Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/60

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
28
AUSTRALIA AND THE EMPIRE

platform, as in the press, a vigilant upholder of the rights of the people, and a particularly keen critic of the Colonial Office. At a public meeting held on January 20th, 1848, at Sydney, Earl Grey's proposal to "amend" the Constitution of New South Wales, in view of the separation of Port Phillip, was criticised with great trenchancy by Mr. Lowe, He detected an anti-popular flavour in everything that emanated from the Liberal Colonial Secretary, and on this occasion, as indeed on all others, he entirely carried his hearers with him.

In 1850 Robert Lowe received the well-merited honour of being elected to represent Sydney in the Legislative Council of New South "Wales, but the following year he resigned his seat, and returned to England, and began his great English Parliamentary career.

Viscount Sherbrooke, it is true, spent only some eight years of his life at the Antipodes, but those years were of the very prime of his manhood. By his commanding talents and political capacity, he, in that brief space of time, divided with Wentworth the honours of the Senate and the emoluments of the Bar. As a colonial public man he experienced that most exhilarating of all feelings, the conscious-