John Dunmore Lang

“ The general condition of the colony of New South Wales, and the absolute necessity for some immediate and fundamental change in the whole constitution and management of the transportation system, are matters on which there can be no room for party feelings, and in which Whig, Tory, and Radical must all agree. In one of his zealous declamations in favour of universal suffrage, the late Mr. Cobbett, the most conspicuous of the Radicals of his day, maintained that every man in England, who had not been convicted of a crime, should have a vote. ”

“ These petitions have been signed by a very large portion of the respectable inhabitants of New South Wales: but in praying for an instrument of government more suited to the present advanced state of the colony than its present Legislative Council, the petitioners are, nevertheless, unanimously of opinion that the elective franchise should not yet be extended to all classes of the free population, and that persons of the class of emancipists in particular should not be eligible to serve on juries. ”