William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872) was an Australian statesman and writer who achieved repute as an explorer.

In the 1820s William Wentworth came to typify the spirit of the radical native-born Australians, conscious of their difference from the "English ascendancy," exulting in their love of country, and determined to obtain civil rights and representative institutions and control the development of what they claimed was their country.

By 1830 the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of New South Wales were convicts, former convicts, or the children of convicts, collectively, if loosely, known as emancipists. They were opposed by the exclusives, the civil and military officers and the free settlers, not numerous, but generally rich. The exclusives adopted a conservative political stance, being relatively happy to cooperate with the governor and coming to seek a measure of constitutional reform that would place them in positions of power commensurate with their wealth and...