er, Robert Campbell,
and Gilbert Wright were appointed delegates for New South Wales. The
most impressive meeting held by the delegates, was convened in the
congregational church of Sydney. A thousand persons, chiefly heads of
families, and of both sexes, listened with absorbing interest to the
appeals of clergymen, protestant and catholic, to principles familiar to
the patriot and the christian. The venerable metropolitan, in accounting
for his absence, recorded his conviction in terms suited to his office
and experience, and in a strain of reproof and warning, which no
government will venture to disregard.[265] The first conference of the
united colonies was held in the city of Sydney and closed its labours on
the 1st day of May, 1851. A permanent executive board and a London
delegation, were nominated; Mr. Charles Cowper being appointed the first
president of the Australasian League, and Mr. Gilbert Wright, secretary.

The appointment of Mr. J. C. King as the delegate for Melbourne, and
other gentlemen resident in London to act in the same capacity, was
intended to agitate the colonial cause beneath the walls of parliament,
and thus by multiplied agencies to weary the ministers into justice--to
conquer their obstinacy by a perpetual coming. It was the earnest desire
of the founders of the league to employ all possible means consistent
with loyal and constitutional principles, that the blame of ultimate
consequences, if adverse, might remain with the servants of the crown. A
letter of instructions addressed to Mr. J. A. Jackson and other
delegates by the executive board of the league and signed by the
president, stated clearly the duties which devolved upon them. "You will
bear in mind that yours is the work of testimony, that we do not hold
you responsible for the result. We are discharging by you a duty we owe
to the parent country. We wish you to state our case; to deprecate the
evils we suffer. We wish you to depict the vast resources and unrivalled
beauty of these colonies, and to insist on the injustice and folly of
degrading them to the purposes of a prison. We are anxious that you
should tell our countrymen at home, that here is a land capable of
boundless prosperity, that our whalers fish upon our coasts, that we
number our sheep by millions, that our wheat is famed in every market in
the world; that there are millions of acres over which the plough may be
driven, and where the axe is not required as pioneer.