ABSTRACT
The old-fashioned Whig view of William Wentworth, ‘Alphabet’ Foster, and John Baker of parliament representing all the interests of the colony, property as well as population, substantially the British parliament of the time, was met by colonial liberals who sought a radical new democratic experiment. The new resulting 1850s constitutions and electoral laws were arguably the most Benthamite or Chartist constitutions in the world but with obstructive Legislative Councils. These new liberal democratic parliaments controlled by popular opinion were developed without revolution or civil war but by constitutional argument and democratic mass meetings. They did not collapse under the pressures of governing. Both may be comparatively rare.
