W. C. Wentworth

Australian politician

• Born: April 13, 1790
• Birthplace: On board the <I>Surprize</I>, in harbor of Cascade Bay, Norfolk Island (now in Australia)
• Died: March 20, 1872
• Place of death: Merly House, near Wimborne, Dorset, England

One of the leading New South Wales politicians of the nineteenth century, Wentworth contributed both to egalitarian and conservative forces in Australian life and made major contributions to Australia’s future educational system.

Early Life

William Charles Wentworth was the son of Catherine (née Crowley) and D’Arcy Wentworth. His mother had been transported to Australia for seven years after being convicted at the Stafford assizes on July 30, 1788. She arrived at Sydney on June 28, 1790, and was then sent to Norfolk Island, where she arrived on August 7, 1790, six days before Wentworth was born. Wentworth’s father was a medical practitioner who was charged with highway robbery on four occasions. He was acquitted each time, and before the last case was over he had obtained an appointment as an assistantsurgeon on the Second Fleet. D’Arcy and Catherine sailed to Sydney on the same ship, and their son was probably born at sea as they sailed from Sydney to Norfolk Island.

For his first five years, Wentworth lived on Norfolk Island. The family returned to Sydney in February, 1796, and moved to Parramatta, where D’Arcy served in the medical center and where Catherine died in 1800.

Wentworth was educated in Great Britain. He returned to Sydney in 1810 but left for London in 1816, where he entered the Middle Temple in February, 1817, to prepare himself, as he wrote, to be “the instrument of procuring a free constitution for my country.” He finished his legal studies in 1823, returning to Sydney in 1824, where he married Sarah Cox, the daughter of an emancipist blacksmith, in 1829. More than six feet tall, with auburn hair, Wentworth had a Roman head and massive form. He was also known for his slovenly dress and the disrespectful bearing he frequently adopted during his speeches. He had a harsh voice but was admired for his forceful speaking.

Life’s Work

Upon returning from Great Britain in 1810, Wentworth was appointed acting provost marshal by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in October, 1811, and was granted 1,750 acres on the Nepean. Two years later, with William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland, and four servants, he set out to cross the Blue Mountains. After twenty-one days, as Wentworth wrote, “the boundless champaign burst upon our sight.” They had found abundant pasture land and knew that animals could be transported to it on foot. Their discovery further stimulated the pastoral industry, and Wentworth was rewarded with an additional thousand acres.

Two years after this exploratory trip across the Blue Mountains, Wentworth went to Great Britain to continue his education. When he returned to Sydney in 1824, he brought with him a printing press and with it started a newspaper, The Australian. In that paper he took up the cause of the “emancipists,” those persons who had served the sentence for which they had been transported. Before this time, he had reacted against the attempt by those with no convict heritage—the “exclusives”—to force the emancipists to remain inferior citizens. In A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Dieman’s Land (1819), he commented that

the covert aim of these men is to convert the ignominy of the great body of the people into a hereditary deformity. They would hand it down from father to son, and raise an eternal barrier of separation between their offspring, and the offspring of the unfortunate convict.

Wentworth used his newspaper to promote the rights of the emancipists and to advance his own political career. He criticized the pretensions of the exclusives and agitated for jury trial and political representation for both emancipists and the freeborn children of convicts. As free immigration increased and transportation to New South Wales ended, however, the emancipists decreased as a percentage of the population, with the result that by 1840 the emancipist issue was no longer as significant as it had been. In addition, trial by jury had been adopted in 1830, by which time Wentworth had sold his shares in the paper. He continued to agitate and to petition for self-government, and in 1835 he joined with others to found the Australian Patriotic Association to work for representative government in New South Wales.

During this period of agitation for self-government, his father died in 1827. Wentworth’s inheritance added to his already considerable holdings, and he continued to acquire property. He purchased Vaucluse in 1827, where he proceeded to build a stately mansion that he made the center of his activities. The property was later increased to five hundred acres, making his home a substantial estate. He also acquired several sheep stations, possessing at least fifteen at one time. With these large holdings, his pastoral interests occupied much of his time, and he gave up his legal practice. At the time of his death, his properties in Australia were assessed at 96,000 pounds and those in London at 70,000 pounds.

Wentworth had prospered economically; politically, his success was slower. During the late 1820’s and early 1830’s, he was popular with the poorer people of Sydney and with the emancipists. Although he had deep feelings for the emancipists, he was no democrat. His own inclinations were to remove social barriers to advancement but to permit only people of wealth to have political rights. As he developed his pastoral holdings and acquired more and more wealth, these inclinations became more pronounced. When he defended the old land system, attempted to prevent the abolition of transportation, and gave his approval to the importation of Asiatic labor, many former supporters deserted him, and his former newspaper asserted that he had betrayed the native-born of New South Wales and that his day was over. In reality, while his day as the leader of the emancipists was indeed over, his day as the leader of the pastoralists was only beginning.

The pastoral industry was the leading one in Australia, but the change in land policy in 1831 had irritated the pastoralists. Now they must buy or lease their holdings, rather than receive free grants. Because this new policy came from London, pastoralists more than ever wanted the colony to be given more control over its own affairs. Already, there had been the gradual concession of rights to the colony. An advisory legislative council of between five and seven official members had been established in 1823, and that council had been increased to fifteen members in 1828, with seven of the fifteen being unofficial members. With the diminution of the convict percentage of the population and the abolition of land grants, there was a reorientation from social and political concerns to economic and political matters.

This new focus brought Wentworth, the former emancipist leader, into alliance with his exclusivist antagonist, James Macarthur. The exclusives had previously desired a nominated Legislative Council but were willing to accept an elective one in order to win over the wealthy emancipists. In addition, the emancipists moderated their desire for a liberal franchise, recognizing that such a franchise might be a threat to their wealth. In other words, the emancipists and exclusives now found a common enemy in the Colonial Office, with James Macarthur and William Charles Wentworth leading the agitation for representative government and autonomy.

With the cessation of transportation to New South Wales in 1840, even more rights were conceded to the colony. The Constitution Act of 1842 enlarged the Legislative Council to thirty-six members, twenty-four of whom were elected. Wentworth became one of these twenty-four when he was elected to the council in 1843. In the council, Wentworth led the pastoralists in their struggle for a change in land policy. He and his fellow squatters wanted to protect their interests in the land, which they proposed to do by maintaining control of the Legislative Council and having control of crown lands transferred to the council.

The council remained Wentworth’s forum of activity for the rest of his time in Australia. He remained popular with the pastoralists, but his standing with the majority of New South Welshmen declined. Determined to protect their economic interests, the pastoralists continued to control the Legislative Council. When the colony was authorized to draw up its own constitution during the early 1850’s, Wentworth became the chairman of the select committee that drafted the constitution. In that document, the pastoralists attempted to maintain their control over affairs by a restrictive franchise and by requiring a two-thirds majority to amend the constitution.

Wentworth wanted to go even further and establish a hereditary peerage, which would serve as the upper house of the bicameral legislature. This proposed aristocracy did not survive the debates in the Legislative Council, and the British government struck out the two-thirds provision. Nevertheless, Wentworth and his colleagues had given to New South Wales a constitution that provided for control over their own domestic affairs. Wentworth had accomplished his goal of giving a free constitution to his country. Having done so, he retired from active affairs and spent the rest of his life in Great Britain, where he died in 1872. His body was returned to Australia, where it was interred on his estate at Vaucluse.

Significance

On the surface, it appears that William Charles Wentworth changed his principles in mid-life; in reality, he was consistent. He was never a democrat, although his support of the emancipists caused many to look upon him as a believer in equality. He did not believe in distinctions made on the basis of birth, but he actively promoted distinctions made on the basis of ability. His support of the emancipists and then of the pastoralists is not, therefore, contradictory but rather consistent. The pastoralists had demonstrated their ability, and not all of them had come from the respectable class. The true measure of a person was not birth but what a person accomplished in life.

In keeping with Wentworth’s support of ability was his commitment to education. If people were to develop to their fullest potential, and if New South Welshmen were to make free institutions work, education was essential. Wentworth was at least partly responsible for the establishment of the first real system of primary education in New South Wales. He was also a leader in the establishment of the University of Sydney and served on its original senate.

Bibliography

Byrnes, John V. “William Charles Wentworth and the Continuity of Australian Literature.” Australian Letters, April, 1963: 10-18. A discussion of Wentworth’s role in the origin of Australian literature.

Clark, C. M. H. A History of Australia. 4 vols. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1962-1978. Aside from being a detailed account of Australian history covering the period of Wentworth’s political career, this volume provides almost the equivalent of a biography of Wentworth.

Green, H. M. “Wentworth as Orator.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 21 (1935): 337-360. A sympathetic presentation of Wentworth as politician and speaker.

Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. A delightful book that gives a thorough account of convict life in Australia. Particularly useful for the discussion of the emancipist-exclusive controversy.

Jose, Arthur. Builders and Pioneers of Australia. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1928. Jose’s sketch of Wentworth is a useful account of his life and work. Jose explicitly states that D’Arcy Wentworth was probably guilty of highway robbery and that friends arranged for him to leave Great Britain.

Melbourne, A. C. V. Early Constitutional Development in Australia: New South Wales, 1788-1856. 2d ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. The standard work dealing with constitutional agitation and the grant of responsible government.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. William Charles Wentworth. Brisbane, Qld.: Biggs, 1934. This is an expansion of the John Murtagh Macrossan Lectures for 1932. The book has to be used with caution, particularly with regard to Wentworth’s birth. The interpretation of Wentworth presented by Melbourne is, however, the basis of all later interpretations.

Ritchie, John. The Wentworths: Father and Son. Carlton South, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 1997. Chronicles the lives of W. C. Wentworth and his father, D’Arcy Wentworth, describing how D’Arcy reestablished himself to further his son’s career.

Ward, John Manning. James Macarthur: Colonial Conservative, 1798-1867. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1981. A biography by a sound scholar. Because of the relations, both unfriendly and friendly, between Macarthur and Wentworth, the references to Wentworth, which are based on research in the Wentworth papers, are extremely useful.

Wood, F. L. “Some Early Educational Problems, and W. C. Wentworth’s Work for Higher Education.” Journal of Royal Australian Historical Society 17 (1931): 368-394. A discussion of the impact of religion on education and of Wentworth’s contribution to the founding of Sydney University.