thrust upon the colony made it hardly possible to spare any time for other than each one’s own private concerns.  In my own case, the only “leisure” I ever had then in the six days was half-an-hour for a walk and a thought in the early morn.  The entire remainder of the day, and great part of the night also, were one succession of private business, public meetings, and deputations, Council Committees and Council sittings.

The unprepared speeches were in due accordance.  Dr. (now Sir Charles) Nicholson, the Sydney Speaker, happened to pay us a visit during these early legislative throes of baby Victoria; and as I sat by him in the privileged place near the Speaker’s chair, he remarked that, prepared as he was to find a crude spectacle, he had never imagined an assemblage of such helpless incompetency.  But, in defence, I took Bulwer Lytton’s view, that genius being mainly labour, and labour mainly time, the want of the last might be merely preventing the first.  And so it has turned out long ago; so that if Sir Charles, who, I am glad to say, is still to the fore, were to pay another visit, and try conclusions with Mr. Service, and possibly a hundred others besides, he might reach a different verdict.

We were all, confessedly, terribly raw in all matters of Parliamentary form.  One day, while we were more than usually puzzled in that respect, Town Clerk Kerr, who happened to be present, was continually sending to myself and others written slips, suggesting the proper or common-sense course.  I could not help thinking that, if he had been but a trifle less of a party man, there was no one in the colony who would have made a better Speaker, with his sufficiently portly person and commanding presence, his imperturbable gravity, and his well-filled head in everything required from that quarter for the position.  But this was an utter non possimus with the nominees and squatting members, most of whom, with Ebden at their head, would almost rather have endured a presentable Vandemonian expiree in the chair than the ultra-democratic Town Clerk and caustic ex-editor of the anti-squatter and anti-government “Argus”.  Some of the officials, however, were fairly up to their mark, notably our Attorney-General Stawell (now Sir William, the ex-Chief Justice), who, both then and since, has ever held the first position in ability.  At an interval came Auditor-General Ebden, and one or two others, official or unofficial.  My worthy friend Cassell, Collector of Customs (or Commissioner thereof, as I think he was then called), was brimful of information for us all, but not much of a speaker.