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Wentworth, William Charles (1790-1872), was an Australian pioneer, statesman, and lawyer.
As a pioneer, Wentworth was a member of the first party that crossed the Blue Mountains, in 1813.
As a statesman and lawyer, he did much to gain responsible government for the colony of New South Wales.
Wentworth began his campaign for responsible self-government for New South Wales in the 1820's. In 1824, he and Robert Wardell, a journalist and lawyer, published a newspaper, The Australian. In articles in the paper, Wentworth opposed the policies of the British government and campaigned for an elected parliament for New South Wales. He supported the cause of the emancipists (pardoned convicts) and launched bitter attacks on the exclusives (wealthy free settlers).
In 1835, Wentworth helped to found the Australian Patriotic Association to agitate for representative government.
He campaigned for legal reforms, including trial by jury. His efforts met with success.
In 1838, the British government passed control over the administration of justice to the colonists. In 1842, it allowed the colony to have a partly elected council. In the election of 1843, Wentworth led the landowners' group. He was elected as a member for Sydney.
By then, Wentworth had become a wealthy landowner. He had also become more conservative in his opinions.
With the other landowners, he tried to prevent the British government from ending transportation of convicts to the colony.
In 1850, the British government passed an act under which the Australian colonists could become self-governing.
Wentworth became chairman of a committee appointed to draft a constitution for New South Wales. He argued that the new constitution should be conservative and that it should provide for a hereditary upper house. But people laughed at the idea of this form of upper house.
In 1854, Wentworth sailed for Britain to see a revised constitution for New South Wales receive the approval of the British Parliament. He returned to New South Wales in 1861. Later, the governor appointed him president of the Legislative Council.
Wentworth was born on Norfolk Island. He was educated at a military college in Woolwich, England, and later at Cambridge University.
In 1813, he joined the explorers Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson in crossing the Blue Mountains.
In 1831 the Australian newspaper reported that 'upward Of 4000 persons
assembled at Vaucluse to partake of Mr Wentworth's hospitality and to evince joy
at the approaching departure of Governor Ralph Darling.
William Charles Wentworth was born in I 790. Both his parents arrived with the Second Fleet: D'Arcy Wentworth as surgeon and magistrate, and Catherine Crowley who was sentenced to seven years transportation for stealing.
Wentworth was sent to school in England, where he was admitted to the bar. He was to be author, politician, pastoralist and, briefly, an explorer, but above all he was to make a reputation as patriot and believer in parliamentary control over autocratic authority. It was because of this that Governor Darling's departure was celebrated so enthusiastically a bullock and 12 sheep roasted on a spit, and 4000 loaves of bread washed down with casks of Cooper's gin and Wright's strong beer, at Wentworth's stately mansion at Vaucluse.
Wentworth had been critical of the New South Wales political system since at least 1824, when, with Dr Robert Wardell he launched the Australian ('independent, yet consistent, free, yet not licentious - equally unmoved by favour or by fear').
In 1827 conflict erupted with Governor Darling over the question of freedom of the press. Repressive legislation proposed by Darling was met by inflammatory declarations from Wentworth.
But as he became older, Wentworth grew more conservative. He increasingly saw property owners as the only people able to handle political power and even spoke of the need for an hereditary aristocracy in New South Wales. He continued to acquire land, and in 1840 he and some associates bought very cheaply nearly one-third of New Zealand from seven Maori chieftains. If this scheme had not been blocked, Wentworth might have become the greatest landowner on earth.
But the colonies were becoming too radical for him: he spent the last years of his life in England, where he was a member of the Conservative Club. After his death in 1872 his remains were brought back to Sydney for a State funeral. They were buried in a vault on the Vaucluse property where 42 years before celebrations had marked the departure of Governor Darling, who had seen Wentworth as 'a vulgar, ill-bred fellow', 'a demagogue', 'anxious to become a man of the people'.