f death
or removal, the governor may choose a substitute, until the Queen's
pleasure be known. The office of this legislative council is, as its
name implies, that of making laws, in which, however, at least
two-thirds of the members must agree, and which must not be contrary
to the charter, or letters patent, or orders in council, or laws of
England. The proposal of new laws always belongs to the governor, who
must, however, give eight clear days' notice in the public papers,
stating the general objects of the intended enactments; nor can this
rule be dispensed with, except in cases of very great emergency. Such is
briefly the outline of the constitution at present established in the
Australian settlements, and under this form of government they have,
most of them, already run a race of prosperity, which, allowing for the
recent dates of their foundation, can scarcely be matched in the annals
of any nation. Nevertheless, the present form of government is a very
great subject of discontent among many of the colonists, and the _want_
of a representative house of assembly in New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land appears to give as little satisfaction to many persons
_there_, as the _presence_ of such an assembly does _here_ in
England.[170] It may easily be imagined what a fine subject for oratory
is thus furnished among a mass of people, who, whatever elements of good
may exist among them, may, generally speaking, be too truly said to have
derived their birth and education from criminals and outcasts. In the
midst of a people thus constituted, a press "unshackled by stamps,
paper-excise, advertisement duty, or censorship," is doing its daily or
weekly work of _enlightening_ the minds of the people respecting their
_grievances_; and where, as in Van Diemen's Land, there is said to be a
newspaper for every 1666 free persons,[171] the people must indeed bask
in the sunshine of political illumination. "The press," it is asserted
on good authority respecting Van Diemen's Land, and it is not less true
of New South Wales, "The press, with few exceptions, finds ample support
in holding up to derision the authorities of the land, and even in the
invasion of the sanctity of domestic privacy."[172] The result, however,
of this state of things is that, actually, in the colonies of Australia
the grievances appear worse, the "wrongs" more galling, and the "rights"
less regarded, than even in England itself; and judging from the crabbed