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APPENDIX
257

to fill offices of trust and importance to the State. He did not feel envious of their lot; for he believed they would act conscientiously. They had been placed in those offices by the voices of the people, and when they acted unwisely they might he removed; but he, by coming out here, had not only closed to himself that path of ambition, but had ceased to he a part of the governing body—had lost all control over the political destinies of the community to which he belonged, and had sunk into the slave of those who were once his equals.

"If it were an offence to join his lot with that of the struggling colonists of Australia, he thought that political disfranchisement and degradation was too severe a punishment for it."

[This generous tribute by Lowe to the political genius of his only possible rival in New South Wales, Wentworth, was uttered, be it observed, some years before the latter had consummated his great services by founding the Sydney University (1850), and by establishing Responsible Government, under his Constitution Bill, which did not become law until 1856.]