The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
GOVERNOR BRISBANE AND GOVERNOR DARLING.
1821 TO 1831.
MACQUARIE was succeeded by Sir Thomas Brisbane, whose term of office, undistinguished by remarkable actions on his part, was full of events of importance to a colony which was fast acquiring a population that could no longer be controlled by a purely military despotism. From the day of Macquarie's departure a struggle commenced between the people and the government which was carried on up to the present year, when the Duke of Newcastle conceded to the Australians full powers of self-government and self-taxation.
Under any circumstances Sir Thomas Brisbane's task would have been difficult. The fortunes made in the colony had attracted a class of emigrants not prepared to submit to the despotic system which the prisoner part of the population could not, and the officials and settlers living on government patronage were not inclined to resist. Succeeding to the absolute powers of Macquarie, in 1824, three years after landing, the Legislative, or rather Executive Council, against the check of which his imperious predecessor had protested, was estabblished. The first chief-justice, the first attorney-general, a solicitor-general, who was also a commissioner of the Court of Requests, a master in chancery, and colonial treasurer, arrived in the colony. Trial by jury took place in the first Court of Quarter Sessions; liberty of the press was conceded; and the Australian, the first colonial newspaper independent of government aid, was published by Mr. Wentworth and Dr. Wardell, and followed by two other journals.
While on this side of the globe we were declaiming and subscribing for the liberties of Greeks, Spaniards, and South Americans, at the antipodes our countrymen were struggling for trial by jury and "unlicensed printing."
Commercial liberty yet remained to be gained. The East India Company claimed the monopoly of trading in the Indian seas, and repeatedly asserted their right by confiscating vessels loaded with produce for Port Jackson. In 1824 the captain of a man-of-war actually seized the ship Almorah, with a valuable cargo of tea and rice, at anchor in Sydney Cove, and sent her as a prize to Calcutta in charge of his lieutenant . Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane, K.C.B., had acquired a high reputation as a soldier in the Peninsula, and as a man of science. The first observatory in Australia was erected under his auspices. But his government, which only lasted four years, was unpopular, and the political concessions made rendered further concessions inevitable. To this fire was added the fuel of grievances which went home to the pockets of almost all the settlers and traders, and an insult which deeply offended a powerful, united, and intelligent religious community—the Scotch Presbyterians.
The Presbyterians applied in 1823 for assistance to build a Presbyterian church in Sydney, and referred pointedly to the support afforded the "Roman Catholics." The tone of the application appears not to have pleased either Sir Thomas or his secretary, and he returned a bitter reply, of which the following is the concluding paragraph. The style is eminently characteristic of colonial secretaries and governors:—
"When, therefore, the Presbyterians of the colony shall have advanced by private donations in the erection of a temple worthy of religion; when in the choice of their teachers they shall have discovered a judgment equal to that which has presided at the selection of the Roman Catholic clergymen; when they shall have practised what they propose, 'To instruct the people to fear God and honour the King;' when, by endeavouring to 'keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace' in a a colony requiring it more than all others, they shall have shown through their lives the influence of the holy religion they profess, then assuredly will the colonial executive step forward to extend its countenance and support to those who are following the Presbyterian creed."
The governor, it is said, acted under the advice of his secretary, a gentleman of the old Tory school. The Scotch gentlemen applied to the home government, when the governor received a severe reprimand, and the Presbyterians the aid they required.
Sir Thomas Brisbane's financial measures were equally unfortunate, yet there is no reason to question the purity of his motives.
It had been usual under previous governors to purchase the surplus grain from farmers at the current price of the day. The colonial government was almost the only purchaser, and to government the corn-growers looked for a certain share of their profits. Among the smaller settlers, the only cash they received in the course of the year was from the commissariat. This was the latter phase of a system which began with rationing the whole community, and gave liberty to prisoners who undertook to support themselves, which, in its second stage, willingly provided a free and emancipated settler with land and prisoner labour, and purchased the produce of land so tilled, to feed the prisoners whom the settlers could not employ.
Sir Thomas Brisbane, who arrived with Commissioner Bigge's report hanging over him, adopted the ordinary contract system, and invited tenders for the quantity required at the lowest price. The small farmers, unused to calculate the effects of open competition, rushed forward to the stores with such eagerness, that wheat fell from 10s. and 7s. 6d. a bushel to 3s. 9d. Abstractedly Sir Thomas Brisbane was right, practically he was wrong; so serious a change required care and time.
About the same time the governor established a colonial currency which raised the pound sterling twenty-five per cent., and proceeded to pay government debts in colonial money to parties who had contracted debts in sterling currency;—a revival of the system of depreciating the circulating medium obsolete in England, but still practised by continental monarchs.
The colonists, seeing the price at which wheat was transferred to the government stores, took it for granted that the harvest had been redundant, proceeded to feed pigs, and otherwise expended the unsold proceeds of their harvest. As the season advanced it was discovered that the harvest, so far from being plentiful, was deficient. Wheat rose to £1 4s. a bushel. Those who had sold cheap had to buy at a high price. The tampering with the currency added to the severity of the crisis. A great flood swept away the finest crops on the Hawkesbury. A famine followed: the government, by proclamation, required that cabbage-stalks should not be rooted up. A large body of small farmers became so insolvent that their farms were sold to pay their debts, and passed into the hands of money-lenders and grogshop-keepers.
The discontent of the colonists reacted on the home government, and Sir Thomas Brisbane was recalled on the 1st December, 1825. Four very important discoveries were made during his administration. In 1823, the Maneroo Plains, situated between two and three thousand feet above the level of the sea, separated from Twofold Bay by a lofty range of mountains, over which there is now a dray-track, were explored by Captain Currie, R.N., who named them Brisbane Downs, but they have since reverted to their native name. In the same year, Mr. Oxley, the surveyor-general, by order of Sir T. Brisbane, explored Moreton Bay, and discovered the navigable River Brisbane, leading to the fine semi-tropical country now fully occupied by squatters, but capable of supporting a large agricultural population.
In the following year Messrs. Ho veil and Hume made their overland journey to Port Phillip; and in 1825, Mr. Allan Cunningham, one of the most enterprising and accomplished of Australian explorers, discovered Pandora's Pass, a cleft than which the Alps offer nothing more wild, more imposing, or more picturesque, affording the only practicable road from the Upper Hunter to the pastoral uplands of Liverpool Plains.
Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Darling, K.C.B., succeeded Governor Brisbane; the colony, during an interregnum of eighteen days, having been in the hands of Colonel (afterwards General) Stewart, of Bathurst, an honour which formed one of the boasts of the gallant officer and standing jokes of the district for the remainder of his life.
GOVERNOR DARLING.
Sir Ralph Darling arrived in December, 1825; his administration lasted six years, and was singularly and deservedly unpopular. He was a man of forms and precedents, of the true red-tape school neat, exact, punctual, industrious, arbitrary, spiteful, commonplace. He laboured hard to reduce into order the confusion he found in the public offices of the colony,, and substituted a system which became quite as corrupt and more dilatory. It was like changing from the court of a Turkish cadi to the Court of Chancery. He obstinately evaded the control intended to be imposed upon him by the secret official and nominee council, and perpetrated one act of tyranny which has no parallel in English history since the time of Charles I. and the Star Chamber, The red-tape tendencies of Governor Darling were shown in his management of the waste lands of the colony.
THE AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURAL COMPANY.
New South Wales, in common with South American mines, Greek and Spanish loans, and a crowd of other bubble speculations, which seem to be decennially necessary to the commercial existence of Englishmen, became, in the last year of Governor Brisbane's official reign, the subject of the operations of a great company, incorporated by charter and by act of Parliament, with a directorate including the best men of the city of London, a capital of a million pounds, a grant of a million acres, and various other privileges and pre-emptions, of which a monopoly of the working and sale of coal eventually proved the most profitable to the shareholders and offensive to the colonists. Under Governor Darling, the agents of this Australian Agricultural Company selected, took possession, and commenced operations on their grant.
A retrospect of the plans and prospects of this company in 1825 will perhaps afford the best landmark of the progress of the colony from the time when the whole community depended for salvation from famine on one ship, and that ship driven by adverse gales out of Sydney Heads away to sea.
The directors of the Australian Agricultural Company, in their original prospectus, represent New South Wales as well calculated for the growth of "timber, wheat, tobacco, hemp, flax, and fruits, amongst which are the olive, grape, fig, mulberry, guava, almond, peach, citron, and orange." They derived their information chiefly from the reports of Mr. Commissioner Bigge; and from the same source rested great hopes of profit—
"1st, On the growth of fine merino wool.
"2ndly, From the breeding of cattle and other live stock, and the raising corn, tobacco, &c., for the supply of persons resident in the colony.
"3rdly, From the production, at a more distant time, of wine, olive oil, hemp, flax, silk, opium, &c., as articles of export to Great Britain.
"4thly, From a progressive advance in the value of land, as it becomes improved; and by an increased population."
The grant of land was made on the ground that the colony would derive advantage from the importation of so large a capital, invested in cattle, horses, and sheep of the Cheviot breeds; in the cultivation of the produce of southern Europe; and that the mother country would be saved the cost of maintaining a certain number of convicts.
At that period it was still so much an object with the government to relieve itself of the cost of the maintenance of criminals, that it was agreed that the company should be relieved of quit rent, on condition of their employing a certain number of prisoners. But from the period of the grant to the Australian Agricultural Company, the value of convict labour rose so rapidly, that they never were able to obtain the stipulated number of servants. In 1830 we find the editor of the Sydney Monitor proposing that convicts should be sold on arrival to the highest bidder, and anticipating that they would realise, in lots of two hundred, 100 a year each for five or ten years!
In the course of the correspondence with this company, the Secretary of State for the Colonies announced that in future, "instead of giving grants of land free, lands were to be put up to sale, according to a valuation of the surveyor-general, similar, in many respects, to the system adopted in the United States of America."
This plan had been suggested by Mr. Commissioner Bigge, with a price of 10s. an acre for lands near towns, and 5s. an acre in the country.
Unfortunately the example of the Australian Company infected many members of Parliament and other persons of influence, who hastened to obtain grants which cost the minister nothing, and appeared to the granters of immense value—a delusion on both sides. The precedent became most embarrassing to the government, while many of the huge blocks were of very little money value to the absentees, and of great disadvantage to the colony.
As to the Australian Agricultural Company, their proceedings created, in the then state of the colony, a financial revolution. They sent out from England, according to the custom of joint stock companies, a numerous staff of officers, with cargoes of implements and breeding stock on a most costly scale; and purchased ewes and heifers in the colony so largely, that prices were raised nearly two hundred per cent. "The company with a long pocket" was a popular toast at colonial dinners, and sellers were never wanting as long as they had any money to invest.
A reaction followed, as it always does follow, extravagant expectations of pecuniary profit. Nevertheless the colony derived advantage from the introduction of the company's capital and superior stock in sheep, horses, and cattle. The grand ideas of vineyards, olive oil, opium, silkworm cultivation, and orange groves, which formed applauded passages in speeches in the House of Commons and the court-room of the company, were never extended beyond the resident manager's gardens.
Unfortunately the beneficial influences were neutralised by a further grant, which not only handed over the large tract of coal seams which had been unprofitably worked by the government, but actually created a monopoly which precluded the colonists from working, on any terms, any coal which might happen to be found under their estates.
These doings seem monstrous now. At that period they were ordinary transactions, in which honourable men and liberal politicians took a share without shame. In the same perverse spirit the authorities and merchants at Sydney, up to 1826, compelled every ship to enter and break bulk at Sydney before calling at the ports of Van Diemen's Land. In 1825 monopoly was as much an article of faith with statesmen as free trade in 1852.
Under Governor Darling emigration from England of persons of moderate capital increased. But a vicious system was established in the surveyor's office, for the benefit of favoured or feeing parties, by which surveys of waste land were kept secret from the uninitiated. In 1830 the author of "A Letter of Advice to Emigrants" recommends " every settler to bring out an order from the Secretary of State to be allowed to inspect charts and maps in the surveyor's office;" and adds, " from being* denied such inspection, emigrants wander about the interior of the colony at great expense, but to little purpose." Reform makes slow progress in the Colonial Office. If we are to believe the boasts of an Hibernian-German captain who, in 1848, visited Port Phillip, even in that year there existed secret choice reserves near the town of Melbourne, which, by the "open sesame" of his letter from Earl Grey, after being long retained, were handed over to a German colony.
Darling ruled the convicts with a rod of iron. The times of the "first fleeters," with floggers, and short allowances of food, were revived. A penal settlement was formed at Moreton Bay; and there, it is commonly affirmed, the prisoners were so badly treated that they committed murder in order to be sent for trial to Sydney. County magistrates were permitted to award any number of lashes for insolence, idleness, or other indefinite offences. As it was not lawful for a man to flog- his own assigned servants, he exchanged compliments with a neighbour. Considering the class of persons who were then frequently selected for magistrates in the colonies, it may easily be conceived to what brutal excesses such irresponsible authority led.
But year by year the civilising elements of society made way. At one time, in 1826, we find a dispensary opened: in the following year a great public meeting is held, with the sheriff in the chair, to petition the King and both Houses of Parliament for the civil rights of trial by jury, and a House of Assembly; and the next year a general post-office throughout the colony, and an Australian jockey club, are established. The editor of a newspaper is found guilty of libel, and two gentlemen fight a bloodless duel. A dispensary, a post-office, an action for libel, and a duel!—the banes and antidotes of civilised society.
The two last years of Governor Darling present events and contrasts still more remarkable.
A Legislative Council, being a step in advance of the Executive Council established by the charter of 1824, held its first meeting in 1829. This was the check against which Governor Macquarie so earnestly and naively protested. The council consisted of Archdeacon (the late Bishop) Broughton, who superseded Mr. Scott, the Commander of the Forces, the Chief Justice, Attorney-General, and Colonial Treasure*, Alexander M'Cleay, afterwards (at eighty years of age) the first speaker of the first Australian Legislative Assembly, and four members selected by the governor.
The proceedings of this council were secret, under an oath administered to that intent; and the governor had an absolute veto. The majority were officials, totally unacquainted with the colony; and, looking at the minority in which the nominees of the government were constantly found in the subsequent open Legislative Assembly, it is not extraordinary that this council gave no satisfaction to the colony. It must, however, be confessed, that in 1829 New South Wales did not possess the materials for representative institutions.
The first act of the council was to establish trial by jury in civil cases.
In the following year, on the 31st March, 1831, the first steam-boat in Australia was launched; two other steam-boats came into use within a few months. Close upon the steam-boat followed Dr. Lang, from Scotland, the first Australian agitator, a Presbyterian O'Connell, who, after professing and printing every shade of political opinions, has recently avowed his preference for a republic, and his hopes that he "shall yet see the British flag trailed in the dust."
Decidedly, in 1831, Australia was making progress.
The history of General Darling's administration reads more like that of one of Napoleon's pro-consuls than that of an Englishman reigning over Englishmen.
The case of Sudds and Thompson is an instance which stands out in the history of the colony as a sort of landmark indicating the termination of the Algerine system of government, and affording a singular example of the state of society in which such an outrage on law, justice, and constitutional rights could be not only done, but defended. The story is worth relating, if only to show what deeds could be perpetrated in the same age by the same race that expended millions in redeeming negro slaves and attempting to convert aboriginal cannibals.
Sudds and Thompson were two private soldiers in the 57th Regiment, doing duty in New South Wales in 1825, the second year of Sir Ralph Darling's reign. Thompson was a well-behaved man, who had saved some money; Sudds was a loose character. They both wished to remain in the colony. In New South Wales these two soldiers saw men who had arrived as convicts settled on snug farms, established in good shops, or become even wealthy merchants and stockowners. As to procure their discharge was out of the question, Sudds, the scamp, suggested to Thompson that they should qualify themselves for the good fortune of convicts, and procure their discharge by becoming felons. Accordingly they went together to the shop of a Sydney tradesman, and openly stole a piece of cloth—were, as they intended, caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be transported to one of the auxiliary penal settlements for seven years. In the course of the trial the object of the crime was clearly elicited. It became evident that the discipline of the troops required to keep guard over the large convict population would be seriously endangered if the commission of a crime enabled a soldier to obtain the superior food, condition, and prospects enjoyed by a criminal. Accordingly, Sir Ralph Darling issued an order under which the two soldiers, who had been tried and convicted, were taken from the hands of the civil power, and condemned to work in chains on the roads of the colony for the full term of their sentence, after which they were to return to service in the ranks. On an appointed day the garrison of Sydney were assembled and formed in a hollow square. The culprits were brought out, their uniforms stripped off and replaced by the convict dress; iron-spiked collars and heavy chains, made expressly for the purpose by order of the governor, were rivetted to their necks and legs, and then they were drummed out of the regiment, and marched back to gaol to the tune of "The Rogue's March." Sudds, who was in bad health at the time of his sentence (from an affection of the liver), overcome with shame, grief, and disappointment oppressed by his chains, and exhausted by the heat of the sun on the day of the exposure in the barrack-square died in a few days. Thompson became insane.
A great outcry was raised in the colony: the opposition paper attacked, the official paper defended, the conduct of the governor. The colony became divided into two parties. Until the end of his administration, Sir Ralph Darling, whose whole system was a compound of military despotism and bureaucracy, was pertinaciously worried by a section which included some of the best and some of the worst men in the colony. Combining together for the extension of the liberties of the colony, they found in the Sudds and Thompson case "the inestimable benefit of a grievance."
It would be unjust to consider Sir Ralph Darling's sentence by the light of public opinion in England. He was governor of a colony in which more than half the community were slaves and criminals; he had to punish and to arrest the progress of a dangerous crime; but he fell into the error of exercising, by ex post facto decree, as the representative of the sovereign, powers which no sovereign has exercised since the time of Henry VIII., and violated one of the cardinal principles of the British constitution, by rejudging and aggravating the punishment of men who had already been judged. At the present day it is, as we before observed, only as an historical landmark that we recal attention to this transaction, which can never be repeated in British dominions.
During General Darling's government further successful explorations of the interior were made, both by private individuals and officials. Among the latter were Major (now Sir Thomas) Mitchell, Mr. Allan Cunningham, Mr. Oxley, and Captain Sturt, the most fortunate of all. In his second expedition, in 1829, Captain Sturt embarked with a party in a boat on the Morrumbidgee (which receives the waters of the Macquarie, the Lachlan, and Darling), until he came to its junction with the Murray, an apparently noble stream. Pursuing his voyage, in spite of many impediments, hardships, and dangers, from rocks, snags, sandbanks, and hostile savages, he reached the Lake Alexandrina, and discovered the future province of South Australia. This lake is a shallow sheet of water, sixty miles in length and forty miles in breadth, which interposes between the sea and the river, thus presenting an impassable obstacle to ocean communication. The hopes excited by the discovery of this picturesque river have hitherto not been realised. Although broad, deep, and bordered by rich land for many score miles, the perpetual recurrence of shallows limits the draught of water to two feet, at which depth steamers cannot be profitably navigated. Captain Sturt, having made this important discovery, returned by reascending the river. In consideration of these and other services rendered to South Australia, the new Legislative Council of that colony have recently voted to Captain Sturt, who has unfortunately become blind, a pension of 500 an act of liberality for which no precedent is to be found in the proceedings of the other settlements.
In October, 1831, General Darling resigned his government, and after an interregnum of two months, filled by Colonel Lindsay, was succeeded by General Sir Richard Bourke.