Having devoted so much space to prominent members of two churches, it may be well to mention that the Wesleyans, without mingling in political warfare, strengthened their pastoral staff. They had five Ministers at work in New South Wales when in 1826 and 1827 they opened chapels in Hobart Town and Launceston.
There was an important accession to the bar and to politics in 1824. William Charles Wentworth returned to Sydney. He had competed with more than twenty others for the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge, and though W. M. Praed's poem on Australasia gained the prize, Wentworth's gained the second place, and in the opinion of many deserved the first. His pen seemed touched by the fire which kindled the muse of Dryden. His sanguine youth predicted the future glories of the sunny South. He claimed to sing them as one born of the soil.[1] The dwellers in it were proud of the talent of their first-born bard. Another able barrister arrived at the same time—Dr. Wardell—who was to be closely allied with Wentworth in public life. The Supreme Court created by the New Constitution Act was not their only arena. Brisbane announced (Oct. 1824) that the censorship of the press would be discontinued, and the Sydney Gazette became untrammelled. Nor was it the only newspaper. In the columns of the Australian, established in 1824, Wentworth and Wardell thundered in a style unknown in the colony before. Sir Ralph Darling had the reputation of being the first to curb the licentiousness of the press, but Brisbane broached the subject (15 Jan. 1825), and it was in response to his despatch that Lord Bathurst (12th July 1825) directed Darling at the "earliest opportunity" to initiate a measure to control the press, to exact a license and to make the maximum term of the license one year.
Sir T. Brisbane was unfortunately estranged from the Colonial Secretary, Major Goulburn, and although that officer's brother was in high reputation in England (Under-Secretary for the Colonies from 1812 to 1821, and in
- ↑ "Thy native bard, though on a foreign strand,
Shall I be mute, and see a stranger's land
Attune the lyre, and prescient of thy fame
Foretell the glories that shall grace thy name?
Forbid it, all ye Nine! 'twere shame to thee,
My Austral parent: greater shame to me."
