Attorney-general
For many years Stawell enjoyed the leading practice at the local bar, and when the Port Phillip district of New South Wales was separated from the parent colony, and entered upon an independent existence as the Colony of Victoria, Stawell accepted the position of Attorney-General and became a member of the Executive Council and the Legislative Council.
A few weeks after Stawell's appointment gold was discovered in Victoria; the duty of creating a system of government which could cope adequately with the situation fell to him. Stawell had to establish a police force, frame regulations for the government of the goldfields, appoint magistrates and officials of every grade, and protect life and property against the attacks of the hordes of adventurers, many of desperate character, who landed in Victoria, first from the neighbouring colonies, and later from Europe and America. Much was owed to the firm administration of Stawell that, at a time when the government was weak and a large section of the newcomers impatient of control, lynch law was never resorted to.
Stawell had very little assistance for some time from any of his colleagues, and until the Executive Council was strengthened by the admission of Captain Andrew Clarke and Hugh Culling Childers, Stawell was the brains as well as the body of the administration. The success of his policy was upon the whole remarkable. In the legislature he was sometimes opposed, and at other times assisted, by John O'Shanassy, who was the leader of the popular party, and between them they managed to pass a number of statutes which added greatly to the prosperity of the colony. A political contemporary, Henry Samuel Chapman, spoke of him as “almost the only efficient man connected with the government.”
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