"Yes."
"Will you forgive injuries?"
"Yes."
These converts had been under preparation for more than a year, and seemed thoroughly convinced and fairly instructed. Therefore the baptismal service was read by Mr. Deerr; and when the vows were reached, the Bishop turned to the Christians around and asked if they would be witnesses and G.o.dparents to these candidates; and, with one voice, they shouted that they would. Each candidate was singly baptized, and then came up to the Bishop, by whom the words receiving him into the Ark of Christ"s Church were spoken. At Ran.o.bunda there was another baptism of 250, and, in the whole district, full a thousand were admitted. It was not in over-confident joy. "Time will show," said the Bishop, "who are wheat and who are tares." It was impossible among so many that all should be perfect Christians, but it was a real foundation; the flame then lighted burns on steadily, and the Christian faith has a firm and strong hold in the district of Krishnaghur.
Anxieties of course crossed his work. The Church Missionary Society, after being used to control its clergy, was not properly ready to allow their canonical obedience to a Bishop; and the troubles that thus arose made him once speak of Heber as happy in being shielded by his early death from the cla.s.s of vexations connected with societies. To his great grief, too, a lady who had worked for years at the education of girls and orphans at Calcutta seceded to the Plymouth Brethren, and was necessarily obliged to give up the charge. It was to him "as if a standard-bearer fainteth." The Oxford controversy also vexed him a good deal. The school of Newton and Cecil, in which he had been brought up, was at the most distant point that the Church permitted from the doctrines of the Tracts for the Times; and few men are able or willing candidly to judge or appreciate opinions that have grown up since their own budget was completed, especially after they have been for some time in the exercise of authority. Thus he set his mind very strongly against all the clergy holding those views who came to work in the diocese; and thereby impeded a good deal that might have worked heartily with him if he had only been able to believe it, and to understand that the maintenance of the voice of the Church is truly the maintenance of the voice of Christ.
In November 1844, when on a visitation at Umballah, he had his first serious illness, a fever, he being then in his sixty-sixth year and in the thirteenth of his residence in India. For about a week he was in great danger, but rallied, and was able to be removed by slow stages, though not without an attack of inflammation on the lungs before reaching Calcutta; and his const.i.tution was altogether so much shaken that he was ordered home, without loss of time, to recruit his health.
He returned to England by the Overland route, and after a short respite recovered much of his strength, so as to be able to preach in many churches and appear at numerous meetings; and in a year"s time the vigorous old man was on his way back to his diocese, where he arrived in time to keep the Christmas of 1846, just two years after he had been stricken down by fever. In the October of the next year he consecrated his cathedral, towards which 20,000_l._ had been his own donation, half towards the building, half towards the endowment. His strength was not quite what it had been before, but he still had abundant energy, and new branches of the Church were springing up around him; not only the three dioceses that had branched from his own in India, but Ceylon had a Bishop of its own, Australia had five, and the Cape and New Zealand and the Isle of Hong Kong had each received a Bishop. The principle had come to be recognized that to send out isolated workers without a head to organize was a plan that could hardly be reasonably expected to succeed; and in the long run prosperity has certainly attended the contrary arrangement.
Not to speak of the Divine authority, the action of a body under a recognized head and superior on the spot must be far readier of adaptation to circ.u.mstances than that of a number of equals, accountable only to some necessarily half-informed Society at home.
In his 73rd year, just after a visitation tour, it somewhat dismayed Bishop Wilson to find a letter from the Bishop of London sending him to consecrate the new church erected by Sir James Brooke, at Sarawak. Few careers have been more remarkable than that of the truly great man who subdued Malay piracy, and gained the confidence of the natives of Borneo; and when the effort of the fourteen weeks" voyage had been made, the Bishop returned full of joy and hope, and not long after, together with the Bishops of Madras and Victoria, joined in consecrating the missionary Bishop of Labuan to the new field of work there opening. On the last journey of his life he also visited Rangoon, and there consecrated the church, finding the clergy hard at work and numerous converts.
During the year 1856 he had many attacks of illness, more or less severe; and in December, in going across the room in haste, he struck himself against a wooden screen, and was thrown down. His thigh was broken, and his age was such that great fears for his life were entertained, but he recovered, and was able to pray with, cheer, and comfort the many anxious hearts at Calcutta during the dreadful days of the Indian mutiny of 1857, when the churches he had consecrated were stained with the blood of the worshippers.
But there was no cause for despondency in the att.i.tude of the converts.
The districts where Christianity had been so widely diffused remained tranquil, and the Christians in the cities where the mutineers were raging did not apostatize; but, unless they could conceal themselves, suffered with the whites. There was a great day of fasting and humiliation appointed by him for the 24th of July, 1857.
That day Bishop Wilson preached his last sermon. The text was from Habakkuk i. 12. "Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my G.o.d, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, Thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty G.o.d, Thou hast established them for correction." Calcutta was then trembling under the tidings of the horrors of Cawnpore, the death of Sir Henry Lawrence, and the siege of Lucknow; and no one knew what peril might be the next. Slaughter seemed at the very gates, when the old man stood forth to console and encourage, but yet to give warning strong and clear that these frightful catastrophes were in great measure the effect of our sins, our fostering of heathenism, our recognition of caste, and were especially a judgment on the viciousness and irreligion that had been the curse of English life in India. It was in open Christianity alone that he beheld hope.
The day was observed by all the clergy, but the Governor-General for some reason declined to make it official, and, only when the worst of the danger was over, appointed the 4th of October as a fast-day. The Bishop arranged the services, but was too unwell to attend them. This was the beginning of his last illness; and though he held an ordination some weeks later, these latter weeks were all sinking, and increasing feebleness. A sea-voyage was twice attempted, but without success; and on the 1st of January, 1858, his trembling hand wrote, "All going on well, but I am dead almost.--D. C. Firm in hope."
Daniel Calcutta, whom these initials indicated, wrote these words at half- past seven at night. By the same hour in the morning he had peacefully pa.s.sed to his rest.
One more Bishop of Calcutta we have since mourned; though the shortness of his career was owing to accident, not disease or climate. But with Daniel Wilson the see of Calcutta became established as a metropolitan bishopric, and ceased to possess that character of gradual extension which rendered its first holders necessarily missionaries. True, it needs many subdivisions. Four Bishops are a scanty allowance for our vast Indian Empire, and the see of Calcutta has a boundary scarce limited to the north; but these are better days than when it included the Cape, Australia, and New Zealand. The Bishop has now more to do with the development of old missions than with the working of new ones; and there can be no doubt that though there has been much of disappointment, and the progress is very slow, yet progress there is. The older converts form more and more of a nucleus, and although there is a large cla.s.s who hang about missions from interested motives, there are also mult.i.tudes of quiet and contented villagers whose simplicity and remoteness shield them from the notice of the travellers who sneer at Christianity and call mission reports _couleur de rose_, because they have been taken in by some cunning scamp against whom any missionary would have warned them.
The towns and the neighbourhood of troops are not favourable places for observing the effects of Christianity. The work of the schools in the great cities tells but very slowly. At present, out of a hundred boys who go thither and receive the facts of Christianity intellectually, only the minority are practically affected by it; and of these, some lose all faith in their own system, but retain it outwardly in deference to their families, while others try to take Christian morality without Christian doctrine; and only one or two perhaps may be sincere and open believers.
But even if only one is gained, is not that an exceeding gain? It took three hundred years of apostolic teaching to make the Roman Empire Christian. Why should we "faint, and say "tis vain," after one hundred in India?
CHAPTER VIII. SAMUEL MARSDEN, THE AUSTRALIAN CHAPLAIN AND FRIEND OF THE MAORI.
It has been mentioned that the island of Australia was considered as an archdeaconry of the see of Calcutta. This enormous island, first discovered in 1607 by Luis de Torres, and inhabited only by the very lowest race of savages, appeared to the Government of George III. a convenient spot for forming a penal settlement; and in 1787 the first convict ships carried out an instalment from the English jails to New South Wales, where the city of Sydney was founded by Governor Phillip.
As usual in those days, the provision made for the moral or religious training of this felon population was lamentably and even absurdly deficient; for it seemed to be considered, that so long as the criminals were safe out of England, it did not greatly matter to her what became of them. But the power of grace is sure to work sooner or later wherever the Christian name has been carried, and a holy man rose up, not only to fight hard with the ma.s.s of corruption in Australia, but to carry on the light to the more distant sh.o.r.es of the Southern Ocean.
This good man, Samuel Marsden, was the son of a small farmer at Farsley, near Calverley, in Yorkshire, and was educated at the free Grammar School at Hull by Dr. Joseph Milner, whose Church History used to be a standard book in the early part of this century. He began his career as a tradesman at Leeds, but his school influences had given him higher aspirations; and a body termed the Elland Society, whose object was to educate young men of small means and suitable character for the ministry, and whose chief supporters were Wilberforce, Simeon, and Thornton, selected him as one of their scholars, and placed him at St. John"s College, Cambridge. He had not even taken his degree when, to his surprise, he was offered a chaplaincy in New South Wales! The post was no doubt a difficult one to fill,--for who would willingly undertake to be one of two clergymen sent to labour among an untamed mult.i.tude of criminals?--and Mr. Wilberforce was, no doubt, glad to suggest a young man so blameless and full of zeal, and of whom, from personal observation at Cambridge, Mr. Simeon had so high an opinion.
Samuel Marsden wished to decline it at first; but finding that no one else would come forward to undertake the charge, he accepted it; and in the spring of 1793 he was ordained, and married, being then nearly twenty- nine years of age. His wife, Elizabeth Tristan, was thoroughly worthy of him, and ruled his house admirably, never calling him back from any duty, but so managing that his open-handed charity never brought him into difficulties. They were obliged to take their pa.s.sage in a convict ship, which was to sail from Hull. Marsden was engaged to preach in a church near the harbour, and was just about to enter the pulpit when the signal- gun was fired to summon the pa.s.sengers on board. He took off his gown, gave his arm to his bride at her pew door, and walked to the beach, the whole congregation streaming out after them down to the boat, where the young clergyman stood for a few moments ere pushing off, to give his parting benedictions.
The ship went round to Portsmouth to receive her load of convicts; and while she was lying there, Marsden visited the Isle of Wight, and one Sunday preached in Brading Church. The effect of his sermon in touching the heart of one young woman was long remembered, in consequence of a memoir of her, ent.i.tled "The Dairyman"s Daughter," which was drawn up after her death by the clergyman of her parish, the Rev. Legh Richmond.
It was as trying a voyage as Henry Martyn"s, except that even less was to be expected from his shipmates. The captain was unwilling to allow prayers to be read even on Sunday, saying he had never known a religious sailor; and though, after a time, Mr. Marsden prevailed, he never felt himself making much impression for good. One of his books on the voyage was the Life of David Brainerd, that torch of missionaries, and who proved the example which served to stir Mr. Marsden to look beyond his own immediate field of labour, severe though that was, and unflinching as was his toil.
His arrival at Paramatta, his new home, was in the March of 1794, when the convict system had prevailed about seven years, and had been sufficient to form a population disgraceful to human nature. None of those endeavours to reclaim the prisoner which now prevail had then been attempted, and jails were schools and hotbeds of crime, whence the transported were sent forth to corrupt each other more and more on board ship; and then, though employed on Government works or a.s.signed to free settlers as servants, so soon as they had worked out their time of servitude they were let loose to live after their own will.
Such as had any capacity for steady industry soon made their fortunes on the parcels of land allotted to them by Government, to which they added by purchase; and these persons, by the influence of wealth and property, rose into colonial rank and authority, though without any such real training in the sense of uprightness or morality as could fit them for the posts they occupied. The least tainted by crime were the Irish, who had been deported by wholesale after the rebellion, some without even a form of trial, but these were idle and p.r.o.ne to violence; while of the regular convicts there was a large proportion addicted to every brutality that vice could conceive, and their numbers were continually being recruited by fresh shiploads after the a.s.sizes at home. The only attempt at securing order and tolerable safety was by visiting every offence, even the slightest, of which a convict was accused in a court of justice, with the most unrelenting severity; and this, of course, had the effect of further brutalizing these felon people, making them reckless of the deeds they committed, and often driving them to become bush-rangers--outlawed wild men of the woods--a terror to the colony. A powerful military force was kept up to repress these wretched beings by physical force, but of moral training there was only what was afforded by the openings for industry in a new country, and religious teaching was represented by--two chaplains, for convicts, soldiers, settlers, and all!
No wonder that the senior soon broke down under the hopeless toil of such a position, and left the junior to struggle with it alone. And n.o.bly he did struggle! Wilberforce had made a wise choice of a man in the prime of youth, whose bullet-headed portrait speaks of the most dogged determination, with nerves, health, and weight enough to contend for a whole lifetime with the horrible depravity around him--the only clergyman, and with three settlements far apart dependent on his ministry. And in the outset he was severely tried by domestic sorrows; for his eldest son, at two years old, was thrown out of his mother"s arms by a jolt to the carriage over the rough road, and killed on the spot; and a younger child, who was shortly after left at home from dread of a similar accident, was allowed by its attendant to stray into the kitchen, where it fell backwards into a pan of boiling water and was fatally scalded.
The father bore these calamities as one who had steadfast faith and resignation--"one who felt much and said little." The demands on his time, indeed, left him no leisure for giving way to grief. Spiritual matters were not all that came upon him. In the utter lack of conscientious men to perform the functions of the magistracy, he was at once appointed to the bench; nor, indeed, was there the same feeling in England then as now against the combination of the clergyman and justice of the peace. The most exemplary parish priests viewed it as a duty to administer justice in their villages; and the first, and till quite recently the sole manual of prayers to be used with prisoners, was the production of one of these clerical magistrates. A Yorkshire farmer"s son could not be expected to know much about law, but good sense, uprightness, perception of justice, and intense determination, he had, as well as Christian humanity; and in these he was superior to any of his colleagues on the Paramatta bench, whom he was continually striving to raise to some comprehension of the commonest rules of justice, mercy, and decency; and in this, after a long course of years, he in some measure succeeded; but not till after his strong hand, impartial justice, and hatred of vice, had made him enemies among all parties; and it is only too probable that his secular authority, though always n.o.bly wielded, impeded rather than otherwise his pastoral influence.
His farming education served him well when he received a grant of land, and of thirteen convicts to bring it into order. It was part of his payment, almost indispensable for procuring to his family the necessaries of life, and it gave him, besides, the means of imparting instruction in honest labour. His property became the model farm of New South Wales, and the profits afforded him the means of establishing the schools, benevolent inst.i.tutions, and missions, for which there were few, if any purses to draw upon. He won himself respect on all sides, especially from the Governor of the colony, Captain King, a hasty, violent, but good- hearted man, with whom more than once he had misunderstandings, but such as were made up again. On one of these occasions, the chaplain"s advice was asked by the Governor, and promised on condition that he might speak as to a private individual. So, when they met, Mr. Marsden locked the door, and, in plain and forcible terms, gave _Captain_ King a thoroughgoing remonstrance on the faults of _Governor_ King, which was taken in perfect good part.
Nevertheless, the whole construction of Society was so atrocious, that nothing could effect any improvement but interference from higher authority. The Court of Judicature in New South Wales was the most shamelessly corrupt and abandoned in existence, and a rebellious spirit broke out which imperilled the military authority of the Governor. Mr.
Marsden saw no hope, except in laying a full statement in person before the home Government; and therefore, at the end of fourteen years, when Governor King was about to return home, he resolved to go himself, and make a strong personal representation to Government. The two families sailed in the same ship, the _Buffalo_, which proved to be leaky; and, when a heavy gale was expected, it was proposed that the pa.s.sengers should quit her, and take refuge in a stronger vessel; but Mrs. King was too unwell to be moved, and Mrs. Marsden would not leave her, so that the proposal was abandoned, and most providentially, for the ship that had been thought secure was lost in the night and never seen more!
The voyage was a slow one; and the first thing Mr. Marsden heard on arriving was, that the insurrection he had expected had actually broken out. This rendered Lord Castlereagh, then Colonial Secretary, the more anxious to obtain the advice of a sensible, clear-headed man like Samuel Marsden, and he was encouraged to explain his views. First, he was anxious for whatever would tend to reform the convicts; and having observed that the most respectable of these were such as had married, or whose wives had come out to them, he begged that, for the future, the families of the married men might be sent out with them. This was refused; but his representation that the convicts ought to be instructed in trades was attended to, when he showed that, by this means, the whole expense of their clothing might be saved. He had discerned the wonderful capacities of Australia for sheep farming, and having brought home some wool, and found it much approved by the manufacturers, he thereupon ventured to pet.i.tion the King for a couple of merino {f:221} sheep from the royal farm at Windsor, to improve the breed. The request was after "Farmer George"s" own heart; he gave five, and thus Mr. Marsden did the work of agricultural improvement of the Benedictines of old. He also obtained that three more clergymen and three schoolmasters should be sent out; and he strove hard for other inst.i.tutions, chiefly for the reformation of the female convicts, which he could not at the time get carried out. He likewise conducted an immense correspondence on behalf of persons who had not found any other means of communicating with their homes; and, at the same time, he became personally acquainted with Wilberforce, and many others of the supporters of the cause of religion.
Above all, it was in this visit to England that Mr. Marsden laid the foundations of the missions to New Zealand, and prepared to become the apostle of the Maori race. These great islands of New Zealand had been discovered and named by Tasman in 1642, and first visited by Captain Cook in 1769. He found them inhabited by a brave, high-spirited, and quick- witted set of natives, with as large a proportion of the fine qualities sometimes found in a wild race as ever savages possessed, but their tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs, fowls, and potatoes--no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time, whalers occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome, and characterized by mutual outrages, when, if a white man were made prisoner, he was sure to be killed and eaten, to serve as a sort of triumphal and sacrificial banquet.
Nevertheless, it was plain that these Maories were of a much higher type of humanity than the Australian natives, whom Mr. Marsden had found so far entirely unteachable and untameable, but for whom he was trying to establish some plan of training and protection. Such a spirit of curiosity and enterprise possessed some of the New Zealand chieftains, that they would come on visits to Australia, and on these occasions Mr.
Marsden always gave them a welcome at his parsonage at Paramatta. At one time there were thirty staying there, over whom he had great influence.
Once, when he was absent from home, the nephew of one of the chiefs died, and his uncle immediately prepared to sacrifice a slave; nor could Mrs.
Marsden prevent it, otherwise than by hiding the intended victim till her husband came home, who made the chief understand that it was not to be done, though the man continued to lament that his nephew was deprived of his proper attendant in the other world, and seemed afraid to return home, lest the father of the youth should reproach him with the omission.
Mr. Marsden made known all that he had been able to gather of the promising nature of the field of labour in New Zealand, and sought aid from the Church Missionary Society, since the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was then unable to reach beyond the colonies. The almost universal indifference of the upper cla.s.ses to missionary labour was terribly crippling in the matter of means; and perhaps the fact was that the underbred cla.s.s of agents of the Societies stirred up by the example of Marshman and Carey, together with the vulgarly-sensational appeals against which Ward"s good taste so strongly protested, greatly tended to make them incredulous. It was not till the statements of scholars and gentlemen, like Henry Martyn and Bishop Heber, became generally known, that the work was looked on without sarcasm, provoked by vulgarity, even where there was great devotion.
No clergyman could be found to undertake the mission to New Zealand; but William Hall and John King, two laymen, undertook to act as pioneers, with instructions to establish family worship, converse on religion with the natives, and instruct their children; trying, at the same time, to show the benefits of civilization, but to take care it was not confounded with Christianity.
These two good men, who were presently followed by Thomas Kendall, sailed in the same ship with Mr. Marsden, when, in August 1809, he paid his last farewell to his native land, and sailed in the _Ann_ for New South Wales.
Strange to say, this very ship contained a Maori, on his return home! He was a young chief named Duaterra, who had, in a spirit of adventure, embarked on board a whaler named the _Argo_, and worked as a sailor for six months, till the captain, having no further occasion for his services, put him ash.o.r.e at Port Jackson, without payment or friends.
However, he embarked in another whaler, and worked his way home, but soon was on board of a third English ship, the _Santa Anna_, in search of seal- skins, and having conceived a great desire to see the country whence these vessels came forth, and to know its chief, he engaged to come to England in it, the captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the _Santa Anna_ reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George"s house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on sh.o.r.e. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the _Ann_, to be taken back to Australia, and when he asked for his wages, to provide some clothing, told him that the owner of the ship would give him two muskets when he should reach Port Jackson.
The poor fellow was little likely to reach it, for lung disease, the great foe of the Maori, had set in; and he was in a pitiable condition when Mr. Marsden, by chance, remarked his brown face on the forecastle, and inquired into his history, which was confirmed by the master of the _Ann_, and was really only a specimen of a sailor"s vague promises, and incapacity to understand that a dark skin ought to be treated with the same justice as a white one. Duaterra was a man of much intelligence, and even under these most unfavourable circ.u.mstances had been greatly impressed with the civilization of England, and was so desirous of improvement that, on arriving at Port Jackson, Mr. Marsden took him to his farm, where he applied eagerly to the learning of husbandry.
Duaterra was not the only Maori ill-treated by British sailors. Another chief having been used in like manner, or worse, on board the _Boyd_, bided his time till the ship was in the Bay of Islands, and then brought his tribe, armed with clubs and hatchets, to revenge his sufferings. They overpowered the crew, slaughtered and feasted upon them, burning the ship, and only retaining as captives two women and a boy. Nevertheless, Hall and King were ready to take the missionaries to this dangerous spot, but Mr. Marsden thought it best to give time for the pa.s.sions thus excited to cool down.
Meantime Governor Macquarie had come out to take charge of New South Wales. He was a man of great determination and despotic will, and carried out many regulations that were of exceeding benefit to the colony, but he did not know the limits of his authority, dealt with the chaplains as with subordinate officials, and sometimes met with staunch opposition from the st.u.r.dy Yorkshireman, his senior chaplain, so that they were in a state of almost constant feud throughout his government, although at the end of his career he bore the strongest testimony to the merits of the only man who durst resist him. The old game of Ambrose and Theodosius, Hildebrand and Henry, Becket and Plantagenet, has to be played over and over again, wherever the State refuses to understand that spiritual matters lie beyond its grasp; and when Governor Macquarie prescribed the doctrines to be preached and the hymns to be used in the churches, and commanded the most unsuitable secular notices to be promulgated by the clergy, if Mr. Marsden had not resisted the Church would have been absolutely degraded. When convicts of wealth and station, but still leading most vicious lives, were raised to the magistrates" bench, Mr. Marsden could not but refuse to a.s.sociate or act with them, and even tendered his resignation of the magistracy, but Macquarie would not accept it. How uncompromising these sermons were is evidenced by an anecdote of a man, who, being stung to the quick, fancied that the words had been individually aimed at him, and determined to be revenged. Accordingly, as soon as he saw the chaplain riding near a piece of water he jumped in, and when Mr. Marsden at once sprung after him, did his utmost to drown his intended deliverer; but after a violent struggle the Yorkshire muscles prevailed, and the man was dragged out, so startled by the shock that he confessed his intention, and, under the counsel he had so fiercely spurned at first, became truly penitent, and warmly attached to Mr. Marsden, whose service he ultimately entered.
The square short face and st.u.r.dy form of Samuel Marsden show the force, vigour, and determination of his nature, which told on beast as well as man. On the road between Sydney and Paramatta, he used to let the reins lie loose on the splash-board of his gig and read, saying that "the horse that could not keep itself up was not worth driving," and though one of the pair he usually drove was unmanageable in other hands, nothing ever went amiss with it when it went out with its master. Such a spirit of determination produced an impress even on those who opposed him most, and many works were carried out in the teeth of the difficulties thrown in their way; such as the erection of schools, of a factory for the reception of the female convicts, and of a sort of model farm, where it was intended to collect, tame, and civilize the aborigines. This was at first planned between the governor and chaplain, but when it was ready Marsden was under Colonel Macquarie"s displeasure, and was therefore excluded from all share in the management, though the site was actually in his own parish of Paramatta. The experiment was a failure, probably not on this account, but from the restless character of the blacks, whose intellect was too small, and their wants too few, to feel any comfort a compensation for their freedom and wandering life. Mr. Marsden and the other chaplains repeatedly tried bringing up children,--some too young to retain any memory of their native habits, but they always relapsed into savage life on the first opportunity, and though here and there individuals may have better come up to the hopes of their devoted friends, yet as a race they seem too little above the animal to be susceptible of being raised.
Governor Macquarie was an iron-handed man, who could not brook opposition, or endure any scheme that did not originate with himself. So when Mr. Marsden laid before him a project for diminishing the appalling misery and vice in which the utter neglect of Government left the female convicts, he acknowledged the letter, but did not act upon it. After waiting eighteen months for him to take some measure, the chaplain sent a statement of the condition of these poor creatures to the Colonial Office; it was laid before Parliament, and Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, sent a letter of inquiry to the Governor. Macquarie"s fury was intense on finding that the chaplain had dared to look above and beyond him; and he gave a willing encouragement to whatever resisted the attempts of Marsden at establishing some sense of religion and morality.
After refusing to accept his resignation of his post as a magistrate, he dismissed him ignominiously, and all the underlings of Government knew that any attack from them would be regarded with favour. A vile and slanderous letter, full of infamous libels, not only against Samuel Marsden, as a man and a Christian priest, but against the missionaries, and signed "Philo-free," appeared in the _Sydney Herald_, the Government paper, and was traced to Macquarie"s own secretary! The libel was such that Mr. Marsden felt it due to his cause to bring an action against the publisher, and in spite of the prejudice against him, after a trial of three days, he gained a complete victory and damages of 200 pounds; but the newspaper published such a false and scandalous report of the trial that he was obliged a second time to prosecute, and again obtained a verdict in his favour.
The officers of the 46th Regiment, on leaving the colony, presented him with a testimonial, and an address most gratifying, amid the general obloquy, and showing a feeling most honourable to themselves. Every one who cared for the cause of virtue at home, especially Wilberforce, Simeon, and Mrs. Fry, wrote encouraging letters to him; and Lord Bathurst, on receiving a despatch from Macquarie, full of charges against the chaplain as man, magistrate, and minister, sent out a commission of inquiry, which, coming with fresh eyes from England, was horrified at the abuses to which the Australian world was accustomed, found every word of Mr. Marsden"s perfectly justified, and at last extracted the following confession from Colonel Macquarie: "The Governor admits that Mr.
Marsden"s manner to him has been constantly civil and accommodating, and that nothing in his manner could provoke the Governor"s warmth. The Governor admits his qualifications, his activity, and his unremitting vigilance as a magistrate, and in society his cheerful disposition and readiness to please." The report of this commission resulted, among other more important consequences, in the unsolicited grant of 400 pounds a year additional stipend to Mr. Marsden, "in consideration of his long, laborious, and praiseworthy exertions in behalf of religion and morality." This was only fitting compensation on the part of Government, for the accusation of avarice had brought to light how many schools and asylums, the proper work of the Government, had been built, and were being maintained, out of the proceeds of the farm which had prospered so excellently.
As long as Macquarie continued in office, Mr. Marsden was out of favour, but Sir Thomas Brisbane, who came out in 1821, was friendly with him, and knew his value, insisting on his returning to the bench of magistrates.
He did all he could to avoid it, till the judges and almost every one in the colony so urged him to accept that he yielded; but in 1824 a case occurred in which a rich and insolent culprit was severely punished by the Paramatta bench, and contrived to raise such an outrageous storm that Sir Thomas Brisbane, who, if better disposed, was more timid than his predecessor, dismissed the whole five magistrates. The offender"s wish had been merely to overthrow Mr. Marsden, but this was found impossible.
The whole fury of the colony again rose against this fearless man, and accusations absolutely absurd were trumped up. One was that he allowed his windmill to work on Sunday! The fact turned out to be, when investigated, that somebody had once seen the sails turning on a Sunday, some time before Mr. Marsden had purchased the land on which the mill stood. A real act of persecution affected him more seriously, as it was the ruin of another person in whom he was interested. There was an old regulation forbidding the hiring out of convicts who were a.s.signed to residents as domestic servants, but this had been virtually repealed by another under Macquarie, permitting such hiring out on the owners complying with certain rules. These had been duly attended to by Mr.
Marsden in the case of one James Ring, a plumber and glazier, who, as a reward for good conduct, was allowed to go out to work in Paramatta for his own profit. Being ill-used and beaten by another servant, he summoned the man before the bench of magistrates, but these, who had been put in when Mr. Marsden and his colleagues were dismissed, immediately committed Ring to jail for being at large. His master went to demand his release, showing that the rules had been observed, but the magistrates replied by levying a fine of two-and-sixpence for every day that Ring had been at work, and as Marsden did not offer to pay, they sent a convict constable to his house to seize property to that amount, while poor Ring himself was sent to work in irons with the penal gang; though at that very moment one of the magistrates had a servant, a tailor, at work in Mr. Marsden"s house; and another person had two hired convicts of another of these justices employed at his home. In fact, it was the only sentence of the kind ever inflicted, yet Sir Thomas Brisbane was afraid to interfere; whereupon Mr. Marsden caused his case to be tried before the Supreme Court, and so completely proved it, that rest.i.tution of the illegal fine was commanded, though the spirit of persecution was still shown in the absurdly small sum of damages allotted to him. What was worse was that he could not procure the release of Ring, for while he was sending an appeal to England the unhappy man lost patience, ran away from the gang where he was working in irons on the roads, and escaped to New Zealand, but was never heard of more. Had he but borne with his misery a little longer he would have been restored to his kind master, for a commission came out which a second time resulted in the complete triumph of Mr. Marsden, and the entire discomfiture of his persecutors.