A university for Sydney

On 6 September 1849 Wentworth, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, successfully moved that the Council appoint a Select Committee to ‘report upon the best means for instituting a University for the promotion of literature and science, to be endowed at the public expense'.

The committee’s subsequent report recommended ‘Founding [a university] without any further delay upon a liberal and comprehensive basis… which shall be accessible to all classes, and to all collegiate or academical institutions which shall seek its affiliation'.

Wentworth and like-minded colonists championed access to the proposed university on the basis of academic merit established through written examination rather than on the basis of a student’s religious affiliation or social status.

A secular and public university

From the beginning, religious organisations disputed the notion of a secular university, pointing to Oxford and Cambridge as models to which an Australian university should aspire.

However, supporters of secular education pointed to another example: the University of London, founded in 1836, explicitly excluded religious qualification as an entry requirement.

On 2 October 1849 a Bill to incorporate and endow the University of Sydney was introduced to the Legislative Council but was lost because of disagreement about the composition of the university’s governing senate.

The Bill had excluded clergy from sitting on the senate while appearing to open the way for freed convicts (‘emancipists’) to become members by including on a list of nominees, William Bland, past president of Sydney College, who had been transported for duelling.

Political debate continued until a compromise was reached that the main Christian denominations could be represented on the 16-member senate by a maximum of four representatives and the Bill was redrafted accordingly. No list of proposed senate members accompanied the new Bill.

The Bill was introduced to the Legislative Council in August 1850 and the following month the University of Sydney Act was passed. It received Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy’s assent on 1 October 1850. Among the first senate members announced in the Governor’s proclamation were three ministers of religion and W C Wentworth.