Politics and Parties in New England: Discoveries, Problems, Solutions and Future Directions

Words of D.M. Jones, a candidate for the electorate ofGwydir, in a speech during the 1872 election... encapsulate oneof the challenges that we face as historians of New South Wales politics.We have a balancing act to perform. On the one hand, we need to takeaccount of those "big" ideas and narratives that underpin the whole system of government as practised in the Australian colonies and, indeed, almost everywhere throughout the world where the British Empire has been a major influence. One of the most powerful of these ideas concerned the existence of an "Ancient Constitution" that embodied the rights of free-born Englishmen. British historians have, in the last fifteen years, had much to say about the influence of this notion on nineteenth-century politics in Britain.²It has been described as a "hegemonic political narrative" or "masternarrative ... a common discursive framework that enabled competing interpretations of English political history".³ This is a fancy way of saying that it was a stock of common ideas, phrases and symbols that framed much political debate. Liberals, Radicals and Tories might all agree on the existence of an Ancient Constitution, but they would each give the idea their own distinctive "turn", each providing their own version of the grand story.