Our First Half-Century Part 4

Ah! could the hearts that cleared the way Be here to-day!

A handful: yet they took their stand Lost in the silence of the land.

They went their lonely ways unknown And left their bones upon the sand.

E'en though we call this land our own 'Tis but a handful holds it still For good or ill.

What though thy sons be strong and tall, Fearless of mood at danger's call; And these, thy daughters, fair of face, With hearts to dare whate'er befall-- Tall G.o.ddesses and queens of grace-- Fill up thy frontiers: man the gate Before too late.

Sit thou no more inert of fame, But let the wide world hear thy name.

See where thy realms spread line on line-- Thy empty realms that cry in shame For hands to make them doubly thine!

Fill up thy frontiers: man the gate Before too late!

Prepare, ere falls the hour of Fate When death-sh.e.l.ls rain their iron hate, And all in vain thy blood is poured-- For dark aslant the Northern Gate I see the Shadow of the Sword: I hear the storm-clouds break in wrath-- Queen of the North!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PREMIERS OF QUEENSLAND.

(1) SIR R. G. W. HERBERT: Dec. 1859--Feb. 1866; July 1866--Aug. 1866.

(2) HON. ARTHUR MACALISTER: Feb. 1866--July 1866; Aug. 1866--Aug.

1867; Jan. 1874--June 1876.

(3) SIR R. R. MACKENZIE: Aug. 1867--Nov. 1868.

(4) SIR CHARLES LILLEY: Nov. 1868--May 1870.

(5) SIR A. H. PALMER: May 1870--Jan. 1874.

(6) HON. GEORGE THORN: June 1876--Mar. 1877.

(7) HON. JOHN DOUGLAS: Mar. 1877--Jan. 1879.

(8) SIR THOMAS MCILWRAITH: Jan. 1879--Nov. 1883; June 1888--Nov.

1888; Mar. 1893--Oct. 1893.

(9) SIR S. W. GRIFFITH: Nov. 1883--June 1888; Aug. 1890--Mar. 1893.

(10) HON. D. B. MOREHEAD: Nov. 1888--Aug. 1890.

(11) SIR H. M. NELSON: Oct. 1893--April 1898.

(12) HON. T. J. BYRNES: April 1898--Sept. 1898.

(13) SIR J. R. d.i.c.kSON: Oct. 1898--Dec. 1899.

(14) HON. A. DAWSON: 1st Dec. 1899--7th Dec. 1899.

(15) HON. R. PHILP: Dec. 1899--Sept. 1903: Nov. 1907--Feb. 1908.

(16) SIR A. MORGAN: Sept. 1903--Jan. 1906.

(17) HON. W. KIDSTON: Jan. 1906--Nov. 1907: Feb. 1908 (still in office).

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PART I.--OUR NATAL YEAR.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIRTH OF QUEENSLAND.

Issue of Letters Patent and Order in Council.--Appointment of Sir George Ferguson Bowen as First Governor.--Continuity of Colonial Office Policy.--Instructions to Governor.--Munificent Gift of all Waste Lands of the Crown.--Temporary Limitation of Electoral Suffrage.--Responsible Government Unqualified by Restrictions or Reservations.--Governor General of New South Wales Initiates Elections.

Fifty years ago an emphatic expression of confidence in the self-governing competence of the people of North-eastern Australia was given by the British Government of Lord Derby. On 6th June, 1859, Queen Victoria in Council adopted Letters Patent--which had been already approved in draft on 13th May--"erecting Moreton Bay into a colony under the name of Queensland," and appointing Sir George Ferguson Bowen to be "Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the same." On the same day an Order in Council was made "empowering the Governor of Queensland to make laws and provide for the administration of justice in the said colony"; also to const.i.tute therein a Government and Legislature as nearly resembling the form of Government and Legislature established in New South Wales as the circ.u.mstances of the colony would allow. This meant that representative and responsible government had been granted to the people of the new colony to the full extent that it was enjoyed by the people of New South Wales under the epoch-making Const.i.tution Act of 1855. It meant also that the whole of the unalienated Crown Lands of the colony were vested in the Legislature.

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

In notifying Sir George Bowen of his appointment, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton tendered him some friendly advice. He said that Sir George would experience the greatest amount of difficulty in connection with the squatters, and he went on in these words:--"But in this, which is an irritating contest between rival interests, you will wisely abstain as much as possible from interference. Avoid taking part with one or the other.... The first care of a Governor in a free colony," he continued, "is to shun the reproach of being a party man. Give all parties and all Ministries formed the fairest play." In public addresses Sir George was advised to "appeal to the n.o.blest idiosyncracies of the community--the n.o.blest are generally the most universal and the most durable. They are peculiar to no party.

Let your thoughts never be distracted from the paramount object of finance. All states thrive in proportion to the administration of revenue." A number of excellent maxims followed, among them--"The more you treat people as gentlemen the more 'they will behave as such.'"

Again, "courtesy is a duty which public servants owe to the humblest member of the community." And, in a postscript, "Get all the details of the land question from the Colonial Office, and master them thoroughly. Convert the jealousies now existing between Moreton Bay and Sydney into emulation." All these generous didactics from the great novelist and Tory statesman, followed by congratulations and good wishes, must have been stimulative to the aspirations of the embryo Governor charged with the foundation of a new colony at the Antipodes.

The value of autonomous government is generally appreciated; but the free gift of land made by the Imperial authority to the various self-governing colonies has no parallel in human history. In the case of Queensland the recipients were a mere handful of people, mostly settled at one end of a vast territory, at least half of which was unexplored. Plenary authority was in fact given to manage and control the waste lands belonging to the Crown, as well as to appropriate the gross proceeds of the sales of any such lands, and all other proceeds and revenues of the same from whatever source arising, including all royalties, mines, and minerals, all of which by the Letters Patent and the Order in Council were vested in the Legislature. This vesting, however, was subject to a proviso validating all contracts, promises, and engagements lawfully made on behalf of Her Majesty before the proclamation took effect. The proviso also stipulated that there should be no disturbance of any vested or other rights which had accrued or belonged to the licensed occupants or lessees of Crown Lands under any repealed Act, or under any Order in Council issued in pursuance thereof.[a] This reservation was really for the protection of a number of people in the colony, and not for the benefit of the Imperial Government. The licensed occupants would be subject to the mandates of the Legislature; while the reservation in favour of the owners of freehold lands was of a comparatively trivial nature, the total area alienated from the Crown a year after the establishment of the new colony amounting to only 108,870 acres, which had yielded 305,250 as purchase-money chiefly to the New South Wales Treasury.

Taking the 670,500 square miles within the colony thus handed over to be worth five shillings per acre, or 160 the square mile, the total value of the Imperial gift to Queensland would be 107,280,000. Of course that price was not immediately realisable, and before much of the vast area could be utilised millions of capital must be expended in reclamation and development; but as some indication of ultimate value it may be pointed out that the land sold up to 31st December, 1860, realised at the rate of nearly 3 per acre. That the "waste"

land was not a dead a.s.set was shown by the fact that the public revenue of the colony for the first year of its existence was 178,589, to which rents and sales of land contributed a substantial proportion. It was not surprising, therefore, that Sir George Bowen's early despatches to the Secretary of State testified to the grateful and enthusiastic loyalty of the people of the colony to the Queen and the mother country.

When the previously established Australian colonies were severally const.i.tuted the people were kept for years in a state of tutelage, so to speak, power being exercised in each case by a Governor advised by Ministers appointed by and responsible only to the Crown. The single Chamber of the Legislature, if not wholly nominated, included a prescribed number of members appointed by the Governor, and was practically under his control. It had therefore been supposed by many colonists that separation having been hotly opposed by some influential residents of the territory concerned--and having been emphatically condemned by an official despatch received in England from Sir William Denison, then Governor-General of New South Wales, almost at the last moment--conditions in restraint of popular government would have been imposed on the establishment of Queensland.

For the separation struggle had been long continued, and marked by much personal and party bitterness. The agitation had been originated and chiefly maintained by people on the seaboard led by ardent patriots introduced a few years previously under the auspices of Dr.

John Dunmore Lang, who while undoubtedly a great Australian patriot was unhappily not a _persona grata_ with the controlling authority at the Colonial Office. The movement was from its initiation protested against by the enterprising Crown tenants who had driven their flocks and herds overland from New South Wales, and had, taking their lives in their hands, adventurously formed stations in the remote wilderness. They not unnaturally dreaded the effect of popular sovereignty upon what they deemed their vested interests. But British statesmen, whether Conservative or Liberal, appear to have felt that, responsible government having been granted to and enjoyed by the people of New South Wales--and consequently to the people of that part of its territory about to be separated--any Imperial limitation of popular rights already conferred would be regarded as an unjustifiable encroachment upon public liberty achieved after many years of ardent struggle in the parent colony. True, the language of the Letters Patent and Order in Council was afterwards construed to involve some temporary limitation of the manhood suffrage which had been affirmed by the Parliament of New South Wales; but whether this limitation was actual or inadvertent does not clearly appear. It was not of much practical consequence, perhaps, in a new country that was rapidly multiplying its scant population, whether or not the electors for the first Legislative a.s.sembly were required to have some other qualification than adult age and six months' residence; but the incident operated prejudicially against the Government, and gave a rallying cry to Opposition politicians.

A somewhat singular course adopted by the Home Government was the authorisation of the Governor-General of New South Wales to appoint the first members of the Queensland Legislative Council, with a term of five years, although subsequent appointments were to be made by the Governor of Queensland for the term of the members' natural lives.

Sir William Denison was also empowered to summon and call together the first Legislative a.s.sembly of Queensland; to fix by proclamation the number of members; to divide the colony into convenient electoral districts; to prepare the electoral rolls; to issue the writs of election; and to make all necessary provision for the conduct of the first elections. It was required, moreover, that the Parliament should be called together for a date not more than six months after the proclamation of the colony, and should remain in existence, unless previously dissolved by the Governor, for a period of five years. Yet there was practically no limitation of popular authority except in respect of the preliminary arrangements, for the Queensland consolidating and amending Const.i.tution Act of 1867 reaffirmed all rights and privileges conferred by the New South Wales Const.i.tution Act.

[Footnote a: These powers were given in the New South Wales Const.i.tution Act, 1855, Sect. 2.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, BRISBANE]