Dan Deniehy was elected as the member of Argyle to the NSW Parliament at age 28. He ran on a platform as an independent liberal and described himself in his opening speech at the Lyceum Theatre as "the most rabid little democrat" ever to represent the people of Argyle.

His main targets were the political inequality of the squattocracy (his term) who survived through a mix of policy and malapportionment.

The politics of the people should be to wrest this mighty land from the hands of a faction [the Parker Government] whose only idea of its greatness was that it was a most excellent wool growing country.

An early identification of the "sheep's back" economy or its modern equivalent, "quarry Australia".

Deniehy advocated many Chartist positions such as paying members of parliament and universal male suffrage with no property requirements. Representing the Goulburn area was fiscally hard on Deniehy, he left Sydney for Goulburn in order to establish himself in a law practice, and unpaid public service put him deeper into debt.

While Deniehy, along with Harpur and Dunmore-Lang, was one of the great Australian republicans of the 19thC, his liberalism did not extend to the Chinese.

In consequence of the discovery of gold in the country, we are threatened by an overwhelming influx of barbarians, men of low social and mental development, and given to the indulgence of vices unfit to be named by a decent man.

If this immigration continued on a large scale, it would impart to the country a degraded and barbarous aspect, and the colonial descent would of a decidedly inferior caste.

Like Confucious and Jefferson, this is the retcon we have to perform for Deniehy, and in fact all Australian republicans of the 19thC. They were illiberal when it came to race and immigration.

I wonder what Australian republicans of the future will shake their heads over when they read the writings of 21stC republicans.