In the 1850s Victoria chose a democratic upper house, while NSW chose an appointed one. It was seen as a victory in NSW as William Wentworth had wanted a titled upper house - an antipodean House of Lords in the tradition of King, Lords and Commons. Much energy was expended on stopping that constitutional plan. Harpur has an interesting point of view on political technology from that period. In his eyes, if the technology has proven corrupt, then it is unfit for government and a new one should be implemented.

Harpur saw an appointed upper house as having a history of corruption. New South Wales was already under the grips of what Deniehy called the 'squatocracy' and an appointed Legislative Council in NSW was seen as a way for Wentworth and other squatters to maintain a grip on NSW politics despite a democratic Assembly.

Harpur in a reply to William Duncan, a publisher of a political journal in Sydney, argued that an imperfect technology that has proved broken should not be tolerated:

The main argument of Mr Duncan's Plea for a New South Wales Constitution is fairly characterized above. It may be imperfect, he argues: but all human things are so, and that therefore we should be satisfied with it. But I, for one, do not believe that all human things are inevitably imperfect.

At all events, I am sure that they would be more perfect than they are, if men were habitually less satisfied with their imperfection: and that the pernicious counsels of such philosophers as Mr. Duncan, have tended, and tend in no small degree, to the perpetuation of this imperfection.

Hence the wisdom of our for ever endeavouring to found only the best - nay, perfect forms of government. Hence, too, the wisdom of our everlasting dissatisfaction with all authority that is hybrid and partial.

How characteristic of the peculiar order of Mr Duncan's mind, is the fond allusion in this Plea to Gatton and Old Sarum? What a sneaking kindness it indicates for the 'old familiar faces' of constitutional rottenness? And what monkish approval of the merest and most formal reproductions of olden abortions and governmental shams?

Verily he is a philosopher - but of the Dark Ages.

Apparently after this got published Harpur and Duncan weren't on the best of terms. I can see why. Harpur is pretty deft with the put downs via pen.

There are a couple of interesting things in those paragraphs though. Harpur argues that anything less than the best technology at the time is perpetuating bad government. If a technology has proven to be inherently corrupt then it should be replaced.

Harpur offers a vision of constant constitutional improvement to match the increasing perfection of humankind. This is an Australian Republican variant of Thomas Jefferson's idea he wrote to Samuel Kerchival that constitution's should be contested every generation.

I have sympathy for William Duncan in this exchange as an appointed upper house was what was politically achievable amongst the conservatives, liberals and republicans in NSW. The problem was the idiocy of William Wentworth in advocating for the political inequality and corruption of a titled Legislative Council - whose compromise, an appointed upper house, took one hundred and twenty five years to be purged from the NSW Constitution.

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