to 
 return to England. My wife is quite well and happy in laying out 
 her grounds. My eyes are indifferent, but certainly better than 
 when I left England, and I am quite satisfied with the result of the 
 expedition. 
 
 The object of this letter is to ask your assistance on behalf of a 
 gentleman (Mr. Wentworth) well known as a writer, a lawyer, and a 
 politician, to all who have any knowledge of New South Wales. 
 He sent his eldest son, William Charles Wentworth, to Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, but on my advice has decided to place him for 
 a year with someone who is in the habit of taking charge of restive 
 colts ; and I am now writing to you to beg you to find such a person. 
 A Cambridge man would be preferred. Young Wentworth is 
 intended for a barrister. I know no one to whom I could apply 
 with so much confidence as yourself, from my long experience of 
 your judgment and discretion in all matters relating to the manage- 
 ment of young men. Any arrangement you may make will be 
 ratified by Mr. Wentworth's agents, who will attend to the pecuniary 
 part of the matter. Whatever you do, please to communicate to 
 them. 
 
 I am very sorry to give you this trouble, but I am sure you will 
 feel for a parent who is quite unable, from the immense distance and 
 the pressure of business, to come to England himself, and has no 
 one to whom to entrust a matter of so much difficulty. 
 
 With kind regards to your wife, in which mine begs to join, 
 believe me, my dear Michell, 
 
 Your old friend, 
 
 Egbert Lowe. 
 
 The rector of Bingham passed away in the year 1845 ; 
 but the news of his death did not reach Nelson Bay for vaanj 
 months, as communication was then painfully slow between 
 England and Australia. By the Eev. Eobert Lowe's will, his 
 lands in the town of Nottingham and in the county of Derby 
 ■were devised in equal shares to his second son Robert, and 
 his youngest son, Frederick Pyndar Lowe.
 
 289 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 
 
 The Wentworth Banquet — Kobert Lowe and Imperial Federation — Private 
 Friends and Public Funds — Tlie Speakersliip and Bi-weekly Dinners — • 
 Lowe on Economy — Hon. Francis Scott, M.P. — Land Legislation — Death of 
 Eichard Windeyer — Death of Lady Mary Fitzroy — Caroline Chisholm 
 
 In the letter to his old Oxford tutor, Eobert Lowe makes not 
 the slightest reference to his activity as a popular leader in 
 the Legislative Council. If the reports of the proceedings of 
 the Council, however, be examined, it will be found that the 
 new member for St. Vincent and Auckland was one of the 
 most prominent public figures in the Colony. He went in 
 and out daily from Nelson Bay on horseback, attended the 
 Courts, where he was making an ever-increasing income, and 
 thence to the Council Chamber, where he spoke with brilliant 
 effect on almost every political question of the hour. Mrs. 
 Lowe does not omit to let their English relatives know how 
 steadily and rapidly he is mounting the ladder of success. 
 ' All who hear Robert speak ' (she writes) , ' both in Court and 
 Council, say he is greatly gifted ; and men who have been in 
 the habit of hearing the best speaking in the House of 
 Commons and at the Bar say he would make his way rapidly 
 in England. The judges. Sir Alfred Stephen and Mr. Dick- 
 enson [afterwards Sir John Nodes Dickenson], tell Eobert it 
 is folly for him to remain here. Robert wishes to return on 
 my account, but he never shall destroy his prospects for me. 
 He has struggled hard, and, considering his sight, the result 
 surprises even me.' 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 LIFE OF LORD SIIEEBROOKE 
 
 This is the first actual intimation of any intention of 
 returning to England ; and it will be seen that the imme- 
 diate cause was the failing health of Mrs. Lowe. She herself 
 says in this letter : * I now feel the value of my love for nature ; 
 to me it supplies society, and as long as I am well enough 
 to ride about our shore and above on the superb cliifs that 
 overhang the coast, I want nothing more. But I have not 
 been well, and my strength has failed me much at times ; 
 then it is that I feel so wishful to see old friends again.' 
 
 * Piobert (she continues) is much away ; the Bar and the 
 Council engross so much of his time.' 
 
 The letter goes on to assure her English friends that the 
 prospects of the colony are brightening, and that her husband, 
 whose income has reached 1,000L a year, is makmg wise and 
 profitable investments. ' Is it not strange ' (she adds with 
 naivete) ' that Eobert, so unlike a money-making man, should 
 be making a fortune ? ' 
 
 There was a great public dinner given in honour of 
 William Charles Wentworth in the hall of Sydney College 
 (January 26, 1846), at which most of the leading men in 
 Sydney, who were not Crown officials, were present. Chief 
 among these were Eobert Lowe, M.C., Eichard Windeyer, M.C., 
 Dr. Lang, M.C., Mr. Archibald Michie, barrister-at-law, Mr, 
 Donald Larnach, and Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Martin. It 
 was on this occasion, in reply to the toast, ' A speedy and 
 thorough reform of the Colonial policy of Great Britain,' that 
 Mr. Lowe delivered one of the most eloquent and effective 
 of his Australian speeches, and, according to the local critics, 
 entirely outshone Wentworth himself. The interest in the 
 following passage is heightened by the palpable allusion to 
 Gladstone, Cardwell, and others, with whom he had contended 
 in debate at the Oxford Union : — 
 
 Many of my college contemporaries have been called on to fill 
 offices of trust and importance to the State. . . . They have been
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 291 
 
 placed in those offices by the voices of the people, and when they 
 acted unwisely, they might be removed ; but by coming out here, I 
 have not only closed to myself that path of ambition, but have 
 ceased to be a part of the governing body — have lost all control over 
 the political destinies of the community to which I belonged, and 
 have sunk into the slave of those who were once my equals. Even 
 if it were an offence to join one's lot with that of the struggling 
 colonists of Australia, poHtical disfranchisement and degradation was 
 too severe a punishment for it. 
 
 It is noticeable that in this remarkable after-dinner speech 
 Mr. Lowe gave eloquent expression to strong Imperialist 
 views. He was not one of those, he declared, who looked 
 forward to separation from the mother country as inevitable. 
 ^ Were they not of the same language — of the same race ? 
 Had they not in common glorious recollections of the past, 
 high and lofty interests of the' present ? ' He then painted 
 in the blackest colours the bungling and incompetence of 
 Downing Street, and proceeded to lay down a line of policy 
 by which he considered the tie between England and the 
 colonies could be perpetuated, and the rights and liberties of 
 both communities preserved. The political sentiment, no less 
 than the eloquent expression of the following passage might 
 have inspired the late deeply respected statesman, William 
 Edward Forster, and will surely appeal to the mind and heart 
 of Lord Eosebery : — 
 
 A line of demarcation should be drawn between Imperial and 
 Colonial legislation, and all meddling interference in matters of a 
 domestic nature should be utterly and for ever renounced. They 
 were the best judges of their own wants, their own circumstances, 
 and could legislate for their own welfare better than those who were 
 totally ignorant of both; he claimed for the Colony the right to 
 regulate her local affairs by her local Assembly, without the control 
 of any power on earth. In Imperial matters also, a voice should be 
 given to the Colonies — a share in the government of which they were 
 made to feel the effect : for if the Colonies were to share in the results 
 of Imperial policy, it was fit they should have a voice in its delibera- 
 tions. If it was intended to carry out the principle, that colonies 
 were integral parts of the British Empire, they had a right to be 
 represented in the British Parhament ; they would then be heard, 
 
 u 2
 
 292 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 their interests would then be cared for. If the representative of 
 Middlesex claims a right to control the destinies of New South 
 Wales, the representative of New South Wales should have a 
 corresponding influence on the destinies of Middlesex. Statesmen 
 were yet to learn that the prosperity of the whole is best secured by 
 making every part prosperous ; that there is no conflict between 
 the interests of the Colony and the Empire, and that the notion of 
 sacrificing the former to the latter always originates in the narrow 
 and selfish view of a part, and not in a comprehensive survey of the 
 whole. England herself is but a part of the Empire, and when she 
 treats us as if she were the whole, she is actuated by a narrow and 
 provincial spirit. If this were granted, then indeed would England 
 and her colonies be knit in an iron confederacy, supreme in her 
 strength ; then might she be, as I hope she ever will be, triumphant 
 in arms, in arts, in Kterature and in freedom. But if this should 
 not be granted, then might she look for evil, for mourning, and 
 for woe. 
 
 It cannot be gainsaid that this is the doctrine— pure and 
 unadulterated — of Imperial Federation ; a doctrine which 
 Lord Sherbrooke, in later life, might not have felt altogether 
 able to endorse. But it should certainly stand as the expres- 
 sion of his opinions when he was a leading colonist and a 
 most popular public man in Sydney, engaged, too, in per- 
 petual warfare with the officials in Downing Street, whom he 
 so vehemently opposed mainly because he considered their 
 course of action calculated to detach the Colonies from the 
 mother country. 
 
 This was almost the last occasion on which Lowe and 
 Wentworth appeared as political allies. After the recall of 
 Sir George Gipps, the squatter party, of which Wentworth 
 was the natural leader, was, under Earl Grey's policy, 
 ' transformed ' (to quote Lowe) ' from the suppliant into the 
 master.' He himself then, as we shall see, opposed the 
 squatters, who were led by his former ally, and became the 
 upholder of the rights of the great mass of the people. 
 
 In these lax days it is counted almost a virtue in a public 
 man to succour his friends at the public cost. Eobert Lowe 
 had no friend in all Australia for whom he had so affectionate
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 29 
 
 ry 
 
 a regard as for William Macleay ; while for his friend's father, 
 the venerable Speaker of the Legislative Council, he, like the 
 rest of the community, had the very greatest respect. It was 
 eminently characteristic that when Alexander Macleay re- 
 signed the Speakership, and Wentworth moved a resolution 
 to compensate him for the loss of his English pension during 
 the time that he had acted in that capacity, on the vote 
 being taken, it was found there were fourteen ayes and two 
 noes ; the two latter being Lowe and Cowper. 
 
 The question of a successor to the Hon. Alexander Macleay 
 was the cause of a most amusing debate in the Council. 
 Wentworth — among whose defects bashfulness was not pro- 
 minent — consented to be nominated as Speaker on condition 
 that he should be allowed to take part in the debates, and 
 that he should have a ' dinner salary,' and a residence pro- 
 vided for him. It was desirable, he told the members, 
 * that the Speaker should be placed in a position to extend 
 hospitality, which would promote the despatch of business by 
 softening the asperities so apt to spring up in the warmth of 
 debate.' He pomted out that in England the charitable 
 institutions would languish without the custom of public 
 dinners. Amidst shouts of laughter he declared that the 
 Speaker's dinner in the House of Commons had become ' an 
 established part of the Constitution.' * And,' he added, ' in 
 this colony, where the members of the Legislature receive no 
 wages for their labours, and are at a long distance from 
 their abodes, it is only right and reasonable that the public 
 should be at the expense of entertaining them once or twice a 
 week.' 
 
 Sir Maurice O'Connell actually rose and warmly supported 
 the proposition. 
 
 This was too much for Lowe, who had been fighting 
 the battle of retrenchment side by side with Wentworth for 
 years. At the same time no one perceived the ludicrous 
 aspect of the whole matter more clearly. His speech, which
 
 294 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 even in those slow days found its way into at least one 
 journal published in London, was a satirical masterpiece. 
 Apologising for speaking before any member of the Govern- 
 ment, Lowe said : — ' I protest against this motion on 
 behalf of the constituency I represent, on behalf of the prin- 
 ciples which I have ever joined the hon. and learned member 
 (Wentworth) in advocating, and, I feel almost constrained to 
 add, on behalf of the hon. and learned member himself.' 
 
 He continued in a really high strain of eloquence to show 
 that in an impoverished colony the dignity of the Council 
 would not be maintained by increasing the salary of its chief 
 officer in order that he might entertain the members at 
 dinner. ' When ' (to use his own words) ' in a season of 
 heavy and prevalent distress, the Council, in a spirit of 
 sympathy which it was bound to feel, gave moderate salaries 
 to its officers, it advanced its dignity in a far higher degree 
 than it could have done by investing the Speaker with the 
 most gorgeous panoply.' 
 
 Lowe said that he could not reconcile Wentworth's 
 motion with his former persistent advocacy of a policy of re- 
 trenchment in accordance with which the House had cut down 
 salaries and abolished offices because the expenditure was more 
 than an oppressed and groaning community could bear. 
 
 Then he continued : — 
 
 I, for one, could never sit down to these bi-weekly feasts. To 
 me, fancy would ever be conjnrin,^- up some bloody Banquo's ghost 
 — shades of displaced pohce magistrates, and curtailed clerks, to 
 push me from my seat ; while the banquet would vanish like a 
 fairy feast, leaving nothing but rock, and dust, and ashes behind. 
 . . . Right and proper it is that the Speaker of the House of 
 Commons should be invested with all the pomp and state of cir- 
 cumstance ; but how different our position in New South Wales. 
 Here it seems to me that free institutions have been hung up, as it 
 were, in a pillory, deprived of all that renders them respectable 
 and respected in other countries. In such a condition it becomes 
 us rather to cast off all empty forms, all outward show and display, 
 and to endeavour rather to assert our dignity by the ceaseless effort
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 295 
 
 to retrieve our constitutional rights, than by mvesting this mockery 
 of a Legislature with the forms and attributes of an entirely 
 different Assembly. 
 
 In the same earnest and eloquent spirit, the orator pro- 
 ceeded to express his regret that Mr. Wentworth, whom, on 
 ' so many occasions he had been proud to follow, and to whose 
 judgment he had often paid the greatest deference,' should 
 have made such a proposal, and for a reason, he added, that 
 concerned the honourable and learned member himself. For 
 he had entertained an opinion that the day might arrive 
 when that gentleman, retiring from the contentious arena of 
 debate, sated with the strife and applause of political discus- 
 sion, might have sought for repose in the Chair. 
 
 After this motion, how could such an event take place ? 
 Mr. Lowe then mentioned the cost of ' this legislative esta- 
 blishment,' and pointed oat that they had not been sparing in 
 censure of subordinate bodies that had cost more than they 
 were worth. If they carried this motion, the public would 
 soon suspect that they had no toleration for any jobs except 
 their own. 
 
 Then, as though suddenly struck by the humour of the 
 whole thing, he drew a ludicrous picture of the two rival 
 candidates for the Speakership : — 
 
 I feel sure that the House will reject the motion which, if 
 carried, I should expect to see followed up by two gentlemen with 
 two bills of fare as candidates, one coaxing a vote with champagne, 
 whilst the other tapped them on the shoulder -with Burgundy — one 
 tempting them with turtle, whilst the other preferred some other 
 recherche delicacy. 
 
 At this stage, Mr. Eobinson, the Quaker member for 
 Melbourne, who had become a mere squatter's nominee, and 
 an abject worshipper of Wentworth, must have given some 
 indication of his views and intentions, for Mr. Lowe suddenly 
 turned round upon him and observed that ' he fancied from 
 the cheers of the hon. member for Melbourne that he intended
 
 296 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 to follow humbly in the wake of the hon. and learned member 
 for Sydney, and no doubt in the speech he would address to 
 the House he would be able to reconcile the pomp and display, 
 which the motion was intended to encourage, with his own 
 modest-coloured and plain habiliments — just as he had found 
 it easy on another occasion to reconcile the transporting troops 
 and munitions of war with the principles of universal peace.' 
 Mr. Eobinson did support the motion on the extraordinary 
 ground that the Lord Mayor of London had 14,000L a year 
 granted him for state alone. An illustration that must have 
 filled the lordly Wentworth with ineffable scorn. As might 
 be expected, Charles Cowper expressed his regret that one by 
 whose side, session after session, he had fought the battle of 
 retrenchment, should have brought forward such a motion. 
 Even the Colonial Secretary and Attorney General, in calmer 
 and more official phraseology, condemned it. But the Joseph 
 Hume of the Council, Pdchard Windeyer, who thoughout his 
 career was a most consistent reformer of abuses, was really 
 indignant, and pointed out ' that the object of the hon. mem- 
 ber for Sydney, and the object of those who resisted any re- 
 duction in the salary of the Governor were precisely similar ; 
 they both wanted to increase the strength of the table-cloth 
 chains which are so binding in many instances — and as the 
 Governor had the power of giving good dinners, his learned 
 friend wanted to set up an opposition shop on the popular 
 side.' 
 
 In fact, almost every member was opposed to the proposal, 
 and Mr. Wentworth, without a blush, announced that as the 
 feeling of the House was so thoroughly against him, he should 
 not press the motion, but would withdraw it. 
 
 In many respects the entire proceeding was eminently 
 characteristic of the two chief actors in the scene. One can 
 well imagine what a merry meeting it must have been when 
 Ilobert Lowe's personal friends next assembled at Nelson Bay, 
 and heard the story of Wentworth and the Speakership.
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 297 
 
 Lowe's activity as the representative member for St. Vincent 
 and Auckland was unbounded. He was in the very prime of hfe, 
 just turned thirty-five, and the position of entire independence 
 which he now held in the Council seems to have stimulated his 
 active and powerful mind. There was not a political question 
 in any way affecting the rights of the community or the liberty 
 of the individual colonist which he was not prepared to discuss 
 with point and settle with promptitude. 
 
 For some time Lowe had ceased to contribute to the 
 Atlas, over which, indeed, he exercised no control whatever after 
 the year 1846. He now devoted his energies entirely to the 
 €ouncil Chamber and the Bar. After the too early death of 
 Windeyer, he seems to have taken up the role of ' Joseph 
 Hume ' himself, and to have subjected all items of public ex- 
 penditure to a constant and most rigid scrutiny. One after- 
 noon, August 5, 1847, he entered the Council rather late, 
 having been detained in court, and, turning to Deas Thomson, 
 the Colonial Secretary (for whom personally he had no small 
 measure of respect), he made some amusingly characteristic 
 remarks on the easy-going and rapid manner of voting away 
 public money. ' Most easily,' he said, ' did the wheels of 
 legislation seem to run under the guidance of his hon. 
 friend the Colonial Secretary, and the tractable and guiding 
 ■disposition of the representatives of the people in that House.' 
 He would advise the constituencies, one and all, never again 
 to return a lawyer to represent their interests in the Council, 
 because he might be by chance detained in court half an hour, 
 unable to get away owing to some delay about a paltry sum 
 of five or ten shillings, and by such an accident the public 
 interests might suffer. He himself had been forced to wait, 
 sorely against his will, that very afternoon while a jury were in 
 anxious discussion whether they would give a plaintiff damages 
 to the amount of 11. 15s. or 2/. It was just four o'clock 
 when he entered the House, and although there was on the 
 paper a previous order of the day, he found in one short hour
 
 298 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 the House had voted away 26,000/. of the piibKc money, and if 
 it had not been for the timely entrance of his friend, the hon. 
 member for Cumberland (Cowper), they would have added to 
 it the further sum of 6,195/. 
 
 In May 1847, he moved for leave to bring in a Bill for 
 compensating the families of persons killed by accident — a 
 transcript of the Act then recently passed in the Imperial Par- 
 liament. But the subject which engrossed most of his atten- 
 tion from this time until his departure from Sydney was the 
 Land Question. 
 
 On May 11, 1817, he made an important speech in pre- 
 senting a petition signed by 138 of his constituents of St, 
 Vincent and Auckland in favour of the reduction of the mini- 
 mum price of land from 1/. an acre to 5s. In this speech he 
 even supported the plan of what is known in Australia as 
 ' deferred payments,' by which the settler pays for his land in 
 instalments. Only by these means, he urged, could the 
 Government hope to settle the people on the lands of the 
 Colony ; only in this way could a genuine yeomanry be formed 
 in Australia. 
 
 Daily the breach between Piobert Lowe and the squatter 
 party grew wider. It only needed the promulgation of Earl 
 Grey's new Land Policy to make that breach irreparable. In 
 order to render intelligible his public conduct when that 
 Minister's famous Orders in Council were promulgated, it 
 is necessary to explain the transformation that had taken 
 place in the status and position of the squatters of New South 
 Wales, since the time when they trembled before the arbitrary 
 acts of Lord Stanley and Sir George Gipps. 
 
 Smarting under the aggressions of Downing Street and 
 the agrarian experiments which Lord Stanley and Sir George 
 Gipps had learnt from the too ingenious Gibbon Wakefield, 
 the squatters, being shrewd men, saw that their only hope of 
 rescue was to appoint and pay a vigilant agent in the House 
 of Commons. Men like Charles Duller and Bulwer Lytton,
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 299 
 
 with whom they were in constant correspondence, were either 
 too philosophical or too literary to make efficient wire-pullers ; 
 but they found in the Hon. Francis Scott, brother of Lord 
 Polwarth, an almost ideal representative of their interests at 
 Westminster. Mr. Scott was a barrister, a director of the 
 South Western Eailway Company, a first-class business man, a 
 country gentleman highly connected, and a Conservative M.P. 
 He accepted the post, the salary of which was fixed at 5001. 
 a year. Mr. Scott's position with regard to the Australian 
 pastoralists was precisely the same as that held by Mr. 
 Eoebuck for the Jamaica planters, and by Edmund Burke 
 for the colonists of what is now the State of New York. 
 Some of his Australian principals were as well connected 
 as himself, having relatives in both Houses of Parliament ; 
 and Mr. Scott was soon able to organise a party in the House 
 of Commons ' which very narrowly watched the proceedings 
 of Colonial Secretaries of State. 
 
 It would be absurd to blame the squatters for doing their 
 utmost ' by constitutional means,' as the phrase goes, to im- 
 l)rove their lot. But it very soon became apparent to Kobert 
 Lowe that the new Secretary of State, Earl Grey, had been 
 induced to surrender the entire rights of the Australian com- 
 munity in the public estate to the pastoral tenants of the 
 Crown. Up to this- point he had in the main fought and 
 worked side by side with Wentworth ; but as soon as Earl 
 Grey's despatches were laid on the table of the Legislative 
 Council — and even before, as their purport had leaked out — 
 they became the leaders of two fiercely opposing parties. 
 Lord Grey had, indeed, little as he probably suspected it, 
 
 ' At a great banquet in Sydney, Mr. Archibald Boyd remarked that ' In 
 paying their (the squatters') just tribute to Mr. Scott, they should not be forgetful 
 of the claims of others. They had received the greatest assistance from Lord 
 Polwarth, from Mr. Mackinnon, M.P. for Leamington, and Mr. Pringle, M.P. 
 for Selkirkshire.' How many Victorians, I wonder, know why one of their 
 counties is named ' Polwarth ' ; or that so much of the colony was in these days 
 a sheep-run of the brothers Boyd.
 
 300 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 surrendered the entire colony into the bands of some five 
 hundred pastoral tenants of the Crown. For he had actually 
 been induced to bestow upon them fixed leases for fourteen 
 years of their runs in the ' unsettled districts ' (that is to say, 
 the whole of what is now New South Wales, and Victoria, and 
 the South of Queensland, with the exception of a certain 
 radius round the few chief towns). At the same time he 
 retained the high Wakefieldian price of land, thus practically 
 prohibiting further settlement. 
 
 When Earl Grey's Orders in Council arrived, a select 
 committee, with Lowe as chairman, was appointed ; its report 
 was laid on the table of the House in September 1847. It 
 was a powerful ' document.' Lord Grey, he said, had divided 
 the colony into the ' Confiscated ' and the ' Unconfiscated.' 
 
 To make confusion worse confounded, Earl Grey next at- 
 tempted to revive the practice of criminal transportation, to 
 the huge delight of the squatters, to whom he had given a 
 practical monopoly of the land, and thus proposed to follow it 
 up by the bestowal of free convict labour. By this means the 
 former suppliants became indeed masters of the situation. 
 
 The series of philippics — for they were nothing short of 
 that — ^which Robert Lowe delivered in the old Legislative 
 Council of New South Wales on the Land Question, would of 
 themselves form a volume. In the opinion of so good a critic 
 as the late Sir James Martin, Chief Justice of New South 
 Wales who as a young man listened with rapt attention to 
 them, the speeches were never surpassed even by Lord 
 Sherbrooke's greatest efforts in England — the famous series 
 of Anti-Eeform speeches. 
 
 It will be possible to glance, and no more, at one or two 
 of these orations, towards the end of this volume ; but it is 
 worthy of note in passing that these Australian speeches were 
 on the popular side of a burning question ; by means of them, 
 though he alienated most of his old squatter friends, he became
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 301 
 
 nothing less than the popular idol. Working men and the 
 honest poor emigrants who had voyaged to the other side of 
 the v,'orld only to find themselves more vigorously cut off 
 from their ' common mother the Earth ' even than in 
 England, were loud in his praises ; finding their way 
 into the gallery of the old Council-Chamber, and seeing 
 him standing up almost alone against a phalanx of Crown 
 officials and pastoralists, now in complete alliance, they were 
 unable to restrain the expression of their admiration. How 
 different was the effect of his more famous orations against 
 Eeform in England need not now be dwelt upon. 
 
 By the death of Eichard Windeyer in 1847, at the com- 
 paratively early age of forty-two, Lowe lost the one henchman 
 whose services he would have valued at this crisis. It is 
 singular that Sir George Gipps and his most jiersistent 
 opponent should have passed away, one in England, the other 
 in Launceston, Tasmania, at about the same time, and, I be- 
 lieve, from the same cause — internal cancer. Eichard Windeyer 
 had devoted so much of his energies to public matters, that he 
 died leaving his private affairs in a far from prosperous con- 
 dition. 'After my father's death,' writes his distinguished 
 son. Sir William Windeyer, Puisne Judge of New South Wales, 
 Lord Sherbrooke proved himself a most generous friend, and 
 to his kindness it was owing that my interrupted education 
 was continued.' In the same letter, which will be found in 
 the second volume of this work. Sir William remarks that the 
 youth of Australia owe to Lord Sherbrooke the Act by which 
 they are enabled to go to the Bar without, as before, having 
 to enter themselves at one of the Inns of Court in London. 
 
 Before the new Orders in Council reached Sydney, and 
 were laid on the table of the House, Eobert Lowe sounded the 
 note of warning : — 
 
 The squatters now look on me as their enemy ; but certain am 
 I that, if they would open their eyes and look to their own true 
 interests beyond the little vista of selfishness to which they at
 
 302 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOIvE 
 
 present confine their gaze, they would not call me their enemy. In 
 this cause — the cause of the colony — no selfish feeling shall deter 
 me from what I feel to be my great and responsible duty, and it is 
 with proud feelings instead of shame that I am able to assert that 
 I represent the opinions of almost every colonist in New South 
 Wales who is not a squatter. 
 
 In the same strongly personal vein, showing how greatly 
 he was moved by the change in his relations to his former 
 friends, he went on to declare that he * was not opposed to 
 the squatters — he would make the burden upon them as 
 light as possible ' : — 
 
 I would give them every encouragement to go forth into the 
 wilderness, to gather the wealth of the colony, and to bring it back 
 in wool ; but to give them a permanency of occupation of those 
 lands — those lands to which they had no better right than that 
 of any other colonist — which were the inalienable possession of 
 generations and generations yet unborn, I can never consent to. 
 Its effect would be to lock up all the lands of the colony, to reduce 
 the rest of the population to a state of vassalage and serfdom, to 
 throw abroad in the land the torch of discord, jealousy, and 
 dissension. It would be to leave succeeding generations an 
 agrarian law as a legacy, to be a bone of contention through future 
 ages, such as history told them it had ever been. It would be to 
 create in the social and political structure of the colony an element 
 of perpetual strife, violence, and anarchy, till, wearied out with 
 ceaseless struggles, it ended in the abrupt and total subversion of 
 the order of things. The prophecy which I had ventured to make 
 when urging the land resolutions on the Council, is now about to 
 be fearfully fulfilled. I then predicted that a system of conciliation 
 in lieu of one of oppression towards the squatters would be adopted 
 by the Home Government. The measure noAV proposed by the 
 present Minister is far more dangerous, though not so harsh and 
 insulting, as the policy pursued by Lord Stanley. For against 
 regulations intended to oppress a class, all could unite — it forced 
 them to unite, and kept them together ; but in the present circum- 
 stances, the bait of immediate selfish emolument is held out, and 
 many would, in the gi'cedy contemplation of that, lose sight alto- 
 gether of the general good. 
 
 From the time of the delivery of this speech, Eobert Lowe 
 assumed the post which Wentworth had relinquished — that 
 of the popular leader in the Legislative Council.
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 303 
 
 Although his political position was now one of singular 
 isolation — for he had both the Crown officials and the squatter 
 party against him — he renewed to some extent his social 
 relations with Government House. Thus, on the Queen's 
 birthday, May 24, 1847, we find ' K. Lowe, Esq.' amongst 
 those presented to Sir Charles Fitzroy at the levee. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe about this time writes to Mrs. Sherbrooke of 
 
 Oxton : — 
 
 I have seen more of Sir Charles and Lady Mary Fitzroy. They 
 are most polite to us, and I like them very much. I have just been 
 planting seeds that were collected on Dr. Leichhardt's expedition ; 
 a gentleman who accompanied him gave me a few seeds of each 
 new flower which they discovered. I intend to make drawings of 
 our new place. I only fear you will think that I have exaggerated 
 its beauties, but I assure yoii that it would be beyond my power to 
 do so. I lead a very quiet life, and now seldom go into Sydney. 
 Eobert rides backwards and forwards every day, and I am sure the 
 exercise is most beneficial to him. The horses of this country are 
 as safe and sure-footed as the mules of Switzerland, and display a 
 surprising degree of intelligence, ^hich I attribute to the life they 
 lead as colts in the bush. They have a most extraordinary facility 
 in finding their road, and seem to be aware of the habitation of man 
 miles before reaching the spot. 
 
 After giving a rather deplorable account of the social 
 condition of Sydney, both as to its so-called higher and lower 
 classes, Mrs. Lowe pays a special compliment to the female 
 emigrants from the north of Ireland. Li another letter to 
 the same correspondent she refers to the two little charges 
 who were part of the Nelson Bay household. 
 
 The two little children are very good. Polly is now sitting close 
 to Eobert reading Burke's works ; sbe reads beautifully, and is not 
 yet quite nine ; she will have been with us three years next Christ- 
 mas. Bobby, I think, is my favourite ; he is such a nice little boy, 
 with a sweet temper, and is growing really quite pretty ; he has 
 dark eyes, and a most faithful countenance. You would be quite 
 amused to see him wait at dmner. Our new Governor, Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy, is very popular, and Lady Mary Fitzroy is liked. 
 
 Lady Mary Fitzroy, indeed, became a greater favourite 
 daily, but was unfortunately killed in a carriage accident
 
 304 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 toward the close of 1847 at Paramatta, to the great grief of 
 Mrs. Lowe and all who were admitted to her intimacy. 
 
 A somewhat dramatic scene took place at this time between 
 Mr. Lowe and Bishop Broughton, against whom, it must be 
 admitted, he displayed at times his strong anti-clerical bias. 
 Mr. Lowe introduced a Bill to give clergymen a freehold in 
 their benefices ; the Bishop begged to be heard against it at 
 the Bar of the House. ' The scene,' writes Mr. Rusden, ' was 
 striking. . . Throughout his address, of which Mr. Lowe 
 admitted the eloquence, the Bishop was heard with respectful 
 attention.' The Bill was withdrawn. 
 
 It was also about this time that Lord Sherbrooke was 
 brought into relations with Caroline Chisholm, 'the emigrant's 
 friend.' That lady, an English Roman Catholic, had first 
 arrived in New South Wales in 1839 with her husband, Captain 
 Archibald Chisholm, of the Indian Army, then on sick leave. 
 What she saw of the misery of the poor emigrants deter- 
 mined her to return and devote her life to their cause. 
 Naturally, Lord Sherbrooke had as great a horror of pro- 
 fessional female philanthropists as had the creator of Mrs. 
 Jellyby ; but, like most of the leading colonists at that time in 
 Sydney, he freely acknowledged that Caroline Chisholm was 
 a clear-headed and practical woman, with plenty of self- 
 reliance, and fully able to carry into practice her charitable 
 schemes. There was something, too, in the courage with 
 which she had, single-handed, fought the battle of the poor 
 and helpless outcasts of the Old World, which appealed to his 
 sense of chivalry. 
 
 When Mrs. Chisholm first arrived she was received with 
 marks of favour by the Roman Catholic clergy ; but, as Mr. 
 Samuel Sidney observes : ' As soon as they found it was to be a 
 universal, or, to use the Irish term, a "godless," scheme of prac- 
 tical philanthropy, and not sectarian and proselytising, they op- 
 posed it vehemently.' As the same writer points out, the Crown 
 ofiicialB were not very enthusiastic about housing and looking
 
 THE POPULAR LEADER 305 
 
 after shoals of immigrants, as it meant * more work, some super- 
 vision, and no increase of pay.' The squatters — who were 
 the chief employers of labour — preferred single men ' without 
 encumbrances ; ' whereas Mrs. Chisholm's pet scheme was to 
 settle married couples and their families on the lands of the 
 colony. Dr. Lang, who was a host in himself, at first, on 
 account of Mrs. Chisholm's faith, raised the ' No Popery ' cry, 
 though afterwards he somewhat reluctantly acknowledged the 
 honesty of her motives. Thus, like most persons who do a 
 work in the world, Mrs. Chisholm had to do it alone. Even- 
 tually she won the hearts of the poor of all races and creeds, 
 and the admiration of all worthy colonists. In August 1847 
 a committee was formed, of which Eobert Lowe was a pro- 
 minent member, to raise a subscription to augment Mrs. 
 Chisholm's slender income in order to assist her in her emi- 
 gration scheme. Among those who supported this movement 
 with their names and subscriptions were : Alexander Macleay, 
 W. C. Wentworth, Charles Cowper, Dr. Nicholson, J. B. 
 Darvall, S. A. Donaldson, J, P. Eobinson, W. H. Suttor, 
 Francis Lord, W. H. Manning (Solicitor-General), William 
 Bland, Captain O'Connell, and Clarke Irving — all repre- 
 sentative colonists. As well as supporting the movement by 
 pen and purse, Ptobert Lowe wrote some verses in honour of 
 Caroline Chisholm, which I transcribe, partly because their 
 authorship has lately been disputed in various Australian 
 journals. 
 
 TO MBS. CHISHOLM 
 
 The guardian angel of her helpless sex, 
 Wlaoni no fatigue could daunt, no crosses vex, 
 With manly reason and with judgment sm-e. 
 Crowned with the blessings of the grateful poor ; 
 For theni, with mirepining love, she bore 
 The boarded cottage and the earthen floor, 
 The sultry day in tedious laboiu" spent, 
 The endless strain of whiniiig discontent. 
 Bore noondaj-'s burning sim and midnight's chill, 
 The scanty meal, the joiu^ney lengthening still ; 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Lavished her scanty store on their distress, 
 And sought no other guerdon than success, 
 Say, ye who hold the balance and the sword — 
 Into your lap the wealth of nations poiu-ed — 
 What have ye done with all your hireling brood 
 Compared with her, the generous and the good ? 
 Much ye receive, and little ye dispense : 
 Your alms are paltry, and your debts immense ; 
 Yoiu" toil's reluctant, freely hers is given : 
 You toil for earth, she labours still for heaven.
 
 307 
 
 CHAPTEK XX 
 
 MK. Gladstone's proposed penal colony 
 
 Archbishop Whately and Charles Buller — Dr. Bland and the Australian 
 Patriots — Review of the Transportation Question — Mr. Gladstone's De- 
 spatches to Sir Charles Fitzroy — Wentworth's Select Committee — The 
 Penal Colony in North Australia — Robert Lowe in the Atlas — A Popular 
 Idol 
 
 In order to complete the narrative of Lord Sherbrooke's 
 career in New South Wales, it will be necessary to lay special 
 stress on the two great colonial questions in the discussion of 
 which he took so large a share, namely, the settlement of a 
 genuine yeomanry on the public lands, and the stoppage of 
 the transportation of criminals from Great Britain and 
 Ireland. 
 
 But before entering into these matters, it may be well to 
 pause and note that the chief actors heretofore on our stage 
 had now disappeared. Sir George Gipps was succeeded by 
 Sir Charles Fitzroy as Governor of New South Wales, and 
 Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, was succeeded, firstly 
 for a brief while by Mr. Gladstone, and then by Earl Grey. 
 During Mr. Gladstone's tenure of the office he attempted an 
 experiment in Northern Australia, so remarkable in itself and 
 so suggestive, in the light of his successor Earl Grey's 
 transportation policy, that it may be well to consider it with 
 some degree of care and fulness. 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone stepped into Lord Stanley's place, an 
 article appeared in the Atlas headed ' British Politics,' in which 
 the new Colonial Secretary was thus referred to : ' Whether Mr. 
 
 x2
 
 308 LIFE OF LOUD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Gladstone will prove himself to be more conciliatory and more 
 constitutional [than Lord Stanley] remains to be seen. He is, 
 we believe, an amiable and kind-hearted man, whose only 
 failing is stated to be a leaning towards the foolish doctrines 
 of Paseyism. If he has a due respect for the civil liberty 
 of his fellow- subjects in the colonies as well as in the mother 
 country, and has good sense and independence enough to 
 liberate himself from the trammels of his underlings, he may 
 do some good — as much perhaps as the present system will 
 admit of.' 
 
 Little did the writer imagine that the first act of Mr. 
 Gladstone as Colonial Secretary would be to send out de- 
 spatches to Su^ Charles Fitzroy in favour of the resumption of 
 criminal transportation. To realise the commotion that the 
 publication of these despatches caused in the colony it will be 
 necessary to explain the state of public feeling which had 
 grown up both in England and in Australia on this question. 
 
 Mainly through the exertions of that wonderfully clear- 
 headed and able man, Eichard Whately, Archbishop of Dub- 
 lin, Sir William Molesworth's Committee of the House of 
 Commons (1838) had pronounced against transportation to 
 Australia as the accepted form of what was called ' secondary ' 
 as distinguished from capital punishment. Before this com- 
 mittee Dr. Ullathorne, the Eoman Catholic Vicar-General, 
 gave some appalling personal testimony as to the social con- 
 dition of the island of New Norfolk, whither were drafted all the 
 worst and most incorrigible convicts from New South Wales. 
 Nothing, however, even in the pamphlet which he subsequently 
 published on this subject, is more horrible than the plain 
 statement made to Sir William Burton by an intelligent con- 
 vict when the judge visited New Norfolk for the purpose of 
 trving a number of refractory prisoners in 1834. ' Let a 
 man's heart,' he said, ' be what it will when he comes here, 
 his Man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to him 
 the heart of a Beast.' Of course, the colony of New South
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY o09 
 
 "Wales was by no means in the awful state of its wretched 
 insular satellite, which was entirely reserved as a receptacle 
 for incorrigible criminality. For all that, the evidence given 
 before the Select Committee of the House of Commons clearly 
 shows that it was in a condition that no civilised and self- 
 respecting community could much longer tolerate, while Van 
 Diemen's Land was only a shade better, if at all, than Norfolk 
 Island. 
 
 But it should be clearly stated that there is no greater 
 myth than the prevailing impression that shiploads of crimi- 
 nals were forced by hard-hearted English officials on unwilling 
 colonists. This statement, which may sound rather heterodox, 
 especially in the ears of * Young Australia,' can be proved to 
 demonstration. Dr. William Bland, one of the leading colo- 
 nists of New South Wales, who was then the colleague of 
 Wentworth in the representation of the city of Sydney, wrote 
 on behalf of the Australian Patriotic Association a series of 
 
 * Letters to Charles Buller, Jun., Esq., M.P.' These ' Letters ' 
 were published, and dedicated to ' William Charles Went- 
 worth, Esq.,- M.C., in Admiration of his Talents, and as a 
 Token of sincere Eegard.' (Sydney, 1849.) 
 
 The purpose of this correspondence with Charles Buller 
 was to endeavour to convince him that the transportation of 
 criminals, and the assignment of convicts to private service, 
 were alike beneficial to England and to Australia. These 
 
 * Letters ' afford conclusive evidence that while leading English- 
 men, notably such men as Archbishop Whately, Sir William 
 Molesworth, and Charles Buller, were on the broadest and 
 most disinterested grounds working for the cessation of 
 criminal transportation, many leading colonists, among whom 
 were the ' Australian patriot,' William Charles W^entworth, his 
 friend and colleague Dr. Bland, and Sir John Jamieson, the 
 most prominent of pastoralists, were moving heaven and 
 earth — or, rather, doing a vast amount of subterranean political 
 wire-pulling — to stock their country afresh with English and
 
 310 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Irish jail-birds.' In one of these letters to Charles Buller 
 Dr. Bland unblushingly observes : ' We are aware of the diffi- 
 culties in our ivay — that the leaders of every party in the House 
 of Commons are opposed to the continuance of those systems, par- 
 ticularly to tJtat of jirivate assignment.'' 
 
 The patriotic doctor then goes on to explain to his correspon- 
 dent that an ' assigned convict ' is, in respect to his ' assignee,' 
 precisely in the same position ' as the free servant is to his 
 master.' 
 
 It is startling, but perhaps wholesome, to compare such 
 views with the notable utterance of Archbishop Whately, who 
 wrought a revolution on the subject in the minds of thought- 
 ful Englishmen. 
 
 The punishment (said Whately to Judge Denman) is one which 
 causes more mischief than it does pain, and which is the more 
 severe to each in proportion as he is less of such a character as to 
 
 be deserving of it When Shakespeare makes someone 
 
 remark to Parolles : ' If you could find a country where but 
 women were, who have undergone so much shame, you might begin 
 an impudent nation,' he little thought, probably, that the experi- 
 ment of beginning such a nation would be seriously tried, and from 
 not having quite enough of shameless women, we should be sending 
 out cargoes of girls to supply the deficiency."^ 
 
 Charles Buller, in reply to Dr. Bland, pointed out to him 
 and the other ' Australian Patriots,' that, as long as trans- 
 portation existed, they could not hope to have responsible 
 government. Buller knew well what he was talking about, 
 and did not mince matters. 'I am fully convinced,' he 
 wrote, ' that it is idle to make any effort for the establish- 
 ment of representative institutions in New South Whales as 
 long as transportation to it continues.' 
 
 For, as he pointed out, even the most liberal-minded Eng- 
 lish statesman would hesitate to confer such institutions on a 
 
 ' At no time were many Scottish criminals sent to Australia, which is a 
 reason generally overlooked for the superior energy and morale which have 
 made the Scotch so pre-eminently successful as colonist there. 
 
 - Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Whatchj, third edition, p. 96.
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY 311 
 
 convict-ridden community. Free emigrants of a better class, 
 too, would not choose a p^nal colony for their adopted home, 
 and that of their wives and children. ' Nor will that prejudice,' 
 he added, ' be removed while men of great influence like the 
 Archbishop of Dublin, and periodical publications of no less 
 influence, continue by denunciations of the state of the Penal 
 Colonies to foster and augment the dislike to emigrate to 
 them.' But Dr. Bland and the ' Australian Patriots ' were 
 quite unabashed, and even ventured to controvert the Arch- 
 bishop's unanswerable arguments against transportation ; for 
 which of us cannot find arguments in support of a profitable 
 practice ? 
 
 The following brief letter from Bland to Charles BuUer is 
 quite an historical curiosity in its way : — 
 
 Sydney : November 22, 1840. 
 
 You state that all parties are agreed in "wdthholding free insti- 
 tutions from New South Wales while it continues to be a penal colony. 
 We regret the error on which this determination is founded, and 
 not less the lateness of the receipt of information in this country in 
 respect of that error, and which alone prevented its timely refutatioii 
 on our part. This circumstance we attribute to the unfortunate 
 interval in the representation of this country in Parliament between 
 the years 1837 and 1839. For though on the retirement of Mr. 
 Bulwer,' that office was nominally transferred to yourself, yet from 
 your unavoidable absence in Canada we have been possessed of the 
 benefit of your important services only from the opening of the 
 session of 1839. 
 
 Despite these ' Australian patriots,' transportation practi- 
 cally ceased from 1840, and no criminals were sent to New South 
 W'^ales during the governorship of Sir George Gipps. As often 
 happens in the conduct of human affairs, this great moral 
 reformation came at the very worst possible time. It came 
 
 ' Lord Lytton, the novelist, who afterwards became Secretary of State for 
 the Colonies. He had previously written to the Patriotic Association, advising 
 them to appoint a Parliamentary agent in London ; they accordingly appointed 
 him, and forwarded a cheque for 500L, the amount of the annual honorarium, 
 which, however, he declined to accept, and gave his services gratuitously.
 
 312 LIFE OF LOPtD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 at that time of terrible financial depression when the whole 
 colony seemed to be in a state of iii^olvency ; and it increased 
 the commercial gloom and made the lot of the squatters and 
 other settlers still harder. For it must be remembered that as 
 long as the colony was an Imperial penal station, there were 
 thousands of convicts and hundreds of soldiers to be fed, and 
 consequently fortunes were made (chiefly by rascals) out of 
 Government contracts. Trade, especially in the sale of rum, was 
 brisk. Nor can it be denied that for some years the free emi- 
 gration to New South Wales was very inadequate both in quality 
 and quantity, so much so that these ' Australian patriots ' and 
 their friends all over the country were able to make out a 
 case in favour of the resumption of transportation. 
 
 Still, any keen and impartial observer on the spot could have 
 discerned that New South Wales was steadily improving socially, 
 morally, and financially, and that, as a consequence, free and 
 untamted immigration would soon set in. Even before Sir 
 George Gipps left there was every sign of increased mate- 
 rial prosperity, when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, came Mr. 
 Gladstone's ill-omened despatch to Sir Charles Fitzroy, in 
 which he threw amongst the colonists, like the apple of discord, 
 the renewal of criminal transportation, and, as a consequence, 
 * cheap labour.' 
 
 This despatch was dated Downing Street, April 30, 1840, 
 and began as follows : — 
 
 'G'^ 
 
 To Governor Sir C. A. Fitzroy, New South Wales. 
 
 Sir, — I am desirous that at the commencGment of your adminis- 
 trative duties as Governor of New South Wales, you should be 
 possessed, m a form as definite as the state of the case admits, of the 
 views of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the introduction 
 of convicts into that colony. 
 
 You are aware that the practice has been for some years past to 
 exclude New South Wales from the sentences of transportation 
 passed in this country Her Majesty's Government sym- 
 pathises with the impatience of the colonists of New South Wales 
 under the system which prevailed there some years ago
 
 ME. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY 313 
 
 But the question is essentially and entirely different, whether it 
 might not be a measure favourable to the material fortunes of New 
 South Wales and unattended with injury to its higher interests to 
 introduce, either directly from England at the commencement of 
 their sentences, or from Van Diemen's Land at some period during 
 their course, a number of prisoners, small in comparison with the 
 numbers that were carried to that colony under the former system 
 of transportation. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the joy of Wentworth, Bland 
 and the Australian Patriotic Association, when Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy made this despatch public, as he did at once, with 
 a view of eliciting colonial opinion. The present colony of 
 Victoria, whose boast it is that it never directly received 
 English criminals, was selected as a corpus vile for the ex- 
 periment. 
 
 The labour of such persons [convicts] would be more liberally 
 remunerated in Port Phillip than in Van Diemen's Land. They 
 would be much more thinly dispersed among the population, would 
 form a scarcely perceptible element in the composition of society, 
 and would enjoy those favourable opportunities of improving habits 
 and character, which transportation, according to its first theory, 
 was designed to afford ; and if this disposal of them, during the 
 latter portion of their respective terms, should follow upon a period 
 of really efficient discipline in the probation gangs (which as yet I 
 by no means despair of their being made to yield) during the earlier 
 portion, in such cases I conceive, while the economical benefit to Port 
 Phillip would be great, the hazard from which such an immigration 
 can never perhaps entirely be set free, w^ould be reduced to its mini- 
 mum, and the hopes of the ultimate reformation of the convicts 
 proportionally raised. 
 
 One can again picture the jubilation of the Messrs. Boyd and 
 those other pastoral tenants who had made Port Phillip ' one 
 vast squattage,' at this prospect of cheap convict labour. 
 Mr. Gladstone did not even stop here, but threw out the 
 suggestion that a limited number of convicts from England 
 might be introduced into New South Wales itself for the 
 execution of public works, such as the making and repair 
 of roads, ' always presuming that they are neither destructive 
 to health, nor essentially liable to moral objections.'
 
 314 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBROOKE 
 
 This is the gist of the despatch. Never did the happy 
 Epicureanism of Sir Charles Fitzroy display its superiority 
 over the severer sense of responsibility in Sir George Gipps 
 than when, on receipt of this document, he at once published 
 it, and so gave the colonists, as he said, an opportunity of 
 deciding the matter for themselves.' Such a despatch would 
 have given Sir George many a sleepless night, and, probably, 
 have led to a fierce conflict with the Legislative Council in 
 which (like the brave gentleman he was) he would have borne 
 the brunt, and done his best to shelter his master in Downing 
 Street. 
 
 This despatch threw the community into a state of 
 wild commotion. Wentworth, who had now become the 
 chief of the ' transportation party ' and the political leader of 
 the ' squattocracy,' moved in the Council for a select committee 
 to inquire into and report upon the entire subject of the trans- 
 portation of criminals into New South Wales. It was duly 
 appointed, with Mr. Wentworth himself as Chairman, and 
 Eobert Lowe as one of its members. 
 
 If anyone will take the trouble to read the evidence given 
 before this transportation committee, he will be simply 
 astonished to see how uncompromisingly the squatters gave 
 their evidence in favour of again receiving English criminals. 
 Mr. Benjamin Boyd, for instance, stated that ten thousand 
 convicts could be taken ' beyond the boundaries,' and be profit- 
 ably assigned to the squatters. He would land them at 
 Portland Bay, Twofold Bay, and Moreton Bay, so as to avoid 
 Sydney and Melbourne. Every employer preferred ticket- 
 
 ' Sir Charles Fitzroy was in reality of that type of aristocratic viceroy, 
 now almost universal in our gi-eat self-governing colonies. He was the third 
 son of General Lord Charles Fitzroy, brother of the Duke of Grafton. His wife, 
 Lady Mary, was daughter of the Duke of Kichmond. A man with such con- 
 nections was not likely to fear the powers of Downing Street, as did the class of 
 ' official ' governors, whose pension and promotion depended entirely on the 
 Secretary of State. On landing on the lovely shores of Port Jackson, Sir Charles 
 is said to have observed : ' I cannot conceive how Sir George Gipps could permit 
 himself to be bored by anything in this delicious climate.'
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S PEOPOSED PEXAL COLONY 315 
 
 of-leave men to bounty emigrants. ' I have few immi- 
 grants,' he added, ' in my employ.' He maintained that the 
 Americans had got control of the South Sea fisheries in the 
 Pacific because of the scarcity of labour in the Australian 
 colonies. • Mr. Lowe plied Mr. Boyd with many pertinent 
 questions, to which he gave careful and guarded replies ; but 
 there was evidently the happiest understanding between him 
 and Mr. Wentworth, as the following questions and answers 
 will show. 
 
 By the Chairman. — Do you not think the ticket-of-leave system 
 one of the happiest devices possible for reforming these people ? — 
 Yes : I have already mentioned that I believe I am one of the 
 largest employers of labour in the colony, and I have always found 
 the ticket-of-leave men the most efficient servants. 
 
 By Mr. Loiue. — Would there not be an outcry raised if you were 
 to pay these people wages, that they were placed on the same 
 footing as free men ? — Such has been the demand for labour, and 
 the exorbitant rate of wages demanded by the bounty emigrants, 
 that we have been obliged by necessity to hire expirees from Van 
 Diemen's Land ; and until there is a fall of at least 50 per cent, 
 in their demands, the emigrants will have no right to complain. 
 
 By Mr. Lozoe. — Might not this state of things be a means of 
 deterring free people from coming to this colony altogether ? — I do 
 not think it would have that effect, as the prosperity of the colony, 
 with an ample supply even of convict labour, would soon induce 
 free immigrants to seek it as a field for employment. 
 
 Mr. Wentworth then proceeded to ask the witness some 
 questions about ' systematic religious instruction ' for these 
 ' exiles,' which Mr. Boyd answered in the most beautiful and 
 becoming spirit.^ The report of this select committee bears 
 
 ' Mr. Boyd said Great Britain and her colonies had only fifty-nine vessels ; 
 America 670 whalers in the Pacific, employing 20,000 men, consuming upwards 
 of 200,000Z. worth of iprovisions annually, and importing into American harbours 
 1,G(J6,000L ; yet these vessels came 1G,000 miles to fish on our coasts. 
 
 - Mr. Benjamin Boyd actually indited and published a letter to Sir William 
 Denison, then Governor of Van Diemen's Land, ' On the expediency of trans- 
 ferring the unemployed labour of that colony to N.S.W.' (1847), in which he 
 observes : ' England formed penal colonies at the uttermost ends of the earth ; 
 the capital and free labour which followed were not enticed hither under any 
 provisions of abolishing the convict establishments ; capitalists and labourers
 
 316 LIFE OF IA)IID SHERBROOKE 
 
 evident traces of Wentworth's masterly hand, though it is 
 not difficult to perceive the restraining touch of Lowe, who 
 was about to become the principal agitator against transpor- 
 tation in any shape to any part of Australia. 
 
 In this report there is a clause about a ' new penal 
 settlement immediately to be formed on the very northern 
 boundary of this colony.' This refers to a subsequent scheme 
 propounded by Mr. Gladstone to Sir Charles Fitzroy. He 
 required only a week after the sending off of the original 
 despatch to concoct an entirely new plan for the revival of 
 transportation to Australia. Writing from Downing Street 
 on May 7, 1846, he proposed to found a convict colony in 
 Northern Australia, northward of the 26th degree of south 
 latitude, by letters patent under the Great Seal of the 
 United Kingdom. Sir Charles Fitzroy, like most of the 
 disciples of Epicurus, was not without a sense of humour ; 
 but it is difficult to say whether he sighed or smiled as he 
 read this eminently characteristic despatch, and thought of 
 the rising tide of popular indignation in Sydney when he 
 should publish it in the newspapers. Mr. Gladstone thus 
 began his discourse to Sir Charles : — 
 
 No truths can at once be more familiar, weighty, and indisput- 
 able, than that the first rudiments of every new colony should be 
 selected from the most virtuous, intelligent, and hardy classes of 
 the colonising State ; and should be composed of capitalists and 
 manual labourers, bearing a due proportion to each other. 
 
 I sincerely and deeply regret the impossibility of taking those 
 great principles for our guide in the present instance. 
 
 Public opinion has demanded, and Parliament has enacted, the 
 abolition of the punishment of death in almost all cases except 
 treason, murder, and the infliction of wounds or injuries with a 
 murderous intention. Hence the importance of an effectual 
 
 eagerly flocked to shores where the large disbursements of the public treasury, 
 and the sustained demand for labour, presented a standard of profit and re- 
 muneration unattainable in the mother country, and in the attractive rates of 
 interest and the high scales of wages and rations, both the employer and the 
 employed waived all reference to the "moral contagion " which a feiv alarmists 
 now profess to dread.^
 
 MR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY 317 
 
 secondary punishment has become greater than ever. — [Hence — to 
 cut Mr. Gladstone a little short — transportation to Australia to be 
 revived.] 
 
 But here a difficulty presented itself. ' It has happened, 
 either by the enactment of positive laws, or by pledges said 
 to have been made by her Majesty's Government, that no 
 place is left in Australia for the reception of transported 
 convicts, except Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk Island.' 
 
 Hence, Mr. Gladstone argued, the necessity for the erection 
 of the new convict colony of Northern Australia under Colonel 
 Barney. 
 
 The despatch concludes : — 
 
 I cannot but advert to the possible, though I do not doubt 
 improbable, difficulty with which you may have to contend. I 
 advert to the dissatisfaction with which the Legislature and the 
 Colonists of New South Wales may contemplate this measure. I 
 should much lament the manifestation or existence of such a feel- 
 ing. It would be with sincere regret that I should learn that so 
 important a body of Her Majesty's subjects were inclined to oppose 
 themselves to the measures which I have thus attempted to ex- 
 plain. Any such opposition must be encountered by reminding 
 those from whom it might proceed, in terms alike respectful and 
 candid, that it is impossible that her Majesty should be advised to 
 surrender what appears to be one of the vital interests of the 
 British Empire— [i.e., to create a fresh Alsatia at the Antipodes]. 
 
 Having practically relieved New South Wales, at no small 
 inconvenience to ourselves (as soon as it became a burden), of 
 receiving convicts from this country, we are acquitted of any 
 obligations in that respect, which any colonist the most jealous for 
 the interest of his native or adopted country could ascribe to us. 
 
 In a second despatch, covering two newspaper columns, 
 dated May 8, he gives minute instructions as to the method of 
 establishing the new convict colony of Northern Australia. Nor 
 was this all. The Lord Auckland sailed early in January for 
 Northern Austraha, having on board : Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Barney, superintendent of the projected colony, Mrs. Barney, 
 and family; W. W^. Billyard, Esq., chairman of quarter sessions; 
 James S. Dowling, Esq., crown prosecutor ; E. C. Merewether^
 
 318 LIFE OF LORD SIEERBROOKE 
 
 Esq., acting colonial secretary ; Mr. G. H. Barney, clerk ; 
 Assistant Commissary- General Darling ; Captain Day, 99th 
 Eegiment, Mrs. Day, and family ; Mr. W. A. Brown, deputy- 
 sheriff ; Mr. Robertson, surgeon ; Mr. George 0. Allen ; Mr. 
 W. K. Macknish, wife and family. These, with twenty 
 soldiers, and some labourers and servants, comprised the 
 nucleus of Mr. Gladstone's penal colony. 
 
 However, Mr. Gladstone retired from the Colonial Office 
 at this juncture, and his successor, Earl Grey, wrote promptly 
 to Sir Charles Fitzroy, on November 15, to this effect : — 
 
 I cannot conceal from you that her Majesty's present con- 
 fidential advisers dissent from the view taken of this subject by 
 their immediate predecessors, even in reference to the state of facts 
 under which they acted, and to the ' considerations by which they 
 were guided. . . . Since the decision was taken there has been such 
 a change in the state and circumstances of society in the Australian 
 colonies as would, could it have been foreseen, have doubtless been 
 regarded by the authors of the project as conclusive against it. 
 . . . Her Majest}' will, therefore, be advised to revoke the letters 
 patent under which North Australia has been erected into a separate 
 colony ; and the establishment formed there must be immediately 
 discontinued. 
 
 Mr. Lowe rose to the occasion. His pen now rarely found 
 journalistic employment, for, after re-entering the Council, he 
 soon ceased his connection with the Atlas; but such a subject 
 as Mr. Gladstone's proposed penal colony was altogether too 
 tempting. In the first instance, he dealt with it in a stirring 
 leading article, written in his most pungent style. Then, 
 when the expedition under Colonel Barney sailed out of Port 
 Jackson, he wooed the comic Muse: — 
 
 How blest the land where Barney's gentle sway 
 
 Spontaneous felons joyfully obey, 
 
 Where twelve bright bayonets only can suffice 
 
 To check the wild exuberance of vice — 
 
 Where thieves shall work at trades with none to buy, 
 
 And stores unguarded pass luirifled by, 
 
 Strong in tlieir new found rectitude of soul, 
 
 Tamed without law and good without control.
 
 lAIR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY 319 
 
 Still more ludicrous was the subsequent wail over the 
 fiasco, which appeared in the form of an inscription on the 
 monument proposed to be erected on the spot where Colonel 
 Barney landed at Port Curtis : — 
 
 Here Barney landed — memorable spot 
 
 Which Mitchell never from the map shall blot . . . 
 
 For six long hours he did the search pursue, 
 
 For six long hours — and then he thirsty grew ; 
 
 Back to the rescued steamer did he steer, 
 
 Drew the loud cork and quaffed the foaming beer ; 
 
 Then ate his dinner with tremendous gust, 
 
 And with champagne relieved his throat adust, 
 
 Fished for his brother flat-fish from the stern. 
 
 And thus victorious did to Sydney turn ! 
 
 Passing from poetry to the hard facts of the cost of 
 this futile experiment, I find, from an official memorandum, 
 that it amounted to some 15,402L 6.s. 2d., all of which was 
 simply thrown into the sea. 
 
 However little one may accept the absurd saying, Vox 
 popidi vox Dei, it is quite true that it was the bulk of the 
 respectable labouring men and women of Australia who won 
 the battle that cleared their shores of the taint of convictism. 
 As will be shown in a succeeding chapter, they found in 
 Eobert Lowe a valiant and eloquent leader, who threw himself 
 heart and soul into the question, and became — what he never 
 was before or after — the idol of the masses.
 
 320 LIFE OF LORD SHEEBEOOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI 
 
 NOTES OF A GREAT SPEECH 
 Legislative Council, Sydney : Oct. 9, 1846 
 
 Befoee passing on to the stormy scenes, many of them en- 
 acted under the bUie vault of heaven, when Eobert Lowe, in 
 defiance of all his inborn traditions — his love of close reason- 
 ing, his keen but scholarly wit, his distaste for mere empty de- 
 clamation — found himself compelled to be the leading agitator 
 in the colony, let us take a glance at some notes of a fine and 
 thoughtful oration delivered by him in the Legislative Council 
 on his favourite subject of education. 
 
 This was on the evening of October 9, 1846, when he rose 
 to move : — 
 
 That an Address be presented to his Excellency the Governor, 
 praying that he will be pleased to place on the Estimates of 
 Expenditure the sum of 2,000/. to meet the expenses of schools to 
 be conducted on the principles of Lord Stanley's National System 
 of Education ; and that his Excellency will be pleased to appoint 
 a Board favoui'ablc to that system, and take all other steps necessary 
 for bringing it into immediate and eli'ective operation. 
 
 It will bo remembered that almost from the time he 
 entered the Council as a Crown nominee, Mr. Lowe had 
 been the chief educational reformer in Australia. The ques- 
 tion, moreover, had for the last two years been amply dis- 
 cussed both in the Council and on the public platform. 
 During this period tlic clergy had organised their forces,
 
 NOTES OF A GREAT SPEECH 321 
 
 while the leaders of the Koman Catholic church had made a 
 complete volte-face. It was from that quarter that the re- 
 formers had most to fear ; for its flocks were both numerous 
 and ignorant. Mr. Lowe began to see that the victory would 
 not be won easily, and that, do what he might, it would in all 
 likelihood take some years simply to ' educate his masters ' — 
 the voters in the community. But he remained undaunted ; 
 and, on the evening referred to, set himself the task not only 
 of explaining the advantages of a general system of educa- 
 tion, but of meeting and controverting the position taken up 
 by his opponents, who declared that he was advocating a 
 ' godless ' system. His answer to this charge will furnish 
 the first extract from his speech, which is given as nearly as 
 possible in the words he used in addressing the Legislative 
 Council. 
 
 A ' Godless ' System. 
 
 The objection urged to this system when it was first brought 
 forward was that it Avas a godless and irrehgious system. Now, I 
 am ready to confess that I am an advocate for irreligious teaching— 
 that I Avould have people made shoemakers or tailors without the 
 aid of religion at all — that all mechanical arts should in fact be 
 taught irreligiously. I am of opinion that religion should be mixed 
 up with none of these things, on the principle that it is sufficient to 
 teach one thing well at a time ; and if children are to be taught to 
 read and write, their attention should be confined to reading and 
 writing, and I repudiate the idea of teaching reading and writing 
 according to any system of religion. So also I am for an irreligious 
 system of arithmetic, for I can see nothing but evil from blending 
 theology Avith simple addition, or cosmogony with subtraction. 
 God forbid that I should wish children to be brought up irreligiously. 
 I would have a child instructed in religion as in anything else, but 
 what I want is that religion should not necessarily be mixed upAvith 
 instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The whole fallacy, 
 indeed, turns on the word education ; if the Avord meant reading and 
 writing, then ought religion to have nothing to do with the matter ; 
 but if it embraced a wider scope — if it contemplated the entire 
 training of man — the fitting for higher \dews and nobler purposes 
 than those for which his original nature fitted him — if it Avas to 
 raise and improve the Avhole faculties of his being, to make him a 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 more exalted creature — then would religion become a part of* that 
 education, but in its proper place. 
 
 But who, I would ask, is there that really wishes the people to 
 be brought up irreligiously '? AYho is it indeed that asks more than 
 to let children be educated, without offending the opinions of 
 peculiar sects ? Money is given for the purpose of education by 
 the State because it is a general good to be applied in the same 
 way to all denominations. At the rate we are going on we shall 
 soon be obhged to have different roads as Avell as different schools, 
 in order that the Roman Catholics and Protestants might not meet 
 for fear they should attack each other. 
 
 The Duty of the State. 
 
 I contend that it is the duty of the Crown to put this spirit down. 
 To see that men are not brought up to dwell on these differences in 
 the forms and modes of worship, or let them assume the mere 
 appearance of religion, till in the heat of controversy and bigotry 
 they forget that they are Christians. It is the part of the Govern- 
 ment to repress these things, and to introduce a system which will 
 teach them to live in harmony, to enlighten men, to soften them — 
 to teach them that religion is a blessing and not a curse, and that 
 the great principle of all religion, whatever garb its doctrine might 
 assume, is the same. It is no part of the duty of a State to see that 
 its population is instructed in the doctrines of a finely drawn, meta- 
 physical faith ; and to attempt such a system would only result in 
 the degrading spectacle of a community torn, not by social or 
 pohtical disagreements, but by the more rancorous and deeply 
 seated war of religious dissensions. No doubt the Anglican Church 
 has had a good effect in England, where people are taught to look 
 lip to it as the established church of the land, and dispensing 
 peculiar blessings as such ; but here, where there should be com- 
 plete religious equality, what are we to anticipate will be the result 
 of this incessant struggle on the part of each denomination to 
 establish an imperium ii\ imperio, within its own precincts, instead 
 of striving to live in the links of one common brotherhood. What 
 system that calls itself Christian can lead to these heart-burnings 
 and jealousies — which, directing its attention to the promulgation of 
 these principles of disunion, teach the Protestant to look on the 
 Catholic as an idolater, and the Catholic to regard the Protestant as 
 a heretic ? How much wiser, hoAv much nobler, to invite a common 
 people — common by birth, by language, and every national tie- — to 
 acknowledge in one brotherhood of feeling, one God, one faith, and 
 one revelation.
 
 NOTES OF A GREAT SPEECH 323 
 
 In an article written about the time this speech was de- 
 livered, Mr. Lowe defended the selections from Scripture in 
 the class books compiled for the Irish National Schools, on 
 the ground that they supplied the only religious instruction 
 that could be embodied in the ordinary lessons of * common ' 
 schools. He then showed why, in his opinion, the clergy of 
 the various denominations were alike dissatisfied with this, 
 and demanded something more in the way of religious in- 
 struction. The priest, he said, whether Anglican or Roman 
 Catholic, objected to these selections because they were 
 unaccompanied by the definite credal teaching of his 
 church; 'while the Dissenter who, in his dread of tra- 
 dition, finds the whole of his religion in braying forth the 
 empty words, " the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but 
 the Bible," objects because the Scriptures are not put entire 
 as a school book into the pupils' hands. The objection of the 
 first two arises from a desire to exercise priestly power — the 
 objection of the last from most contemptible ignorance.' 
 
 Eeverting again to the speech, Mr. Lowe put before the 
 Council the two systems — the general or ' common ' system of 
 education, calculated to weld the rising generation into a 
 united Australian people, and the denominational system, 
 which could only foster differences and dissensions. 
 
 Tlie Ttvo Systems. 
 
 Which system, I ask, is the best and most holy ; which will most 
 conduce to the happiness and enlightenment of mankind ; which is 
 the system which will most harmoniously lead the scattered 
 population of the colony to a sense of the blessings that education 
 is designed to bestow ? Is it not the general system — the system of 
 education in common — that we should prefer in a young community 
 like this, while it is yet ductile, while the fountains of the river of 
 education are yet unpolluted by the prejudices of older nations ? 
 Are we willing to sell this right to give the means of enlightenment 
 to a community — to disseminate a spirit of harmony and bro- 
 therly love — for the sake of a little transient concord '? Which is 
 the nobler, purer feeling : to adopt the intended system of social 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 enlightenment, or to encourage the splitting up of the community 
 into sectarian parties ? Apart from the selfishness, or cowardice, 
 involved in submitting to the latter system for the sake of a little 
 peace, could there he a doubt on such a question ? Would that 
 Council stop to calculate when such a chance was offered ? I ap- 
 prehend not. It will not be excusable if it does not by every means 
 in its power seek to put a stop to the spirit of bigotry and sectarian- 
 ism everywhere prevailing. Some there are too old to be instructed, 
 fi'om whom these pernicious principles cannot be extracted, people 
 who have come out with all their burning prejudices deeply instilled 
 into them, and who T\dll bear them to the grave. But finite as its 
 power is for good, and infinite for evil, it is within the sphere of 
 that House to say that these prejudices shall wane, if not entirely 
 perish with the present generation — it is within its sphere to prepare 
 a happier soil in the minds of the rising generation, for those great 
 principles of religion which are inherent in every shade and denomi- 
 nation of Christianity. 
 
 Common or Conjunct Schools. 
 
 The result was that those schools did enlighten the people— did 
 free them from crime, the offspring of ignorance — did make them 
 wiser, happier, better. What, on the contrary, had been the eflects 
 of the denominational system ? Ithadbeen to keep the many in dark- 
 ness, whilst for the sake of show it had educated the few ; nor could 
 there ever be any other result while the teaching of doctrinal points 
 of religion was mixed up with the principles of ordinary education. 
 I will now touch on another branch of the subject, or rather view 
 the subject in another light. It would appear, whether they would 
 or would not, that this colony was to receive con^dcts, that the Home 
 Government had so willed it ; and whether they received them 
 direct, or as expirees, convictism was to be its destiny. If then we 
 do not at once decide on some general plan of elementary instruction, 
 even that Volume on Avhich our religion is based, in which its pre- 
 cepts are to be read, and its promises made known, will be a sealed 
 book to two thirds of the rising population of the country. And 
 what must be the result ? That the ignorant population will 
 greedily receive the invitations to vice and crime, and the leaven of 
 convictism will leaven the whole lump. Instead of rising upwards 
 in the scale, for the reformation of the convicts, they must degrade 
 down to a level with them. What elements, I would ask, are we 
 not letting loose over the land if we shut our faces to the extension 
 of education ? If we refuse to give the power to read to the many, 
 in order that the few may be instructed in accordance with religious 
 prejudices — instead of becoming the seat of religion, of morality, of
 
 NOTES OF A GREAT SPEECH 325 
 
 enlightenment and civilisation to which it might have been converted, 
 the colony must sink down into the depths of degradation too 
 dreadful to describe. Polluted and lost, her state would only be 
 that which the poet had pictured, and which, except in the words 
 of the poet, I will not attempt to picture. 
 
 Eeligion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
 
 And unawares Morality expires ; 
 
 So thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored. 
 
 Light dies before the uncreating Word. 
 
 Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall. 
 
 And universal darkness covers all. 
 
 That, I believe to be the destiny reserved for this colony if a 
 more extended system of education be not immediately set on foot ; 
 and whatever might be the opinion of those whose eyes are blinded 
 in this matter, and who would reserve them for that fate with a 
 dogged determination, I believe it to be the duty of this Council, 
 its imperative duty, to take this matter into its own hands, 
 regardless of clamour out of doors, and to legislate for the present 
 and future enlightenment, the present and future welfare and 
 happiness, of the people by adopting the system I have advocated. 
 
 Although the famous lines from the Dimciad may seem 
 somewhat forced in the eyes of Australians and Englishmen 
 of the present day, they were singularly appropriate at a time 
 when English ministers and colonial capitalists had leagued 
 together for the revival of criminal transportation. 
 
 With all his eloquence, Lowe only succeeded in carry- 
 ing his Address by twelve votes to ten, and Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy, following the precedent of his predecessor — prompted, 
 it was said, by the same adviser. Bishop Broughton — refused 
 to place the 2,000/. asked for on the estimates. But, as the 
 subsequent history of Australia has shown, these statesmanlike, 
 if at the time unsuccessful, efforts have borne good fruit. It is 
 to the broad and philosophical teaching of Eobert Lowe in 
 these early years, more than to that of any other Australian 
 public man, that our fellow subjects at the Antipodes owe 
 their existing State school system.
 
 326 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 
 
 Earl Grey's Land Bill — Mr. Lowe on Downing Street solicitude — Wentworth 
 and the Waste Lands — Eoman Nobles and Australian Squatters — Lowe's 
 appeal to the Squatters — To the Council — Lowe's Reply to Wentworth — His 
 Pamphlet — The Division— Review of the Land Question — Agrarian Gamblers 
 — Character of Wentworth — Lowe determines to return to England 
 
 On June 1, 1847, Earl Grey's despatches relative to his new 
 Australian Land Bill were laid on the table of the Legislative 
 Council. They had the effect of consolidating the squatters' 
 influence, and of winning over the dreaded Wentworth to the 
 side of the Government, The bribe was a tremendous one. 
 By the regulations of the Orders in Council, the whole of the 
 Crown lands of New South Wales — which, let it be borne in 
 mind, then included the present colony of Victoria — were 
 divided into three classes, the ' settled,' the ' intermediate,' 
 and the ' unsettled ' districts. In the settled districts the 
 squatters' ' runs ' were to be leased from year to year ; in the 
 intermediate, eight years' leases were granted to the Crown 
 tenants, subject to two months' notice in the event of any part 
 of the run being required for sale ; while, in the unsettled 
 districts, the occupying squatters were granted fourteen years' 
 lease with the right to a second term of fourteen years if the 
 lands were still unsold. Moreover, the squatters of the inter- 
 mediate, as well as of the unsettled districts were to have 
 what were called 'pre-emptive rights,' by which, if they 
 themselves chose to become the purchasers at the upset price 
 of 1/. per acre, their runs were exempted altogether from
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 327 
 
 public auction. Consider for a moment the effect of this 
 portentous agrarian experiment for which Earl Grey was re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 The colony of Victoria, then the district of Port Phillip, 
 was, as Mr. Boyd said, at that time ' one vast squattage.' 
 Although so few years had elapsed since Sir Thomas Mitchell 
 had first gazed upon the rich pastures of what he called 
 ' Australia Felix,' it was completely divided from the Murray 
 to the sea into sheep and cattle runs. An enterprising young 
 Englishman with capital, arriving about this time to 'take 
 up country,' went overland to Sydney and informed the 
 Governor that every acre in Port Phillip was already appro- 
 priated. Now, under Lord Grey's Orders in Council the whole 
 of the jDresent colony of Victoria, with the exception of a small 
 area round three towns, Melbourne, Geelong, and Portland, 
 was to be practically handed over for what seems an indefinite 
 period in the life of a young community, to these squatters. 
 We have here the origin of the long and bitter agrarian strife 
 in that colony, as well as an explanation of the deep-rooted 
 feeling of hostility felt towards the squatters as a class by the 
 bulk of the community — a feeling which did not die out until, 
 by successive local Land Acts, the Crown lands were clumsily 
 ' unlocked.' 
 
 It is a striking proof of the provincial spirit which is still 
 so prominent a characteristic in all the Australian colonies, 
 that the best informed writers in Victoria, in dealing with the 
 Land Question, always attribute their partial emancipation 
 from the squattocracy whom Earl Grey had made into a 
 privileged caste, purely to their own local efforts, to the Land 
 Convention of Melbourne, or to Mr. J. M. Grant's ' 42nd 
 clause,' in an amended Land Act. They entirely overlook, or, 
 rather, have quite forgotten, the magnificent stand which 
 Piobert Lowe made in Sydney in 1847, before Victoria existed 
 as a colony, when it was merely a pastoral adjunct of New 
 South Wales, known as the Port Phillip district.
 
 328 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 If, however, they investigate the matter, they ^Yill 
 find that to Eobert Lowe, and to him alone, belongs the 
 honour of upholding, almost single-handed, the rights of the 
 whole community to the Crown lands of Australia ; and they 
 will also find, further, that it was he who first fought their 
 battle against the combined forces of the English Govern- 
 ment, the local Executive in Sydney, and the whole weight of 
 the squatter party, led by the former champion of the people, 
 Wihiam Charles Wentworth. 
 
 As soon as the Orders in Council were made public, this 
 unequal battle began. Before they were promulgated, Mr. 
 Lowe, on September 25, 1846, had moved and carried a re- 
 solution as to the reduction of the upset price of land. It is 
 noteworthy that Wentworth and his party still supported this 
 line of policy. On June 21, 1847, with Earl Grey's despatches 
 on the table, he moved a resolution : ' That with reference to 
 the proposed Orders in Council laid on the table of this House 
 on J.une 1, 1847, this House reaffirms the resolution agreed 
 to on September 25, 1856, that is to say, that while the 
 minimum upset price of 11. per acre is maintained, the squat- 
 ting system can never be settled on a just and satisfactory 
 basis.' On this occasion he failed, and the Council stultified 
 itself by negativing its previous action. Eobert Lowe, however, 
 delivered a most memorable speech, which contains a fuller 
 exposition of the Australian Land Question than any ever 
 delivered. Seizing upon an admission of Lord Grey in his 
 despatch ' that this squatting occupation is only to be tem- 
 porary,' he exclaimed : — 
 
 Glad am I to find that the noble Secretary had not so far for- 
 gotten his own English feelings, had not so abandoned his duty as 
 an adviser of his Sovereign, as to have contemplated the perpetua- 
 tion, in this dependency of the Crown, of so pernicious, so degraded 
 a system. That he looked forward to a period — if these orders 
 were carried out I fear an imaginary period — when the broad wastes 
 of New South Wales would cease to be wastes, but would become 
 the abode of civilised men, and flourish with the arts of life. I say 
 it is an imaginary period to which Earl Grey, through the ignorance
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 329 
 
 or hallucination in which he is involved, looks forward — and if this 
 dream of settling the squatters on the Crown lands, and at the 
 same time maintaining the minimum price is acted on, it must 
 remain for ever an imaginary period. The principle of the despatch 
 was right, but the means of working out that principle were utterly 
 wrong ; and this was one of the blessings which we ow^e to legisla- 
 tion 1G,000 miles off. The intention of Earl Grey was evidently to 
 correct an abuse. But were these leases the way to avoid the 
 abuse of favouritism '? Did they not involve a more glaring, a 
 more extended system of favouritism than was ever before displayed 
 in the world ? What right had any particular class of a com- 
 munity to the grant of particular rights and privileges denied to 
 others ? On what ground — I reiterate the challenge of the other 
 night — on what ground did the squatters stand forth and claim these 
 concessions extended to them in favouritism over the whole of the rest 
 of the colony, who had an equal right and an equal claim ? Where 
 were the great services they had rendered to the State ? W' here 
 were the records of their noble deeds, and high achievements, and 
 their devoted services '? W^here were these to be found ? The 
 splendid estates conferred on a Wellington or a Marlborough Avere 
 no marks of favouritism, were in no sense the abuse of patronage, 
 but the just reward for distinguished services offered by a grateful 
 people. But could the squatters put in any such claim as this '? 
 
 He then proceeded to argue with cutting irony that if this 
 were Lord Grey's plan for averting favouritism, it would have 
 been better to hand over the freehold instead of the fourteen 
 years' leases to the squatters. Another argument that Earl 
 Grey used for granting these leases, and at the same time 
 maintaining the high upset price of land, was a favourite one 
 with the disciples of Gibbon Wakefield, that it would prevent 
 the dispersion of the people. This word dispersion seems 
 to have had a most terrifying effect upon all the colonising 
 theorists of that time. Wakefield had taught them that to 
 encourage, or rather not to check, this tendency to seek ' fresh 
 woods and pastures new,' which is surely the very essence of 
 the colonising spirit, was to bring about a return to barbarism. 
 So we find Earl Grey supporting this wholesale alienation of 
 the public estate on the ground that it would act as a check 
 ' to that tendency to an undue dispersion of the inhabitants,
 
 o o 
 
 30 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBEOOIvE 
 
 which is found so strong in countries in progress of settle- 
 ment, and where the population is still very small in propor- 
 tion to the extent of territory,' 
 
 Lowe's reply to this form of Downing Street maternal 
 solicitude is worth preserving. 
 
 It is some%Yhat strange that such a doctrine as this should 
 be inculcated by Earl Grey, the strenuous, the uncompromising- 
 advocate of Free-trade, the enthusiastic admirer and follower cf 
 Cobden, and the consistent supporter of all the great measures 
 which have been passed of late years for ensuring the freedom of 
 the commerce of Great Britain. In England this statesman would 
 have the channels of trade to run free and uncontrolled, but he 
 disclaims this natural and social right when dealing with Australia. 
 In England, the butcher, the baker, the builder, the farmer — all 
 trades, all callings, are left unrestricted, and men follow their 
 own inclinations. But the rule is not to be applied to the colony, 
 where we are not able to judge what is best for our own interests. 
 Here, if left to themselves, men would disperse — and why should 
 they not disperse, if they thought it fit and profitable to do so ? 
 Could not Earl Grey see that if men felt it to be their interest to 
 disperse, impelled by the hope of gain, or even the mere love of 
 adventure, they would do so in spite of all these absurd restrictions 
 intended to concentrate them ? This policy of compulsory concen- 
 tration, if it could be carried into effect, would operate with immenee 
 power in checking those hopes and feelings of the human breast 
 which were the soil in which the spirit of enterprise had root and 
 growth. Concentration is the result of wealth, not the cause of 
 it. When men — when a community — grew wealthy, they would 
 always concentrate; it was the natural tendency of human nature. 
 ])ut while wealth remained to be acquired, while that which gave 
 concentration its attraction and charm, while the comforts that 
 attached to it, and which the division of labour alone could afford, 
 Avere still wanted, men would follow the natural bent of their dis- 
 positions and disperse to seek for wealth where they thought they 
 would best find it. 
 
 By this line of argument he again demolished the Wake- 
 iieldian policy of keeping up a high or fancy price for the free- 
 hold of the Crown lands. Lord Grey, in fact, seems to have 
 eschewed that wise judicial law never to give a reason in 
 delivering judgment, for his despatch literally teems with
 
 ME. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 331 
 
 theories and generalisations as to the vahie and proper dis- 
 posal of the waste lands in a dependency. Every sentence in 
 these despatches seems to have heen seized upon and contro- 
 verted by Lowe. It would be tedious, and it is perhaps un- 
 necessary, to attempt to reproduce this elaborate refutation 
 of the policy of these Orders in Council. He showed that, 
 with all the literar}- artifice employed by Edward Gibbon 
 Wakefield, his pet theory, which had entangled and fascinated 
 so many English public men, only amounted to dear land 
 and cheap labour in a new land whither most of the people 
 had come to avoid both. In this, as in all his speeches, it is 
 difficult to condense Lord Sherbrooke's utterances and yet 
 bring out all the points, because, as the bewildered sub-editor 
 said, ' they are all points.' He deals with the question of im- 
 migration in a most fresh and suggestive manner ; but at 
 this time he never long kept away from his main theme — the 
 iniquity of handing over so much of the public lands to the 
 squatters. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the subsequent history of 
 Australia will be the first to recognise the truth of the warn- 
 ings which he uttered, as to the injustice and impolicy of 
 favouring a class whose prosperity depended rather on the 
 state of the home-market than on the social or material 
 advancement of the colony. In eloquent words he predicted 
 in this very speech that which actually took place by the 
 creation of a favoured pastoral oligarchy, whose interests 
 must be diametrically opi^osed to those of the rest of the com- 
 munity. All these evils, he declared, had fallen upon them 
 because one or two men, high in office, had failed to under- 
 stand the constitutional law that the public lands of the 
 colony were vested in the Crown, as trustee for the whole 
 people of the colony. He maintained that these Crown 
 lands could not be bestowed on any individual or class of 
 individuals, any more than a man's private estate could be 
 made over without the consent of the proprietor.
 
 332 LIFE OF LOKD SHERBROOKE 
 
 At this novel doctrine the squatters in the Council be- 
 came very restive, and the Quaker representative of the great 
 pastoral interests controlled by Messrs. Boyd and Co. (Mr. 
 Piobinson) seems to have mterjected something about these 
 pastoral leases being a great boon to the community. 
 
 The hon. member for Melbom-ne (retorted Mr, Lowe) might 
 like to have my coat, if the colour suited him, but it ^Yas not for that 
 reason that anyone might give it to him ; and it was equally true 
 that he might, with respect to this land, wish to stand in the shoes 
 of the colonists, but that gave no right to anyone else to give the 
 shoes of the colonists to him. It was not the land of a class, but of 
 a community, which was not prepared to make this great boon to the 
 squatters for their exploits in vanquishing kangaroos and cutting 
 down gum-trees. 
 
 Lowe then turned to his most redoubtable foe, and 
 proceeded to reply to the assertions of Wentworth, who from 
 this time forth had one most convenient argument — viz. that 
 the waste lands of Australia were practically valueless for all 
 purposes of settlement, and only suited to nomadic tribes. 
 
 ' If they are so valueless,' retorted Mr. Lowe, ' then the 
 hon. and learned member for Sydney can have no objection 
 to returning these leases.' As to the claim of occupancy, 
 that presupposed the abolition of all law and the return to 
 the social condition favoured by Eob Eoy — 
 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can. 
 
 Then came the claim of discovery. Were those who set up 
 this claim, asked the speaker, prepared to give to Dr. Leichardt 
 the whole of the territory just discovered by him ? Now, he 
 was a genuine discoverer, a great explorer, and a man of 
 scientific mind, who richly merited the tribute of thanks and 
 admiration which that House had awarded to him. But Dr. 
 Leichardt would be the last man to prefer such an absurd 
 claim ; and, if so, what claim had those who had obtained 
 their runs from shepherds and insolvent people who had got 
 jammed in the pressure of the times ? ' If you advance this
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 333 
 
 claim of disco veiy,' said Lowe, * as a reason why you 
 should have the people's lands, be honest and consistent, and 
 give to Dr. Leichardt a like title to every foot of ground over 
 which his horse's feet passed.' 
 
 Wentworth having challenged Lowe to cease criti- 
 cising the schemes of others and to propound one of his 
 own, the latter said that his system was very simple : it was 
 merely to reduce the upset price of land to five shilhngs or 
 less an acre, and to leave the squatter in his present tenure 
 until the land was actually purchased by the hond-Jide settler. 
 The speaker then said : — 
 
 I will call the attention of the House to the great similarity in 
 the Land Question in this remote and insignificant dependency to 
 that in which it stood on that far greater stage, and with those 
 infinitely greater actors of the forum, who were concerned in it ; 
 for I am not one of those flippant theorists who, because we have made 
 some discoveries — because we happen to have discovered gunpowder, 
 the art of printing, and other improvements, believe that we are at 
 present equal in intellect and poAver to the great men of old. Let 
 the House carefully mark this resemblance, and ponder over what may 
 be coming. Their Sylla, their Marius, might yet be unborn, but the 
 same causes would bring about the same efiects ; the same system of 
 oppression and tyranny, if history were not a fable and experience a 
 liar, would in its own time bring forth these bitter fruits. The 
 bones of those who were urging on this system might go down into 
 the dust ere the evil they had occasioned should be consummated. 
 Generation after generation might pass away, but let them beware, 
 for even now they were lighting the torch which, flung upon the 
 land, might smoiilder for a time, but in the end would burst forth into 
 universal conflagration, 
 
 Lowe then read a passage from the history of the 
 Eoman Eepuhlic describing the social and political condition 
 of Italy in the time of the Gracchi, and begged the Sydney 
 legislators to ponder over the picture, and the many analogies 
 it presented to their own condition. He drew a close parallel 
 between the policy of the squatting party and those who had 
 wrought the ruin of Italian husbandry. In Eome we read of 
 the increase of slaves ; was not the demand for labour at the
 
 334 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 minimiim rate on which beings could exist ah-eady loud in 
 Sydney ? Were they not having cannibals^ poured upon them 
 in consequence of their aggression on the lands. Again, the 
 Pioman nobles seized on vast tracts of land, as the squatters 
 are doing now. 
 
 There was one fine dramatic incident in this great and 
 impassioned speech. Turning away from men like the Boyds 
 and Eobinson, who were mere speculating gamesters in land 
 and labour, Lowe made a direct and personal appeal to the 
 genuine pioneer squatters : — 
 
 I appeal to those only who are interested in the colony ; to those 
 who think of, and have faith in, her future glory and after destiny ; 
 those whose names were, and would be, recorded in her future 
 history ; those who in her critical conjunctures and times of need 
 had rendered her good service ; those who were cherished and 
 esteemed by her inhabitants, and whom I should be sorry to see go 
 down to the grave with the tarnished fame which an act like this 
 must involve. To these I may not inappropriately address such an 
 appeal ; but not to those mercenary speculators who, solely influenced 
 in all their actions by the sordid love of gain, those heartless, selfish 
 men who came out here, not to make it their abiding-place, not to 
 bring ^nth them to it those high English feelings, that love of 
 liberty which alone could make a country great and good, but to 
 sell the colony into degradation that they might aggrandise them- 
 selves ; those deceitful men who made professions concerning 
 education which they never felt nor strove to carry out, of improve- 
 ments wliich they never made, of capital which they never invested 
 — to these I would make no such appeal, but, with that contempt 
 they deserve, bid them take their pound of flesh and begone. 
 
 It would be possible to cull more than one such indignant 
 passage as this from this powerful speech, which constantly 
 soared into flights of lofty eloquence, and seems to palpitate 
 with passion, with noble invective, or with withering scorn. 
 We are often told of some favourite tragedian who, after 
 middle life, holds the most critical and fashionable audiences 
 
 ' The kidnapping of the savages of the South Pacific for labourers and 
 shepherds was then in full force, and carried on openly by the Boyds, Robinson, 
 and others interested in squatting.
 
 ME. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 335 
 
 in London spellbound by his dramatic intensity, but who had 
 acted the same part with the same fire to small provincial 
 audiences twenty years before. Such seems to me to have 
 been the experience of Lord Sherbrooke as a Parlia- 
 mentary orator. In reading these impassioned sentences, 
 laden, too, with thought and the fruits of a ripe scholarship, 
 one cannot but feel that the stage was too small on which 
 such talents were then being exhibited. But we should, per- 
 haps, bear in mind— and I do not think that the thought was 
 ever absent from Lord Sherbrooke whilst he dwelt in Aus- 
 tralia — ^that this handful of men in the old Legislative Council 
 of Sydney were laying the foundations of a great English- 
 speaking commonwealth and of free institutions at the 
 Antipodes. 
 
 At all events, on this question of the right to the waste 
 lands of the colony thei'e is no mistaking his terrible 
 earnestness. He was evidently conscious, too, that his 
 was the voice of the people of the colony, and he told the 
 squatters in the House that he intended to leave no stone 
 unturned to avert or overthrow Lord Grey's new Land Bill. 
 
 ' I know,' he exclaimed, ' that you would gladly shun these 
 discussions, and that you wish I should not speak above my 
 breath on these matters ; that you would willingly hide from 
 the English Government the intense desire you have to retain 
 these lands.' 
 
 He then made a last appeal to their enlightened selfishness. 
 Eeduce, he said, the upset price of land, give over the dream 
 of acquiring a monopoly of the colony, and let there be 
 something left to attract the stream of healthy immigration, 
 and you may yet reap the reward in a remunerative market 
 for your stock at your very doors. Then, referring to the 
 division of the colony into ' Settled ' and ' Unsettled ' districts, 
 he drew a most gruesome picture of its inevitable effects : — 
 
 I would ask those Avho are possessed of this desperate avarice, 
 and, like Alexander Selkirk, long to reign lords of all they survey,
 
 336 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 what will they do for their children? The land under these 
 regulations will become a di\ided land ; it will be like a human 
 being struck Avith paralysis, one side vigorous, and glowing Avith the 
 blessings of civilisation, and the busy hum of men ; the other, dull 
 and cold and torpid. There must be a line drawn through the 
 land— the line between Hfe and death. What would they do with 
 their children in this stunted region of shepherds and stillness, 
 from which all the liberal professions were shut out, and from 
 which wealth, the wealth of a community, must be excluded ? 
 I believe there is something in population which in itself tends 
 to wealth. Look at Canada, with a barren soil, one paltry export— 
 of timber — with a climate that shuts the door against the energies 
 of the people for half the year, with a revenue contemptible as 
 compared with ours ; yet even there the great establishments of 
 education for professional instruction are kept up, and flourish. 
 How different the desolate regions of the squatters ! For, would 
 they come forward to bring population round them— would they 
 erect villages, and hamlets, and churches, and schools, on the 
 land on the faith of these fourteen-year leases, or do they even 
 pretend to say they would if they had the fee-simple? Carry 
 this measure into effect, and it could have but one of two issues — 
 either the leases must be withdrawn, or rebellion must ensue. 
 How long, when they had an all-powerful influence in the House, 
 would the squatters continue to pay their rents ? How would they 
 get labour ? Did they think the native population would be con- 
 tent to go back and live this degraded and inanimate life of a 
 shepherd ? A great deal had been said about railways, but what 
 object could there be in making railways if all the land was to be 
 locked up in leases ? Would that Council ever do so degraded an 
 act as to vote money for any such purpose, increasing the value 
 of lands thus leased away, and of which the lessees possessed the 
 pre-emptive right of purchase ? 
 
 Mr. Lowe wound up this remarkable oration by an appeal 
 to the Legislative body itself which, he said, might be trite, 
 l)ut was none the less worthy of their weighty consideration. 
 
 It was, that if popular representative institutions were 
 ever to take firm root in the soil of Australia, then ' the 
 deliberations of that Council ought to be as untinged, as 
 untainted by any suspicion, as the Courts of Judicature.' He 
 recognised his own solemn responsibility in bringing so 
 deliberately such a series of charges against an influential
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 337 
 
 section of the community, and he knew that, perhaps for the 
 first time, the outside pubHc were keenly watching their 
 conduct and discussions. What they had to avoid at such a 
 crisis was giving occasion for the finger of shame and ridicule. 
 ' It is this,' he concluded, ' that I fear : that they w^ho ought 
 to give the tone to the public virtue and shape the political 
 education of the colony should give to sceptics in political 
 virtue a pretence to sneer at those institutions which it ought 
 to be our common glory to revere.' 
 
 Never had Lowe risen to such heights, never had he 
 or any other member confronted so powerful an opposition, 
 composed not only of the ordinary officials and Crown nominees, 
 but of the able band of political squatters now under the 
 leadership of Went worth. 
 
 When the former popular tribune rose, it is true he spoke 
 of his successor with unfeigned admiration, as possessing 
 ' an eloquence far greater than my own, or than that of any 
 other gentleman in this Council.' But he quickly descended 
 into mere scurrilities, and his one charge against Lowe 
 was that he was a theorist, without practical knowledge of 
 pastoral matters. There is only one point in Wentworth's 
 reply which need be specially commented upon, as showing 
 the bitterness of this political controversy, in which, it seems 
 to me, Eobert Lowe was bearing so gallant and so disinterested 
 a part. In one portion of his speech Lowe had said, with 
 evident earnestness, that if these Orders in Council were 
 put into effect he should leave the country and return to 
 England, and he urged upon the Council to reject Earl 
 Grey's Land Bill altogether — a course which Wentworth 
 would have been the first to advocate in the days when he 
 was really the great ' Australian patriot.' The way in which 
 he now took up this challenge is worth relating : — 
 
 The hon. and learned member for Auckland (he exclaimed) 
 had told them that if these Orders were put into effect he would 
 leave the country. If the Council could be guilty of conduct so 
 
 VOL. I. z
 
 o38 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 disreputable, so unworthy, and so contemptible as to fling back 
 upon a Minister a Bill the offspring of their own resolutions, he, 
 Mr. Wentworth, would leave the House. He should feel that its 
 dignity, its influence, its self-respect, its honesty, were gone, and 
 henceforward the post of honour would be the private station. 
 
 Anyone familiar with the parliamentary history of New 
 South Wales can picture the same vehement orator using the 
 very same words if the Council did not fling back upon a 
 Minister a Bill of which he himself disapproved. 
 
 This tremendous discussion was adjourned from night to 
 night,' and on the evening of June 24th Lowe rose, and in a 
 speech of equal length and power to that with which he had 
 opened it answered his opponents on every side of the House. 
 But the finest and most effective passage was his dignified 
 reply to Wentworth : — 
 
 The hon. and learned member, in a strain which he had never 
 adopted before, proceeded to denounce the colony as a barren waste, 
 unfit for cultivation, unfit for the reception of civilised man. It 
 was with pain that I heard him deliver these denunciations. I 
 have always delighted to contemplate New South Wales as a great 
 and glorious country, and to picture the hon. and learned gentleman 
 as taking the first place among the native-born who have attained 
 honours and distinction in their own land. I had thought that it 
 would alike be his pride and his glory to shine the first in the annals 
 of the colony — as he had outstripped the comers from older Europe 
 in the march of intelligence and patriotism. It was, therefore, with 
 deep regret that I heard him from time to time speak so harshly of 
 the capabilities of his native land. Even I, a stranger, a cork 
 floating on the ocean, one who might be here to-day and away to- 
 morrow, cannot but feel some sentiments of gratitude to this 
 country — not, perhaps, like those which swell my bosom for my own 
 land ; but I have drunk her water and breathed her air, and, grateful 
 
 ' NotliiiiK will more clearly show how keen was the duel between Lowe and 
 Wentworth than a remark in the Sydney Morning Herald on one of these Land 
 debates : — ' As member after member rose to make their observations, it was 
 evident that Mr. Lowe and Mr. Wentworth were watching the debate. A pro- 
 tracted debate was expected, but suddenly a long pause ensued, and the Speaker 
 put the question. . . . Mr. Wentworth was determined not to speak until Mr. 
 Lowe had addressed the House, in order that he might have the reply ; and 
 Mr. Lowe had adopted the same course with respect to Mr. Wentworth. Thi; 
 (juestion was put while the one was waiting for the other.'
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 339 
 
 for these benefits, I could not travel over the country and find all 
 barren from Dan to Beersheba. But to hear this dispraise from a 
 son of the soil, one born and bred in the land, was more than 
 displeasing. I hope it may not be so, but it looked as if the hon. 
 and learned member Avas depreciating the article he wanted to 
 secure. He (Mr. Wentworth) has accused me, perhaps rightly, of 
 ignorance of the physical state of the country. I have but little 
 judgment in such matters, so I do not entirely rely on my own 
 opinion. But I believe I give him no mean authority when I name 
 Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of the Colony, who tells 
 me that the stations of the hon. and learned member for Sydney 
 are like paradises. Sir Thomas passed through them on his late 
 journey, and returned enchanted with the beautiful scenery and 
 pasturage which he had witnessed. These were the stations of the 
 hon. and learned member, but, perhaps, as they appertained more 
 nearly to him, his modesty would not permit him to praise them. Sir 
 Thomas, however, spoke of them as a man in raptures ; and per- 
 haps even his hon. and learned friend would pause before he accused 
 the Surveyor- General of ignorance. 
 
 These (continued Mr. Lowe in the same vein of raillery, and 
 using his opponent's actual expressions) — these were the wastes, 
 the sterilities, the Saharas, the lands withered with the blast of the 
 desert, which had been so prominently dwelt on and so con- 
 temptuously depicted, although it must be admitted that the 
 occupant had evinced no ill-will towards having the possession of 
 them secured to him. 
 
 The modern reader, even if bred and born in Australia, and 
 to some extent familiar with the history of its Land Question, 
 can form no idea of the marvellous grasp and the knowledge of 
 every detail displayed by Mr, Lowe in this elaborate reply to 
 the squatters. It was a veritable tour de force. The future 
 historian, anxious to know the various stages in the evolution 
 from a purely pastoral and nomadic condition to the higher 
 and more complex social state to which Australia has now 
 attained, will find in these agrarian speeches of Mr. Lowe 
 most suggestive matter. Reference might also here be made 
 to the remarkable pamphlet which about this time he pub- 
 lished in Sydney, under the title, An Address to the Colonists 
 of Neiv South Wales on the proposed Land Orders. In this 
 pamphlet, in a highly condensed and purely argumentative 
 
 z 2
 
 340 
 
 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 form, will be found the substance of his matured views on the 
 Land Question in Australia. If, as may be confidently pre- 
 dicted will be the case, a complete volume of Lord Sher- 
 brooke's speeches, addresses, and pamphlets should one day 
 be given to the world, this address, though dealing with a 
 bygone controversy in a remote colony, should assuredly find 
 a iDlace. 
 
 Mr. Lowe thus concluded his speech in the Council : — 
 
 The present motion would be defeated, not by the will, the 
 opinion, the sense of that House, but by the junction of a party 
 governed by self-interest with the unwilling, but fettered members 
 of an irresponsible Government. To say, after what they had seen 
 tbat night, that there was no danger to be apprehended from the 
 growing influence of the squatters was simply to close the ears 
 to the warnings of human experience. They saw an unwilling 
 Government dragged at the wheels of the chariot of the hon. and 
 learned member for Sydney — while they might have spread life and 
 vigour, and wealth and prosperity through the wide range of the 
 Colony. ' If they had done these things in the green tree, judge ye 
 what they wiU do in the dry.' 
 
 The division was then taken, and may be here recorded 
 as showing the names and opinions of the members of the 
 Legislative Council of 1847 : — 
 
 
 Ayes 
 
 Noes 
 
 Mr. Lowe 
 
 Mr. Dangar 
 
 
 , Murray 
 
 ,, Darvall 
 
 
 , Lamb 
 
 ,, Foster 
 
 
 , Lord 
 
 „ Parker 
 
 
 , Bowman 
 
 Capt. Dumaresq 
 
 
 , Brewster 
 
 The Commander of the Forces 
 
 
 , Bland 
 
 Mr. G. Macleay 
 
 
 , Suttor 
 
 Capt. O'Connell 
 
 
 , Icely 
 
 Mr. "Wcntworth 
 
 
 , Cowper (teller) 
 
 „ Wild 
 
 
 „ Allen 
 
 
 The Attorney-General 
 
 
 
 Mr. Robinson {telltr)
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 341 
 
 The figures of the division, it will be seen, are close ; the 
 names, for the most part, save to a very few surviving old 
 colonists, will convey little or nothing. But to the people of 
 New South Wales in 1847, those names conveyed a great deal, 
 for, as Mr. Lowe said, the division list proved his assertion — 
 that every member of the Council who was not a Crown offi- 
 cial and therefore compelled to vote in favour of Earl Grey's 
 measure, or else a squatter and therefore directly interested 
 in its provisions, was on his side. This entirely disproves an 
 assertion, frequently made by colonial writers even up to the 
 present day, that Eobert Lowe was an inconsistent, and to that 
 extent untrustworthy, political leader in Australia, because he 
 had first of all been the chief champion of the squatters, and 
 afterwards their principal opponent. The answer is that he 
 was their chief champion when they were fighting for their 
 constitutional rights, and their principal opponent when they 
 were grasping at the patrimony of the whole people. As he 
 said himself, he may, perhaps, have made mistakes, and not 
 even have been altogether consistent in the plans he had put 
 forward during the years he had been in the colony, ' but his 
 lips bad ever been the organ of his heart.' 
 
 It was, indeed, the social conditions that had changed. 
 Ptobert Lowe's land policy for Australia was, in brief, while 
 treating the pastoral tenants of the Crown with strict fairness, 
 and in no wise subjecting them to any arbitrary exactions, 
 to make every effort to establish a genuine yeomanry. This 
 was the meaning of his constant efforts to get Australian wheat 
 into the English markets duty free ; it was for this that he 
 devoted night after night to the discussion of the question of 
 what were called the ' waste lands ' of the colony, which he 
 maintained could never be permanently settled save by means 
 of a minimum, and not, as Gibbon Wakefield held, by a maxi- 
 mum upset price. As already stated, Lowe was chairman of a 
 special committee appointed by the Council on this subject of 
 the price of land, and he himself prepared, with his own
 
 342 LIFE OF LOED SHEllBROOIvE 
 
 hand, the report of that committee, "which agrarian reformers, 
 even of the advanced school of Mr. Henry George, might do 
 well to peruse. It greatly enhanced his reputation at the time, 
 and the Sydney Morning Herald, in a leading article (Oct. IG, 
 1847) thus commented on it : — 
 
 We must not conclude without offering to the Committee, and 
 especially to their gifted Chairman, our hearty thanks for their 
 valuable services. ... Of the report we can, with all sincerity, 
 declare that we prize it as an ornament to our official literature, an 
 honour to the colony, and an acquisition to the course of political 
 science. 
 
 Wentworth and most of the squatter party supported 
 Lowe at first in his strenuous endeavours to cheapen the 
 price of land. But when Earl Grey offered them the fixed 
 tenure of their ' runs,' with the proviso that the high price of 
 Crown lands should be maintained, they speedily forgot all 
 their former liberal professions. We can hardly wonder at 
 it, for human nature is weak, and the Orders in Council 
 converted them — a handful of men — from tenants at will into 
 something very like proprietors of the enormous territory 
 which now forms the two chief colonies of Australia, with a 
 population of over two million souls. 
 
 It does not fall within the present narrative to relate how 
 after all most of them profited very little by Earl Grey's ill- 
 considered land legislation. Briefl}^ it may be added, that 
 with the gold discoveries of 1852 there came an enormous 
 influx of immigration, quickly followed by the granting of 
 responsible government to New South Wales and the newly- 
 created colony of Victoria. After violent public agitation, 
 these newly-created colonial legislatures, in answer to the cry 
 ' Unlock the lands,' wrested from the squatters the privileges 
 which Earl Grey had conferred upon them by an Imperial Act, 
 and, so far as they could, carried out the agrarian principles 
 which Robert Lowe had laid down some years before in the 
 Legislative Council of Sydney. Lord Sherbrooke, therefore,
 
 MR. LO^YE A^'D THE SQUATTERS 343 
 
 while baffled by the coalition of the Crown officials and 
 squatters, may be most justly regarded as the true father of 
 the yeoman class in New South Wales and Victoria, and as 
 the first of Australian land reformers. 
 
 Before bringing this chapter to a close, a few words with 
 reference to the personnel of the leading squatters of this time 
 may throw light on this fierce controversy. It must not for 
 a moment be supposed that they were in all cases utterly 
 selfish, grasping, and unpatriotic. Many of them were, as 
 Lord Sherbrooke himself declared, high-spirited and cultured 
 men, and some of them of the best blood of England. In 
 one of the most striking passages in the particular speech of 
 the series of agrarian philippics, from which extracts have 
 been reproduced in this chapter, he appeals personally to this 
 class — the class of genuine pioneer squatter — those who 
 in Australia's critical conjunctures and times of need had 
 rendered her good service. At the same time he contrasts 
 with these ' those mercenary speculators ' who gave no 
 thoughts to the welfare of their fellow-subjects or to the 
 future of Australia, so long as they might aggrandise them- 
 selves. To these he says : ' I would make no such appeal, 
 but, with that contempt they deserve, bid them take their 
 pound of flesh and begone.' 
 
 It was really these latter— mere land jobbers and specu- 
 lators carrying on vast undertakings with borrowed English 
 capital — who, by their political machinations and influence in 
 London, had managed to get control both over the Colonial 
 Office and the local Legislative Council. The story of the 
 two brothers, Archibald and Benjamin Boyd, and of their 
 financial and political agent, the Quaker Eobinson, would 
 furnish the subject for a striking colonial romance. Ben- 
 jamin Boyd had arrived in the colony in a yacht of the 
 royal squadron some time in the early ' forties,' and, as 
 he had a fine appearance, a glib tongue, and apparently 
 unlimited money, dressed well and talked much of his aristo-
 
 344 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 cratic connections, he was at once accepted in Sydney as a 
 great man whose resources and capital would revive the 
 drooping fortunes of the place. He began gambling in land 
 on the most gigantic scale, and projected a town, or rather 
 city, at Twofold Bay, the details of which make Dickens's 
 account of Eden in Martin Chuzzleivit seem quite matter 
 of fact. He and his brother had started a huge financial 
 institution, at the head of which he placed the unfortunate Mr. 
 Eobinson. They owned whaling vessels, which they manned 
 chiefly with Maoris and South Sea Islanders. They beguiled 
 poor immigrants hundreds of miles from Sydney to one or 
 other of their innumerable runs ; then offered them the 
 princely wages of lOZ. a year, with beggarly rations. If they 
 refused, they were compelled to walk back, and an old colo- 
 nial chronicler tells us that ' while a few strong men walked 
 back over the mountains, those who remained created such a 
 feeling in "the country that Mr. Boyd could not venture to 
 visit his stations until the time of the year when the police 
 magistrate, with a guard of policemen, took his annual round.' 
 The extent of country w'hich Archibald and Benjamin Boyd 
 at one time controlled was simply enormous. These Napo- 
 leonic operations were all carried on by borrowed money from 
 London, and so one day the crash came. 
 
 Then Benjamin Boyd, broken in fortune, started oft" in his 
 yacht for the South Sea Islands, where he was killed and 
 eaten. It was a horrible death, luit there seemed a rude 
 justice in it, for he and his brother and their agent Eobinson 
 had kidnapped hundreds of these unfortunate natives and 
 sliipped them to New South Wales to work for little or 
 nothing on their stations, whei'e they died in shoals. Mr. 
 Archil jald Boyd, who was quite as dazzling a personage as 
 his brother during this brief champagne time of froth and 
 excitement, managed to get back to England, where he ended 
 his days in a garret in liloomsbury, writing novels of tlu! 
 Faintly Ilcnilil type. Had he but told the story of his own
 
 MR. LOWE AND THE SQUATTERS 345 
 
 brief career as a pastoral king, it must have been the most 
 fascinating of AustraKan narratives. The Quaker Eobinson, 
 who seemed at first to have a really promising career before 
 him, became the dupe as well as the agent of the Boyds, and 
 after the crash died suddenly in Sydney — it was rumoured by 
 his own hand. It seems almost incredible that such men as 
 these could have affected the political history of a great 
 colony : yet nothing can be clearer than that it was through 
 their influence and astuteness that the Hon. Francis Scott 
 had been appointed the paid agent of the pastoralists in the 
 House of Commons, and that by this means the squatters had 
 been transformed from suppliants into masters. 
 
 Had Wentworth remained true to his former patriotic 
 convictions, these men would have been powerless. But this 
 remarkable man — the one truly great man of our race born in 
 this strange new world of Australia— proved deaf to the appeal 
 so eloquently made by Lowe to his nobler nature. The bribe 
 was too great ; the Orders in Council made secure his position 
 and gave him the vhtual mastery in the local legislature. 
 INlixed with the fine gold of his great spirit and masterful 
 personality, there was a strain of base alloy ; and, truth to 
 tell, the Wentworth of nearly sixty years of age, though he 
 could still rouse himself to great intellectual efforts, was no 
 longer the earnest vehement reformer and patriot of earlier 
 days. 
 
 Eobert Lowe had publicly declared that if, by the un- 
 principled alliance of the Crown officials and the pastoralists, 
 this squatter oligarchy was to be set up, he would no longer 
 remain in the country. It was, indeed, after the division on 
 this memorable night had been taken in the old Legislative 
 Council, that he confided to his one intimate friend, William 
 Macleay, that as soon as he could arrange his affairs he would 
 return to England. There were evils, he said, in the system 
 of an old established aristocracy ; but to have a brand-new, 
 overbearing, traditionless squatting oligarchy placed over you
 
 346 LIFE OF I-ORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 was simply intolerable. He had, however, still a work to do. 
 He was yet to stand forth as the champion of the rights of 
 the free immigrants — the untainted population of the colony 
 — against the further deplorable attempt of Earl Grey to 
 revive the practice of criminal transportation. Moreover, 
 Eobert Lowe was to become member for Sydnej'.
 
 '> 
 
 47 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A SLAVE-TEADE PHILIPPIC 
 
 The ' Orator ' in Heads of the People — German and French Immigrants — 
 The Squatters and the South Sea Islanders 
 
 The series of brilliant and impassioned speeches on the Land 
 Question had raised the fame of EobertLowe as an orator to the 
 very highest pitch among the whole of the colonists, urban and 
 pastoral, of New South Wales. This is shown by the fact that 
 an enterprising journalist of Sydney who had projected an 
 illustrated weekly newspaper called Heads of the People (a kind 
 of humble forerunner of Vanity Fair), singled him out for his 
 issue of Sept. 4, 1847, as the type of the 'Orator.' It is rather 
 amusing to find that the editor was unable to induce ' Mr. 
 Robert Lowe, M.C.,' to sit for his portrait. He, however, 
 managed to produce a caricature, representing the ' Orator ' 
 in a frock-coat, and with his hands (very ill- drawn) spread out 
 on the table, over which he was leaning in the act of addressing 
 the House. This rude portrait has been at times reproduced 
 in Australia ; but it is absolutely worthless as a likeness, as, 
 indeed, the editor of this long-forgotten Australian journal 
 admitted in the accompanying letterpress. 
 
 The portion of the article, however, describing Robert 
 Lowe's qualities as an orator may still be read with some 
 interest : — 
 
 Mr. Lowe (observes his early colonial critic) has many advan- 
 tages, with some disadvantages, as an orator. His advantages — and 
 in this respect be leaves all competition far behind him— are a rapid 
 and fluent delivery ; a splendid command over figures of speech and
 
 348 LIFE OF LOED SIIERBROOKE 
 
 rhetorical ornaments, sometimes, indeed, verging on the turgid ; a 
 perfect acquaintance with the classics, and with modern literature, 
 and a good knowledge of the law. 
 
 The writer then goes on to state that the contest in the Legis- 
 lative Council for leadership ' lies between Mr. Wentworth 
 and Mr. Lowe.' For himself, he gives the palm to the former, 
 though admitting that he has none of the * wonderful com- 
 mand of well-chosen words possessed by his rival.' With these 
 two the colonial editor links the name of a man who was then 
 almost at the close of his short earthly career — Eichard 
 Windeyer. 
 
 ' Mr. Windeyer's forte,'' he says, ' is satire. His sarcasms 
 are more unpleasant to bear than the most virulent abuse.' 
 After Lowe, Wentworth, and Windeyer, this not altogether 
 injudicious critic considered that in Deas Thomson, the 
 Colonial Secretary, the old Legislative Council of Sydney 
 possessed * a plain, matter-of-fact, business-like orator,' whose 
 speeches would win the confidence and attention of any 
 parliamentary body. 
 
 Lowe had, of course, completely alienated the most in- 
 fluential section of the community — the squatters. This he 
 knew perfectly well, and during the remainmg couple of years 
 of his public life in Sydney he fought them, so to speak, with 
 his back to the wall. The handing over of the millions of 
 broad acres of New South Wales and Port Phillip to the 
 I)astoral tenants and land-gamblers seemed to haunt him like 
 a nightmare. There is no doubt that it was the selfishness 
 displayed by the squatters in thus getting possession of the 
 public patrimony which drove him, during his last year in 
 Sydney, into the leadership of the anti-transportation party. 
 This was after his election to the city of Sydney, when, as I 
 shall show, he was for a brief while the leading agitator and 
 the most popular tribune of the colonial democracy. 
 
 Before narrating the events following on the general 
 election of 1818, there are still one or two stirring episodes to
 
 A SLA^'E-TRADE PHILIPPIC 349 
 
 recall in connection with his public conduct as the member for 
 the joint counties of St. Vincent and Auckland. On August 
 27, 1847, a petition was presented from a number of German 
 residents in Sydney praying to be allowed the privileges and 
 immunities of English subjects. The German element has 
 always been strong in the colony of South Australia, and 
 very law-abiding and prosperous in all the colonies. It is 
 pleasant to find that Lowe seconded the motion on their 
 behalf; there was, however, a difficulty in the way, as no 
 general statute affecting the naturalisation of foreigners 
 had been passed by the Imperial Parliament. The Quaker 
 member, Mr. Robinson, who could be very liberal where the 
 public lands were not concerned, urged that the sooner they 
 got rid of all restrictions, the better ; in his opinion, thej^ 
 should encourage all foreigners to come and settle. These 
 innocent remarks aroused Lowe's sense of irony at once. 
 He rejoiced, he said, to hear that the hon. member for 
 Melbourne was disposed to offer every inducement to foreigners 
 to come amongst them, but the ' very strongest inducement 
 would be the offer of a little of the land of which he and his 
 class had been kind enough to relieve the colony.' 
 
 If French emigrants should come hither, driven out of their 
 own country by the abolition of the law of primogeniture and the 
 consequent subdivision of the land, it would be highly refreshing to 
 them to see in how few hands the lands are vested here. They 
 would say, at all events, ' Whatever rock these New South Wales 
 fellows have split upon, it is not on the subdivision of the land.' 
 (Koars of laughter.) 
 
 On October 1st, 1847, two days before the Legislative 
 Council adjourned, Eobert Lowe made a much more serious 
 attack on the enterprising Boyd Brothers and their man-of- 
 all-work, the Quaker Piobinson, for kidnapping South Sea 
 islanders, and shipping them to New South Wales to supply 
 on their stations the free convict labour which was no longer 
 accessible. As just now the South Sea labour traffic is a
 
 o ': 
 
 50 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 burning question between various religious philanthropists 
 and the Government of Queensland, it may be as well to point 
 out that the kidnapping system of the Boyds, which Lord 
 Sherbrooke so powerfully denounced, was totally different 
 to the proposed ' regulated ' Kanaka labour. These selfish 
 and masterful men, who had gone out to Australia merely to 
 make money as fast as they could, and who had become 
 virtual masters of the colony for the time being, felt them- 
 selves under no restrictions, moral or legal, in their transactions 
 with the unfortunate savages of the South Sea Islands. This 
 system of employing, even under governmental restrictions, 
 the labour of these inferior races is by no means yet settled 
 in Australia ; but it is plain that there can be no analogy 
 between the social condition of New South Wales and Port 
 Phillip in 1847, and that of North Queensland in 1892. In the 
 former case the islanders were kidnapped and conveyed in many 
 cases to the high plateau and more mountainous portions of 
 these southern and colder regions. There was no Government 
 supervision whatever, and whether the unfortunate islanders 
 died on these vast sheep-runs, or were speared by the aborigines, 
 then comparatively numerous, seemed to be a matter that con- 
 cerned no one. We shall never know the proportions to which 
 this Polynesian slave trade attained in these early years ; but 
 of the hundreds of South Sea islanders who were imported by 
 the Boyds and Piobinson alone, it is hardly likely that any 
 ever again beheld their native shores. 
 
 It is evident that this illegal traffic must have attained 
 considerable proportions when Eobert Lowe from his place 
 in the Legislative Council gave notice of the following 
 motion : — 
 
 That an Address be presented to his Excellency the Governor, 
 setting forth that this Council begs to call the serious attention of 
 the Executive Government to the incipient slave trade which is 
 so rapidly springing up between this colony and the islands of the 
 Pacific Ocean. 
 
 That this House desires to point the attention of his Excellency
 
 A SLAVE-TRADE nilLIPPIC 351 
 
 to the third and ninth clauses of the Imperial Act 5 Geo. IV. 
 c. 113. 
 
 That the existing traffic in human creatures obviously unable to 
 contract for themselves, and who must, therefore, be brought from 
 their native land either by force or fraud, is clearly within the 
 spirit (perhaps the letter) of this enactment, and that it is the duty 
 of the Government to take immediate and vigorous steps for its 
 suppression. 
 
 His speech in proposing this resolution on October 1st, 
 1817, was one of the longest and most impassioned ever de- 
 livered by him in that Council. The public excitement that 
 it evoked is shown by the number of columns it occupies in the 
 somewhat clumsy report of the next day's Sydney Morning 
 Herald. It is much to be regretted that Lord Sherbrooke 
 in later life did not find time to revise this report, for the 
 subject is an important one, and after almost half a century 
 is still a question of Australian, if not of Imperial import and 
 significance. 
 
 In his indictment of this traffic in Polynesian labour Lowe 
 did not hesitate to characterise it as ' a new form of the slave 
 trade,' into the past history of which he entered with great 
 fulness. But he admitted that the materials on which he had 
 to build this charge were few and scanty ; it was but an 
 incipient slave trade, against which he wished to guard the 
 colony : — 
 
 I stand not in the same position that Wilberforce did when he 
 raised his voice against this trade. Then its supporters came un- 
 blushingly forward and avowed their acts, for they were not then 
 legally criminal. But a dark, mysterious veil is thrown over this 
 traffic : we hear of frays and bloodshed, of the cutting off crews of 
 boats, we hear of presents to chiefs ; but of detailed accounts of 
 this commerce we have none. We know nothing of the condition 
 of the people that are brought here : whether they were prisoners 
 of war, whether they were slaves at home, whether they came of 
 their own free will, or were at the disposal of the chiefs. 
 
 The speaker then proceeded to analyse the nature of the 
 alleged contract under which these South Sea islanders were
 
 352 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 brought to work on the sheep-runs of New South Wales and 
 Port Phillip: — 
 
 The form of the precious contract was as follows : — 'I ■ 
 
 [blank, to be filled up by some hard name], 'native of [blank 
 again], 'in the Pacific Ocean, have this day agreed with' [here 
 follows the name of the captain of the vessel], ' on the part of Mr. 
 Benjamin Boyd, of the City of Sydney, N.S.W., to serve the said 
 Benjamin Boyd in the capacity of a seaman in any of his ships or as 
 a whaler, either on board or on shore, or as a shepherd or other 
 labom-er, in any part of the colony of N.S.W., and to make my- 
 self generally useful for the term of five years.' 
 
 Now, what abstract idea could these savages have of Benjamin 
 Boyd, Avith whom they were contracting ? The Hindoos in India, 
 it was said, took the East India Company to be an old woman, and 
 the same sort of feeling in the present case was not unlikely. But 
 what could these savages know of Mr. Benjamin Boyd ? How could 
 they know whether he was a demon of good or evil order ? It was 
 not pretended that they could form an opinion. What abstract 
 idea of a shepherd could these natives have, Avhen they had never 
 seen a sheep on their native island at all ? But there was a further 
 stipulation, that the servant thus introduced should make himself 
 generally useful. Now, the gentlemen who frequented the registry 
 offices knew very well what were the duties this term involved. But 
 Avas anybody foolish enough to believe that the savage did so ? 
 Then, again, it was stipulated that they should serve for a period of 
 five years ; and perhaps the hon. member for Melbourne (Robinson) 
 would inform them what powers of enumeration were possessed by 
 these savages to enable them to comprehend what the period of five 
 years was. Perhaps they might be similar to the Cherokees, who 
 were unable to reckon more than three, and when asked as to any 
 greater number, pointed to the hairs of their head to signify that they 
 were innumerable. Then followed the other part of the agreement, 
 in which this man-stealer, on the part of Mr. Benjamin P>oyd, agreed 
 to pay these savages wages at the rate of 1/. Os. per annum, with the 
 following weekly ration, viz. :— meat, ten pounds ; and he supposed, 
 although it was a matter of some difficulty among civilised people to 
 determineher Majesty's weights and measures, they, the savages, knew 
 what ten pounds was. Mai/.c, wheat, or flour, seven pounds ; doubt- 
 less the savages have a knowledge of wheat, maize, meal, and a correct 
 abstract idea of a mill. Then, as to clothing, there was, first of all, one 
 pair of moleskin trousers, the savage being, doubtless, well acquainted 
 Avith the texture and manufacture of moleskins ; a pair of linen 
 trousers ; a woollen shirt, which he ought as a shepherd to Imow 
 something about ; a cotton shirt ; and next he came to an article of
 
 A SLAYE-TEADE rillLIPPIC 353 
 
 peculiar interest, doubtless, to the savages — it was ' one Kilmarnock 
 cap.' Now, though neither a cannibal nor a native of Tanna, I am 
 myself utterly unacquainted with the meaning of a Kilmarnock cap. 
 One blanket completed the outfit. 
 
 Thus, with one shirt and a blanket these poor wretches were to 
 be sent from the burning heat of a tropical sun to Maneroo, which 
 has a winter of almost European severity. Whether this was slave- 
 trade or not, it was a piece of inhumanity which ought to call 
 down the execration of the House, and of which I trust there are 
 members who will not shrink from expressing their opinion. 
 
 The agreement then went on to say ' that the full meaning 
 and terms of this agreement, as read in English, having been 
 
 first truly and clearly explained to me by -, who understands 
 
 my native language, I affix my mark hereto in testimony of my 
 concurrence in this present engagement.' 
 
 The date followed ; but I am glad that the words anno Domini 
 are left out, as it shows that even the most obdurate consciences 
 shrank from the introduction of the name of Christ into this 
 document. 
 
 Speaking in this strain of mingled irony and indignation 
 for a couple of hours, Lowe moved the resolution, which was 
 seconded by Charles Cowper. Robinson rose and defended 
 himself and Benjamin Boyd. He stated that the importation of 
 South Sea islanders into the colony arose in this way : Some 
 five years ago the whaling industry, previously an important 
 one, was abandoned ; the whaling boats were in consequence 
 idle. They could get no seamen. At first New Zealanders 
 were shipped to the extent of the third of a crew of a wdialing 
 vessel, and then increased to one-half. This proved success- 
 ful, and was the foundation of * savage ' labour. They then 
 went to the Pacific Islands. True, some of these islanders 
 were cannibals ; so were the aborigines of Australia. Mr. 
 Eobinson then solemnly read Boyd's instructions to one of 
 his station-managers as to these imported islanders, from 
 which it would seem that it was necessary to keep them in 
 bodies, as a safeguard against the attacks of the ' old hands ' 
 (meaning the convict shepherds). As for their rations, Mr. 
 Eobinson explained that they had no tea or sugar, but 
 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 354 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 plenty of potatoes ; they were very intelligent, and could 
 count. 
 
 Mr. Kobinson further read the articles of agreement with 
 the Chinese at one of the stations controlled by the Boyd 
 syndicate. By article eleven three days were allowed in every 
 year to the Chinaman for the performance of his religious 
 rites. 
 
 In the subsequent debate the Colonial Secretary (Deas 
 Thomson) avowed his intention of voting against the motion, 
 but admitted that the importation of ' savage ' labour might 
 ruin the colony. The Attorney- General (Plunkett) — the 
 official whom the Boyds and Piobinson most dreaded — was 
 more outspoken than his colleague. He unhesitatingly con- 
 demned ' savage labour at sixpence a week and a shirt a 
 year.' 
 
 Kobert Lowe then rose and said the object he had had in 
 view was completely achieved. He had called the attention 
 of the House and the country to what he had designated an 
 ' incipient slave trade ' ; and an incipient slave trade nine out 
 of ten would now consider it. After the remarks of the 
 Attorney-General he was quite willing to withdraw his motion 
 and leave the matter in the hands of the Government, on 
 whom he had not the slightest intention of casting any 
 imputation. In answer to Wentworth's taunt that he had 
 agitated this question of Polynesian labour merely out of ill- 
 feeling towards the Boyds and Piobinson, Lowe replied with 
 great feeling and indignation : — 
 
 The hon. member for Sydney has condescended to charge me 
 with being actuated by ill-feeling towards the hon. member for 
 ^Melbourne and those with whom he is connected. I can assure 
 the House that I wish to blast no man's character ; that I have 
 no feeling against either of the persons named — but I have a 
 feehng respecting the things which they do. I have a strong 
 feeling respecting monopoly, against griping, over-reaching and 
 tyrannous oppression ; and it is because 1 believe that they, and the 
 hon. member for Sydney also, did these things, that I have any
 
 A SLAVE-TEADE PHILIPPIC 355 
 
 feeling of opposition towards them, "What is it to me that they have 
 inundated the country with cannibals ; that by their grasping 
 monopoly they made that which might be a garden into a wilder- 
 ness ? I am only a sojourner ; I could cut the cable and leave the 
 colony to them — some of them sons of the soil, who had accom- 
 plished its ruin — to the enjoyment of the fruits of their own work. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to repeat that the Labour problem 
 has assumed quite a different phase in Australia in our day. 
 In fairness one must admit that the proposal to introduce 
 Kanaka labour into North Queensland has received the support 
 of Sir Samuel Griffith, a Liberal statesman of distinction, 
 Wliether Lord Sherbrooke would have supported the policy of 
 introducing, under strict governmental regulations, the labour 
 of South Sea islanders on the sugar plantations of northern 
 Queensland is perhaps doubtful. But that he would have felt 
 very little sympathy with the tyrannical policy of the Australian 
 Trade Unions is certain. Nothing stirred him so much as 
 the sight of 023pression and injustice, whether exercised by 
 individuals or by classes. 
 
 A A
 
 356 LIFE OF LORD SIIEPtBPtOOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 
 
 Lowe's Address to the Electors of St. Vincent — Action of Henry Parkes and 
 Sydney Electors — Eeturned for Sydney without canvass or expense — His 
 last Letter ' home ' 
 
 The General Election of 1848 was the most exciting and the 
 most important that had ever been held m the colon3\ Mr. 
 Lowe decided to stand again for his former constituency, and 
 on July 1st issued the following Address to the electors of the 
 united counties of St. Vincent and Auckland : — 
 
 Gentlemen, — "When you did me the honour to elect me as your 
 representative, I was earnestly desirous of carrying out three 
 objects — the reduction of the minimum price of Crown lands to a 
 reasonable sum ; the removing from us the impending danger of 
 district councils ; and the applying a searchiug and systematic 
 economy to the pubhc expenditure. 
 
 On the first of these subjects, the reduction of the price of lands, 
 a majority, consisting of officials who are obliged to vote according 
 to the direction of the Government, and large squatters, who con- 
 sider the maintenance of this price essential to their private interests, 
 have, in the last session, declined to express any opinion, and I have 
 thus the mortification of seeing that, while the Legislative Council 
 is hesitating, the question is practically settled by the division of 
 the most valuable and saleable lands of the colony among about 
 one thousand colonists, who can neither sell, cultivate, nor improve 
 them. 
 
 As to the question of district councils, we are threatened with 
 a Constitution whicli not merely adopts them, but makes them the 
 point upon which the whole system of government is to revolve. 
 And yet upon this subject also the Legislative Council has felt itself 
 unequal to express any opinion. The country has spoken, but its 
 representatives have been silent.
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 357 
 
 As to the public expenditure, I have been one of a small minority 
 usually outnumbered by the officials and Crown noroinees in our 
 efforts to stem the torrent of corruption. Our ill-success may be 
 attributed to three causes— the unaccountable conduct of many 
 representative members, who have absented themselves from the 
 Council altogether ; to the almost uniform support given on principle 
 by the members from Port Phillip to any measure of the Govern- 
 ment ; and by the lamentable want of independence of some of the 
 members of the middle district. From these causes, after all our 
 boasted economy, we leave the expenditure of the country as large 
 as we found it, and have given the sanction of a partly-elected 
 assembly to abuses which we ought not to have tolerated for an 
 instant. 
 
 It is under these discouraging circumstances, Gentlemen, I again 
 offer my services to you as your representative. As far as depends 
 on me, those services shall be rendered with the same zeal and in- 
 dependence ; but the constituencies of the country must determine 
 whether they shall be attended with better success. 
 
 I regret that the shortness of the period fixed for the return of 
 the writs, and my indispensable professional duties, will render it 
 impossible for me to attend personally at the election, and to give 
 to you that account of the trust you have reposed in me which you 
 are entitled to ask, and which I am willing, and I believe able, to 
 render. 
 
 I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert Lowe. 
 
 It is clear that Lowe had created widespread popular 
 enthusiasm on behalf of himself and his political convictions ; 
 for without his consent, or even knowledge, a number of the 
 leading electors of Sydney met together and decided to requi- 
 sition him to allow himself to be put in nomination for the 
 metropolitan constituency. In the only daily journal that 
 Sydney then boasted — the Herald— ior July 5th, 1848, the 
 following announcement appeared : — 
 
 City Electors. 
 
 The friends of Robert Lowe, Esq., are requested to sign the 
 requisition, copies of which are lying at the undermentioned 
 places : — 
 
 Mr. H. Parkes's, Hunter Street ; &c. &c.
 
 358 LIFE OF LORD SHERBPtOOKE 
 
 The City of Sydney had two representatives in the Legis- 
 lative Council, and both the old members were seeking re- 
 election—William Charles Wentworth and Dr. William Bland. 
 It is very clear that the object of Mr. (now Sir Henry) Parkes 
 and his friends in bringing forward Eobert Lowe was to 
 challenge, and if possible conquer, the stronghold of Wentworth. 
 However, at first the late member and candidate for St. Yin- 
 cent and Auckland was clearly averse to so hazardous and 
 apparently hopeless an enterprise. 
 
 On the same day that Mr. Henry Parkes's announcement 
 appeared in the paper there was a report of a political meeting 
 held on the previous evening in the Mechanics' School of Art, 
 Pitt Street, on which occasion Robert Lowe had supported the 
 candidature of Mr. John Lamb for the city in a remarkably 
 able address. But the anti-Wentworthites— or, as the squatters 
 called them, the Piadicals— were determined that Lowe should 
 himself stand. Accordingly, the following requisition was 
 hastily prepared and signed by a number of his enthusiastic 
 admirers : — 
 
 To Bohert Loice, Esq. 
 
 Sir, — We, the undersigned Electors of the City of Sydney beg 
 you will allow yourself to be put in nomination as a candidate for 
 the representation of our interests in the Legislative Council at the 
 forthcoming General Election. In the event of your complying 
 with our request, we pledge ourselves to use our utmost endeavours 
 to secure your return. 
 
 J. K. WiLSHiKE, Aldennan. 
 W. S. Macleay. 
 Anthony Hoedekn. 
 Henry Paekes. 
 John Robertson. 
 
 S. Samuel. 
 P. N. Russell. 
 G. A. Lloyd. 
 W. W. Billyard. 
 
 The committee formed to collect signatures to the above requi- 
 sition have determined to put ]\Ir. Lowe in nomination at the 
 approaching election and to poll the last vote. 
 13y order of the Committee, 
 
 J. K. Heydon, ) t • 1 <y A • 
 ,T T, I Joint Secretaries. 
 
 Henry Parkes, )
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 359 
 
 With the exception of the ex-Mayor and WilHam Macleay, 
 these electors of the City of Sydney were all young unknown 
 men at the time. But it is noteworthy that two of them after- 
 wards filled more than once the office of Prime Minister, while 
 two others became Treasurers and Postmaster-Generals of the 
 colony ; and every one of the nine who thus requisitioned 
 Lord Sherbrooke to stand for the metropolis became, in some 
 way, a man of mark. 
 
 Eobert Lowe at first held back, no doubt for the reason that 
 he had already offered a renewal of his services to the ' joint 
 counties.' Mr. Parkes, however, as all who know him can 
 testify, was never the man to be lightly put aside from his 
 purpose. He lost no time in using his persuasive powers, and 
 to some effect, for on the following day, July 8th, this startling 
 announcement appeared in the columns of the Herald: — 
 
 To the Electors of the City of Sydney. 
 
 Brother Electors, — We ask you to vote for Mr. Lowe because 
 we believe he will strenuously endeavour to enlarge the elective 
 franchise [surely a strange reason when we think of the great anti- 
 reform speeches in the House of Commons]. 
 
 We ask you (it continued) to vote for him because we believe he 
 will be the successful advocate of an equitable alienation of tbe 
 public lands and an economical expenditure of the public money. 
 In short, we ask you to vote for Mr. LoAve because we ni our hearts 
 believe be will be tbe ablest defender and most incorruptible pro- 
 moter of our common rights and liberties, not being bound by any 
 predilections of self-interest. 
 
 Electors and Freemen, — You have been told that Mr. Lowe 
 will not take his seat for Sydney if elected. This is not true ; here 
 are Mr. Lowe's own words : — 
 
 ' In answer to a question from you, whether I would sit for the 
 city if elected, I repeat, Yes. 
 
 ' I could not so far insult the citizens of Sydney as to refuse. 
 
 ' Yours very truly, 
 
 'EoBEBT Lowe.' 
 
 Mr. Lowe was thus placed somewhat in the tantalising 
 position of Captain Macheath between the two charmers ; and 
 although his enthusiastic admirers in Sydney offered to defray
 
 360 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 his expenses, he did not definitively consent to stand. But 
 on July 13th a letter written by him appeared in the newspaper, 
 apparently in reply to some hostile criticisms as to his inde- 
 cision m the matter. 
 
 To the Editors of the ' Sydney Morning Herald.' 
 ' Non fumiUQ ex fiilgore, sed ex fiimo dare lucem.' 
 
 Gentlemen, — As it appears from your paper that there is some 
 misconception abroad as to my position ■\\dtli respect to the Sydney 
 election, I beg to make the following statement : — 
 
 When I was asked to become a candidate for the City of Sydney, 
 I said No, because I was a supporter of Mr. Lamb, and because I 
 had already addressed my former constituents. When I was asked 
 whether I would sit for the City if elected, I said Yes, because to 
 refuse would have been to insult the citizens and to forego the 
 possibihty of a triumph for those principles with which I am 
 identified ; and because neither my duty to Mr. Lamb nor to my 
 former constituents seemed to me to require sucli a denial. Li this 
 I can see neither coquetry nor contradiction. It is one thing to 
 refuse to solicit an honour, it is another to refuse to accept it when 
 obtained. I will not solicit the votes of the electors of Sydney, but 
 if they return me unsolicited I will not refuse the seat. I know 
 no words which can make this statement of my intentions more 
 explicit ; if I did, I would use them. 
 
 1 am, Gentlemen, 
 ' Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert Lowe. 
 
 The election was fought out with the utmost determina- 
 tion on both sides. The nomination took place on July 27th, 
 and dense crowds began to assemble at the hustings as early 
 as ten in the morning. \Vhen Lowe put in an appearance 
 on the platform he was greeted with tumultuous applause ; 
 while "Wentworth, now self-deposed from his position of 
 popular idol, was hissed by the crowd, though cheered by his 
 immediate friends. Wentworth was nominated first, and 
 received with cries of ' Coolies ! ' ; but when Alderman 
 Wilshire came forward to propose Robert Lowe, deafening 
 cheers rent the air, which were renewed again and again when 
 his proposer declaimed : —
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 361 
 
 ' Mr. Lowe had been represented as the idol of the people. 
 . . . The people had formerly their political idols, but mis- 
 sionaries had come in among them, who had taught them the 
 folly and wrong of such worship.' 
 
 This very palpable hit at Wentworth was of course 
 mightily relished by the surging crowd. Mr. Weekes, Lowe's 
 seconder, drove the wedge home : — 
 
 Who so fit (he asked) to represent them as Mr. Lowe ? 
 Had he not stood almost alone in the late Council ? Would 
 they allow such a man to be the representative of some fifty 
 bark huts in a distant district ? If they returned Mr. 
 Wentworth, they should take care to send in Mr. Lowe to look 
 after him. Mr. Lowe was the only man in the colony able to 
 grapple with that intellectual giant. 
 
 As might naturally be supposed, these observations had a 
 decidedly ruffling effect on W^entworth, and he proceeded to 
 abuse the new popular idol in his most vigorous style. Nor 
 did he fail to remind the electors of the splendid eulogy which 
 Lowe had passed upon him, when they were political allies, on 
 occasion of the Wentworth Banquet. ' Only two years ago 
 this man,' he said bitterly, ' had heaped praises on me — had, in 
 his flattering, eloquent way, designated me as the great son of 
 the soil.' 
 
 When Lowe came forward he was received with rap- 
 turous applause, again and again renewed. Silence being 
 at length obtained, he addressed the electors with the utmost 
 animation and vigour. He began by saying that he stood 
 before them in a very peculiar position. He was not a candi- 
 date for the representation of the city. He had not solicited 
 a single vote. He had not either addressed or canvassed the 
 electors. But a number of gentlemen who aj^proved of the 
 principles which actuated his conduct in the Legislative Council 
 had thought fit to give their support to those principles, and 
 had that day put him in nomination. 
 
 Then, point by point, he calmly reviewed his own public
 
 362 LIFE OF LOltJ) SIIERBROOKE 
 
 career, and met the plausible taunts of Wentworth as to his 
 inconsistency ; with emphasis he declared that it was the 
 squatters who had lost sight of their political principles, not 
 himself : — 
 
 I have been consistent in fighting for liberty ; the squatters have 
 been consistent in fighting for money. I would remind Mr. Went- 
 worth that, at the very meeting at which I praised him, he had said 
 that he spurned ' fixity of tenure,' which he was now so anxious to 
 retain. Mr. Wentworth had then declared that he sought no tenure 
 beyond that of occupation until the land was wanted for sale. When 
 Mr. Wentworth made that declaration I thought of him only as a 
 patriotic and gifted son of the soil, and in the simplicity and folly 
 of my heart praised him as an example to the rising generation. 
 
 Electioneering crowds in Australia are among the quickest 
 in the world to seize a point or appreciate a palpable hit, and 
 this sample of the ' retort courteous ' was loudly cheered. 
 The battle thus begun was fought out to the bitter end. 
 It was soon seen that though Wentworth's own seat was im- 
 pregnable, that of his old friend and follower, Bland, was 
 by no means secure. Wentworth, like a wise general, cm- 
 ployed all his strategy to defend the weak spot in the citadel. 
 'Whatever your verdict may be with regard to myself (he 
 declared), ' if it be the last public service I- am to render you, I 
 charge you never to forget your tried, devoted, indefatigable 
 friend, William Bland.' It was all of no avail. When the 
 poll was declared it was found that the candidates had polled 
 as follows : — 
 
 Mr. Wentworth 1,1 G8 
 
 Mr. Lowe 1,012 
 
 Mr. Lamb 950 
 
 Dr. Bland 874 
 
 After the declaration of the poll Lowe returned thanks 
 in a speech of great force and fervour, saying that if he 
 were to live for a thousand years, and to employ the whole of 
 the time in contesting elections, he could never again expect 
 to achieve so signal a triumph. And what made it the more
 
 THE GREAT ELECTIOX OF 1848 363 
 
 valuable in his eyes was, that it was not a mere personal 
 triumph, but a triumph of the political principles which he had 
 stood almost alone in vindicating. It is surely a singular 
 thing that the future English statesman, who in after years 
 showed the greatest distrust of the vox 'populi, should have 
 thus been returned by pure popular enthusiasm, without any 
 solicitation on his part, and at no expense to himself.' 
 Despite the fierce contest, he spoke in the highest terms of 
 his colleague's political capacity : — He knew of no man in 
 Australia, no man out of Australia, with whom he should be 
 more proud to act ; nay, if Mr. Wentworth would but regard 
 public affairs from a national, and not a merely personal 
 standpoint, there was no one whose leadership he should be 
 more proud to follow. 
 
 Notwithstanding his deep distrust of the worth and stability 
 of the wealthier classes, Lowe advocated the immediate esta- 
 blishment of responsible government, or, as he expressed it, the 
 giving to the people * the power of expending their own money 
 and making their own laws.' He despaired of the * petty 
 aristocracy ' of the colony, which was banded together to 
 uphold a giant monopoly opposed to the public interest. And, 
 just as he had learnt to distrust the pastoral class, so he 
 could not look to the mercantile interest to support him in his 
 desire to promote the welfare of Australia— an interest, he 
 declared, that had long been rocking to and fro — now in the 
 
 ' ' The committee who conducted the free election of Mr. Robert Lowe beg 
 to lay before the electors the following statement of their gross receijats and 
 expenditure, and to append acknowledgments of the appropriation of the surplus 
 to the funds of the Benevolent Asylum and the Sydney Infirmary : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 Total amount of receipt 118 10 9 
 
 Total amount of disbursements in the election 
 Half surplus to Benevolent Asylum 
 
 Ditto Sydney Infirmary .... 
 
 Aug. 23rd, 1848. W. Colejian, Treasurer: 
 
 109 8 
 4 11 
 4 11 
 
 3 
 3 
 3 
 
 £118 10 
 
 9
 
 364 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 insolvent court, now out of it — without stability, without con- 
 sistency. He would as soon think of building a fortress on an 
 earthquake as he would of depending on a class like that. 
 To the pick of the working classes alone, the skilled artisans 
 and the sober, vigorous, free immigrants, could he turn in his 
 hope of a brighter future for the land of Australia. 
 
 Many, on reading this declaration, will rub their eyes, and 
 doubt if this can indeed be a faithful echo of the warning 
 voice that so eloquently denounced the widening of the fran- 
 chise in England, and the admission of the working classes 
 to a share in the government of this country. It was the 
 same voice, the same man ; the essential difference lay in the 
 circumstances. Eobert Lowe at this period saw no salvation 
 for Australia save in the worth and manhood of the free, 
 untainted working-class immigrants — the honest, plodding 
 toilers from English fields and cities ; above all, the shrewd 
 Scotch artisans of skill and character, such as Dr. Lang was 
 sendmg out. These were beginning to pour into Sydney ; 
 and it was Robert Lowe's most earnest hope that they would 
 overpower and eventually root out the * rotten seed ' with 
 which the land had been so freely sown. 
 
 That his words about the working classes were no mere 
 politic flattery of the mob is at least clear enough ; for he 
 wound up by telling the working men of Sydney who had 
 returned him that, while he promised to listen to their repre- 
 sentations, he reserved to himself the right of exercising 
 unfettered his own judgment. Li the excitement of the hour 
 his hearers may not have noticed the significance of these 
 words ; but they were no idle utterance. However, the pro- 
 ceedings of the day terminated by the new member being 
 dragged home in triumph by the people in Alderman Wilshire's 
 carriage. 
 
 Piobert Lowe keenly appreciated the honour conferred upon 
 him, as the following letter — the last written l)y him from 
 Australia — will sufficiently show : —
 
 THE GREAT ELECTION OF 1848 365 
 
 Bobert Lowe to Mrs. Pyndar of Madresfield. 
 
 Nelson Bay, near Sydney : August 17, 1848. 
 
 My dear Grandmother, — I cannot allow anyone else to deprive 
 me of the pleasure of telling you of a very great compliment which I 
 have recently received, and which, in our little community, is quite 
 as important, and looked upon as quite as great a distinction, as if I 
 had been appointed a member of any provisional government. I 
 was requested on the recent deposition of our little Colonial Parlia- 
 ment to become a candidate for the City of Sydney, which is a very 
 considerable place, containing a population to the number of 50,000, 
 or one quarter of the whole Colonies. I declined the honour, but 
 the people would not be refused, and without my becoming a 
 Candidate, returned me after a very severe contest, in which a great 
 deal of money was spent, and immense exertions made against me. 
 It is gratifying to me, and will, I hope, be so to you, to find that in 
 this remote place I have been able to create for myself so strong a 
 feeling in the minds of so many of my fellow-colonists, and to reflect 
 that for this, and all else of good that I enjoy, I am indebted entirely 
 to your generosity, which has saved me from an odious drudgery 
 which, I am firmly convinced, would have ended in the loss of my 
 health and sight. I hope most sincerely to hear by the next ship 
 as good accounts of you as we had by the last. No one knows better 
 than I do how great a misfortune it is to have the use of the 
 inestimable organs of sight in any way impaired. But even this I 
 find the mind may be schooled to bear, and I know no one to whom 
 their eyes have been a source of such inestimable pleasure as to 
 you. 
 
 How strange this new French Revolution must seem to you, like 
 a dream of the past which you must so well remember. The 
 historical parallel is very striking : the fixing the rate of wages and 
 food, the intimidation by the mob under which all parties act, and 
 under which the new Constituent Assembly will meet like the old 
 National Convention. 
 
 My wife begs to join me in kindest love to yourself and your 
 guests. 
 
 Believe me always 
 
 Your grateful and dutiful grandson, 
 Robert Lowe. 
 
 This was written to his mother's mother. She, too, it will 
 be seen, had sympathised with him in his trials and struggles.
 
 S6G LIFE OF LORD SIIERBEOOKE 
 
 CHAPTEE XXY 
 
 MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 
 
 Port Phillip declines to send Members — Lowe's Letter — Earl Grey elected for 
 Melbourne— Lowe and the Sydney Unemployed 
 
 During the progress of this Sydney election Lowe told the 
 electors that it appeared to him somewhat doubtful whether 
 the newly-elected members would ever take their seats in the 
 Legislative Council. The reason of this strange announce- 
 ment was that certain leading residents in the then district of 
 Port Phillip (now the colony of Victoria) had openly expressed 
 their determination not to elect any members to the Sydney 
 Legislature. This caused great alarm in Sydney, and the 
 Herald of August 2, 1848, appeared with a startling leading 
 article headed, ' The Port Phillip Conspiracy to Strangle the 
 Legislative Council ' : — 
 
 * A set of hare-brained fellows having on the day of nomina- 
 tion at Melbourne determined that no members at all should 
 be returned from that part of the colony, and having thereby 
 ■caused the returning-ofliccr to retire from the hustings with- 
 out the means of endorsing a single name on the back of his 
 v\'rit, the very grave question arises. Will it be competent for 
 the Legislative Council to sit ? ' 
 
 It w^as on this grave constitutional question tliat Mr. 
 "William Kerr, town-clerk of iMelbourne, and founder of the 
 Arrjiis newspaper, wrote to Mr. Lowe, and received the follow- 
 ing reply, which is of historical interest so far as the present 
 colony of Victoria is concerned. It will be noted witli pleasure,
 
 MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 367 
 
 by all Victorians ^YOl■thy of the name, that there had actually 
 been a movement on foot to nominate Lowe as one of the 
 members of the province : — 
 
 Bobert Loive to the Toum Clerk of Melboiirne. 
 
 Sydney : July 29th, 1848. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter an- 
 nouncing to me the decision of the constituency of Port Phillip not 
 to elect any members at all, aiid the consequent abandonment of 
 the intention which you were so kind as to entertain of putting me 
 in nomination to represent the electoral district of Port Phillip. 
 You will have heard before this reaches you of tbe result of the 
 Sydney election, which has been equally gratifying to me and con- 
 firmatory of my principles. 
 
 I merely allude to it to show you that I am perfectly disinterested 
 in tbe suggestions which I take leave to offer to yourself and my 
 brotber-colonists of Australia Felix. All who take the trouble to 
 read the proceedings in Council arc well aware that I have always 
 endeavoured to give Port Phillip fair play, and bave never joined in 
 the dead set which bas been most injudiciously and improperly 
 made against it by men who ought to have had more enlightened 
 views, and to have treated with more deference and respect the 
 unanimous opinion of the province. I trust, therefore, you will 
 receive my advice as that of a friend anxious to serve you, not of 
 an enemy anxious to mislead you. My opinion is, tbat you are 
 acting unwisely in not filling up tbe seats of your six representatives. 
 
 I do not presume to give an opinion whether it is better for the 
 province that those seats should remain vacant than be filled up by 
 sucb persons as bave hitherto been sent, and as a colonist of tbe 
 INliddle District I must candidly say, that if Port Phillip sends us 
 nothing but gentlemen who confine their attention to inflating the 
 price of land and the amount of Government expenditure, we are 
 better without such gentlemen than with them. It is a mistake to 
 say tbat the absence of tbe Port Phillip members will throw us more 
 into the hands of the Government. For the last two or three years 
 tbe Port Phillip members bave contributed much to the strength of 
 the Government — nearly as much as the nominees of the Crown ; 
 but what I am afraid you have done, or at any rate wall do if you 
 persist in the same course, will be to prevent the Legislative Council 
 from being constituted, so as to proceed to the despatch of 
 biisiness. 
 
 As regards the Squatting Question, tbis is much to be regretted. 
 The election seemed to incline against the squatters in the Middle
 
 358 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 District, and I feel confident that the nominees of the CrowTi will be 
 of the same way of thinkin.q-. 
 
 Thus, had the Council been allowed to meet, had Port Phillip 
 merely elected five members who absented themselves from the 
 sittings of the Council, I should have been able to have brought this 
 struggle for the preservation of the lands of the colony to a suc- 
 cessful issue ; but now every selfish and unworthy influence is left at 
 liberty to be employed upon the Government, and the lips of those 
 who would speak for the colony are sealed. Every effort will be 
 used to induce the Government to make intermediate districts as 
 small and the unsettled as large as possible. Whether it resists 
 this pressure or no will mainly depend on the strength of the anti- 
 squatting party in the Council. That party you, in your zeal for 
 separation, will not permit to act, and thus you hand over your 
 beautiful district to the clutches of a despicable monopoly, from 
 which ages of the most enlightened and patriotic exertion may not 
 sufiice to free you. 
 
 I would also beg to suggest that your contumacy — for such it 
 will be regarded by the Home Government — though it will probably 
 accelerate the period of your separation, will probably render that 
 separation much less advantageous to you than it would otherwise 
 be. As a friend of freedom, I should much regret to see you handed 
 over to a nominee Council, or, what is still worse, to a Council elected 
 by local cliques, elected according to Lord Grey's nostrum. 
 
 I cannot believe that if you abdicate your franchise now you 
 will get it back at the time of separation. It appears to me, that 
 in your natural desire to get rid of us you are abandoning your 
 lands to the squatters and your franchise to the Crown. I would, 
 therefore, beg respectfully to recommend you to fill up the seats of 
 your districts with five anti-squatters, which I apprehend you are 
 well able to do ; but if you do not choose to be represented in the 
 Legislative Council, at any rate fill up the vacancies; and thus give 
 the Council an opportunity of meeting, and of fighting with the 
 squatters on your behalf that battle which you seem unwilling to 
 fight on your own. 
 
 If you think the publication of this letter will serve any good 
 purpose, it is much at your service. 
 
 I am, dear Sir, 
 
 Your obedient, humble Servant, 
 
 EoBEKT Lowe. 
 William Kerr, Esq., Melbourne. 
 
 Mr. Kerr published this letter in the Arrjus on August 11 ; 
 but in the meantime the ' hare-brained fellows ' of Melbourne
 
 MEMBER EOR SYDNEY 369 
 
 had disfranchised themselves, as the writ had been ah-eady 
 returned without any name having been endorsed on the back 
 of it. Tbe Sydney Government, however, consented to re- 
 issue the writ, but, to punish Melbourne, made Geelong the 
 place of nomination. It was then that the enter];)rising 
 residents of Port Phillip determined on a sensational coup in 
 order to bring their great grievance home to the minds of the 
 English authorities. To show the absurdity of the system by 
 which the affairs of their province were conducted by half a 
 dozen gentlemen in the remote city of Sydney, the separation 
 party nominated (of course without asking consent) the Duke 
 of Wellington, Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, Lord John 
 Piussell, and Sir Piobert Peel. This farcical proceeding was 
 intended to show Earl Grey how absurd the then existing 
 system had become. They even went further, and actually 
 elected Earl Grey himself as the member for Melbourne in the 
 Legislative Council of Sydney. 
 
 The Colonial Secretary, little knowing what these irreverent 
 Port Phillipians were capable of doing, was duly proposed and 
 seconded in opposition to a widely-respected local squatter, 
 Mr. John Fitzgerald Foster, a gentleman who subsequently 
 became Acting-Governor of Victoria, and who, in compliance 
 with the win of his uncle. Lord Fitzgerald and Vesey, assumed 
 those names by which he is known to this generation. Mr. 
 Yesey Fitzgerald still lives to tell the members of the Carlton 
 Club how he contested Melbourne in 1848, and was beaten by 
 the 'phantom Earl.' 
 
 The poll was declared on August 26 as follows : — 
 
 Earl Grey 295 
 
 Foster 202 
 
 It was a pure frolic, but it gave a great deal of trouble to 
 the Sydney Government, and made the Sydney newspaper 
 fairly frantic. * An affair of treason against the majesty of 
 common-sense'; 'its perpetrators deserve to be whipped'; 
 
 VOL. I. . B B
 
 370 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 'a forfeiture of the franchise': such were the journaKstie 
 comments. 
 
 We think (says the Herald) Earl Grey, when he comes to know 
 of the Melbourne atrocity, insulting to the noble Lord's own person, 
 as well as to the Imperial Legislature, will pronounce the people of 
 Port Phillip unfit for the franchise, and will give them a Council of 
 Crown nominees. 
 
 Earl Grey himself, however, took the matter in a much 
 lighter spirit when chaffed in the House of Lords about being 
 the new member for Melbourne. The proceeding, however, 
 was not so purely farcical as it looks, and, as a matter of fact, 
 Earl Grey had to plead formally a want of qualification as 
 the reason for not taking his seat in the Sydney Legislative 
 Council. The Crown law officers declared his election to be 
 valid, but that, should he allow two sessions of the Council to 
 elapse before going to the Antipodes and taking the oaths, 
 then his seat as member for Melbourne would be legally vacant. 
 It was, indeed, a thoroughly characteristic colonial device for 
 forcing on the attention of the Secretary of State a specific 
 grievance, and there can hardly be any doubt that Earl 
 Gre3's sham election expedited the creation of the colony of 
 Victoria and the granting of Australian self-government. 
 
 Piobert Lowe had not very long been member for Sydney 
 before he exhibited to the working classes in a very character- 
 istic way that independence of judgment of which he had 
 forewarned them on the hustings. Sydne}", from that day to 
 this, has always been more notorious even than Melbourne 
 for what are called ' meetings of the unemployed.' Like all 
 cities, young or old, Sydney has always had what the late 
 .John ]h-ight called a residuum ; that is to say, a number of 
 utterly unfit or miserably unfortunate persons who, especially 
 in democratic communities, clamour for State assistance at all 
 times of personal distress or pubhc difliculty. 
 
 After the triumphant return of the * popular idol ' a
 
 MEMBEPt FOR SYD^EY 371 
 
 number of these men, who had called a public meeting to air 
 their grievances, were thoroughly taken aback by the reply 
 which they received from the new member for Sydney. 
 Writing to a Mr. Cunninghame, who, it seems, was editor of 
 a journal called the People's Advocate, and had organised 
 the meeting of unemployed operatives, Mr. Lowe thus 
 replied to the invitation to attend : — 
 
 Sir, — I must beg to decline to attend your meeting for the 
 following reasons : — 
 
 Because the revenue (which is principally raised from the wages 
 of the people) ought to be expended for the good of all, and not of a 
 particular class. 
 
 Because it is just as improper to spend public money to keep up 
 wages as to keep up rents or profits. 
 
 Because I do not think the mechanics of Sydney ought to put 
 themselves in the position of paupers receiving charitable relief at 
 the expense of their equally distressed fellow-colonists. 
 
 Because those who anticipated an immediate profit from the 
 intended expenditure are the worst possible judges of its 
 necessity. 
 
 Because the attempt to prevent labour finding its level must, in 
 my opinion, be either useless or mischievous. 
 
 Because I will never be a party to spending public money in 
 order artificially to raise the price which employers of mechanics 
 in the interior must pay for their services, and thus to arrest the 
 progress of improvement throughout the colony. 
 
 I have stated my reasons thus at large out of respect to the 
 meeting, with whose wishes I regret it is not in my power to 
 concur, 
 
 And I remain, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 EoBERT Lowe. 
 
 Sydney : December 19, 1848. 
 
 The meeting was fairly aghast. It is true that two other 
 well-known members of the Legislative Council also wrote 
 declining to attend ; but their letters were of the vague and 
 shuffling description. As soon as the assemblage could 
 recover itself, a Mr. Lynch rose in a frenzy to his feet — and 
 anyone familiar with such public meetings can hear the rich 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 roll of the Irish brogue m these disjomted and mdignant 
 sentences : — 
 
 You have been termed paupers ! And that by the pet of the 
 people ! For your pet, Robert Lowe, on the evening of the election, 
 from his own verandah in Elizabeth Street, declared that the 
 mechanics, the working men of Sydney, were the only real freemen 
 in the colony. And now, by Heaven ! 700 to 1,000 mechanics are 
 walking about Sydney idle. . . . We applied to tAvo country 
 members, who declined to attend, but did not write such an insult- 
 ing document as our own city member. Every syllable of which 
 (hissed out by Mr. Lynch) grated on the ear. [The audience 
 demanded to hear Mr. Lowe's letter again, and it was read 
 accordingly]. In the name of God! (yelled the exasperated 
 Mr. Lynch) what does he mean ? If the money was given by the 
 Council to the mechanics, would they keep it buttoned up in their 
 pockets ? Would it not every Saturday be expended with a small 
 shopkeeper, from whom it would travel on to the middleman and 
 the merchant ? 
 
 A subsequent speaker, in a somewhat more connected and 
 relevant manner, said that though he was one of Mr. Lowe's 
 most enthusiastic admirers, he could scarcely believe his eyes 
 when he first saw this letter. Mr. Lowe had declared himself 
 the representative of the mechanics of Sydney, he had 
 applauded their public spirit, and told them that they were the 
 real people of the colony. Now he refused to support them, 
 on the ground that they w^ere a class. 
 
 This is quite enough of the oratory of these early leaders 
 of the unemployed movement. It was inevitable that they 
 should quickly fall to loggerheads witli the new member for 
 Sydney — a city which to this day so many of their kind 
 have loved so well that no offer of regular work ' up-country * 
 can ever induce them to leave it. Eobert Lowe had now a 
 much weightier question on his hands, for Earl Grey had set 
 about in earnest to re-introduce the evil system of transporting 
 the criminals of the old country into Australia.
 
 O l-f o 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 
 
 The proposed Constitution — Lowe and Wentworth at tlie Victoria Theatre — 
 Earl Grey's ' Exiles ' — The Convict Ship Hasliciny — Lowe at Circular 
 Quay — Alarms Sir Charles Fitzroy — His plea for Eesponsible Government 
 
 Earl Grey was possessed by the laudable ambition of enrolling 
 his name among those whom the late Walter Bagehot terms 
 ' nation-builders.' In a remarkable despatch to Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy, published in Sydney on December 25, 1847, the 
 Colonial Secretary elaborated a new political Constitution for 
 Australia. This scheme, to which he had evidently given a 
 considerable amount of thought, proved so unpalatable to the 
 colonists that even this masterful Minister was forced to 
 abandon it when Sir Charles Fitzroy informed him that it 
 had met with universal condemnation. Briefly, Earl Grey 
 proposed that the district councils, those languishing and, 
 indeed, all but non-existent bodies, should form ' electoral 
 colleges' for the purpose of returning a representative assembly, 
 while a second Upper Chamber was to be composed entirely of 
 Crown nominees. 
 
 The immediate effect of the publication of this scheme was 
 to reunite Lowe and Wentworth. In fact, all the leading 
 colonial politicians and the whole body of the electors ranged 
 themselves into one solid, overwhelming Opposition. A meeting 
 was promptly held to consider Earl Grey's new Constitution, 
 with the Mayor of Sydney in the chair, when resolutions 
 were passed expressing astonishment and regret that a mere 
 modification of the old close-borough system should originate
 
 374 LIFE OF LORD SHERBEOOKE 
 
 with the son and representative of the noble earl to whom 
 Britain was indebted for the Eeform Bill. 
 
 It is unnecessary to quote the full text of these resolutions, 
 although they bear evident traces of the handiwork both of 
 Lowe and Wentworth, who were the two most prominent 
 figures at this meeting. The resolutions were indeed with- 
 drawn, and a committee appointed consisting of a number of 
 leading and rei)resentative public men of that day in New 
 South Wales, of whom Robert Lowe and W. C. Wentworth, 
 from a j)olitical point of view, were decidedly the foremost. 
 
 This committee at once organised a great public meeting, 
 which was held on January 21, 1848, in the Victoria Theatre. 
 The pit and boxes, we are told, were densely thronged, while 
 the stage was crowded with the * most influential gentlemen 
 of the colony of every shade of political opinion.' It was on 
 this occasion that Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Martin made 
 his first notable speech in Sydney ; while among the other 
 speakers were Mr. Archibald Michie, Mr. S. A. Donaldson, 
 Mr. James Macarthur, and other leading colonists. But the 
 two great guns M'ere, of course, the members for Sydney 
 — Wentworth and Lowe ; now standing again side by side 
 on the same platform. Next day the Sydney Morning Herald 
 referred to ' that brilliant orator, ]\Ir. Robert Lowe, whose 
 eloquence on such a theme is the more impressive from being 
 associated with a professional knowledge of the law.' 
 
 This unstinted praise is by no means too lavish. It is not 
 possible to read even a summary of this speech without 
 recognising its power and brilliancy ; as stated with regard to 
 some previous colonial speeches, it is probable that Mr. Lowe 
 never rose to loftier flights in England. Indeed, it is evident 
 that in one respect he was heard in these early days of 
 the colony to greater advantage ; for in Australia he took rank 
 not only as a foremost speaker in Parliament, lint as a most 
 moving orator at mass meetings. 
 
 The burden of his discourse was that, instead of accepting
 
 IIOBERT LOWE AND EAllL GPtEY 375 
 
 Earl Grey's pedantic constitutional experiment, it would be 
 wiser for the colonists of New South Wales to transplant as 
 far as possible the Constitution of the mother-land. This, 
 indeed, M^as the burden of all the speeches, notably of Went- 
 worth's. Such an enthusiastic and united expression of public 
 feeling could not be ignored even in Downing Street ; and on 
 receipt of Sir Charles Fitzroy's despatches this scheme of Earl 
 Grey was promptly abandoned. The Colonial Minister, indeed, 
 met with equally hostile criticism within, as without, the walls 
 of the Legislative Council. 
 
 On May 2, 1848, Wentworth, in a speech of great argumenta- 
 tive power, brought forward in the Council a series of resolu- 
 tions against this new Constitution of Earl Grey. His chief 
 supporter was Eobert Lowe, who spoke enthusiastically of 
 Wentworth's ' clear and luminous speech, entitling him to 
 the thanks of the country and the House.' He went on to sa}' 
 that he agreed with nearly every word uttered by his colleague ; 
 but he would enter into a friendly discussion with him on the 
 advantages of the bicameral system. 
 
 It was true they could not have a house of dukes and 
 marquises like the House of Lords. Nor did he think, let it be 
 composed of whom it might, that it would command much re- 
 spect, but there were plenty of men fitted for it. As to a 
 chamber entirely composed of nominees, he held that it would 
 be unconstitutional for it to take part in money votes. 
 
 Wentworth, who had once again become filled with demo- 
 cratic ideas, wound up what was really a very great night's 
 debate with unflagging ability. * Give the Governor this 
 shelter,' he declared in his denunciation of Upper Houses, * and 
 let what will arise, he might sit quietly in some snug parlour 
 of his palace, where the gale of popular opinion or indignation 
 could never reach him.' 
 
 It was to this speech that the late Lord Sherbrooke made 
 special reference after he had returned to London, when he 
 delivered his luminous address on the Australian Colonies Bill
 
 376 LIFE OF LORD SHERBPtOOKE 
 
 before the members of the Society for the Eeform of Colonial 
 Government in 1851, on which occasion Sir "William Moles- 
 \Yorth presided.^ 
 
 Upon the withdrawal of Earl Grey's scheme, the English 
 Ministry handed over this constitutional problem to a com- 
 mittee of the Priv}^ Council. But the usual delays, not to be 
 wondered at in the settlement of so grave a question, ensued, 
 and it was not until after endless discussions in the British 
 Parliament that the present system of responsible government 
 in Australia was established. By this time Eobert Lowe had 
 left Australia and become once more a citizen of London, and 
 was indeed a member of the House of Commons. 
 
 Before his departure from New South Wales, Lowe was 
 called upon to take a yet more prominent part in opposition 
 to another and more dangerous innovation on the part of 
 Earl Grey. On this subject he had no longer the powerful 
 support of his colleague, but had to face instead the combined 
 forces of the Crown officials and those of the dominant 
 squatter party led by Wentworth himself. 
 
 This question was Earl Grey's attempt to renew criminal 
 transportation, the frustration of which may be regarded as 
 the turning-point in the history of Australia. To no part of 
 his colonial career did Lord Sherbrooke look back with greater 
 pride than to the decisive stand which he took against the 
 policy of Earl Grey on this question. And rightly so, for he 
 manfully assisted to make Australia what she is — an uncon- 
 taminated, self-respecting and self-governing English commu- 
 nity — instead of what she was intended to be, and what so 
 many of her own sons would have liked her to remain — a 
 wealth-producing, but utterly degraded penal settlement. 
 
 Li a previous chapter, the one entitled * Mr. Gladstone's pro- 
 posed Penal Colony,' some slight fore-glimpse has been given 
 <^)f the state of public feeling in Australia about this time with 
 
 ' See vol. ii., p. 5.
 
 IIOBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 377 
 
 regard to the transportation of British criminals. In that 
 chapter it was pointed out how strongly popular feeling was 
 excited when Sir Charles Fitzroy published Mr. Gladstone's 
 despatches. This arose from the ever-increasing number of 
 free, untainted immigrants, who had made their home in this 
 new world at the Antipodes, relying on the express declaration 
 of Lord John Eussell, that from ' August 1840 transportation 
 to New South Wales would cease for ever.' Earl Grey was 
 now the Colonial Minister, and several years had elapsed since 
 this fiat had gone forth. In the meantime, owing mainly to 
 the untiring efforts of Dr. Lang, numbers of sturdy Britons, 
 in the prime of life, full of energy, with good practical abilities, 
 and with unblemished characters, had made Australia their 
 adopted country. It was from this ever-increasing body of 
 genuine colonists that Earl Grey was to receive his most severe 
 rebuff and Australia to secure her freedom from imported 
 criminality. 
 
 It has been shown that the squatters as a class — and they 
 then formed the dominant class in New South Wales and Port 
 Phillip — were strongly in favour of the revival of transportation. 
 This is revealed in the most unmistakable manner by the 
 correspondence that passed between Dr. William Bland, repre- 
 senting the ' Australian Patriotic Association,' and Charles 
 Buller, the deeply lamented young English statesman, whose 
 death was in no ordinary sense a loss to the Empire. Earl 
 Grey, a man of the highest ability, who without doubt as 
 Colonial Minister gave more time and attention to the Colonies 
 than has any English Minister before or since, now made a 
 fatal blunder. He was unfortunately a man of the doctrinaire 
 type — one who was likely at a crisis to evolve a cut-and- dried 
 scheme without duly taking into consideration the temper of 
 the iDeople upon whom he was prepared to experiment. I 
 have already stated that a new and ever-increasing class of 
 free immigrants had been for some years past pouring into 
 Australia, and that these men and not the few hundred
 
 378 LIFE OF LOIfD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 squatters, with their vassals the ' ticket-of-leave men,' would 
 now decide whether Australia was to become a free and worthy 
 English State, or to remain in great part a remote Imperial 
 penitentiary. 
 
 It was at this critical period that Earl Grey devised what 
 he doubtless considered to be a new and most innocuous system 
 of transportation. The cargoes of criminals were no longer 
 to be known as ' convicts,' but (such is the virtue in a name !) 
 as ' exiles.' It was, as Earl Grey explained in his despatch 
 of September B, 1847, ' a scheme of reformatory discipline.' 
 These ' exiles ' were to be sent to the colonies only after they 
 had undergone a term of imprisonment in Great Britain, and 
 in all cases ' the wives and families of such exiles, together 
 with a number of free emigrants, equal to the number of such 
 exiles, shall be sent out at the cost of the British Treasury.' 
 Truly a nice-sounding scheme with a brand-new beautiful 
 name— but meaning in plain unofficial language that Australia 
 was to remain the ignoble receptacle of British rascality. 
 
 Mr. Lowe at first adopted a cautious and tentative attitude 
 with regard to this question of the revival of criminal trans- 
 portation. There is an old saying, ' Once bitten, twice shy.' 
 He had already found that by throwing the weight of his great 
 eloquence and talents on the side of the squatters, he had not 
 so much helped them to assert their constitutional rights, as 
 he had unwittingly enabled them to secure a monopoly of 
 almost all the land of South-eastern Australia. This was 
 indeed a severe lesson, and the very hardest which, as a public 
 man, he was forced to learn in the strange school of colonial 
 experience. Absolutely independent, and then, as always, 
 beyond the reach of those personal ties and considerations 
 which warp the judgment and opinions of even honest men, 
 he now found, owing to his previous alliance with the squatters, 
 that he could not utter a syllable without being taunted with 
 inconsistency, if not with mere caprice. 
 
 Eobert Lowe, under the circumstances, no doubt felt that
 
 ROBERT LOAVE A?si) EARL GREY 379 
 
 it behoved him to be wary. He saw — no man so clearly — that 
 the squatters, having got possession of the public lands, now 
 wanted as a further boon a supply of unpaid labour to work 
 them. The eagerness of Wentworth and his henchman. Bland, 
 in supporting Mr. Gladstone's crude experiments in transporta- 
 tion, and later on the more systematic scheme of Earl Grey, 
 became daily more and more apparent. From the first, Went- 
 worth, in the Legislative Council, warmly supported 'exile- 
 ism ' and proposed a series of Eesolutions on the subject 
 on April 10, 1848. In the course of the debate Lowe merely 
 insisted that, if this new plan were put into operation, the 
 colony should at once demand military protection at the ex- 
 pense of England, and Imperial loans for public improvements. 
 It must be frankly admitted that up to this time Lowe 
 had expressed no strong indignation against criminal trans- 
 portation. On the contrary, he spoke with great caution and 
 moderation, and apparently in the tone of a man not altogether 
 averse to a somewhat perilous social experiment. Eead 
 between the lines, however, his speech on this occasion showed 
 clearly enough the direction in which his mind was trending. 
 Turning to the squatters, now, in conjunction with the Crown 
 officials, the absolute masters of this primitive semi-representa- 
 tive Parliament, Lowe warned them that their visions as to 
 what the effect of this measure might be were perhaps rose- 
 coloured. 
 
 The results look brighter in the vista of anticipation than in 
 reality. It reminds me of an elegant engraving in a recent number 
 of the Illustrated London Neivs of a thriving town in the remote 
 parts of the colony, with houses erected, streets laid out and built 
 on, and where a beautiful harbour, crowded with vessels and crowned 
 by a magnificent lighthouse, appeared in most majestic picturesque- 
 ness.' 
 
 There was nothing yet, however, to show that Lowe 
 meant to separate himself still more widely from his old 
 
 ' Probably the city which Mr. Benjamin Boyd projected on these lines, on 
 the shores of the still desolate Twofold Bay.
 
 380 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 squatter friends and allies by directly opposing them on the 
 transportation question. In fact, when he sat as a member of 
 Wentworth's special committee, he did nothing to show any 
 distinct divergence of view, save that he ' heckled ' Mr. 
 Benjamin Boyd rather vigorously. But when in the year 
 1848 Earl Grey thought fit to revoke Lord John Eusseh's 
 policy of 1840,^ and to revive criminal transportation through- 
 out the whole of Australia, Piobert Lowe ranged himself with 
 the popular democratic party against the squatter and official 
 aristocracy. 
 
 We shall have now to contemplate the late Lord Sherbrooke 
 in a character that may well astonish those who knew him best. 
 From the moment that Earl Grey attempted to revive criminal 
 transportation, not only to the whole of Australia, but also to 
 South Africa, in defiance of local public feeling and without 
 any of the conditions as to sending out the wives and families 
 of the ' exiles ' and an equal number of free immigrants, 
 Eobert Lowe stood out in the streets and public places of 
 Sydney as the leading ' agitator ' of the day. It is not 
 difficult to divine that it was the arbitrary methods of Earl 
 Grey, as much as the evils of his transportation pohcy, which 
 so aroused the fury and the indignation of this strange 
 popular Tribune. 
 
 It is rather unfortunate that the only systematic work 
 deserving the name of a history of Austraha should have been 
 written by a gentleman who was at this time engaged in 
 
 ' Great credit is due to Earl Eussell, but he was merely a bird of passage. 
 It was his successor, Lord Stanley, the late Earl of Derby, who was head of the 
 Colonial Office from 1841 to 1845, to whom Australia owes that long respite 
 from imported convictism which enabled her free population eventually to get 
 the upper hand. This wayward statesman, but great English noble, deserves, 
 on this account alone, a statue in every capital city of the Antipodes. Had 
 Lord Derby put in force, during these years, the transportation policy after 
 wards adopted by Lord Grey, he would have met with little or none of the 
 strenuous opposition in the Colonies themselves, which proved too strong for 
 that ill-fated minister ; and it is difficult to see how Australia could ever have 
 emerged from being an Imperial penitentiary.
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 381 
 
 pastoral pursuits in New South Wales, and was therefore a 
 supporter of ' exileism.' But though Mr. Eusden loses no 
 chance of sneering at the anti-transportation leaders, he is 
 compelled to confess that Earl Grey acted in a most wrong- 
 headed and impolitic fashion. Be that as it may, the Colonial 
 Minister acted promptly ; he sent out his shiploads of con- 
 victs, first in the Neptune to the Cape of Good Hope, where 
 the colonists refused to allow them to land, much to the delight 
 of John Mitchell who was a prisoner on board, and of course 
 loved to behold the Saxon at strife with his kind. After a 
 weary delay, the captain had to sail away and land his criminals 
 in ill-fated Van Diemen's Land, now the fair island of Tasmania, 
 from which it will be remembered Mitchell subsequently made 
 his escape by in reality, if not technically, breaking his parole. 
 By the Order in Council of September 1848, Earl Grey, in 
 defiance of Australian sentiment, had, on his own initiative, 
 once more made Australia a penal settlement. It was now 
 1849, and during the last two years public feeling had intensi- 
 fied. The most prominent anti-transportation leader up to 
 this time was Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Cowper, who in after 
 years very fitly rose to be Prime Minister of New South Wales, 
 and later on its oflScial representative in London. The people 
 in the then comparatively small township of Melbourne, 
 emulating the colonists at the Cape, refused to allow the 'exiles ' 
 to land when the first convict ship sailed into the waters of 
 Port Phillip. Mr. Eusden's comment on this is simply that 
 ' Melbourne, as usual, was demonstrative.' To my mind, 
 considermg that Mr. Eusden for so many years filled the respon- 
 sible post of Clerk of Parliaments in Victoria, and that he was 
 one of the most prominent and most favoured residents of 
 Melbourne, this bald comment in a voluminous history is un- 
 worthy of himself as well as of the occasion. There were men 
 quite as respectable and quite as law-abiding as Mr. Eusden 
 (for one, the Chief Justice of Victoria, Sir William Foster 
 Stawell) among those * demonstrative ' early colonists, who
 
 382 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 marched down to Hobson's Bay ^Yith the view, if necessary, of 
 preventing by force the landing of this first batch of Earl 
 Grey's criminal hordes. 
 
 Mr. Eusden, who requires three bulky volumes to record 
 the more or less parochial affairs of Australia, dismisses the 
 historic action of the residents of IMelbourne in preventing the 
 landing of these convicts by a short contemptuous phrase. 
 This seems to me a strange way of writing Australian history, 
 and I much prefer the allusion to this episode made by Sir 
 Archibald Michie in a popular lecture delivered some years ago 
 at St. George's Hall, Melbourne : ' Take the convict question, 
 for instance, on which public opinion here once showed itself 
 nearly to the point of rebellion, when a large body of spirited 
 colonists, amongst whom was the present Chief Justice (for 
 which I honour him), marched down to Sandridge, resolved 
 that a newly arrived cargo of convicts, per ship Ilashemij, 
 should not land here.' ' 
 
 The convict ship Hasliemjj, being unable to land her cargo 
 at Melbourne, sailed for Port Jackson with a view of deposit- 
 ing them in Sydney. It was then, on July 11, 1849, that 
 Eobert Lowe appeared in his new rule of Tribune of the People. 
 The vessel had been looked for from day to day by crowds 
 scanning the harbour from the quay-side. When, at last, the 
 convict-ship entered the far-famed Heads, and sailed up the 
 lovely expanse of blue waters, the leading merchants on the 
 wharves and the chief shopkeepers in the city closed their 
 establishments and quietly, Ijut resolutely, proceeded with 
 hundreds of their fellow-citizens to the open space above the 
 Circular Quay. Here the only coign of vantage was a dis- 
 used public vehicle, from the to^) of which the speakers, in full 
 view alike of the convict-ship and the Governor's residence, 
 addressed the assembled thousands, standing in the pelting 
 rain. To make the scene still more dramatic, there lay at 
 
 ' -1 Lecture on the Westminster Rei-iewer's Version of Victorian History. 
 By the Hon. Aicliibakl Michie, Q.C. (Melbourne, 1808.)
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 383 
 
 anchor, almost alongside the HasJieiny with her felons, a number 
 of emigrant ships full of free untainted English men and women 
 eager to become Australian colonists and settlers. 
 
 The crowd awaited patiently their accepted leader, the 
 popular member for Sydney, but Mr. Lowe came not. At 
 length Mr. Eobert Campbell, a much respected merchant, was 
 called on to preside. A loyal but strong protest was then read 
 by Mr. Lamb against the re-introduction of British criminals, 
 when suddenly Eobert Lowe made his appearance amidst enthu- 
 siastic applause, and proceeded to second the adoption of this 
 protest ' of the people of the colony of New South Wales against 
 the outrage which had been so insultingly and offensively 
 perpetrated upon them.' 
 
 The new Tribune was in excellent form ; and, after reading 
 some of his fine denunciations we may well believe the story 
 related by Mr. Kusden of the old woman in the crowd who, 
 unable to restrain her enthusiasm, exclaimed, ' Ah ! bless his 
 dear old white head ! ' 
 
 The threat of degradation has been fulfilled. The stately pre- 
 sence of our city, the beautiful waters of our harbour, are this day 
 again polluted with the presence of that floating hell — a convict 
 ship. la the port lies a ship freighted, not with the comforts of 
 life, not with the luxuries of civilised nations, not with the com- 
 modities of commerce in exchange for our produce, but with the 
 moral degradation of a community — the picked and selected 
 criminals of Great Britain — educated in her crowded streets, among 
 her starving masses. New South Wales must be the university at 
 which these scholars in vice and iniquity must finish their course of 
 instruction. New South Wales must alone supply the college where 
 these doctors in crime can take their last degrees. 
 
 ■^o^ 
 
 Lowe then reviewed, in a series of short, pungent sentences, 
 the action of Cowper and himself in the Legislative Council 
 in opposition to Wentworth, who, it will be borne in mind, 
 was his colleague in the representation of the city of 
 Sydney. But even when, full of indignation against the high- 
 handed methods of Earl Grey in forcing British criminals
 
 384 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBUOOKE 
 
 on the colony, Lowe was not able to speak for long with- 
 out revertmg to the question of the public lands. He viewed, 
 he said, this attempt to inflict a degrading slavery on the 
 colony only as a sequence to the recent confiscation of the 
 public lands by the squatters. ' That class had felt their 
 power — they were not content to get the lands alone ; without 
 labour they were worthless — and, therefore, they must enrich 
 themselves with slaves.' 
 
 This was not a question of the injury which the 250 felons on 
 board the Hashemy would do the colony. It was a question 
 whether the inhabitants of this colony should be subjected to the 
 contamination of trebly convicted felons, and whether they should 
 submit to a measure to enhance the value of tbeir confiscated lands. 
 It was not the mere fear of competition amongst operatives which 
 now united them on this question ; it was not a mere breeches-pocket 
 question with the labouring classes, though it might be with the 
 employers. It was a struggle for liberty — a struggle against a 
 system which had in every country where it prevailed been destruc- 
 tive of freedom. 
 
 Lowe closed with a most eloquent warning in reference to 
 the loss of the American colonies ; and the protest which he 
 had seconded was put to the vast meeting and passed with 
 acclamation. 
 
 Then uprose a 3'oung artisan who has for many years been 
 the most celebrated public figure in Australia, but who on this 
 occasion, as he declared, was the mouthpiece of the ' largest 
 class in the colony — the working class.' It was in this vein, 
 as a working class representative, that Mr. Henry Parkes 
 spoke throughout with marked force and ability. Save as a 
 working man, he said, it would have been unwise and pre- 
 sumptuous in him to detain the meeting longer ; but this was 
 pre-eminently a workman's question. 
 
 Did the 1,400 emigrants now afloat on the waters of Port Jackson 
 believe when they left Great Britain that they would find a convict- 
 ship in the midst of the vessels that brought them hither ? Would 
 they, had they dreamt of such a tbing, have sacrificed all home ties 
 and volunteered to degrade themselves ? The only course consistent
 
 ROBERT LOWE AND EARL GREY 385 
 
 with justice to the colonists at large was that the convict-ship and 
 cargo should he sent back. 
 
 After Mr. Parkes had finished, Mr. (now Sir Archibald) 
 Michie rooved that — 
 
 A deputation be appointed to wait immediately upon the Governor 
 with a protest, to request him to forward it to the Queen, and that 
 the deputation consist of the following gentlemen : — 
 
 The Chairman (Mr. Campbell), Mr. Robert Lowe, Mr. Lamb, 
 Mr. Nicholls, Mr. Michie, Dr. Aaron, Mr. Parkes, Mr. R. Peek, 
 Mr. Heydon, Mr. Coleman, Mr. Hawkesley, Mr. R. Curtayne, Mr. 
 Knight, Mr. E. M'Encroe, Mr. Pembroke, Mr. Strong, Mr. Ham, 
 Mr. Mullins, Mr. J. R. Wilshire, Mr. Simmons, Mr. Jennings, Mr. 
 C. Kemp, and Mr. Gilbert Wright. 
 
 This somewhat formidable host at once proceeded to 
 Government House, but Sir Charles Fitzroy, who appears to 
 have discovered that worry and anxiety might beset a man 
 even in that * delicious climate,' would seem to have lost all 
 his usual sang froid. In fact, what between Earl Grey, the 
 convict-ship in the harbour within sight of his windows, and 
 the deputation clamouring at his gates. Sir Charles, for an old 
 soldier, had quite lost his head. He sent out to say that only 
 six gentlemen could be admitted to his presence, and the gates 
 were then promptly closed against the others. Lowe was of 
 course one of the six. The private secretary, doubtless in 
 the inimitable manner of his class, then proceeded to inform 
 the favoured half-dozen that it would be necessary to forward 
 a copy of the protest in writing to Sir Charles, who would ap- 
 point a time to receive the deputation and return an answer. 
 
 In due course this was done, and a request was at the 
 same time forwarded to his Excellency asking him to appoint 
 a time when he could meet them. And so, for the time being, 
 the proceedings at the Circular Quay ended. ' The meeting ' 
 (says the Sydney Morning Herald) ' dispersed without any noise 
 or tumult, and the conduct of the people throughout was grave, 
 decorous, and becoming.' 
 
 VOL. I. c c
 
 386 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBIfOOKE 
 
 On the following Monday, June 18th, a public meeting, 
 called by the ' Deputation Committee,' was held on the same 
 spot. 
 
 Lowe, who was received with enthusiastic cheering, begged 
 to read the resolution which was put into his hands — 
 
 That, considering the discourtesy shown by His Excellency the 
 Governor to the former meeting and to its deputation, this meeting- 
 abstains from appointing a deputation to wait upon His Excellency 
 with the preceding resolutions and address, but requests the Chair- 
 man to transmit tliem to him, with a written request that His Ex- 
 cellency will be pleased to forward tliem to Her Majesty the Queen 
 for her gracious consideration. 
 
 He began by saying that he was rather at a loss to know- 
 why he had been pitched upon to move this resolution, un- 
 less it was that they had selected him * to bell the cat ' — 
 and if such was the case, ' bell the cat he would.' This was, 
 of course, taken as a preliminary attack on Sir Charles Fitzroy, 
 and was lustily cheered accordingly ; but Lowe said that he 
 was not inclined to deal harshly with the Governor, as he 
 believed that that gentleman entertained a kind of languid 
 sympathy with the colonists, and would even help them so long 
 as by so doing he did not risk his reputation with his masters 
 in Downing Street, or imperil his own situation. But Sir 
 Charles Fitzroy had rescued Port Phillip from the infamy of 
 receiving the criminal cargo, wdiich he now wished to inflict on 
 Port Jackson. Both harbours were in the same colony, and 
 the Governor's conduct was, therefore, a direct insult to the 
 l)eople of Sydney. Lowe then proceeded to give a very 
 graphic account of the precautions taken by Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy to guard against the presumed violence of the jire- 
 vious meeting. 
 
 The gates of His Excellency's palace were closed, a double 
 military guard with bayonets fixed, as if expecting an attack, was 
 stationed there, the cavalry of the colony the mounted police were 
 quartered in the stables, and the kitchen of the house, filled with 
 soldiers, was garrisoned as kitchen never was garrisoned before. All
 
 EGBERT LOAVE AND EARL GREY 387 
 
 tliese precautionary measures against any attack on tlie person of 
 the Governor took place for what ? — because the people had met 
 peaceably, calmly, but determinedly, to protest against the grossest 
 outrage that had ever been perpetrated on any community. 
 
 What did the friends of Sir Charles Fitzroy say for him in excuse 
 on this occasion ? That he was afraid ! He a ' soldier and afeard ! ' 
 He, an old Waterloo hero, and afraid of a few people, shivering and 
 hungry, and who would have been most glad to have got rid of the 
 duty entrusted to them as quickly as possible ! He knew well that 
 the object of the people m meeting on the former day was to dis- 
 cuss this convict question, not to attack his palace ; and, although 
 the Governor might have been frightened, there was no intention 
 to frighten him. 
 
 At least (added Mr. Lowe with great gravity), I did not intend 
 to frighten him, and, if I have done so, I beg his pardon, and hope 
 never to do so again. 
 
 But what had the Government to be frightened at '? Did they 
 take the deputation to be robbers and murderers ? If Sir Charles 
 Fitzroy wanted to look for such characters, better for him to go and 
 seek them on board the convict-ship in the harbour. Great dis- 
 respect had been shown to the people, in that, out of a deputation of 
 twenty-three gentlemen sent to Government House by the meeting 
 held last Monday, only six were admitted. What was the reason of 
 this ? Was the Governor afraid of his silver spoons, or did he think 
 the deputation would proceed to a general sack of the house, and 
 drink all the claret in his cellars '? Or was it thought sufficient that 
 six pair of dirty shoes should be allowed to intrude upon the vice- 
 regal carpet ? Surely in this matter the people had met with great 
 insult. Then, again, the deputation had reason to complain of the 
 manner of their reception when they were admitted to the viceregal 
 presence. It was very natural that they should, beyond merely 
 formally presenting the protest and resolutions to His Excellency, 
 desire to have a little conversation with him. They endeavoured to 
 do so, but they did not succeed. 
 
 For my own part, I can say that I behaved much more civilly 
 than usual. I was unusually polite, and yet the deputation, in- 
 stead of being allowed to address anything to His Excellency, were 
 quietly and coolly bowed out of the room. The fact is that the 
 Governor of a colony is necessarily surrounded by parasites and 
 sycophants, who are always anxious to keep him from any pre- 
 sence save their own. There was also a certain class of paid officials, 
 who, though their principles might be of a higher and better cha- 
 racter, still were anxious to advise His Excellency to measures which 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 LIFE OF LOED SHERBROOKE 
 
 would enable them to retain their own salaries. To these two classes 
 only was the Governor generally accessible, and it was not, therefore, 
 surprising that he should not be very well pleased to meet a deputa- 
 tion from the people. 
 
 Having disposed of the Governor, Robert Lowe took a 
 higher flight, and proceeded to defend a resolution asking Her 
 Majesty to dismiss Earl Grey from her Council. 
 
 He said that though this course might appear foolish and 
 quixotic to many persons, it would have an appreciable effect 
 on the English Government, and on English public opinion. 
 It would be a most effective way of showing that New South 
 Wales resented this poUcy of criminal transportation. He 
 then proposed a resolution in favour of the establishment of 
 responsible government. Lowe's principal argument was 
 given in this form : — 
 
 There were forty-five dependencies of the British Crown ; of these, 
 some few had responsible government ; these few were limited to 
 Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Was this invitation to 
 receive the convicts of Great Britain sent to those colonies ? Dare 
 the Government have sent it ? No ! But here, mocked as the colony 
 was with a wretched mongrel imitation of representative legislature 
 — in the Cape of Good Hope, without any i^epresentative legislature 
 at all — in South Australia, in Van Diemen's Land, and in New Zea- 
 land, ^^'ith their wretched Nominee Council, the people were solicited 
 to receive the convicts of Great Britain. 
 
 What stronger illustration could be advanced in favour of the 
 necessity of responsible government ? How many hours, how many 
 minutes would this question have been discussed had responsible 
 government prevailed ? The very entertainment of such a question 
 by any Government would have been sufficient for its decisive 
 destruction. 
 
 He then declared that the existing government of New 
 South Wales was a small second-hand bureaucracy. He 
 went very far iiideed in denouncing the lavish expenditure 
 entailed on the colonies by the Imperial authorities, and even 
 urged the policy which Lord Granville carried out many years 
 afterwards, of the removal of British troops, which he declared 
 were useless in Australia.
 
 ROBERT LOAVE AND EARL GREY 389 
 
 He said, and with truth, that it was far too much the habit 
 of the men in office in England to regard the Colonies as in- 
 tended, not for the benefit of the bulk of the English people, 
 and as the great means for the expansion of our race, language, 
 laws, and religion ; but merely as places where their sons and 
 relatives could be provided for with light berths at heavy 
 salaries. There is no one who has studied the history and 
 development of colonies, from the late Sir George Cornewall 
 Lewis down to the humblest scribe in a remote bush news- 
 paper, who has not found out that this is one of the chief 
 reasons why Crown dependencies have, as a rule, been utter 
 failures compared with those colonial communities which have 
 acquired the right of managing their own affairs. 
 
 Lowe illustrated the broad distinction between a love 
 for, and loyalty to, the traditions and inheritances of the 
 English race and a mere submission to Downing Street 
 officialism, by the following apt allusion to the battle of 
 Waterloo : — 
 
 To-day is the 18th of June ; thirty-four years ago a victory, the 
 greatest, the most decisive, the most important, the most noble that 
 had ever graced the annals of a civilised nation was achieved by the 
 valour, the unconquerable energy, of British soldiers. Many amongst 
 those who stood around him might be the descendants of the heroes 
 that fought that day. Those heroes did not brave death on that occa- 
 sion, they did not obtain that great and glorious victory, to provide 
 for the sons and nephews of officials only. It was not for that that 
 they fought and bled — it was for the rights of their country and 
 their kind ; and base would the men of Australia be if they sat down 
 contented with one shadow less of the rights which those soldiers, 
 their ancestors, earned for them with the sword, and which they had 
 bequeathed to them. 
 
 ' The meeting dispersed quietly, and it is our duty,' writes the 
 Herald, ' to say from our own experience of such assemblies in 
 the home country, a more respectable, (in every sense) a more 
 €alm, peaceable, and well-conducted political meeting could not 
 take place in any portion of the British dominions.' 
 
 These two monster open-air meetings, in which it will be
 
 390 LIFE OF LOED SHERBEOOKE 
 
 seen that the late Lord Sherbrooke was altogether the prmcipal 
 figure, did much towards the settlement of the question of the 
 transportation of criminals into Australia. None of the 
 convicts onboard the Hashemy, says Mr. Eusden, were allowed 
 to be employed in the metropohtan county of Cumberland ; 
 they were removed ' up country ' at the expense of their 
 employers, or sent on by sea to Moreton Bay. The convict 
 ships that subsequently arrived at Port Jackson were compelled 
 to carry then: cargoes also to this northern settlement, now 
 the flourishing colony of Queensland. 
 
 It was some years before transportation ceased throughout 
 AustraHa. But by the refusal of the district of Port Phillip to 
 receive the prisoners on board the Hashemi/ and the public 
 protests headed by the late Lord Sherbrooke when that vessel 
 appeared in Sydney Harbour, the transportation policy with 
 which Earl Grey had so unfortunately linked his name received 
 its death-blow. The subsequent resistance to this evil and ill- 
 considered policy, which flourished for some time longer so 
 rankly in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and in Western 
 Australia, led to the banding together of the various colonies 
 in an anti-transportation league. This was the actual begin- 
 ning of that policy of colonial co-operation, based on the feel- 
 ing of colonial interdependence, which must eventually lead to 
 Australian Confederation.
 
 391 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IN AUSTRALIA 
 
 Lowe's Attack on the Sydney Corporation — Proposed University for Sydney^ 
 Challenged by Dr. Bland — Lowe's Offence to the ' Emancipist ' Class — Sails 
 for England — A Footnote on Stanley, Gladstone, and Grey 
 
 Egbert Lowe's colonial career was now drawing to a close. 
 He retained his seat in the Legislative Council as member for 
 Sydney until the last ; and he also continued to take an active 
 part in public affairs almost up to the very hour of his 
 departure. There were, indeed, two public questions in which 
 he took a most prominent part during his closing year in 
 Australia. One was the motion to abolish the Sydney Corpora- 
 tion ; the other was the Bill to establish the Sydney University. 
 
 On September 9, 1849, Lowe proposed the adoption of the 
 report of a select committee recommending that the Sydney 
 corporation should be abolished. His speech on this occasion 
 might well startle a generation dry-nursed on county councils. 
 But the select committee of which he had been chairman had 
 indeed drawn up a report in favour of the abolition of the 
 corporation — mayoral robes, aldermanic dinners, and all — and 
 it was in support of this dreadful thing that Lowe delivered 
 not the least remarkable of his colonial speeches. 
 
 Certainly his arguments for the abolition of municipal insti- 
 tutions generally, and the municipality of Sydne}^ in particular, 
 will sound strange in the ears of most men whether ' Progres- 
 sives ' or 'Moderates,' Liberals or Conservatives. But Eobert 
 Lowe had the rare merit (if it be not rather a defect in a poli- 
 tician) of never being commonplace ; and consequently, whether
 
 392 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 one agree with him or not, it is generally refreshing to follow 
 the line of his arguments on any suhject, enforced as they 
 always were by a clear, pointed, and vigorous phraseology. 
 
 If we look to the origin of municipal institutions, he 
 declared, we find that they were commenced in barbarous 
 times in order to do in a bungling way that business which 
 the Government could not do itself. They were the offspring 
 of the Feudal system, and it was absurd to say that because they 
 were then useful in protecting the many against the few, the 
 weak against the strong, that such elective boards are specially 
 fitted to look after the cleansing and lighting of modern 
 cities. 
 
 It was mere cant to affirm, parrot-like, that the elective 
 principle should always be upheld. No less an authority than 
 Edmund Burke had asserted that popular election was in 
 itself a great evil only to be endured because it sometimes 
 obviated a greater. There was no inherent virtue in popular 
 election ; like all human contrivances it could only be tested 
 by results. 
 
 If in any case the good did not exceed the evil, let them 
 discard.the elective principle altogether. 
 
 There had been elective monarchies, but I have yet to learn that 
 I am guilty of anything unconstitutional when I say that I prefer 
 hereditary monarchies. There have been elective judges, but I have 
 yet to learn that I am guilty of anything unconstitutional in saying 
 that I had rather see the judges of the land appointed. There were 
 elective magistracies, and 1 know not why I should be deemed un- 
 constitutional because I wish the magistrates to be appointed rather 
 than elected. And by the same reasoning, it was not unconstitu- 
 tional to seek to divest the Municipal Corporation of Sydney, and 
 all other municipal corporations, of the elective principle. The 
 question, therefore, narrowed itself to this, not whether the course 
 proposed is constitutional, but whether the elective principle, as 
 applied to corporations, is attended with beneficial results. 
 
 In this age belief in nuniicipal institutions will be exploded. 
 Reverenced by antiquarians, they are condemned by economists ; 
 they have ceased to be bulwarks against oppression and sanctuaries
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IN AUSTRALIA 393 
 
 of freedom ; and they have proved themselves to be totally un- 
 adapted for administrative functions. 
 
 This was the general line of argument which Lowe adopted ; 
 but when he went on to support the petition of 2,600 of the 
 •citizens of Sydney for the abolition of their corporation, he 
 adduced some very startling local facts. He declared that the 
 expense of working the corporation had been about 90 per 
 cent, on the gross expenditure ; and that instead of improving 
 the city council was growing worse dail}^ ' until it had at last 
 reached the lowest point of municipal pessimism.' Why should 
 such an unsatisfactory and corrupt body be perpetuated ? In 
 this connection he even denounced what he called the ' pot- 
 house argument,' that there should be no taxation without 
 representation. In the face of its misdeeds the city council 
 had approached the House to ask for greater powers and 
 extended funds ; but the House would not fulfil its duty if it 
 lent any ear to such a request. Year after year, as mayoralty 
 succeeded mayoralty, no one had taken the trouble to look 
 into the city expenditure and receipts ; the collectors had never 
 been called on to give an account of their stewardship, until, 
 almost by accident, defalcations to an unknown extent were 
 discovered. 
 
 Becoming epigrammatic, as was his wont, Lowe alleged 
 that municipal bodies ' combine the maximum of dilatoriness 
 with the maximum of rashness.' He then dragged to 
 light some of the evidence given before the select committee, 
 which would seem to point to the fact that Sydney could boast 
 a kind of infantile but thriving Tammany Ring in the year 
 1849. According to this evidence, the tenants of councillors' 
 houses were invariably employed on the city works ; and the 
 ' houses of a councillor were always tenanted when the 
 said councillor was on the Improvement Committee, and 
 mostly untenanted when he was not.' The great thorough- 
 fares of Sydney had been neglected, while roads on the very
 
 394 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBKOOKE 
 
 outskirts had been put in complete repair — roads in which 
 there were no houses or traffic, but which skirted the private 
 property of some enterprising city father. 
 
 Mr, Lowe went on to say that what he as a taxpayer 
 wanted was to see the streets cleansed, drained, lighted, and 
 paved in the most efficient and most economic way. In lieu of 
 the idle frippery of ma3"ors, aldermen, and councillors, he would 
 appoint — not elect — a body of paid commissioners. These 
 commissioners would have a plain, businesslike duty before 
 them, which they could perform without any long speeches 
 before or after dinner. He therefore moved — ' That the Acts 
 incorporating the city of Sydney ought to be repealed.' 
 
 A lively debate ensued, in which Wentworth and the 
 Colonial Secretary bore the chief part against him and his 
 select committee. Lowe replied at considerable length and 
 with remarkable vigour. It had been urged by Wentworth 
 that the great achievement of the Whig Government was the 
 passing of the Municipal Eeform Acts. This, Lowe admitted, 
 was an achievement ; not so much for what it did, as for what 
 it undid. It served to sweep away the old rotten corporations ; 
 but since the passing of these Acts, into such great contempt 
 had these institutions fallen, that it was with difficulty people 
 could be found to accept office in them. 
 
 The motion on being put to the vote was lost ; but, strange 
 as it may seem, public feeling in Sydney was undoubtedly in 
 favour of tbe proposal to abolish its own city council. Com- 
 menting on the debate and the division, the Sydney Mornincf 
 Herald observed : ' Man}' of them would have preferred that 
 the resolutions had been carried in their original integrity ; 
 but all must be pleased that the charge preferred by Mr. Lowe's 
 committee has been declared proven, and that to this long- 
 neglected and deeply-injured city something like justice is at 
 length to be done.' 
 
 Three nights afterwards, Lowe rose to withdraw certain 
 resolutions of which he had given notice in favour of the
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IN AUSTRALIA 395 
 
 immediate establishment of responsible government. His 
 reason for doing so, he said, was that Mr. Hawes, the Under- 
 Secretary of State for the Colonies, had given a pledge in the 
 House of Commons for the alteration of the Constitution of 
 the Australian Colonies. His second reason for requesting to 
 withdraw his motion was that his political friends and sup- 
 porters considered the time inopportune owing to the disturb- 
 ances in Canada. He himself had found nothing in what he 
 read of the proceeedings in Canada to justify any opposition 
 to the granting of self-government to Australia ; but these 
 circumstances weighed more heavily on the minds of his 
 friends, and so he consented most reluctantly and most un- 
 willingly to withdraw his resolutions. 
 
 The question, however, on which Lowe took the most 
 prominent part during this closing year was Wentworth's Bill 
 for the foundation and endowment of a University in Sydney. 
 Lowe was, indeed, at first, Wentworth's warmest supporter 
 in this matter, and was nominated as one of the original 
 members of the Senate.^ 
 
 This plan of Wentworth's in nominating the members of 
 the Senate off-hand was resented : first bv Mr. James Martin, 
 who was not included in the list, and subsequently by 
 Mr. Lowe, who was. Furthermore, Lowe objected to the 
 manner in which Wentworth had attempted to rush the mea- 
 sure through the House, and to the presence on the proposed 
 Senate of Wentworth's friend Bland, who, though a man of 
 some education and of good standing in Sydney, had had 
 the misfortune to have been transported in the earlier days to 
 the colony for his share in a duelling transaction in India. 
 
 ' The names of the Senate as proposed by Wentworth were as follows : — 
 Sir Alfred Stephen, Chief Justice ; Edward Deas Thomson, Colonial Secretar}- ; 
 J. H. Plunkett, Attorney-General ; Charles Nicholson, Speaker ; W. C. Went- 
 worth and Robert Lowe, Members for Sydney ; James Macarthur ; S. A. 
 Donaldson ; Edward Hamilton ; William Macleay ; Hastings Elwin ; William 
 Bland ; Francis Merewether ; E. Broadhurst ; A Denison ; Matthew Henry 
 Marsh.
 
 396 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 At the same time Wentworth had proposed to exclude the 
 clergy altogether from the governing body of the University. 
 This anomalous state of things caused Eobert Lowe to make 
 a characteristically pointed remark which led to some un- 
 pleasantness at the time. ' It would take much discussion,' he 
 said, ' to convince that House that it was a good principle to 
 exclude the clergy as a body, and to admit convicts into the 
 government of such an institution.' 
 
 Bland was no longer a member of the Council, but at once 
 applied to be enabled to present a petition in defence of his 
 social fitness to take his place on the University Senate. But 
 though in no sense of the word an ordinary criminal, for it was 
 admitted that he had committed no offence that a man of the 
 highest rank at that time would have blushed to own, still, he 
 was an ' emancipist ' ; and, under the circumstances, it was 
 eminently injudicious on the part of Wentworth to place him 
 in what was in reality a false position. The Legislative 
 Council ruled that the petition of Bland was inadmissible ; and 
 he then issued a challenge to his assailant couched in the most 
 violent terms. Such matters as these should be lightly passed 
 over, as things done in the heat of the moment ; certainly no 
 friend of Bland (who it will be remembered had attended Lowe 
 during the period when he was threatened with blindness, and 
 who knew well that he was almost as disqualified for duelling 
 as a man born blind) would repeat the charges he thought fit 
 in his anger to make against the personal courage of one , 
 who, throughout life, was absolutely deficient in the sense of 
 fear. Mr. Archibald Michie obtained a rule nisi on behalf 
 of Mr. liobert Lowe calling on William Bland to show cause 
 why a criminal information should not be filed against him 
 for attempting to provoke a breach of the peace. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the Chief Justice, Sir Alfred Stephen, 
 and his two colleagues, in their very impartial judgments, 
 deliberately declared that Bland had no just cause of ofifence 
 whatever.
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IX AUSTRALIA 397 
 
 The debate (said Sir Alfred Stephen) turned upon a principle of 
 vital importance to this colony, and to the proposed University, viz.. 
 whether persons who had been transported to this colony were- 
 eligible to be on the Senate. That question was fairly debated, it 
 was argued, by Mr. Lowe as a question of principle, and no particular- 
 reference was made to Mr. Bland, nor was his name mentioned. ' 
 
 Sir Alfred added that — 
 
 From the bench he could only recognise Mr. Bland, for the 
 purpose of the debate, as one of those who came to the colony as a 
 convict. Off the bench, he had the highest esteem for him, for his 
 very good qualities ; he knew that his case was a peculiar one, and 
 had been distinguished from others by society here. 
 
 This affair passed over harmlessly. But the ' emancipist '' 
 class was then numerous and influential enough to make its 
 resentment felt. This was a consideration, however, that would 
 never have made Lowe hesitate to express his views with the 
 greatest force and freedom. His attitude in regard to this 
 question of the Senate was regarded not only as a personal 
 attack on an individual, hut as a clear denunciation of an 
 entire class, and from the point of view of his own ease and 
 comfort it was most injudicious. The profound hostility of 
 many old colonial settlers to Lowe may be attributed to the 
 stand which he took in trying to exclude the ' emancipists ' 
 from the University Senate. 
 
 The constitution of the original Senate, however, was not 
 the only point on which Lowe widely differed from Wentworth. 
 In Wentworth' s scheme of a University it was provided that 
 when the number of graduates amounted to fifty, they should 
 elect their own Senate. According to Lowe's forecast this 
 meant that at the end of six years the management and 
 government of the University would be in the hands of these 
 local graduates ; and as certain of these would hail from the 
 other colonies,^ it meant that the University would be placed 
 * in the hands of some twenty or thirty Sydney youths who had 
 
 ' The totally different social conditions of Australia in 1892 to some extent 
 nullifies this criticism ; but the provincial spirit is still strong.
 
 398 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 never been out of the colony, and knew nothing of University 
 matters whatever.' 
 
 This fact should be noted, he said, by the scholars from the 
 home Universities who might be invited to Sydney to fill pro- 
 fessorships. It was in discussing this part of Wentworth's 
 University scheme that Eobert Lowe, as far as I have been able 
 to glean, showed for the first time his deep dislike to that 
 narrow provincial spirit which, it must be confessed, is so sadly 
 prevalent in all colonial communities. His words, spoken 
 almost five and forty years ago, are true to this day, and 
 could be pondered with advantage not only in the city in 
 Avhich they were delivered, but in every city and township of 
 Australasia. 
 
 When that collegiate Millennium should have arrived, in which 
 age should give way to youth, experience to inexperience, in which, 
 in all probability, the narrowest local and provincial sentiment should 
 take the place of a broad, general, and catholic spirit, then perhaps 
 might flourish the principles so much in fashion among the native 
 youth with their favourite maxim, ' Australia for the Australians ! ' 
 Then might the new senate, with its handful of local youthful 
 graduates, appropriate the ample salaries provided for the professors 
 to appointments of their own making of men chosen from amongst 
 themselves. Those who knew anything at all of University manners 
 — those who had mingled in a world wider than this scattered com- 
 munity — would be the first to admit the danger and to dread all such 
 inducements to the fostering, especially in a seat of learning, of a 
 narrow and provincial standard of excellence. 
 
 Without any allusion, open or covert, to Bland's case, 
 Lowe, in this really excellent speech, in which he scattered 
 so much good counsel as to the lines on which the first uni- 
 versity in Australia should have been laid down, thus referred 
 to his own Oxford experiences ; in doing so, he boldly grasped 
 that dangerous and unpleasant ' emancipist ' question, which 
 most of the members found it so much more convenient to 
 ignore. 
 
 I was for eleven years at the University of Oxford, I have taught 
 in that University, and can say tliat out of the hundreds of high-
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IN AUSTRALIA 390 
 
 minded young men with whom I became associated as their tutor 
 there was barely one who would have consented, for the largest sum 
 of money, to sit as a professor under a direction in which any person 
 who had been transported for crime could form a member. If the 
 Council wished to ruin their infant University, let them ignore this 
 warning ; then must they fall back on the native talent before alluded 
 to. They might command a kind of talent from England, but a 
 talent without honour and without character ; an importation that 
 would do but little for the fame and stability of their University. 
 
 Wentworth was, however, determined to rush his University 
 Bill through the Council and to nominate whom he chose for 
 the Senate. With all his great qualities, his superb energy, 
 and his naturally broad imperial views, by long domination 
 over inferior men in a small isolated community Wentworth 
 had himself degenerated into an overweening provincial. He 
 was, moreover, the accredited leader of the old squatter 
 oligarchy, which was unfortunately closely associated with so 
 much that was evil as well as so much that was good in the 
 social condition of early New South Wales ; and thus, as Gold- 
 smith so happily says, he 
 
 Narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 
 The consequence of Lowe's opposition to these provisions 
 in the University Bill was that the measure was rejected. In 
 a very fair and impartial leading article entitled * The Fate of 
 the University Bill ' {Si/dney Morning Herald, October 1:2, 
 1849), Wentworth is entirely blamed for this misadventure. 
 That remarkable man, however, in October of the following- 
 year, succeeded in passing the measure, and so he may justly be 
 regarded as the founder of the first University established in 
 Australia. By this time Eobert Lowe had returned to England, 
 and for a brief while Wentworth held undisputed sway in the 
 Legislative Council of New South Wales. Under the new Con- 
 stitution, however, he was to find himself entirely overthrown 
 by the new democratic forces of the time. In September 
 1851, when Sydney sent three members to the new^ Legislative
 
 400 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 Council, Went^YO^th was the lo'^est on the poll of those 
 returned ; while his chief opponent, Dr. Lang, triumphantly 
 headed it. Went worth felt the blow acutely, and the rest of 
 his life was chiefly spent in retirement in England, where he 
 died, in his eighty-first year, at Marleigh House, Wimborne, 
 Dorsetshire, in 1872. 
 
 By this time the late Lord Sherbrooke had attained to his 
 highest distinction in the Imperial Parliament ; but there is 
 no record to show that he and Wentworth ever met during 
 the last sixteen years of the life of the latter in this country. 
 
 To revert to the closing year of Robert Lowe's sojourn in 
 Sydney, it is worth pointing out that almost up to the very 
 last hour he took an active part in public matters which he 
 thought likely to advance the interests of the community. As 
 late as January 8, 1850, we find him attending a meeting of 
 the Sydney Eailway Company, of which the late Sir Charles 
 Cowper was in the first instance president and afterwards 
 manager. On this occasion Lowe made a most sensible and 
 l)usinesslike speech, showing the great importance he attached 
 to the development of the country by means of railway com- 
 munication. It will be borne in mind that what are now the 
 large and flourishing capital cities of Australia, connected by an 
 enormous trans-continental railway system, were then, with the 
 exception of Sydney, mere isolated bush townships. In his 
 opening remarks at this meeting, Lowe announced that he 
 should not be much longer in the colony to ' watch the progress 
 of this great national work ; ' but none, he said, took a deeper 
 interest init than himself. He was alarge shareholder — indeed, 
 he believed the second person to take shares in the Sydney 
 Railway Company — 
 
 The first being the late respected Mr. James Simmons, a gentle- 
 man whose public spirit, and whose zeal and confidence in the 
 establishment of railways in this colony, made his death a severe loss. 
 
 Had Mr. Simmons been present that day, I am sure we should
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR IX AUSTRALIA 401 
 
 have found him ready to support, with his sound judgment and cahn 
 common sense, not the interests of any man or of any party, but the 
 interests of the great object we have in view in the estabhshment of 
 railways. I for one trust that the result of this meeting will be the 
 healing of all our differences and the concentration of all our energies 
 to that one great end. I shall be proud to go home and be able to 
 proclaim that no other British colony had yet dared to attempt the 
 establishment of railroads out of her own resources, except the de- 
 pressed and trampled-on dependency of New South Wales. 
 
 Lowe then delivered a very warm eulogium on the tact 
 and business-like abilities of Mr. Cowper, who was forthwith 
 appointed manager by the meeting. 
 
 Cowper subsequently devoted himself exclusively to the 
 affairs of the Sydney Railway Company, until it was absorbed 
 by the government, when he returned to public life, and after- 
 wards became Prime Minister of New South Wales. 
 
 Robert Lowe had for some time made up his mind to 
 resign his seat in the Legislative Council, and return to 
 England. He would not in all probability have taken the 
 step when he did, but would have preferred to remain in 
 order to bear his part in the first Colonial Legislature under 
 responsible government ; but Mrs. Lowe's health had become 
 seriously impaired, and for some time past her one desire 
 had been to return to her friends and her native land. 
 
 Accordingly, on January 27, 1850, Mr. and Mrs. Robert 
 Lowe, with their young charges, the orphan Jamieson children, 
 sailed from Sydney in a small vessel for England. 
 
 To the deep disgust of his most active constituent, the 
 present Sir Henry Parkes, Robert Lowe was permitted to 
 leave the colony without that • farewell banquet ' which now 
 marks the departure of every pushing politician or popular 
 player, who looks upon it as a necessary advertisement in his 
 precarious calling. 
 
 In closing this record of the brief but brilliant colonial 
 career of the late Lord Sherbrooke, it may not be amiss to 
 
 VOL. I. DP
 
 402 LIFE or LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 add a few sentences by way of a footnote on the three remark- 
 able EngUsh statesmen who filled the office of Secretary of 
 State for the Colonies during his sojourn in New South Wales. 
 These were : Lord Stanley (the late Earl of Derby), who was 
 Colonial Secretary from 1841-5 ; Mr. Gladstone, who held the 
 office for less than a year; and Earl Grey, whose tenure 
 lasted from June, 1846, to February, 1852. Readers of these 
 pages cannot fail to have noticed that Lord Sherbrooke 
 denounced the official actions of each of these three remark- 
 able men with absolute impartiality. He was, however, always 
 careful to point out to his fellow-colonists that the evil was 
 in the system, and not in the particular politician who might 
 happen to represent the Colonies in the English Cabinet and 
 Parliament, Still, to many English readers, Lowe's words 
 and actions towards Lord Grey may seem too harsh, especially 
 when it is borne in mind that this high-minded and assiduous 
 nobleman sacrificed his political career in the cause of colonial 
 self-government. It was this self-sacrifice which made so 
 kindly and impartial a critic as Mr. R. H. Hutton, declare, 
 ' Earl Grey is one of the wasted forces of politics.' To Lord 
 Derby, and still more to Mr. Gladstone, the tenure of the 
 Colonial Office was but a brief and passing episode in a great 
 and successful public career, terminating in each case in the 
 Premiership of England. But Earl Grey will only be 
 remembered as the Colonial Secretary. He probably gave 
 more time and attention to the Colonies than any half-dozen 
 other Secretaries of State. To him undoubtedly belongs the 
 credit of establishing the system of responsible government, 
 though Lord Stanley had initiated the parliamentary system 
 in Australia. But Lord Grey well nigh destroyed his boon 
 by saddling it with unworkable conditions. Moreover, he irre- 
 trievably ruined his reputation in the Colonial communities, 
 for which he had sacrificed so much and laboured so diligently, 
 by his determination to revive the evil practice of criminal 
 transportation.
 
 403 
 
 ENVOI 
 
 In his latter years, Lord Sherbrooke frequently reverted to 
 these early times in New South Wales. Often he would ex- 
 press a desire to revisit the once so familiar scenes — his old 
 home at Nelson Bay ; the beautiful gardens of his friend, 
 William Macleay, at Elizabeth Bay ; his favourite township of 
 Goulburn, and the fair and fertile region of Illawarra. 
 
 ' But I might not recognise them,' he would say ; * all will 
 be changed.' He, however, always declared that he would be 
 able to find his way in the well-remembered streets of Sydney, 
 and to recognise almost every stone in the older portions of 
 that still picturesque city. If at any time he chanced to refer 
 to the fierce political battles of those days, he invariably added, 
 * no doubt I made many mistakes ! ' 
 
 It must be admitted that he had excited considerable per- 
 sonal antagonism, but at the same time he enjoyed a far 
 greater measure of popularity than, to his own regret and to 
 the misfortune of his country, ever fell to his share in 
 England. I do not think, however, that he could have re- 
 mained for long the Tribune of the People even in Sydney ; 
 there were indeed signs that his popularity would have inevit- 
 ably waned. He was, with all his great gifts, his high courage, 
 his earnest convictions, his skill in debate, and his frequent 
 flights of genuine and most moving eloquence, a man not 
 made to woo the general ear. He was constitutionally unable 
 to condescend either to platitude or cant, which are absolutely 
 essential to win, or at least to retain, popular favour ; and 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 LIFE OF LORD SIIERBROOKE 
 
 he would always have felt it a personal degradation to secure 
 the votes and voices of the crowd by pandering to prevailing 
 prejudice or popular ignorance. 
 
 Such a man can be known only to intimate friends 
 or kindred sphits — and these will ever be few. At every turn 
 he is sure to have his motives, his words, his actions misre- 
 presented or misunderstood. The great mass of mankind are, 
 in one sense, not so much to blame ; for it is a distorted image, 
 and not the man himself, that is presented to their dim vision. 
 It is always this image which they passionately reject or pas- 
 sionately acclaim. 
 
 I have often speculated on Lord Sherbrooke's actual reflec- 
 tions and feelings as he sailed out of Sydney harbour in 1850. 
 In later life he saw it all through the softening haze of years, 
 and would merely express his regret that he had never found 
 time to revisit Australia. On the eve of his departure he in 
 all probability regarded things differently, and was perhaps 
 not sorry to quit the place and close his colonial career. 
 
 But had he been a man consumed with self-complacency 
 and prone to keen appreciation of his own merits and abilities, 
 he might have reviewed the eight years of his colonial life 
 with no little personal gratification as he gazed on the quickly 
 receding shores of that country in which they had been passed. 
 He was still in the prime of life, with his brave wife by his 
 side confident as ever of his coming greatness. With his own 
 fine brain and resolute will, unaided by friends or favour, he 
 had achieved success, and even a measure of fame. At all 
 events, in Sydney, as at Winchester, he had ' effectually shown 
 by a most crucial experiment that he was not too soft for the 
 business of life.' He had now secured, so to speak, a firm 
 foothold in the world ; it was quite open to him to try what 
 fortune awaited him in his native land. And he had laid the 
 foundations of his fortune purely by hard work in defiance of 
 difficulties and by honourable means that knew no deviation.
 
 ENVOI 405 
 
 He had taken from no man his due, nor had he turned his 
 pubhc trusts to private ends. 
 
 It would be untrue to say that Lowe either hked the social 
 life of Sydney or respected the tone of public morality in the 
 colony. Popular as he became with the masses, there were 
 things that deepened rather than destroyed his innate distrust 
 of the unreasoning passions and prejudices of the * many ' ; 
 while, with regard to the ' few,' he saw much that must have 
 made him almost despair of the future of Australia. 
 
 To Eobert Lowe remained the one supreme consolation — he 
 had fought the good fight. His eight years had been indeed one 
 long battle against Colonial Secretaries, Governors, Society, 
 Squatters, Emancipists — one unceasing battle. But, with 
 absolute truth he could have declared that he had drawn the 
 sword only for the well-being of the people to whom he 
 would become little more than a passing stranger, and for the 
 future greatness of the country that he was never again to 
 behold.
 
 INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME 
 
 AAK 
 
 Aae, falls of, 117 
 
 Abbott, Dr., 122, 126 
 
 a Becket, Arthur Martin, 173 
 
 Address, Lowe's, on Land Orders, 339 
 
 Argus, Melbourne, 366, 368 
 
 Articles construed by Themselves, 123 
 
 Atlas, 131, 254, 318 
 
 Australia, Eobert Lowe's first impres- 
 sions of, 166 ; Mrs. Lowe first im- 
 pressions of, 156, 158 
 
 — Northern, proposed penal settle- 
 ment, 317 
 
 Australian Colonies Bill, 181 
 
 — Patriotic Association, 301) 
 Autobiography, a chapter of (Lord 
 
 Sherbrooke's type-written Me- 
 moir), 4-44 
 
 Bak, called to, 139 
 
 Barker, Mr., Lowe's description of his 
 
 station, 179 
 Barney, Colonel, 317, 318, 319 
 Bathurst, 176 
 Beauchamp, Earl, 56 
 Becher, family of, 57 
 Becher, Eev. J. T., 48 
 Bell's Life, 84 
 Billyard, W. W., 317, 358 
 Blair, David, 171 
 Bland, Dr. William, 172, 234, 309, 310, 
 
 311, 362, 396, 397 
 Blindness, Lowe's threatened, 170 
 Bloxsome, Mr., 220 
 Boulton, Mr. T. B., 283 
 Bourke, Sir Richard, 214, 243, 248, 261 
 
 DEN 
 
 Boyd, Archdeacon, Lowe's regard for, 
 95 ; Lowe's letter to, 96 
 
 — Archibald, 299 n., 344 
 
 — Benjamin, 314, 315, 344, 353, 354 
 
 — story of the brothers, 343 
 
 Boyle, Richard, Archbishop of Tuam, 
 
 58 
 Earl of Cork, 58 
 
 — Robert, 58 
 
 Bradley, Dr. (Dean of Westminster), 84 
 Broughton, Bishop, 161, 251, 304, 325; 
 
 and Duke of Wellington, 141 
 Duller, Charles, 298, 309, 310, 311 
 Burton Crescent, 134 
 Burton, Judge (Sir William West- 
 
 brooke), 200, 205, 308 
 Bush, wanderings in, 174-184 
 Byron, Lord, 46 
 
 — letter to Rev. R. Lowe, 47 
 
 Caedwell, Earl, 67, 256, 258 
 Chaplain, Parliamentary, 212 
 Chisholm, Caroline, 304, 305 
 Church, Dean, 82, 122, 127, 131 
 Circular Quay, meeting at, 382 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 67, 95 
 Colonial loyalty, 257 
 Congreve, Dr. Richard, 95 
 Corn, Australian, 222 
 Cowper, Sir Charles, 189, 193, 212, 
 
 225, 284, 296, 353, 383, 400, 401 
 Cranbrook, Earl of, 82, 94 
 
 Dabridgecourt, family of, 58 
 Denison, Henry, 180
 
 408 
 
 LIFE OF LORD SHERBROOKE 
 
 DIA 
 Diary, Continental tour, 108, 113 
 Dickenson, Sir Jolin Nodes, '28'J 
 Dissenters and the Bible, 323 
 Dog, verses on, IIG 
 Donaldson, Stuart A., 283 
 Dowling, Chief Justice, 188, 209 
 Doyle, Bishop, 249 
 DueUing (in Sydney), 221 
 Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, 236 
 Dutch merchants, 111 
 
 Education, Australia ; Lowe's work 
 
 on, 15G, 210, 225, 237, 244, 322 
 Elective principle, 392 
 Elliotson, Dr., 205, 206 
 Envoi, 403 
 Ethics of Mr. Lowe, 207 
 
 Fakrer, Sir Thomas, 72, 142 
 
 Ffoulkes, Kev. Edmund S., on Lowe's 
 classic verses, 90 
 
 Fitzroy, Lady Mary, 303 
 
 — Sir Charles, 303, 312, 314, 385, 
 387 
 
 Forster, William, 203 
 
 Foster, Mr. Fitzgerald (Vesey Fitz- 
 gerald), 369 
 
 French emigrants, 349 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, 87, 94, 119, 
 122, 126 
 
 Giles, Archdeacon, 85 
 Gipps, Lady, relative of Mrs. Lowe, 
 158 
 
 — Sir George, 158, 166, 175, 170, 181 
 182, 185, 180, 187, 188, 253, 209, ' 
 270, 271, 272, 270, 285, 301 I 
 
 — Lowe's rupture with, 238, 240 
 Gladstone, W. E., 79, 80, 81, 222, 807, 
 
 312, 313, 310, 317, 402 
 Glasgow, Lowe and Greek Professor- 
 ship, 102 
 
 — freedom of the city, 105 
 
 Grey, Earl, 298, 300, 318, 320, 369, 
 373, 388 
 
 — his failure as Colonial Minister, 
 402 
 
 LOW 
 
 Griffith, Sir Samuel, 355 
 Guizot, M., 249 
 
 Hampden, Dr., 133 n. 
 
 Hampden, John, 58 
 
 Hardy, Gathorne {see Earl Cranbrook) 
 
 — John Kichard, 263 
 Hashemij, convict ship, 382 
 Heads of the people, 347 
 Higinbotham, Mr. George, 256 
 Hutton, A. W., 128 
 
 — R. H., 402 
 
 Illawarka, 174, 184 
 Insolvency Act, Lowe's work on, 194 
 Ireland and the Poor Law (appendix 
 to Chap. I.), 59-63 
 
 Jackson, Prebendary, 85 
 Jamieson orphans, 209, 267, 303 
 
 Keble, Rev. John, 119, 126, 131 
 Kerr, William, Lowe's letter to, 367 
 Kingsley, Charles, 120, 127 
 KuatchbuU, trial of, 199 
 
 Lambie, Mount, adventure on, 177 
 
 Lang, Dr., 141, 189, 212, 214, 215, 216, 
 217, 225, 233, 248, 290 
 
 Lawson, Mr., 177 
 
 Leichardt, Dr., 332 
 
 Lowe children, 64 ; laws for the nur- 
 sery, 64, 65 
 
 — Henry Porter (see also Henry 
 Sherbrooke), letters to, 86, 98, 99, 
 101 
 
 — Mrs, K., of Bingiiam, portrait of, 
 facing 55 ; Pyndar family, 50 ; 
 letters to, 145 
 
 — Rev. Robert, portrait of, facing 
 40 ; Byron's letter to, 47 ; sports- 
 man, 47 ; social reformer, 48 
 letter to Rev. J. T. Becher, 48-50 
 pioneer. Poor Law Reform, 50-52
 
 INDEX TO THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 409 
 
 LOW 
 
 letter to Oddfellows, 52 ; elocu- 
 tion, 53 ; Prebendary and family, 
 55 ; Gulson's letter to, 59-63 ; 
 death of, 288 
 
 Lowe, Robert, of Oxton, 54 
 
 — Samuel, of Southwell, 54 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 298, 311 n. 
 
 Macaronic Poem on Princess Victoria's 
 visit to Oxford, 88-90; Robert 
 Lowe's letter to H. P. Lowe on, 86 ; 
 Bishop Wordsworth on, 87 ; Sir 
 John Mowbray on, 87 ; Pi'ofessor 
 Froude on, 87 
 
 Macarthur, James, of Camden, 178, 
 261, 273, 395 
 
 Macdermott, Alderman, 21G 
 
 Macleay, Alexander, 186, 293 
 
 — family, hereditary genius of, 162 
 
 — Sir George, 162, 163 7i. 
 
 — William Sharpe, Lowe's tribute to, 
 41, 183; at Elizabeth Bay, 163; 
 legacy to Lord Sherbrooke, 183 
 
 — W. S., 263, 283, 286, 358, 395 
 Magdalen, Lowe Fellow of, 97 
 Manning, Cardinal, 79, 128 
 Marriage, Robert Lowe — Georgiana 
 
 Orred, 107 
 Martin, Sir James, 263, 290, 300 
 Massie, Edward, 81, 87 
 Melbourne, early, Robert Lowe on, 40, 
 
 153 ; Mrs. Lowe's account of, 
 
 152 
 Melbotirne Eevieio, 154, 236 
 Michell, Rev. R., 103, 108 ; letters to, 
 
 104, 105, 132, 139, 140, 287 
 Michie, Sir Archibald, 199, 263, 290, 
 
 374, 382, 385, 396 
 Miles, Alfred, 58 
 Mill, J. S., 65 
 Mitchell, John, 381 
 
 — Sir Thomas, 179, 225, 264, 268, 
 281, 286, 287, 339 
 
 Molesworth, Sir William, 308, 309 
 Mowbray, Sir John, 83, 84, 87 
 Municipal bodies, 392 
 Musters, Mrs. Chaworth, 46 
 
 POR 
 Nelson Bay, 281 
 Neptune, convict ship, 381 
 Newman, Cardinal, 67, 119, 127, 128, 
 
 131; Tract 90, 121 ; Lowe's letter on, 
 
 132 
 — Francis William, 78 
 Nicholson, Dr. (Sir Charles), 193, 225, 
 
 233, 234, 247 
 Nimeguen, 112 
 Notts Hunting Song, 47 
 
 Observatioxs, Lowe's, on Tract 00, 129" 
 O'Connell, Captain, 176, 221 
 — Sir Maurice, 176, 221, 293 
 Oddfellows, Rev. R. Lowe's letter to, 52 
 Oxford, Lowe at. Lord Selborne's 
 reminiscence, 76, 77, 92; Canon 
 Melville's, 77-79 ; Francis W. New- 
 man's, 78 ; Sir Francis Doyle's, 81 ; 
 Earl Cranbrook's, 82 ; Sir John 
 Mowbray's, 83 ; Dean of West- 
 minster's, 84 ; Earl Cranbrook on 
 Lowe as private tutor, 94 ; Dr. 
 Richard Congreve, 95 ; Canon Mel- 
 ville, 93 ; J. A. Froude, 94 
 
 Palmer, Dr., 177, 284 
 
 — Roundell {see Lord Selborne) 
 
 Parallel, Lowe's, between Canada and 
 
 Austraha, 223 
 Paramatta, 158, 160 
 Parker, Sir Henry Watson, 176 
 Parkes, Sir Henry, 263, 357, 358, 359, 
 
 384, 385, 401 
 Pastoral Association, 25;> 
 Pattison, Mark, 105 
 Peacock, Sir Barnes, 139 
 People's Advocate, 371 
 Plunkett, John Hubert, 161, 186, 193, 
 
 225, 243, 250, 3.54 
 Poems of a Life, history of, 118 
 Folding, Archbishop, 247 
 Poor Law, 50 
 Port Phillip, separation, 232 ; supported 
 
 by Lowe, 234 ; Lowe's speech on, 
 
 241 ; convicts for, 313 ; conspiracy, 
 
 366
 
 410 
 
 LIFE OF LORD SlIERBROOKE 
 
 PRI 
 
 Privilege, breach of, 219 
 
 Pusey, Dr., 120, 131 
 
 Pycroft, Eev. James ( Oxford Memories), 
 
 86, 92, 94, 199 
 Pym, John, 58 
 Pyiidar family, 56 
 
 — Mrs., 365 
 
 — Eev. E., 45 
 
 EoBixsox, John Phelps (member for 
 Melbourne), 212, 225, 233, 244, 250, 
 295, 332, 349, 353, 354 ; death of, 
 345 
 
 Eotterdam, 110 
 
 Eusden, Mr. G. W., 214, 244 n., 263, 
 381, 383, 390 
 
 St. Vincent and Auckland : addi'ess 
 
 to the electors, 273, 356 ; speech on 
 
 the hustings, 274 
 Schedules A, B, C, 278 
 Scott, Dean, 85 
 Scott, Hon. Francis, 299 
 Selborne, Earl of, 67, 69, 73, 76, 92, 
 
 121, 132 
 Senate, Sydney University, 395, 397 ; 
 
 Lowe's criticism of, 398 
 Senior, Master in Chancery, 142 
 Sherbrooke, Lady, of Calverton, 142 
 Sherbrooke, Mrs., of Oxton Hall, 134 ; 
 
 letters to, 135, 137 
 Sidney, Samuel, 265, 270 
 Simmons, Mr. James, 400 
 Simon, Sir John, 210 
 Sinclair, Eev. Thomas, 85 
 Some Account of the Taylor Family, 
 
 57 
 'Songs of the Squatters,' 264, 271; 
 
 ' Squatter to his Bride,' 266 
 South Sea labour traffic, 350 
 Stanley and Cardwell, 258 
 Stanley, Lord (late Earl of Derby) : 
 
 his Australian Constitution, 185, 
 
 211, 222 ; system of Irish education, 
 
 246 
 Stawell, Sir W. Foster, 381 
 Stephen, Sir Alfred, 188, 196, 287,289, 
 
 395, 396, 397 
 
 UPP 
 
 Strathfieldsaye, 58 
 
 Swiss Guards, Lowe's hnes on, 74 
 
 ' Swiss Sketches,' 118 
 
 Swiss tour, 115 
 
 Sydney, address to the electors, 359 
 
 Sydney, Eobert Lowe's description of 
 157, 159; harbour, 156; commer 
 cial depression, 165 ; college, 196 ; 
 corporation, 391 ; university, 395 
 
 Sydney Morning Herald, 186, 187, 206, 
 207, 209, 221, 234, 235, 239, 338 n., 
 342, 357, 360, 366, 370, 374, 385, 389, 
 394. 399 
 
 Sydney Eailway Company, 400 
 
 Syme, David, on the Unearned Incre- 
 ment, 154 
 
 Tait, Archbishop, 82, 83, 103, 104 
 
 Tariff, colonial, Lowe on, 194, 195 ; 
 Wentworth on, 194, 195 
 
 Taylor, Peter, and Lord Sherbrooke, 57 
 
 Templer, James Lethbridge, 263 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 58 
 
 Therry, Sir Eoger, 161, 193, 225, 238, 
 248, 249, 261, 262 
 
 Thomson, Sir Edward Deas, Colonial 
 Secretary, 161, 186, 225, 354 
 
 Transportation, criminal. Select Com- 
 mittee on, 314, 380 ; Earl Grey's 
 attempt to revive, 378 ; Mr. Glad- 
 stone's proposals, 312 ; Lord John 
 Eussell's policy, 380 
 
 Trevor, Canon, 82, 84 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, 66, 67 
 
 — Thomas Adolphus, 66, 68 
 
 Twofold Bay, 344 
 
 Ullatiiorne, Dr., 243, 250, 308 
 Unemployed, Sydney, Lowe's letter to, 
 
 371 
 Unicnimchia, Lowe's speech in, 85 
 Union, Oxford, debates, 79-85 ; fining 
 an archbishop, 83 ; Lowe and 
 Trevor, 82; BelVs Life, 84; Mr, 
 Gladstone at, 79, 80 ; Lowe and 
 Ward, 82 ; Edward Massie, pre- 
 sident, 83 
 Upper House, Colonial, 375
 
 INDEX TO THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 411 
 
 VIC 
 
 Victoria (colony), see Port Phillip 
 Victoria, Princess, visit to Oxford, 
 
 Lowe's macaronic poem on, 86, 88- 
 
 90 
 Voyage to Australia : Lowe's account 
 
 of, 147 ; Mrs. Lowe's account, 148 
 
 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 253, 329, 
 
 331 
 Ward, William George, 67, 82 
 Waverley Novels, 55 
 Wentworth, William Charles, 177, 192, 
 193, 195, 196, 287, 290, 293, 328, 
 337, 338, 360, 361, 362, 363, 373, 
 374, 375, 395 ; character of, 399 ; 
 death of, 400 
 Westgarth, William, 164, 165 
 Whaling industry, 353 
 Whately, Archbishop, 308, 310 
 Williams, Dr. (of Winchester), 71 
 Wilshire, Mr. .J. W., 245, 358, 360, 
 
 364 
 Wilson, Bishop, 249 
 Wilson, Professor, nephew of, 174 
 Winchester ; Robert Lowe entered as 
 
 ZOI 
 commoner, 36 ; Spartan discipline, 
 67 ; Adolphus Trollope's reminis- 
 cence, 69 ; Lord Selborne's reminis- 
 cence, 69-72 ; Sir Thomas Farrer's 
 story of, 72 ; Bishop Charles Words- 
 worth's reform of, 73 ; Lord Sher- 
 brooke's verses at, 74, 75 
 
 Windeyer, Richard, 189, 225, 279, 290, 
 290 ; Mrs. Lowe concerning, 189 ; 
 his Monetary Confidence Bill, 189- 
 191 ; Lowe replies to, 192 ; death 
 of, 301 
 
 Windeyer, Sir William, 301 
 
 Windyer, sen., Disraeli on, 189 n. 
 
 WoUongong, 174 
 
 Wordsworth, Dr. Charles (Bishop of 
 
 St. Andrews), 60, 71 n., T2, 73 n., 80, 
 
 87 
 Wordsworth, Dr. Christopher (Bishop 
 
 of Lincoln), 08, 73 
 
 Yeojianey, Australian, Lowe's effort 
 to create, 341 
 
 ZoisT, 205 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
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