Part 19

Many years elapsed, ere the re-action of his system attracted the attention of parliament; until then, it was approved or tolerated by the crown. The pressure of a strong and united party, what ministers have the courage to withstand? They were willing that the Governor should bear the odium of measures, long subject to their cognizance, which they had passed by unreproved, and sometimes even applauded. Macquarie thought he had gained a triumph, when he raised emancipists to social distinction, and detained a mass of transgressors within the rules of obedience; and, for a time, so thought the ministers. They desired to establish a city, out of the materials of the gaol; but when they saw the success of their plans--half civic, half felonious--they were terrified at their own creation, and wished the city had remained a prison. In this feeling, Macquarie did not participate: he delighted in the result of his policy; and wondered at the inexorable cruelty of those who grudged an asylum to their unfortunate countrymen--who attempted to dash from their lips the liberty and hope they began to taste.

Whether it were possible, without a free community, to retain ten thousand persons in perpetual vassalage, or to uphold a system of simple coercion and social exclusion, in a colony so remote, remains a question; but it is none, that the name of Macquarie will become more illustrious, as the traditions of faction subside, and classes are blended in the unity of a people. It will be said that he found a garrison and a gaol, and left the deep and broad foundations of an empire!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 97: The instructions to Macquarie (1809) were--grants at 6d. quit rent. Thirty acres to an expiree, twenty for a wife, and ten each child.]

[Footnote 98: _Collins's New South Wales._]

[Footnote 99: The _Life of George Barrington_, written by himself, a respectable volume in size and typography, was published in 1810: nearly every paragraph is copied from Collins, the style being first debased; and the colored sketches are a mere piracy from other volumes. It was thought fair, by the ingenious booksellers to use the name of a popular pickpocket, rather than one so little known as a Lieutenant-Governor. Of posthumous agency in thus picking the pockets of the prigging race, George Barrington's memory must be acquitted.]

[Footnote 100: _Life of Barrington._]

[Footnote 101: Tench.]

[Footnote 102: Heath: _Par. Pap._]

[Footnote 103: Terry kept blank deeds ready at his public-house.--_Bigge's Report._]

[Footnote 104: "Eighteen years ago (1802), the period when I arrived in this colony, it was lamentable to behold the excess to which drunkenness was carried. It was no uncommon occurrence for men to sit round a bucket of spirits, and drink it with quart pots, until they were unable to stir from the spot."--_Dr. Redfern's replies to Macquarie; published by Parliament._

This reference to the past was intended to contrast favorably with the present (1820), but drunkenness was not greatly diminished: the bucket and pannikin still were in request at more remote parts of the colonies, and their use was recommended as a "measure of police," to prevent the drunkards from robbing each other. Poured into a bucket, none could be unfairly abstracted--_all_ shared alike; but had it not been so arranged, some rogue of the party would have removed some bottles, when the rest were off their guard; and thus reserved for himself the pleasures of intoxication, when the others were obliged, for lack of spirits, to be sober!]

[Footnote 105: Bigge, however, states, that Marsden himself was a trafficker in spirits, and felt naturally opposed to the profuse competition he encountered; yet the reader will recollect that this was the common article of barter--its use universal, in even the most correct society; and that it was rather to the disorderly habits of the houses which vended it, than to its consumption, that the most rigid moralists of the day would object.]

[Footnote 106: Letter to Lord Sidmouth.]

[Footnote 107: _Surgeon-superintendent Reid's Voyages to New South Wales._]

[Footnote 108: Cunningham.

The following is a picture of things as they were:--"The madames on board, occupy the few days which elapse before landing in preparing the most dazzling effect, on their descent upon the Australian shore." "With rich silk dresses, bonnets _a la mode_, ear pendants, brooches long, gorgeous shawls and splendid veils, silk stockings, kid gloves, and parasols in hand, dispensing sweet odours from their profusely perfumed forms--they are assigned as servants. The settler expected a servant, but receives a princess."--_Mudie's Felonry._

This is doubtless the language of caricature; but the extravagant pretensions of many, could be scarcely exaggerated.]

[Footnote 109: Bigge.]

[Footnote 110: Bigge.]

[Footnote 111: Bennet, p. 77.]

[Footnote 112: _Phillip's Voyages_, 1789.]

[Footnote 113: Macquarie's commission.]

[Footnote 114: _Abstract of the Emigrant and Emancipist Population in the year_ 1820, _with a schedule of Property belonging to them_: _compiled from the statements of the Emancipists._

--------------------------------+----------------+-------------+ 1820. | Emancipists. | Emigrants | --------------------------------+----------------+-------------+ POPULATION-- | | | Adults | 7,556 | 1158 | Children | 5,859 | 878 | |----------------+-------------+ | 13,415 | 2,436 | | 2,436 |=============| |----------------+ | Excess of Emancipists | 10,979 | | |================| | PROPERTY-- | | | Acres in cultivation | 29,023 | 10,737 | Ditto in pasture | 212,335 | 198,369 | Houses in towns | 1,200 | 300 | Cattle | 42,988 | 28,582 | Sheep | 174,179 | 8,739 | Horses | 2,415 | 1,553 | Swine | 18,563 | 6,804 | Vessels | 15 | 8 | Capital in trade | L150,000 | L100,000 | |================|=============| Total estimated Property | L1,123,600 | L526,136 | | 526,136 |=============| +----------------+ | Excess in favor of Emancipists: | L597,464 | | rather more than as 2 to 1] |================| | | | | --------------------------------+----------------+-------------+

[Footnote 115: "Now, in matters of opinion, man is like a pig: if you force him on he retrogrades. If you are really serious in attaining a point, make him believe the reverse is your object in view. Governor Macquarie, finding a number of demurrers to his opinion, instead of coaxing them into his views, looked upon them as his personal enemies, and often treated them as such."--_Cunningham_, vol. ii. p. 112.]

[Footnote 116: _Bigge's Report._]

[Footnote 117: Ibid.]

[Footnote 118: Mr. Hall, a free immigrant editor, addressed a meeting of emancipists (1822), and regretted he was not one of their number!--his sincere regret that he was not an emancipist! This, it must be recollected, was after dinner.]

[Footnote 119: _Wentworth_, 2nd edit.]

[Footnote 120: _Bigge's Report._]

[Footnote 121: When addressing the Secretary of State, Macquarie observes--"In my opinion (speaking of the voluntary settlers), they should consider they are coming to a convict country, and if they are too proud or too delicate in their feelings to associate with the population of this country, they should consider in time, and bend their course to some other country, in which prejudices in this respect would meet with no opposition. No country in the world has been so advantageous to adventurers as New South Wales: the free settlers, coming out as such, have never felt their dignity hurt by trading with convicts, even when they were such." Again--"It has been my invariable opinion, that a freeman, by pardon or emancipation, should be in all respects considered on a footing with every other man in the colony, according to his rank in life and character; in short, that no retrospect should, in any case, be had to his ever having been otherwise."--_Letter to Earl Bathurst_, 1813.]

[Footnote 122: _Reid's Voyage._]

[Footnote 123: This was afterwards prevented.]

[Footnote 124: _Macarthur's Present State._]

[Footnote 125: "Men are governed by words: under the infamous term convict, are comprehended offenders of the most different degrees and species of guilt. One man is transported for stealing three hams and a pot of sausages; in the next berth to him, is a young surgeon engaged in mutiny at the Nore; another, was so ill read in history, as to imagine that Ireland was ill-treated, and too bad a reasoner to suppose that nine catholics ought not to pay tithes to one protestant. Then comes a man who set his house on fire; another, the most glaring of all human villains, a poacher; driven from Europe, wife and child, by thirty lords of the manor, for killing a partridge. Now, all these are crimes, no doubt; but surely to which attach different degrees of contempt and horror. A warrant granted by a reformed bacon stealer would be absurd; but a hot brained young blockhead, who chose to favor the mutiny at the Nore, may, when he is forty years of age, and has cast his jacobin teeth, make a useful magistrate and loyal subject.

The most inflexible were some of the regiments stationed at Botany Bay--men, of course, who had uniformly shunned the society of gamesters, prostitutes, and drunkards; who had ruined no tailors, corrupted no wives, and had entitled themselves, by a long course of solemnity and decorum, to indulge in all the insolence of purity and virtue."--_Rev. S. Smith_, 1823.]

[Footnote 126: Doe, on demise of Jenkins, _v._ Pearce and wife.]

[Footnote 127: 1814: 54 Geo. iii, took away the corruption of blood, from children born after conviction, except in case of treason and murder.--_Sydney Gazette_, 1818.]

[Footnote 128: _Bigge's Report._]

[Footnote 129: _Collins's New South Wales._]

[Footnote 130: Acts.]

[Footnote 131: 4 Geo. iv.]

[Footnote 132: Mr. Wentworth states the trials in the criminal court in 1806, as 117, in 1817, at 92; but then he asserts, that offences had increased, subject to summary jurisdiction, from 300 to 1,000, while the population (20,000) had only doubled. He was not, however, ignorant, that many of those offences were not such in law or morals, but merely violations of local regulations (_Wentworth_, 2nd edit.). The colonial convictions were, with few exceptions, of persons who had been transported before: of 116 persons for trial at Hobart (1821), 79 were then under sentence, and 37 expirees--the entire number.--_Bigge._]

[Footnote 133: "With regard to character and respectability allow me to observe briefly, that while some are in general well-conducted persons, little that is praiseworthy can be advanced: there is not much religion among the best, and the far greater part have not the appearance of it."--_Rev. Mr. Cowper, 1820._]

[Footnote 134: _Edinburgh Review_, 1803.]

[Footnote 135: "His sentences are not only more severe than those of other magistrates, but the general opinion of the colony is, that his character, as displayed in the administration of the penal law in New South Wales, is stamped with severity."--_Bigge's Report._

Such was the idea of the people on the spot; but Mr. Wilberforce observed, in the House of Commons, he was--"a man who acquired the admiration of all who knew his merits; a man who shone as a bright example to the moral world--who deserved the title of a moral hero: who had overcome difficulties for the amelioration of his species, in the most unfavorable circumstances; which would always endear his name to the friends of humanity."--_Wentworth_, 3rd edit.]

[Footnote 136: "For my part, my only wonder is, that Mr. Redfern did not apply some degrading chastisement to the nose or breech of this cowardly Commissioner."--_Wentworth_, 3rd edit.]

[Footnote 137: Henderson, 1832.]

SECTION IX.

The duty of the Commissioner being discharged, it devolved on the home government to gather, from the mass of facts he accumulated, those which discovered abuses remediable, and to select for adoption the recommendations of their chosen councillor. The changes he advised amounted to a total revolution in the system, subject to his censorship; but so obstinate are evils, fostered by local interest and lengthened indulgence, that years elapsed before the effects of his influence were powerfully realised. He, however, secured for the exclusionists the recognition of their favorite principle, and not only were emancipists pronounced ineligible for the future, but those already in the commission found it expedient to resign. Mr. Redfern was dismissed.

This determination of the imperial authorities, by whatever reasons supported, was a deviation from a practice which covered the entire period of Macquarie's government; therefore sanctioned, expressly, or by the silence of the crown. The degradation of those on the bench, could not have been politically important, and was one of those acts of power, which rather gratify the vengeance of caste, than vindicate the purity of government. The mortification of the emancipists, at this triumph, was intense: they justly felt, that the ministers, and not they, were responsible for measures which had recognised their eligibility to the usual honors of colonial opulence; and that, even were it expedient to abandon the former system, a less violent process might have been discovered.

It may not be amiss to describe the career of an emancipist, of whose elevation Mr. Bigge remarks, "that it had been most strongly urged against Macquarie by his enemies, and most questioned by his friends." This case (1810) formed the precedent for appointments from persons of his class, and, as selected by Mr. Bigge, may be considered a specimen of the most objectionable. The facts of the Commissioner are all here embodied; his detracting tone is abated.

Andrew Thomson was a native of Scotland: his relations of that class of traders, in their own country called merchants; who carry their goods from town to town. He was sixteen years of age on his arrival in the colony, and therefore, a boy of fourteen or fifteen when he forfeited his liberty. When free, he engaged in business as a retail shopkeeper, and traded to Sydney in boats built by himself: the defects of his education he partly cured by application, and acquired such knowledge as ordinary retail shopkeepers possess. He established a salt manufactory, a ship-building establishment, and it was _rumoured_, an illicit distillery. He was chief constable: kept a public-house--such was the common practice of traders. He acquired great influence among the settlers, by his forbearance and liberal credits; his business extended, and he became a considerable landholder. He supported the legal authority during the rebellion, and suffered for his loyalty; a just ground for the esteem of that Governor, who came to restore the authority of his sovereign. When an inundation of the Hawkesbury exposed the settlers to great suffering, he undertook their relief; supplied them with goods, and was happily a gainer by the risk which his humanity induced him to incur: so great was the importance of prompt exertions, he was permitted to employ both the men and boats, which were under his control as superintendent of convicts.

In his neighbourhood, there were but two persons suitable to the office of magistrate, and having filled that of chief constable with great approbation, the Governor, Macquarie, considering his youth at the time of his offence--the merit of his loyalty when few were loyal--his industry and opulence, and his reputation for humanity--did not think his former condition a bar to a commission of the peace. It is said that Lieut. Bell, who conducted the party by whom the government-house was surprised, and a Governor made prisoner, objected to his appointment; but his opposition was confined to murmurs, or if represented at home met with no sympathy from the ministers.

Mr. Thomson was admitted to the company of the Governor, and the parties of the military, who yet, it is said, were not pleased with the abrupt suppression of the absolute ban. He died within the year of his elevation to the bench. Governor Macquarie commanded an epitaph to be placed on his tomb, stating that "it was in consequence of his character and conduct, that he appointed him to the magistracy; and that, by the same act, he restored him to the rank in society he had lost." His death was regretted by his neighbours, who in a public address to his Excellency described him "as their common friend and patron." It must be added, he had participated in some of those immoralities, which, in the time of the Prince Regent, dishonored the residence of kings; and he escaped that just reproach which could not be expected where the selection of mistresses was the prerogative of military command. Such is a fair statement of Andrew Thomson's character, as given by Bigge, without his reflections.

The disclosures of the Commissioner terminated the indulgences given to expirees, with such "unsatisfactory results." The small portion of land granted them, without great industry, was incapable of supplying their wants, and they were the pests of their neighbours; or, when they settled on allotments in town, they obtained materials from the royal stores by the assistance of their fellows.[138] Land was still granted, but not as the indispensable consequence of transportation.

The plan of recompense to officers in kind, he also condemned: rations of food and rum, double and triple; and the assignment of men to earn wages, as the salaries of their masters, were gradually substituted by payments in money. The small sums formerly allowed, were rather the wages of servants who live on their fees: by a casuistry, never long wanting to those who earnestly seek it, even men beyond the rank of overseers, persuaded themselves that the recognised stipends were never intended to be reckoned as payment.[139] The tender of these supplies was a source of profit to the officers; like the butlers of noblemen, persons of the highest trust were not insensible to presents; and merchandise was accepted only when the "regulars" were duly paid. The waste of public property, occasioned by the system, was great. The loss and sacrifice of clothing and tools; the spoiling of food, and the wilful destruction of implements, proved how large may be the outlay of the crown, without much advantage to a colony. Years were required to reduce these evils; some of which are yet not unknown.

These were, however, small changes, compared with the total revolution in the spirit and details of convict management, suggested by the Commissioner. All those signs of advancement which he saw in the material state of the colonies, in connection with the objects of transportation, were anomalies in his eyes. He observed, that the prisoners were always anxious to reside in the towns, where they obtained, by casual labor, the price and opportunities of dissipation. By a peremptory exercise of his authority, Mr. Bigge stopped some of the public works, and promoted the dispersion of those multitudes who were employed in the improvement of the capital.

The Commissioner, strongly impressed with the mischief incident to the congregation of prisoners in the presence of a free community, proposed several remedies. Among the most important was the establishment of settlements, purely penal, at Port Curtis, Moreton Bay, and Port Bowen. These places were explored by Mr. Oxley, the surveyor-general of the colonies. Moreton Bay is situated 480 miles from Port Jackson: this region, watered by the Brisbane, unequalled for climate and soil in any part of the globe of the same latitude; adorned with trees of magnificent growth,[140] had nothing in its natural features to repel. Though the days are warm in summer (80 deg. to 100 deg.), the nights are cool, and for several months fires are agreeable. Bananas, plantains, and pines--cotton, tobacco, maize, the sugar cane, and all the ordinary productions of a tropical climate, are cultivated with success. The atmosphere is soft and salubrious: of 1,200 persons, afterwards stationed there, sometimes not more than ten were sick at once; and during seven years, one soldier only died.[141]

Such was the site chosen by Mr. Bigge; but he endeavoured to render it suitable, by suggesting a code of regulations, in which may be discovered the outline of several schemes, since claiming originality. It was intended for those convicted of serious crimes, or such as committed offences in the colonies. The prisoners, two together, were to build their own huts; their sole implement the hatchet, and their material wood and nails: their only furniture, stools and bedding. Their labor graduated; from removing heavy weights, and sawing the hardest timber, to the easy occupation of the gardener, according to their behaviour or their crimes. They were to raise their own provisions, and the produce of their tillage for the crown, was to be sold in the colonies, and carried to the public account; except a sixteenth part, the moiety of which was to be paid to the commandant, and the rest proportionately to the overseers. No vessel, unauthorised, was to touch at the port: every precaution was projected to prevent escape, and the natives were expected to bring back, for rewards, such as might venture to stray. Every crime, short of murder, was to be punished on the spot. No spirits were to be sold; no money circulated; no private speculations in produce permitted. The wives of prisoners, when suffered to join them, were to sacrifice all but the necessaries of life. From the chief settlement others were to branch off; fifteen miles distant from each other. A church, a school, a library, were to promote the reformation of the prisoners--an object to be considered paramount to every other. Such were the plans for a _City of Penitence_, projected by Bigge; and by which he expected, in several directions, to dispose of 4,000 prisoners.

It was his hope, that their labor would discharge the chief cost of their control, and end the mockery, and the inequalities of punishment.

Before the arrival of the Commissioner, penal establishments existed, and prisoners were sequestered for violations of local regulations; or on extensive farms, where grain was grown for the royal stores. At Newcastle, on the Hunter River, were coal mines (1818), where those under colonial sentences, or those _guilty_ of experience in mining, were subjected to a more rigorous servitude. By an onward progress of the settlers, this station was less adapted for its purpose, and (1821) a second was provided at Port Macquarie, 175 miles north of Port Jackson. The increase of population soon rendered a further movement requisite: it was not, however, until 1824, that Surveyor-general Oxley completed his report of Moreton Bay: pioneers were forwarded, and at length 1,000 prisoners were employed in that remote region. The plan thus narrowed, only partially succeeded, and the numbers at last dwindled to 300 men: the Commissioner's idea, therefore, was never fairly tested. An organisation of several thousands in a city of penitence; under a discipline, which, while excluding the worst temptations of regular society, might preserve many of its elementary forms; managed by permanent officers, in number and gradation, sufficient to form and preserve the tone of a profession--is unfortunately still a speculation: nor is it yet safe to assume, that the failure of stations, exhibiting several features of the Commissioner's scheme, but excluding others not less important, is a conclusive argument against the original design.[142]

In this colony, a penal station was projected during the residence of Bigge. While he approved the object, he did not cordially concur in the selected locality: he remarked several of those obstacles to access, which were not compensated by the difficulties of escape. The punishment of colonial offences, when persons were already in bonds, was attended with some difficulty; the law not authorising additions to a sentence, except by a court of criminal jurisdiction, regulated by the forms, and bounded by the limitations of English statutes. To punish a misdemeanour, and sometimes even capital offences, the culprit was brought before a justice of the peace, and sent to a penal settlement for the remainder of his sentence. Thus a widely different penalty attended the different parties to the same crime: one would scarcely touch the place of his second exile, before the termination of his British sentence restored him to full freedom; another, perhaps a prisoner for life, would linger out his wretched existence in the place of his seclusion, forgotten.[143]