The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
GOVERNOR MACQUARIE.
1809 TO 1821.
COLONEL MACQUARIE directed the government of New South Wales for twelve years the longest period that any governor has enjoyed that office. He exercised a pure despotism, but it was neither a stupid nor a brutal despotism, according to the light of the day.
The following extract from his first despatch not unfairly describes the state of the colony on his arrival:—
"I found the colony barely emerging from infantine imbecility, suffering from various privations and disabilities; the country impenetrable beyond forty miles from Sydney; agriculture in a yet languishing state, commerce in its early dawn, revenue unknown; threatened with famine, distracted by faction; the public buildings in a state of dilapidation, the few roads and bridges almost impassable; the population in general depressed by poverty; no credit, public or private; the morals of the great mass of the population in the lowest state of debasement, and religious worship almost totally neglected."
He was the first man of decided talent appointed to office in Australia. He was distinguished by his self-reliance and constant energetic action. If the comparison had not been vulgarised, one might liken him, comparing small with great, to Napoleon. His was the same order of mind -- views narrow but clear -- essentially a materialist in politics. In New South Wales wealth was the visible sign of success, and Macquarie rewarded success wherever he found it. He made roads, erected public buildings, and again and again traversed the whole length and breadth of the colony, following closely in the footsteps of new explorers, distributing grants to skilful settlers, planning townships, and pardoning industrious prisoners. His activity was untiring, his vai ity boundless. He seldom condescended to ask advice, and, when he did, generally followed his own opinion. With charming naïveté he observes, in answer to a despatch from the Secretary of State, informing him that it was not the intention of the Government to appoint a council to assist the governor, as had been recommended: "I entertain a fond hope that such an institution will never be extended to this colony."
Even the recommendations of Secretaries of State he disregarded; and, as he was successful, he was permitted to pursue his own course. He infused his own active spirit into the settlers, and under its influence the material progress of the colony was extraordinary. Higher praise his administration scarcely deserves. The moral, not to say the religious, tone of the settlement owes little to his eare. One instance will suffice. He requested, in one of his despatches, that as many men convicts as possible should be transported, as they were useful for labour, but as few women, as they were costly and troublesome; thus losing sight altogether of the inevitable demoralisation which must be the result of a community of men.
Macquarie has been much attacked for saying "that the colony consisted of those who had been transported, and those who ought to have been;" and "that it was a colony for convicts, and free colonists had no business there: "but there was truth at the bottom of both these rude speeches. He looked upon New South Wales as a place where convicts were sent to be subsisted at the least possible expense, and certainly neither he nor any one else at that tune foresaw a period when it would cease to be a convict colony. His strong common sense told him that the cheapest way of ruling his felon subjects was to make them wealthy and respectable. Under his predecessors the idea had grown up that convicts were sent over to be the slaves of the free settlers. Governor Macquarie would perhaps have had no objection to that arrangement on moral grounds, had it been possible; but it was not, as the free settlers of free descent were too few in number, too indolent in character. He therefore took up the opposite ground that the colony and all its emoluments and honours were for the benefit of those prisoners who were industrious, prosperous, and free from legal criminality.
The first individual selected for favour was a Scotchman, Andrew Thompson, transported at sixteen years of age, probably for some trifling offence. He had not only attained wealth and developed new sources of commerce for the colony, by building coasting vessels, by establishing saltworks and other useful enterprises, but had distinguished himself by his humanity and general good conduct. For instance, in the Sydney Gazette of the 11th May, 1806, we find Thompson permitted to purchase brewing utensils from the government stores, at the usual advance of fifty per cent, on the invoice price, with the privilege of brewing beer, in consideration of his useful and humane conduct in saving the lives and much of the property of sufferers by repeated floods of the Hawkesbury, as well as of his general demeanour.
Macquarie, within two months after his arrival, created Thompson a magistrate, and repeatedly invited him and other emancipists of similar success and conduct to dine at Government House, in spite of the remonstrances of the free inhabitants, of the officers of the 43rd Regiment, which succeeded the 73rd, and of hints from the Colonial Office. No doubt in New South Wales many a prisoner was induced to persevere in sober industry by the sight of an ex-prisoner and publican riding in his carriage to dine at Government House; but in England the effect could scarcely have been beneficial as a restraint on idle apprentices and incipient pickpockets. Such reports interleaved in the Newgate Calendar, and other light reading of the felonry of Britain, must have tended to diminish the vague horrors that previously hung round Botany Bay.
Governor Macquarie commenced by employing the convict labourers not required by settlers in making roads, and erecting and repairing public buildings. On the first harvest after his arrival, to the horror of the martinets, he permitted the privates of the 73rd Regiment to hire themselves out as reapers, to be paid in grain or money, the price of wheat at that time being £1 3s. 6d. a bushel. At the same time lie patronised amusements which the high prices of provisions did not prevent the wealthier classes from establishing. The New South Wales Gazette of October contains an account of three days' racing, conducted in Newmarket style, followed by an ordinary and two balls, the principal prize, a lady's cup, being "presented to the winner by Mrs. Macquarie." The whole proceedings are related in a style which would leave nothing to be desired in the Little Pedlington Gazette. For instance:—"The subscribers' ball, on Tuesday and Thursday night, was honoured with the presence of his excellency the governor and his lady, his honour the lieutenant-governor and lady, the judge-advocate and lady, the magistrates and other officers, civil and military, and all the beauty and fashion of the colony. The business of the meeting could not fail of diffusing a glow of satisfaction the celebration of the first liberal amusement instituted in the colony in the presence of its patron and founder." A supper followed the ball:—"After the cloth was removed the rosy deity asserted his pre-eminence, and, with the zealous aid of Momus and Apollo, chased pale Cynthia down into the Western World; the blazing orb of day announced his near approach, and the god of the chariot reluctantly forsook his company: Bacchus drooped his head, Momus could no longer animate. The bons vivants, no longer relishing the tired deities, left them to themselves!"
In the first year of his government, Macquarie undertook a tour through all the known districts of the colony, and continued the practice annually during his reign. On his return, by a general order, he censured the settlers for the little attention they had paid to domestic comfort or good farming, in buildings for the residence of themselves and shelter of their cattle; offered cattle, sheep, and goats from the government herds, to be paid for in grain, with eighteen months' credit; and announced that he had marked out for settlement the five new townships of Richmond, Pitt, Wilberforce, and Castlereagh, out of reach of floods of the Hawkesbury and Nepean, in which grants would be awarded to deserving applicants, on condition that they erected dwellings according to plans supplied, and other measures of a similar practical character.
In the December of the same year, the first brick church, St. Philip's, was consecrated (on Christmas-day) by the Heverend Samuel Marsden,—a name from that time forward constantly occupying a conspicuous place in the annals of the colony, as clergyman, magistrate, landowner, and stockbreeder. For instance, his next appearance in the Sydney Gazette is, in conjunction with two other gentlemen, advertising a reward of one pound sterling, or a gallon of spirits, for every skin of a native dog,—an animal which was then, and has been ever since, the scourge of flockowners.
In 1812 a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the state of the colony of New South Wales, after 
Native Dog, or Dingoe
examining a number of witnesses, including the ex-Governors King and Bligh, printed a report, from which it appears that the population amounted to 10,454, distributed in the following proportions:—The Sydney district, 6,158; Paramatta, 1,807; Hawkesbury, 2,389; Newcastle, 100: of these, 5,513 were men, and 2,200 women; military, 1,100; of the remainder, one-fourth to one-fifth was actually bond; the rest being free, or freed by servitude or pardon. In addition, 1,321 were living in Van Diemen's Land, and 177 in Norfolk Island, but orders had been sent out to compel the voluntary settlers, who had adhered to that island after the government establishment had been removed, to withdraw.
The settlements of New South Wales were bounded on the west by the Blue Mountains, "beyond which no one has been able to penetrate the country; some have with difficulty been as far as one hundred miles from the coast, but beyond sixty miles it appears to be nowhere practicable for agricultural purposes; beyond Port Stephen and Port Jervis these settlements will not be capable of extension; of the land within the boundaries, one half is absolutely barren." The ground in actual cultivation was 21,000 acres, and 74,000 were held in pasture. The stock, in the hands chiefly of the settlers, was considerable, but it was still necessary to continue the importation of salt provisions.
The currency of the colony was in government paper and copper money, but barter was the principal medium of sale; and wheat and cattle had been recognised by the court of justice as legal tenders in payment of debts.
The exportations of the colony consisted principally of whale oil, seal skins, coals, and wool. The iron ore, of which there was abundance, had not been worked. The trade in skins and coal was limited by the monopoly of the East India Company. Sheep were not sufficiently numerous to make wool an article of large exportation. The culture of hemp had been less attended to than might have been expected. An illegal trade in sandal-wood had at times been carried on with the South Sea Islands and China. Mercantile speculation had been discouraged by impolitic regulations.
For many years a maximum price was imposed by the governor upon all imported merchandise, often too low to afford a fair profit to the trader; at this price the whole cargo was distributed amongst the civil and military officers of the settlement, who alone had liberty to purchase; and articles of the first necessity were afterwards retailed by them, at an enormous profit, to the poorer settlers. The imposition of a maximum price on imported articles, and on the price of grain and butcher's meat, had been discontinued, and the attempt to limit the price of labour had failed. The trade in spirits Was reported as a great difficulty.
The defects of the system of criminal jurisdiction by court-martial, and civil jurisdiction without legal assistance or juries, are described; and the report states, that the governor, uncontrolled by any council, had power to pardon all offences, except treason and murder; to impose customs duties, to grant lands, and to issue colonial regulations; and for the breach of these regulations to inflict a punishment of 500 lashes and a fine of £100.
The committee recommended that a council should be given to the governor. With regard to grants of land, they reported that, according to evidence, a retiring governor had granted 1,000 acres to his successor, who had returned the compliment by a similar grant immediately after being installed in office.
Free settlers latterly had not been permitted to emigrate to New South Wales without giving proof that they were possessed of a certain capital. On their arrival they usually received a grant of land in proportion to their means.
On the arrival of Governor Bligh, two-thirds of the children annually born in the colony were illegitimate.
This report, which also entered at considerable length into the treatment of convicts, directed a little of public attention to the antipodean colony, and the result was to induce the Government to appoint a judge, with two magistrates chosen in rotation, who composed a supreme court in civil and criminal cases; and in Van Diemen's Land, as well as New South Wales, a fifty-pound civil court, with appeal, was formed, with the judge-advocate as sole judge.
This was the first step toward meliorating the absolute despotism under which the free settlers had hitherto lived. Measures were also taken for removing the restrictions on commerce with Van Diemen's Land, and abolishing trade monopolies: but Governor Macquarie's protests against the interference or assistance of a council prevailed, and he was enabled to pursue his plans with that concentrated vigour which is the one advantage of an enlightened despotism.
To enumerate all the public works which, with no mean amount of skill and at great cost to the parent country, Governor Macquarie executed, would be neither useful nor amusing. It is sufficient to state, that, while he erected many substantial if not elegant buildings in the town of Sydney, he took care, by well-devised roads, to render available all the cultivable land and pastures to be found within as much of the territory as had been explored. The settlers imbibed his spirit of progress, and imitated his energy; flocks and herds increased to a great extent, although the sheep were for the greater part of an inferior breed, a mixture of the hairy Bengal and heavy-tailed Cape, whose wool was worthless for export. But M'Arthur, whose efforts had been neglected and repressed by previous governors, was steadily pursuing his great idea of naturalising the "noble race," or Spanish merino, on the plains of Australia. In December, 1812, the Sydney Gazette reports that ten rams of the merino breed, lately sold by auction from the flocks of John M'Arthur, Esq., produced upwards of 200 guineas; and that "several coats made entirely of the wool of New South Wales are now in this country, and are of most excellent quality." In 1852 a whole fleet of ships were required to convey the wool of Australia to the manufacturers of Yorkshire.
In 1813 occurred one of those droughts, the one drawback on what would otherwise be a course of unvarying prosperity, which are periodical in Australia. On this occasion it was not only the crops that suffered; the numerous flocks and herds were unable to find sufficient pasturage on plains which, when first discovered, were overspread with luxuriant herbage many feet in height. Necessity forced upon the colonists the idea of again searching for a passage across the Blue Mountains. The attempt had been unsuccessfully made by several early colonists; amongst others, by the brave Surgeon Bass.
The last and successful effort was made by three gentlemen whose names are still well known in the colony—William Wentworth, son of the D'Arcy Wentworth who took an active part in the deposition of Governor Bligh, one of the earliest free colonists, himself destined in various ways to occupy a distinguished place in the annals of the colony; Lieutenant Lawson, afterwards one of the greatest land and stock owners; and Gregory Blaxland, one of the first members of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
With incredible toil and hardships, they effected a passage across a chain of mountains clothed with dense timber and brushwood, and intersected by a succession of ravines, which presented extraordinary difficulties, not so much from their height as from their precipitous character. At the foot of the opposite side of the mountains, an easy journey led to
Bathurst Plains in 1852.
Bathurst Plains, the finest pasture country the colonists had yet seen, far exceeding even the famous Cow Pastures on the Nepean. It is to this country, the discovery of Messrs. Wentworth and Lawson, that the gold-diggers are now streaming in thousands, but not clambering up precipices, sliding down ravines, and cutting paths through impenetrable brushwood, like the early pioneers; but easily travelling, and grumbling as they go, at the ill-kept condition of a macadamised road which has been conducted with admirable engineering skill in a series of ascending and descending gradients, over which even loaded drays can travel with ease.
Within fifteen months from the discovery of the first pass over the Blue Mountains, Governor Macquarie caused a practicable road to be made. He never lost any time in planning and executing such works. Some governors would have occupied as much time in preparing a despatch as he did in completing the work. Many settlers, without waiting for the road, contrived to transfer portions of their live stock to the new pastoral El Dorado. In April, 1815, the governor himself, with Mrs. Macquarie, accompanied by his principal officers and Mr. Lewin, painter and naturalist, set out on a progress to view what he called "his last conquest."
The results of this progress, made two months before the battle of Waterloo, are recorded in the following extracts from a "General Order:" certainly one of the most curious documents of the kind ever published.
Macquarie's journey across the Blue Mountains.
"The commencement of the ascent from Emu Plains, through a very handsome open forest of lofty trees for twelve miles, was much more practicable and easy than was expected. At a further distance of four miles a sudden change is perceived in the appearance of the timber and quality of the soil, the former becoming stunted, and the latter barren and rocky. Here the country became altogether mountainous and extremely rugged. From henceforward to the twenty-sixth mile is a succession of steep and rugged hills, some so abrupt as to deny a passage altogether; but at this place an extensive plain is arrived at, which constitutes the summit of the western mountains, and from thence a most extensive and beautiful prospect presents itself on all sides to the eye. On the south-west side of this table land [query, King's Table Land?] the mountain terminates in an abrupt precipice of immense depth. At the bottom [the governor does not mention how they got to the bottom] is seen an immense glen, twenty-four miles in length, terminating as abruptly as the others, bounded on the further side by mountains of great magnitude, to which the governor gave the name of Prince Regent's Glen. Proceeding hence to the thirty-third mile, on the top of a hill, an opening presents itself on the southsouth-west side of the glen, from whence a view is obtained of mountains rising beyond mountains with stupendous masses of rock in the foreground, in a circular or amphitheatrical form. The road continues from hence, for the space of seventeen miles, on the ridge of the mountain which forms one side of Prince Regent's Glen, and there suddenly terminates in a perpendicular precipice of 676 feet. Down this Mr. Cox had constructed a road to which the governor gave the name of Cox's Pass, and to the ridge, Mount York.[1] On descending the pass, the first pasture land and soil fit for cultivation appeared, watered by two rivulets running east and west, and joining, forming Cox's River, which takes its course through Prince Regent's Glen, and empties itself into the River Nepean. Three miles hence the expedition of Messrs. Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson, terminated. A range of very lofty hills and narrow valleys, alternately, form the part of the country from Cox's River for a distance of sixteen miles, until Fish River is reached.
"Passing on, the country continues hilly, but affords good pasturage, gradually improving to Sidmouth Valley, distant eight miles from the pass of Fish River. The land level, and the first met, unencumbered with timber, forms a valley north-west and south-east between hills of easy ascent, thinly covered with timber. Leaving the valley, the country again becomes hilly; thirteen miles brought the party to Campbell River, where an extensive view opened of gently rising hills and fertile plains. In the pool of Campbell's River, that very curious animal the paradox, or water-mole, was seen in great numbers.[2] The Fish River, which forms a junction with the Campbell River a few miles to the northward, has two fertile plains named O'Connell's and Macquarie's Plains. Seven miles from the bridge over Campbell River, Bathurst Plains open to the view, presenting a rich part of champaign country of eleven miles in length, bounded on both sides by very beautiful hills thinly wooded. The Macquarie River, which is formed by a junction of the Campbell and Five Rivers, takes a winding course through the plains, which can easily be traced from the highlands by the verdure of the trees on the banks, which are the only trees throughout the extent of the plains. The level and clean surface (marked in plough ridges) gives them very much the appearance of lands in a state of cultivation." On the south bank of the Macquarie, the governor encamped for a week, occupying his time in making excursions in different directions
The Duck-billed Platypus or Paradox.
through the country on both sides the river; and on Sunday, 7th May, 1815, fixed on a site suitable for the erection of a town at some future period, to which he gave the name of Bathurst."
This discovery, made by the courageous perseverance of the three gentlemen before named, rendered available by the wise energy of Macquarie, and profitable by the fine-woolled sheep of M'Arthur, assured the future fortunes of the Three Colonies of Australia, and laid the foundation of an empire on the sweepings of our gaols.
Macquarie was vain, hopeful, ambitious, and not unjustly proud of what, in his despatches to Earl Bathurst, he called "his discovery;" but his utmost expectation only extended to supporting a considerable but isolated population by pastoral and agricultural pursuits. He expressly stated, in his curious general order, that "The difficulties which present themselves in the journey from hence [Sydney] are certainly great and inevitable; those persons who may be inclined to become permanent settlers will probably content themselves with visiting the capital rarely, and of course will have them seldom to encounter." And under this impression the grants of land were made chiefly in large blocks of several thousand acres.
What would have been his pride and admiration could he have foreseen that, within a few miles of the plains of pasture land which have realised to the first settlers hundreds of thousands of pounds in wool, gold lay in heaps for gathering; and that within the lifetime of Wentworth, the explorer, an unbroken army of gold adventurers would crowd the highway from Sidney to the "City of the Plains," and in one year double the exports and the consuming powers of the colony.
The road to Bathurst Plains, executed in an incredibly short period, under the direction of Governor Macquarie, was materially improved by succeeding governors, and especially by the surveyor-general, Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Cook of Australian inland discovery. Sir Thomas Mitchell effected works second only in importance and merit of design and execution to the Siraplon Pass over the Alps. It is unfortunate that he was not permitted to carry out other public works which he suggested at a period when the barracks and gaols were filled with idle convicts. The road by Mount York was so steep that bullock drivers were in the habit of cutting down and attaching part of a tree to their drays, by way of substitute for a drag. Sir Thomas filled up an intervening valley by cutting down part of the summit of Mount Victoria.
Under Macquarie, in addition to the Bathurst, the Argyle district, one of the best agricultural and pastoral districts on the road, of which Goulburn is the centre, was discovered; as also Port Macquarie, afterwards a penal settlement, at the mouth of the River Hastings, leading to a fertile district, as yet, in consequence of the price of land and labour, unoccupied to its full extent. Mr. Oxley, the surveyor-general, traced the Rivers Lachlan and Macquarie to the west of the Blue Mountains, where they disappear in a swamp in dry seasons, and in seasons of extraordinary rain form an inland sea. Macquarie also formed one penal settlement on the fertile soil of Emu Plains, and another in the coal district at the mouth of the River Hunter, not improperly named Newcastle. He also materially improved the aspect of Sydney by laying it out on a new plan, and gave encouragement to every useful enterprise. He was wise enough to see the importance of, and did his best to create, a class of small farmers, who, tilling the ground with their own hands, would be independent of hired labour, and assist in protecting the colony against the effects of a dearth of corn. With this view, he gave grants of thirty acres each to emancipated convicts. Unfortunately, he did not accompany this wise measure with an importation of female population.
Among the gossiping libels against the yeomanry class current among the squatocracy is a statement that Macquarie's settlers sold all their farms for rum. This statement was investigated by Mrs. Chisholm, who found a great number of the settlers in the Hawkesbury voting for members of council on their original grants. That under the horrid single-man system many should have flown to rum for consolation, is not extraordinary. The old saw says—
"Without a wife,
"A farmer's is a dreary life."
Very little could be expected from a population of which not one in five could obtain an honest helpmate, and which knew little of clergymen except as sellers of rum and dispensers of lashes. Even in the mother country, the duty of educating the masses had hardly begun to make way; thus it was only the inoculation of whatever good there was in the colony, and the facility of getting an honest living, that prevented the colonists of Macquarie's time from becoming a nation of bucaneers.
The ignorant and the vicious were turned loose in New South Wales with the lash and the gallows for those who were found out, but with independence for those who were industrious. The result showed how human nature can run clear where not pressed down by poverty or compressed in towns.
The Rum Hospital was a specimen of the tone of morality during the early years of New South Wales. It was built by three gentlemen, under a contract with the governor, which gave them a monopoly of the sale and importation of rum for a certain number of years. The workmen were, as much as possible, paid in rum, and public-houses were multiplied to an extent exceeding the proportion in the lowest and poorest haunts of Great Britain.
Many individuals, profiting by the enormous government expenditure, became wealthy; and all the sober, and many who were not sober, of the free or freed population were prosperous. It became manifestly better policy to live by work or trade than by robbery.
Of churches there were two, and these barely filled; of the few clergymen the majority were occupied as magistrates, in awarding lashes to refractory servants, in farming, in breeding stock, and dealing in anything that would bring a profit. When New South Wales was considered worthy of an archdeacon, one honourable exception, the much-loved Parson Cowper,[3] was passed over and neglected, according to the rule of the duy, in favour of an ex-wine-merchant.
The Roman Catholics, amounting to some thousands, were not allowed to have the comfort of a priest of their own religion. Considering that the Roman Catholic cannot, like the Protestant, retire to any solitude and there relieve his mind by prayer and confession to God that he deems the intervention of the priest, especially on his deathbed, essential to his salvation it is not extraordinary that the Irish part of the prisoner-population should have been turbulent and desperate; they felt themselves condemned to misery in this world, and perdition in the next dying "unhousel'd, unannointed, unanel'd."
The tone of society in the towns was horrible: no educated or honourable class; no church worthy of the name; no schools except for the wealthy, and these chiefly taught by convicts; slave-masters who sold rum; slaves who drank it; an autocrat surrounded by parasites, whose fortune he could make by a stroke of his pen. Except military honour, and the virtue cherished by a few who lived apart, there was as little virtue and honour as freedom in this wretched, prosperous colony.
From the foundation of New South Wales to the end of Governor Macquarie's administration, about 400,000 acres of land were granted to private individuals. Of these, in course of time, many town lots have become of enormous value, as likewise some of the country land; but much was barren, and not worth cultivation when better land was rendered accessible by roads.
In 1817, the first judge, Mr. Field, arrived; a branch of the Bible Society was established, and a Roman Catholic priest, Father O'Flynn, landed and spent some time in the colony, but, not having been duly authorised by the home government, he was compelled to return. Bigotry was in full bloom before Christianity had taken root.
In 1819 arrived a commissioner of inquiry, John Thomas Bigge, Esq., and his secretary, Thomas Hobbs Scott, Esq. He remained until February, 1821, having collected a body of evidence, which was afterwards printed for the use of the House of Commons. It contains many curious stories. The publication of this report had a considerable effect in directing the attention of the British public to the resources of Australia, and eventually caused the influx of a superior class of emigrants. But it was not until Governor Darling's time that the demand for convict labourers, on terms then in force, began to exceed the supply. Colonists, chiefly the Scotchmen, discovered the advantage of agricultural pursuits in a colony in which, with a grant of land, they became entitled to rations for twelve months for themselves and their wives, and convict labourers at the rate of one for each thirty acres, who were also rationed by the government for the space of eighteen months. The inquiry by Mr. Commissioner Bigge was partly owing to the representations made, in a work published by Mr. William Wentworth, during a visit paid to England for the purpose of being called to the bar.
Among other subjects that came under the notice of the commissioner was the ecclesiastical government of New South Wales. The report of Mr. Bigge recommended the appointment of an archdeacon. Mr. Scott, the secretary, lost no time in taking orders, and in 1825 reappeared in the colony as Archdeacon Scott.
In the year that the royal commissioner quitted the colony a Wesleyan chapel was opened, and the foundation stone of a Roman Catholic cathedral was laid by the governor at the request of Father Therry—good Father Therry—who shared with Parson Cowper the honour, the respect, the affection of the poorer colonists, and of the outcast prisoner population, whom they so faithfully tended, and the persecution of their spiritual superiors.
In 1822 Governor Macquarie embarked for England, after a longer and more successful administration than any governor in the Australian colonies has hitherto enjoyed. He found New South Wales a gaol, and left it a colony; he found Sydney a village, and left it a city; he found a population of idle prisoners, paupers, and paid officials, and left a large free community, thriving on the produce of flocks and the labour of convicts.
- ↑ Mount York Road has since been abandoned in favour of an easy descent by Mount Victoria executed by Sir Thomas Mitchell.
- ↑ It is now extinct in that part of the colony.
- ↑ A son of the Rev. Mr. Cowper is one of the most respectable and influential men in the colony, and a valuable member of the Legislative Council.