find the colonists in the middle of their conflict with the gold-diggers at Ballarat. He was placed on the commission to inquire into the outbreak, was chosen its chairman, and was acknowledged to have conducted a difficult inquiry with much tact and success.
In 1857 Westgarth was again summoned to England on business. On this occasion he decided to remain in London, and founded the firm of Westgarth & Co., colonial brokers, agents, and financiers, rapidly absorbing a large proportion of the business which arose in connection with the demand of the Australian colonies for loans on the London market, and becoming a leading authority in all matters connected with these securities, as well as a considerable factor in their progressive improvement. In 1881 he represented the Melbourne chamber of commerce on the tariff congress of the colonies held in London. He was instrumental in establishing the present London chamber of commerce, and saw his efforts successful in July 1881. He also interested himself in the housing of the poor and in the ‘sanitation and reconstruction of central London,’ on which he wrote an essay in 1884. Through the Society of Arts he offered a series of prizes for the best practical essays on these two subjects.
In 1888, having retired from business, Westgarth revisited Melbourne to be present at the Centennial Exhibition, and was very warmly received both there and in the other colonies. He returned in November 1888, and died suddenly in London on 28 Oct. 1889. Westgarth was quiet and unostentatious in his mode of life, and very methodical in his work and habits. He had been in every way a leader in work for the social and political advancement of the colony of Victoria. He married in 1854. Westgarth's most important works were:
- ‘Report on the Position, Capabilities and Prospects of the Australian Aborigines,’ 1846.
- ‘Australia Felix: an Account of the Settlements of Port Phillip,’ 1848.
- ‘Victoria, late Australia Felix,’ 1853.
- ‘Victoria and the Australian Gold Mines,’ London, 1857.
- ‘Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria,’ Melbourne, 1888.
- ‘Half a Century of Australian Progress: a personal Retrospect,’ London, 1889
He also edited from the manuscript of John Davis ‘Tracks of McKinlay and Party across Australia,’ 1863, and contributed several articles on Australian subjects to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ and papers for the British Association on financial questions, besides writing novelettes in the Tasmanian ‘Launceston Examiner.’
[Melbourne Argus, 30 Oct. 1889; Mennell's Dict. of Austral. Biography.]
WESTMACOTT, Sir RICHARD (1775–1856), sculptor, was born in London in 1775. He was the eldest son of Richard Westmacott, sculptor, of Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, who published in 1777 a series of twenty engraved designs for chimney-pieces, with classical ornaments, and died on 27 March 1808, aged 60 (Gent. Mag. 1808, i. 274). His father gave him the first instruction in his own art, and sent him in 1793 to Rome, where he studied under Canova. He made rapid progress, and in 1795 gained the first gold medal of the academy of St. Luke, offered by the pope, with a bas-relief of Joseph and his brethren. In the same year he was elected a member of the academy of Florence. He left Rome in 1797, on the approach of the French army, and travelled by Bologna to Venice, and thence through Germany, reaching London at the close of the year.
The first work which he exhibited at the Royal Academy was a bust of Sir William Chambers in 1797. He remained a constant exhibitor, sending several works each year, with hardly an exception, till 1839, after which he retired almost wholly from professional practice. Up to 1820 he exhibited chiefly monumental sculpture, varied by portrait-busts and statues. He had a large practice, second only to Chantrey's, and received commissions for monuments in all parts of the country, as well as in India and the colonies. Among the more important of these were the statues in Westminster Abbey of Addison (1806), General Villettes (1809), Pitt, Fox, and Spencer Perceval; many monuments in St. Paul's, including those to Sir Ralph Abercromby, Collingwood, Duncan, Captain Cook, General Gibbs, and General Pakenham; a statue of Nelson at Birmingham (1809), and the statues of Francis, fifth duke of Bedford, in Russell Square (1809), and of Fox in Bloomsbury Square (1816). Westmacott was employed in arranging the Towneley marbles which were purchased for the British Museum, then in Montague House, in 1805. In that year he was elected an associate and in 1811 a full member of the Royal Academy. He presented as his diploma work a ‘Ganymede’ in high relief. In the catalogues of the academy exhibitions his address is given as 24 Mount Street till 1819, when he had removed to 14 South Audley Street, where he resided during the remainder of his life. In 1820 he exhibited his first classical subject, a relief of ‘Hero and Leander,’ and in the
