Daniel Deniehy

Daniel Henry Deniehy (18 August 1828 – 22 October 1865) was an Australian journalist, orator and politician; and early advocate of democracy in colonial New South Wales.

Deniehy was born in Sydney, 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.

Meanwhile, Deniehy became a leading figure in Sydney's small but lively literary world and in radical politics; artist Adelaide Ironside 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."

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