SIR MAURICE O’CONNELL.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1605, 12 April 1879, Page 3

SIR MAURICE O’CONNELL.

The Australian colonies have (says the “Australasian”) lost a man of mark and eminence in Sir Maurice Charles O’Connell, who has been for many years President of the Legislative Council of Queensland. The history of the deceased gentleman is emphatically Australian, rather than belonging to any particular colony, and is so in a degree beyond that in which the same observation could be made of any other colonial statesman. By birth Sir Maurice was a native of S?dney. His grandfather on his mother’s side, Admiral Bligh, well-known in connexion with the mutiny of the Bounty, win one of the early Q-ovornors of New South Wales, and his father, General Sir Maurice O’Connell, was Acting Governor of New South Wales, and the lately deceased Sir Maurice has acted in the same capacity in Queensland several times. In his youth Sir Maurice O’Conuell entered the army as ensign at the ago of sixteen, and seven years later threw himself in the very spirit of chivalry i»to tho Oarlist war, then

raging in Hpain. Heroised in Ireland a regvn oil In* Bdisn Legion, and embarked lor .Spain to fl gM for 'Mhe Queen and the constitution ” Ho attain;;! Ibe rank of general of brign le iii command of the British Auxiliary Legion, ft> d ho was created a knight commander of Isabella, the Catholic, be sides gaining other Itigh distinctions by his personal gallantry, Ho returned to Sydney in 1835 as military secretary on the staff of his father, and his active and energetic disposition soon assorted itself as compicuouuly in social find political life as it had on the field of warfare. He was one of the members for Port Philip in the Legislative Council of flew South Wales. Throughout Ins life Sir Maurice O’Connell has brought to his public duties something of the high chivalric feeling which led to Ins early plunge into tho Spanish war, and he has been enabled to hold with dignity an eminens place above tire level of faction or party strife, A colony Id fortunate which posscssct among its public men some of tho stamp of Sir Maurice O’Connell, and it is matter fc? regret that wo see so few of this order arising to take the place of tho old ones as they pass away.