This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY
79

statesmen thought, or at least hoped, that it might be otherwise. While paying the largest tribute to the genius of Wentworth, it must be said that on this point he was grievously in error. Yet if such a man, with such commanding talents and so splendid a record of past services, utterly failed to create a patrician element in colonial society, what hope could there be save in the frank acceptance of democratic institutions? Wentworth's idea in brief was to make Australia a replica of England rather than of America. To effect this he boldly proposed, as a part of his Constitution Bill, the creation of a colonial House of Peers. His views on this question were not lightly formed.

He knew the curious elements out of which the new nation was to be evolved better than any other man. For years he had fought for the rights and liberties of the people, and throughout his whole life the love of his native country, Australia, was to him a passion. But his imperial instincts were likewise great, and in the full maturity of his splendid powders he could see no way of creating a free self-governed Australia, worthy of an ultimate partnership with the mother-country, without establishing, along with colonial autonomy, a colonial