Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and VictoriaWestgarth, William
History
Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria
Westgarth, William
Victoria -- Description and travel
He and I were on opposite sides of the political hedge, at least in the
times when we were together in public life, both in Sydney and
Melbourne, during the pre-constitutional era. He belonged, almost beyond
any others--the exceptions being perhaps limited to William Forlong and
my friend A.R. Cruikshank--to the anti-popular and pro-squatting party;
although, subsequently, when there was the "fact accomplished," and no
help for it, he accepted "fully and cheerfully," as his election
addresses put it, the reigning democratic platform. But he was not
unkindly withal, and he helped my comparative legislative inexperience
at Sydney, when we were both there to represent Melbourne and Port
Phillip. He had done me a great favour also in making himself most
serviceable with the German immigration which I had started from Hamburg
in 1849. He was quite a German scholar, having finished his education at
Carlsruhe, a name which he transferred to his pastoral station in the
Port Phillip District.
Ebden, like most others in it, did not bring much out from the allotment
mob. When returned afterwards to represent the district along with me in
Sydney, I heard that a draft of cattle from the station was needed for
expenses. These were still the reactionary times of such small things
for all of us. But in after years he went on and prospered, and he left
behind him what might have been called a large fortune in any place
where there were not a W.J.T. Clarke and a Henry Miller, and perhaps
some few others besides, in the rival category.
EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS," "THE TIMES" OF THE
SOUTH.
"The good I stand on is my truth and honesty;
I fear nothing
What can be said against me.
--Henry VIII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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