Plus britannique que la Grande-Bretagne! (More British than Great Britain!)

The editor of Sydneys liberal newspaper, The Empire, was Henry Parkes. Later in the century, he would come to be regarded as the Father of the Australian Federation (his visage now adorns the Australian $5 note). A tradesman, Parkes had arrived in the capital city of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1839 from Birmingham where he had been involved in the campaigns for the Great Reform Act and the Peoples Charter, which had sought extensive democratic reform of the British political system. Like many who would come after him Parkes had invested his hopes for the future in the creation of a Better Britain in the vast island of the Southern Hemisphere. A month before his editorial appeared in The Empire, gold was discovered in Bathurst 200 kilometres west of Sydney. By the time that a gold rush was officially proclaimed in May 1851 Parkes vision seemed well within the grasp of the colonists. According to the colonys leading politician, William Charles Wentworth, the discovery of gold, must in a very few years precipitate us from a colony into a nation. Wentworths sentiment quickly became a truism that provided most Australians with a reference point to glimpse the future