Electioneering in New England 1856-1889

Elections sort out the winners from the losers; they are the edifice on which a democratic political system depends. But there is more to elections than voting; they are also rich in symbolic meaning and 'constituted a ritual process through which constituencies talked to themselves, creating narratives which expressed their sources of unity as well as their sources of difference'. Australian scholars, however, have said remarkably little about these rituals, and we lack a social and cultural history of Australian electioneering. This article explores aspects of electioneering in the New England region of northern New South Wales (NSW) for the period between the coming of responsible government in 1856 and 1889 - the eve of a major transformation of electoral law and the nature of the political system. I am therefore concerned with a mainly 'premodern' political culture that contained 'some' elements we can recognise as familiar from a modern perspective, and others that stand in a similar relationship to our contemporary understanding of democratic politics as a Balinese cockfight to a game of cricket. To some extent, the NSW political system was (almost) 'born modern', with manhood suffrage, a secret ballot and other democratic innovations being established in the very earliest years of responsible government. Nevertheless, many traditions of British popular politics - some of them unsavoury - were adapted to Australian circumstances and influenced the conduct of elections for much of the nineteenth century. Colonial electioneering in NSW was haunted by the popular memory and knowledge of the English traditions of electoral intimidation. violence, drunkenness, bribery and corruption; and, especially before the 1870s, there were enough vestiges of this kind of activity in the colony's (Win elections to furnish fairly regular reminders of the dangers to community peace and stability of turbulent electioneering. Finally, this paper explores the particular challenges of doing democratic politics in small and very small communities. located in geographically vast electorates far from the colonial capital. These circumstances produced further contestation concerning how a democratic election should be conducted; what kind of candidate was required; and what his obligations to his constituents should be both during and after the campaign.