Daniel Deniehy
Encyclopedia
Daniel Henry Deniehy was an Australia
n journalist
, orator and politician
; and early advocate of democracy
in colonial New South Wales
.
, the son of Henry and Mary Deniehy, former convicts of Irish
birth who had prospered in the colony after their term had expired. Deniehy was educated at the best schools Sydney then had to offer, including Sydney College
, and completed his education in England at his father's expense. He travelled in Europe and visited Ireland
, where he met leaders of the Young Ireland
party. He was influenced by both English Chartism
and Irish nationalism
. Returning to Sydney in 1844, he studied law and became a solicitor
in 1851.
was an associate. Deniehy was a follower of the radical leader John Dunmore Lang
(despite Lang's violent dislike of the Irish and of Roman Catholicism), and a member of Lang's organisation, the Australian League. He practised law in Goulburn 1854–58, in Sydney 1858-62, in Melbourne
1862-64 and in Bathurst
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 advocated manhood 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 the squatter
class of early settlers had seized for themselves. He accused the conservatives, led by the veteran Sydney politician William 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."
When Wentworth proposed creating a hereditary peerage
in New South Wales, Deniehy savagely satirised it: "Here," he said, "we all know the common water mole
was transferred into the duck-billed platypus
, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I suppose we are to be favoured with a "bunyip aristocracy
." (The bunyip
is a mythical beast of Aboriginal legend.) His ridicule caused the idea to be dropped.
Deniehy was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
in 1857, representing Argyle
(the Goulburn region). In 1859 he stood for West Sydney
, but was defeated. However he was successful in 1860 representing East Macquarie
(the Bathurst region). As a radical democrat, he should have been an effective supporter of the liberal parliamentary leaders Charles Cowper
and John 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 edited Southern Cross, a radical newspaper, in 1859. Deniehy had opposed the appointment of Lyttleton Bayley as attorney-general and produced a satire How I Became Attorney-General of New Barataria (Sydney, 1860) which was published in the Southern Cross. In Melbourne
in 1862 he edited The Victorian for its owner, the Irish-Australian politician Charles Gavan Duffy
. In Sydney he became a notable literary critic, and lectured on modern literature at the newly-founded Sydney University. He was a regular contributor to the Irish-Australian newspaper The Freeman's Journal and other papers.
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 actual transfiguration. 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's Waverley Cemetery
, where a monument was erected over the grave. An inscription on it reads:
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, orator and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
; and early advocate of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
in colonial New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
.
Early life
Deniehy was born in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, the son of Henry and Mary Deniehy, former convicts of Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
birth who had prospered in the colony after their term had expired. Deniehy was educated at the best schools Sydney then had to offer, including Sydney College
Sydney Grammar School
Sydney Grammar School is an independent, non-denominational, selective, day school for boys, located in Darlinghurst, Edgecliff and St Ives, all suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
, and completed his education in England at his father's expense. He travelled in Europe and visited Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, where he met leaders of the Young Ireland
Young Ireland
Young Ireland was a political, cultural and social movement of the mid-19th century. It led changes in Irish nationalism, including an abortive rebellion known as the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. Many of the latter's leaders were tried for sedition and sentenced to penal transportation to...
party. He was influenced by both English Chartism
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...
and Irish nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
. Returning to Sydney in 1844, he studied law and became a solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
in 1851.
Career
Meanwhile Deniehy became a leading figure in Sydney's small but lively literary world and in radical politics; artist Adelaide IronsideAdelaide Eliza Ironside
Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside was an Australian artist.Ironside was born in Sydney, only surviving child of James Ironside, commission agent, and his wife Martha Rebecca, née Redman. She was educated by her mother and from a young age showed literary ability, contributing to the press both in...
was an associate. Deniehy was a follower of the radical leader John Dunmore Lang
John Dunmore Lang
John Dunmore Lang , Australian Presbyterian clergyman, writer, politician and activist, was the first prominent advocate of an independent Australian nation and of Australian republicanism.-Background and Family:...
(despite Lang's violent dislike of the Irish and of Roman Catholicism), and a member of Lang's organisation, the Australian League. He practised law in Goulburn 1854–58, in Sydney 1858-62, in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
1862-64 and in Bathurst
Bathurst, New South Wales
-CBD and suburbs:Bathurst's CBD is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is approximately 25 hectares and surrounds two city blocks. Within this block layout is banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park* and monuments...
1865. In all these places he was active in local politics and journalism.
Like Lang, Deniehy was an advocate of extended democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
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 advocated manhood 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 the squatter
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
class of early settlers had seized for themselves. He accused the conservatives, led by the veteran Sydney politician William Wentworth
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
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."
When Wentworth proposed creating a hereditary peerage
Peerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
in New South Wales, Deniehy savagely satirised it: "Here," he said, "we all know the common water mole
Mole (animal)
Moles are small cylindrical mammals adapted to a subterranean lifestyle. They have velvety fur; tiny or invisible ears and eyes; and short, powerful limbs with large paws oriented for digging. The term is especially and most properly used for the true moles, those of the Talpidae family in the...
was transferred into the duck-billed platypus
Platypus
The platypus is a semi-aquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young...
, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I suppose we are to be favoured with a "bunyip aristocracy
Bunyip aristocracy
The term bunyip aristocracy is an Australian term satirising attempts to develop an aristocracy in the colonies now forming that country.It was first coined in 1853 by Daniel Deniehy who made a speech lambasting the attempt by William Wentworth to establish a titled aristocracy in the New South...
." (The bunyip
Bunyip
The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes....
is a mythical beast of Aboriginal legend.) His ridicule caused the idea to be dropped.
Deniehy was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
New South Wales Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The other chamber is the Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney...
in 1857, representing Argyle
Electoral district of Argyle
Argyle was an electoral district for the Legislative Assembly in the Australian State of New South Wales from 1856 to 1904, including Argyle County surrounding Goulburn...
(the Goulburn region). In 1859 he stood for West Sydney
Electoral district of West Sydney
West Sydney was an electoral district for the Legislative Assembly in the Australian State of New South Wales created in 1859 from part of the electoral district of Sydney, covering the western part of the current Sydney central business district, Ultimo and Pyrmont, bordered by George Street,...
, but was defeated. However he was successful in 1860 representing East Macquarie
Electoral district of East Macquarie
East Macquarie was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales between 1859 and 1894, in the Bathurst region. It was represented by two members, with voters casting two votes and the first two candidates being elected.-Members for East Macquarie:...
(the Bathurst region). As a radical democrat, he should have been an effective supporter of the liberal parliamentary leaders Charles Cowper
Charles Cowper
Sir Charles Cowper, KCMG was an Australian politician and the Premier of New South Wales on five different occasions from 1856 to 1870....
and John 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 edited Southern Cross, a radical newspaper, in 1859. Deniehy had opposed the appointment of Lyttleton Bayley as attorney-general and produced a satire How I Became Attorney-General of New Barataria (Sydney, 1860) which was published in the Southern Cross. In Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
in 1862 he edited The Victorian for its owner, the Irish-Australian politician Charles Gavan Duffy
Charles Gavan Duffy
Additional Reading*, Allen & Unwin, 1973.*John Mitchel, A Cause Too Many, Aidan Hegarty, Camlane Press.*Thomas Davis, The Thinker and Teacher, Arthur Griffith, M.H. Gill & Son 1922....
. In Sydney he became a notable literary critic, and lectured on modern literature at the newly-founded Sydney University. He was a regular contributor to the Irish-Australian newspaper The Freeman's Journal and other papers.
Late life
Only 150 cm (five foot) tall and in poor health throughout his life, Deniehy possessed enormous energy and was a gifted orator. The Australian historian Manning ClarkManning Clark
Charles Manning Hope Clark, AC , an Australian historian, was the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume A History of Australia, published between 1962 and 1987...
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 actual transfiguration. 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's Waverley Cemetery
Waverley Cemetery
The Waverley Cemetery opened in 1877 and is a cemetery located on top of the cliffs at Bronte in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is noted for its largely intact Victorian and Edwardian monuments. The cemetery contains the graves of many significant Australians including the poet Henry Lawson and...
, where a monument was erected over the grave. An inscription on it reads:
- The vehement voice of the South
- Is loud where the journalist lies
- But calm hath encompassed his mouth,
- And sweet is the peace in his eyes.
Further reading
- E.A. Martin, The Life and Speeches of Daniel Henry Deniehy (1884)
- Cyril Pearl, Brilliant Dan Deniehy: a Forgotten Genius (1972)
External links
- Daniel Henry Deniehy by the Australian poet Henry Kendall
- A downloadable text of The Life and Speeches of Daniel Henry Deniehy