CHAPTER XI.
SIR GEORGE GIPPS.
1838 TO 1846.
SIR RICHARD BOURKE was succeeded by Sir George Gipps, who was sworn in on the 2nd February, 1838; the government, during an interregnum of ten weeks, having been administered by the Lieutenant-governor, Colonel Snodgrass.
Sir George Gipps, who was a captain in the Royal Engineer Corps, owed his appointment entirely to the talent he had displayed while acting as secretary to the commission issued for inquiring into the grievances of rebellious Canada. During his residence in that colony he had devised and published a plan for educating colonists to the use of representative institutions by "district councils" for the administration of local affairs. It was an ingenious theory, but, as we shall hereafter show, no more suited for the state of society in pastoral Australia than an American river steamboat for crossing the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the forcing this district council scheme on the unwilling colonists was the one great idea of Sir George Gipps's colonial career, to which he sacrificed them and himself.
He was a man of abilities far above the average; an eloquent speaker, a nervous writer; with industry, energy, and a special aptitude for the details of administrative business; but haughty and narrow-minded; impenetrable to reasoning which did not square with his preconceived views; filled with inordinate ideas of his own importance as "the representative of majesty;" with a violent, temper, which in dealing with the colonists he took little pains to control, although his communications with the Colonial Office displayed a pliability almost amounting to subservience. He claimed to receive the deference due to a viceroy, and at the same time to exercise the duties of an English prime minister. With sharp and ready tongue he introduced and pressed legislative measures for carrying into effect theories most distasteful and unsuitable to his colonial "subjects;" but opposition, or even that fair criticism and discussion which a British premier would expect and even invite, he treated as personal insult to his authority; almost as high treason.
