WENTWORTH, WILLIAM CHARLES the "Australian patriot," was born in 1793 in Norfolk Island, the penal settlement of New South Wales, the son of D'Arcy Went worth, the government surgeon of the settlement. The son was educated in England, but he spent the interval between his school ing at Greenwich and his matriculation (1816) at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in adventurous exploration in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Having been called to the bar, he began to practise in Sydney. With a fellow barrister, Wardell, he started a newspaper, the Australian, in 1824, to advocate the cause of self-government and to champion the "emancipists"—the incoming class of ex-con victs, now freed and prospering—against the "exclusivists"—the officials and the more aristocratic settlers. With Wardell, Dr. William Bland and others, he formed the "Patriotic Association," and carried on a determined agitation both in Australia and in England, where they found able supporters.
They attacked the governor, Sir Ralph Darling, who was re called in 1831 to give evidence before a select committee of the House of Commons on his administration. The Constitution Act of 1842 was generally recognized as mainly Wentworth's work. In the first legislative council, he led the "squatter party." He was the founder of the University of Sydney (1852), he led the movement which resulted in the new constitution for the colony (1854), and in 1861 became president of the new legis lative council. For some years before 1861 he lived chiefly in England, where in 1857 he founded the "General Association for the Australian Colonies," with the object of obtaining from the government a federal assembly for the whole of Australia ; and in 1862 he definitely settled in England, dying on March 20, 1872. His body was taken to Sydney and accorded a public funeral.