When the previously established Australian colonies were severally constituted the people were kept for years in a state of tutelage, so to speak, power being exercised in each case by a Governor advised by Ministers appointed by and responsible only to the Crown. The single Chamber of the Legislature, if not wholly nominated, included a prescribed number of members appointed by the Governor, and was practically under his control. It had therefore been supposed by many colonists that separation having been hotly opposed by some influential residents of the territory concerned--and having been emphatically condemned by an official despatch received in England from Sir William Denison, then Governor-General of New South Wales, almost at the last moment--conditions in restraint of popular government would have been imposed on the establishment of Queensland. For the separation struggle had been long continued, and marked by much personal and party bitterness. The agitation had been originated and chiefly maintained by people on the seaboard led by ardent patriots introduced a few years previously under the auspices of Dr. John Dunmore Lang, who while undoubtedly a great Australian patriot was unhappily not a _persona grata_ with the controlling authority at the Colonial Office. The movement was from its initiation protested against by the enterprising Crown tenants who had driven their flocks and herds overland from New South Wales, and had, taking their lives in their hands, adventurously formed stations in the remote wilderness. They not unnaturally dreaded the effect of popular sovereignty upon what they deemed their vested interests. But British statesmen, whether Conservative or Liberal, appear to have felt that, responsible government having been granted to and enjoyed by the people of New South Wales--and consequently to the people of that part of its territory about to be separated--any Imperial limitation of popular rights already conferred would be regarded as an unjustifiable encroachment upon public liberty achieved after many years of ardent struggle in the parent colony. True, the language of the Letters Patent and Order in Council was afterwards construed to involve some temporary limitation of the manhood suffrage which had been affirmed by the Parliament of New South Wales; but whether this limitation was actual or inadvertent does not clearly appear. It was not of much practical consequence, perhaps, in a new country that was rapidly multiplying its scant population, whether or not the electors for the first Legislative Assembly were required to have some other qualification than adult age and six months' residence; but the incident operated prejudicially against the Government, and gave a rallying cry to Opposition politicians.