Politics, ideology and the New South Wales Legislative Council, 1856-72
Date
1974
Authors
Connolly, Christopher Newland
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The nominated Legislative Council in New South Wales was
never intended as a bastion of squatter supremacy but was
preferred to an elective upper house partly because it seemed
likely to give representation to urban conservatives and
partly because it could be 'swamped' in constitutional deadlocks
with the Assembly. In the first years of responsible
government the Council became, as expected, the organ of urban
conservatism, but those years also saw the growth of a radical
liberal movement drawing most of its support from small
traders, minor professional men and artisans. The wealthy
businessmen, lawyers, landowners and squatters whose interests
the Council was designed to protect were unable to prevent the
enactment of 'class legislation'in favour of the 'little man';
they heard liberal politicians attack the supremacy of statute
law and deny the necessity for a conservative upper house;
and they saw state aid withdrawn at a time when the influence
of conventional religion seemed necessary to prevent the
'disintegration' of society. Above all, the Governor was
forced to swamp the Council when no strictly constitutional
deadlock existed, destroying conservative faith in the
nominated upper house. After the swamping, however, Cowper,
the liberal Premier, conciliated the conservatives and during
the 1860s they regained some of their influence. Liberal
eagerness for 'popular' reforms diminished and, as the
conservatives' fears subsided, they began once more to favour
the nominated Council. By the early 1870s, many liberals also
agreed that the principle of nomination had worked well. The
old political divisions were by then almost irrelevant and
conservatives of the 1850s contributed significantly to the
'liberal' ethos of the 1870s and early 1880s.
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