First Council Debates Index 1838 - 1856

As 'Hansard' was not instituted in NSW until 1879 the Parliamentary Debates were not recorded officially until that date. This means that there is no official record of the debates of the first Council and of the first twenty three years of debates in the new Parliament. However the 'Sydney Morning Herald' and the other Sydney newspapers of the day reported the debates in the Council as soon as reporters and other strangers were permitted so to do: reporters were first allowed in the old Council Chamber on 6 June 1838. There are a number of indexes printed by the NSW Government Printer, which should be available in the Mitchell and State Libraries. They are:

Index to the Sydney Morning Herald's reports on the debates in the Legislative Council of NSW: Sessions 1843-1848, Sydney Government Printer, 1846, 2 volumes.
The same: Sessions 1843-1854 (with exceptions).
Index to the Sydney Morning Herald's reports on the debates in the Legislative Council of NSW: Session 2, 1846, Sydney Government Printer, 1846

As well, people occasionally collected and published debates relating to particular topics. The most important collections would be:

Thompson, Edward Deas, 'Corrected Report of the Speeches of the Honourable Edward Deas Thomson, Esq., Colonial Secretary of NSW, Delivered in the Legislative Council, on the First and Second Reading of the Bill for the Division of the Colony into Electoral Districts, in the First Session of 1851', Sydney, W. and F. Ford, 1851
Silvester, Edward Kennedy (ed.), 'The Speeches, in the Legislative Council of NSW, on the Second Reading of the Bill for Framing a New Constitution for the Colony', Sydney, Thomas Daniel, 1853 [Reprinted 1896]

The present Legislative Council Office also compiled in the early 1950s (as part of the series of 'Consolidated Indexes' (1856 - 1954) a 'Consolidated Index to the "Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council" ' (1843 - 1855), which includes references to the Sydney Morning Herald Reports of Debates. These references have been extracted into a separate Index to Debates 1843 - 1855'

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