Henry Samuel Chapman was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 judge, colonial secretary, attorney-general, journalist and politician.

Early life

Chapman was born at Kennington

Kennington

Kennington is a district of South London, England, mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, although part of the area is within the London Borough of Southwark....

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the son of Henry Chapman, English civil servant, and his wife Ann Hart, née Davies. Chapman was educated privately at Bromley

Bromley

Bromley is a large suburban town in south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

. In 1818 he entered a bank, then in 1823 emigrated to Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 where he went into business as a commission merchant. In 1833 he started the first Canadian daily newspapers, the radical Montreal Daily Advertiser, in association with Samuel Revans

Samuel Revans

Samuel Revans was a notable New Zealand newspaper owner, entrepreneur and politician. He was the Father of Journalism in New Zealand.-Early life:...

.

In 1835 Chapman returned to England as a salaried intermediary between the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada

Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada

The Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada was the lower house of the bicameral structure of provincial government in Lower Canada until 1838. The legislative assembly was created by the Constitutional Act of 1791...

 and its friends in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Chapman remained in England for some time and took up the study of law, being admitted to the bar of the Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

 in 1840. Five years earlier he had published The Act for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations . . . with a complete index and notes. He was also involved in journalism and various Liberal reform movements e.g. the anti-corn law agitations. He served on several Royal Commissions on industry, e.g. on the Yorkshire wool industry, and contributed to reviews and to the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

New Zealand and Australia

Chapman founded the New Zealand Journal, which he edited and published in London from 1840 to 1843; he also published the New Zealand Portfolio. He supported the colonizing ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was a British politician, the driving force behind much of the early colonisation of South Australia, and later New Zealand....

, and had a passion for colonial self-government, on which he published several treatises. In 1843 he published the New Zealand Portfolio, Papers on Subjects of Importance to the Colonists, and was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand

Supreme Court of New Zealand

The Supreme Court of New Zealand is the highest court and the court of last resort in New Zealand, having formally come into existence on 1 January 2004. The court sat for the first time on 1 July 2004. It replaced the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, based in London...

. He was stationed at Wellington, residing at Karori

Karori

Karori is a suburb located at the western edge of the urban area of Wellington, New Zealand, some 4 km from the city centre.Karori is significantly larger than most other Wellington suburbs, having a population of over 14,000 at the time of the 2006 census.-History:Before the arrival of...

. The size of the district meant covering such distances as Kawhia to New Plymouth (150 miles) and New Plymouth to Wellington (200 miles) on foot. But he was under the Chief Justice William Martin and, according to Charlotte Godley, always considered himself too good for his present position. So in 1852 he accepted a position in Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...

 (Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

).

Chapman went to Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...

 as Colonial Secretary

Chief Secretary

The Chief Secretary is the title of a senior civil servant in members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and, historically, in the British Empire. Prior to the dissolution of the colonies, the Chief Secretary was the second most important official in a colony of the British Empire after the...

 in 1852, arriving in April. Later that year, as a nominee member of the council, left the chamber when a vote on the transportation question was being taken. Governor Denison held that as a representative of the government in the legislative council Chapman should have supported its transportation policy and virtually dismissed him, though he gave him leave of absence on half pay until the question could be referred to the Secretary of State. The governor's action was confirmed and Chapman went to Melbourne in 1854 and practised as a barrister. In 1855 he was elected a member of the Victorian Legislative Council

Victorian Legislative Council

The Victorian Legislative Council, is the upper of the two houses of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia; the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit in Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative Council serves as a house of review, in a similar fashion to...

, and early in 1856 drafted the bill which brought in the ballot system of secret voting, afterwards known as the 'Australian' or 'Victorian' system and adopted by other countries all over the world. The Australian Encyclopaedia, entry under "ballot", points out that it became law in Victoria on 19 March 1856 and in South Australia on 2 April 1856; though the South Australian proposals had been made first. In Victoria there were very vague ideas about the working of a secret system of voting. Chapman's special contribution was that he devised a method that was workable, and drafted the first bill to become law in any part of the world. Under it the voter struck out the name of any candidate he did not desire to be elected, and this procedure was followed in Victoria until federation came in. Though without a seat in parliament, he had been defeated at an election at St Kilda, Victoria

St Kilda, Victoria

St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...

, Chapman was attorney-general in the first O'Shanassy

John O'Shanassy

Sir John O'Shanassy, KCMG , Australian colonial politician, was the 2nd Premier of Victoria. O'Shanassy was born near Thurles in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of a surveyor, and came to the Port Phillip District in 1839...

 ministry for a few weeks in 1857, and securing the St Kilda seat in December, in the following March was asked to form a ministry. This was done with O'Shanassy as premier and Chapman as attorney-general. This government resigned on 27 October 1859. In 1860 Chapman was a lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

. In 1861 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly

Victorian Legislative Assembly

The Victorian Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the Parliament of Victoria in Australia. Together with the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house, it sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Melbourne.-History:...

 for Mornington. He resigned his seat in February 1862 to become an acting-judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria

Supreme Court of Victoria

The Supreme Court of Victoria is the superior court for the State of Victoria, Australia. It was founded in 1852, and is a superior court of common law and equity, with unlimited jurisdiction within the state...

, while Redmond Barry

Redmond Barry

Sir Redmond Barry KCMG was an Irish colonial judge in Victoria, Australia.-Early life:Barry was the son of Major-General Henry Green Barry, of Ballyclough, County Cork and his wife Phoebe Drought, daughter of John Armstrong Drought and Letita Head...

 took a year's leave of absence.

In March 1864 Chapman was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, at Dunedin

Dunedin

Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...

. He was involved there with the University of Otago

University of Otago

The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...

 and the Otago Institute. He retired in 1875, taking up commerce and sheep farming in Central Otago. He died of cancer in Dunedin. He had an obituary notice in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

.

Family

Chapman married twice; firstly to Catherine Brewer, (daughter of T. G. Brewer, a London barrister) in 1840, who was drowned while returning to England along with two sons and a daughter when the ship The London foundered in the Bay of Biscay

Bay of Biscay

The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

 in January 1866. Chapman revisited England in 1868, and married Miss Selina Frances Carr who survived him, with at least three sons of the first marriage. His fifth son, Sir Frederick Revans Chapman

Frederick Revans Chapman

Sir Frederick Revans Chapman was a New Zealand judge, the first New Zealand-born Supreme Court judge.He was born at Wellington, the fifth son of Henry Samuel Chapman, then resident judge in Wellington. He was educated at the Church of England Grammar School, Melbourne and in Europe, before reading...

became a Supreme Court judge in New Zealand, and President of the Court of Arbitration.