CHAP. I] ORIGIN AND HISTORY 35
of the Colony which was called Queensland, had to govern
for six months without any legislature, but he had as his
Colonial Secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Herbert,
who accompanied him from England, and he with his two
other chief officers, the Attorney-General and the Colonial
Treasurer, presented themselves for election for the Assembly
and were duly appointed, thus giving the Governor the
advantage of experienced officers in the Ministry. The
Legislative Council was nominated by the Governor of New
South Wales, but he wisely accepted the advice of the
Governor of Queensland, and thus a curiously inconvenient
arrangement resulted without injury to the new Colony.
Western Australia still stood outside the system in this
as in many other ways. While the rest of Australia was
destined to adopt at no distant date a policy of extreme
Opposition to native immigration, Western Australia looked
to the east for its connexion, and under its Crown Colony
administration seemed to have little in common with the
rest of the continent, from which it was isolated by lands
deemed to be desert and utterly useless, though in 1911
that judgement shows signs of being reversed. But the
desire for responsible government was strengthened by
the gradual influx of settlers from the west when the gold
resources of the Colony became known, and in April 1883
the Administrator was asked to ascertain from the Home
Government whether responsible government could be
conceded. The reply of Lord Derby, of July 23, 1883.2 indi-
cated difficulties in the vast size of the Colony, the small
Population, and the fact that a demand for responsible
government would probably mean that the Colony must be
divided as New South Wales had been divided, since the
interests of the tropical north and the rest of the Colony
were divergent. The Governor, in a dispatch of April 9,
1884.2 was inclined to advise that the grant of responsible
government should depend on the result of the elections
of 1885; he suggested that the four nominated unofficial
‘ Parl, Pap., August 1861. ? Ibid., C. 5743, p. 2.
* Ibid., pp. 5 seq.
