Daniel Deniehy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of theNew South Wales Legislative Assembly forArgyle | |
| In office 1857–1859 | |
| Member of theNew South Wales Legislative Assembly forEast Macquarie | |
| In office 1860 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1828-08-18)18 August 1828 |
| Died | 22 October 1865(1865-10-22) (aged 37) |
| Occupation | solicitor and journalist |
Daniel Henry Deniehy (18 August 1828[1] – 22 October 1865) was an Australian journalist, orator and politician, and early advocate of democracy incolonial New South Wales.
Deniehy was born in Sydney, the son of Henry and Mary Deniehy, former convicts of Irish birth who had prospered in the colony after their term had expired.[1] Deniehy was educated at the best schools Sydney then had to offer, includingSydney College,[2] and completed his education in England at his father's expense. He travelled in Europe and visited Ireland, where he met leaders of theYoung Ireland party. He was influenced by both EnglishChartism and Irish nationalism. Returning to Sydney in 1844, he studied law and became a solicitor in 1851.
Meanwhile, Deniehy became a leading figure in Sydney's small but lively literary world and in radical politics; artistAdelaide Ironside was an associate. Deniehy was a follower of the radical leaderJohn Dunmore Lang (despite Lang's violent dislike of the Irish and ofRoman Catholicism), and a member of Lang's organisation, the Australian League. He practised law inGoulburn 1854–58, in Sydney 1858–62, inMelbourne 1862–64 and inBathurst 1865. In all these places he was active in local politics and journalism.
Like Lang, Deniehy was an advocate of extended democracy in the emerging political systems of the Australian colonies. He joined the opposition to the 1853 New South Wales Constitution Bill, which would have created a powerful unelected upper house and limited the franchise for the lower house to those owning substantial property. He was active in the New South Wales Electoral Reform League, which advocatedmanhood suffrage for the lower house and reduced powers for the upper house.
Deniehy argued that the real issue was control of the vast grazing lands of inland New South Wales, which thesquatter class of early settlers had seized for themselves. He accused the conservatives, led by the veteran Sydney politicianWilliam Wentworth and what Deniehy called "some dozen of his friends," of wanting to "confiscate for their own uses the finest portions of the public lands, to stereotype themselves into a standing government, so that they may retain, watch over, and protect the booty they wrest."
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When Wentworth proposed creating ahereditary peerage in New South Wales, Deniehy savagely satirised it: "Here," he said, "we all know the commonwater mole was transferred into theduck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I suppose we are to be favoured with a "bunyip aristocracy." (Thebunyip is a mythical beast ofAboriginal legend.) His ridicule caused the idea to be dropped.
Deniehy was elected to theNew South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1857, representingArgyle (the Goulburn region). In 1859 he stood forWest Sydney, but was defeated.[2] However he was successful in 1860 representingEast Macquarie (the Bathurst region).[3] As a radical democrat, he should have been an effective supporter of the liberal parliamentary leadersCharles Cowper andJohn Robertson, but he disliked both these leaders, and was temperamentally unable to work in a parliamentary team. He soon became an isolated loner, and began to drink heavily. With the introduction of manhood suffrage in New South Wales in 1858 his campaign for democracy was fulfilled, and he was out of sympathy with the more advanced radicals.
Members of Parliament were not paid at this time, and Deniehy always earned his living as a barrister and as a journalist. He founded and editedSouthern Cross, a radical newspaper, in 1859. Deniehy had opposed the appointment ofLyttleton Bayley asAttorney General and produced a satireHow I Became Attorney-General of New Barataria (Sydney, 1860)[1] which was published in theSouthern Cross. InMelbourne in 1862 he editedThe Victorian for its owner, the Irish-Australian politicianCharles Gavan Duffy. In Sydney he became a notable literary critic, and lectured on modern literature at the newly foundedSydney University. He was a regular contributor to the Irish-Australian newspaperThe Freeman's Journal and other papers.
Only 150 cm (five feet) tall and in poor health throughout his life, Deniehy possessed enormous energy and was a gifted orator. The Australian historianManning Clark writes of him: "His heart was a battlefield between the cherub and the insect of sensual lust." (He married Adelaide Hoals in 1852 and had seven children in nine years). "At times his face caught a fire and beauty that looked like phases of actualtransfiguration. At other times his face was coarsened by days of drunken debauchery." He died of alcoholism in Bathurst, aged only 37. In 1895 his remains were exhumed and reburied in Sydney'sWaverley Cemetery, where a monument was erected over the grave. An inscription on it reads:
A statue of Deniehy, by sculptorJames White, stands in a niche of the Department of Lands Building, Sydney.[4]
Additional sources listed by theAustralian Dictionary of Biography:
Additional sources listed by theDictionary of Australian Biography, not listed above:
| New South Wales Legislative Assembly | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member forArgyle 1857–1859 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member forEast Macquarie 1860 Served alongside:Cummings | Succeeded by |
