South Australia gets limited 1851 Legislative Council but colonists push for much more on 1834 founding promise
This plaque on South Australia's parliament house on North Terrace, Adelaide city, commemorates the promise of self government for the province in the 1834 constitution passed by the British parliament.
South Australia’s population, boosted by the copper finds in the colony, reached 50,000 in 1849. This was the number that the colony’s 1834 constitution has said would be the trigger for self government.
But the 1834 Act no longer had effect, replaced by the new South Australia Act 1842. But the mood for self government in the Australian colonies, about to enjoy even more prosperity with the gold rushes, was growing. The British secretary of state Earl Grey had felt the sting of rebellion, with mass protects in New South Wales in 1849 with his attempt to bring back a modified transporting of convicts, and in British Canada.
The British Whitehall colonial office was turning government policy towards having semi-independent colonies within the empire rather than outside republics. In 1850, the Australian Government Bill was introduced to the British House of Commons, allowing New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) and South Australia to introduce, firstly, “blended legislatures” and later bicameral legislatures: a people’s house and a house of review.
The “blended legislature” was a Legislative Council of no more than 24 members, with two thirds elected and a third appointed. The franchise for the first Legislative Council elections in South Australia in 1851 was restricted to men of property worth at least £100, including pioneering pastoralists George Fife Angas, Francis Dutton and Samuel Davenport and original political schemers such as Richard Robert Torrens, Richard Hanson and John Morphett.
The new British secretary of state Jake Pakington told South Australian governor Henry Young that he was unsure whether the colony was ready for representative government. This opinion was leaked to the South Australian public via the Victorian press.
When the council met in 1855, Young presented a conservative draft constitution for an appointed upper house. Most councillors objected to an appointed upper house and wanted an elected two-house parliament. The colonial secretary, appointed by the governor, said a bicameral parliament would be rejected in London, so the council agreed to send off the limited draft constitution.
But a large faction of the council, led by Charles Strickland Kingston, continued to press for elected chambers, male suffrage and ballots. A petition was sent to England and a more liberal secretary of state, Lord John Russell, accepted added changes.
In 1855, Richard Graves MacDonnell replaced Young as governor and he also opposed the colonists’ constitution, preferring a single-chamber council with 15 elected and four nominated members.
Again, leading colonists decried this interference and the colonial office sided with them. The office told governor MacDonnell that his proposed was “inconsistent with the establishment of responsible government” and they saw “no reason why South Australia should remain exempted from a the operation of system conceded to the neighbouring provinces of New South wales, Victoria and Tasmania”.
To get his way, MacDonnell dissolved the council but liberal members were returned at an election in the same numbers as before. He had no choice but to agree to the constitution as drafted by the council.