Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales

Chapter 9

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[**** England, Ireland and Scotland, since united into one kingdom.]

I have been thus copious in extracts from the navigation laws, to prove that the great leading principles of these laws would not only be in no wise encroached upon by allowing the inhabitants of this colony to carry on the whale fisheries in their own vessels, but also that the duties which were thus clandestinely imposed on oils so procured, have been a flagrant violation of them, and that they are a single isolated exception to a general rule. Nor would the abolition of the duties in question, and the consequent encouragement of these fisheries, prove injurious to the British merchants at home, as must have been apprehended by those who were the authors of the prohibitory law by which these duties were enacted. Looking, indeed, at the mere situation of the colony, it would not be unnatural to conclude that its contiguity to the sperm whale fisheries, on the coast of New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea, would give its inhabitants such a decided advantage over the persons carrying on the same fisheries from this country, that these latter would soon be forced to abandon a ruinous compet.i.tion, and that she would consequently be deprived of the very important benefits which she at present derives from it. The fears, however, which are apt to arise on this view of the subject will be immediately dissipated if it be considered, that the rope, canvas, casks, and gear of every description, necessary for the outfit of the colonial vessels for these fisheries, are furnished by this country, and can never be obtained in the colony under an advance of fifty per cent. on the prime cost; that the sperm oil in the market is unequal to the demand for it, an a.s.sertion proved as well by the existing bounties held out by the legislature for the encouragement of these fisheries, as by the enormous wages gained by the seamen employed in them; that these bounties themselves operate as a considerable prohibition to the colonists; and, lastly, that many years must elapse before the colonial fishermen can be properly organized, and rendered as expert as the English. These various disadvantages under which the inhabitants of this colony labour, are all but one of a permanent nature, and it is evident will always more than counterbalance the single local superiority which they possess, and ensure the English merchants a decided advantage in the market;--an advantage which if it will not outstrip all compet.i.tion, will at least only just permit that salutary opposition which is essential to the prevention of monopoly and to the interests of the public.

It must, I should imagine, by this time be quite obvious, that the removal of the duties in question would be in complete unison with the spirit of the navigation laws, and with that liberal and enlightened policy, which this country has on all other occasions invariably observed, with respect to colonies in parallel circ.u.mstances. In establishing, therefore, a precedent, I hope that I have made out a case sufficiently strong to warrant the interference of the legislature. It may not, however, be altogether superfluous, if it be only to point out the injury which this country has sustained from her past injustice and impolicy, just to glance at the advantages that she would possess in future wars from having an extensive body of seamen at her disposal in the South Pacific Ocean. Hitherto our squadrons in India have been entirely supplied with seamen from this country, and the great mortality which takes place on that station requires this supply to be constantly kept up. It is well known, although fewer actions take place in the Indian seas than perhaps on any other of our maritime stations, that the number of deaths occasioned by the influence of the climate alone are proportionally more considerable than in any other part of the world, with the single exception, I believe, of the coast of Africa. It becomes, therefore, a question of the greatest importance, whether considered in a political or philanthropic point of view, to ascertain if this lamentable expenditure of human life might not be considerably diminished by manning our ships of war in the Indian seas with the inhabitants of New Holland. It is well known that our settlements in this vast island are situated in a climate which forms a mean between the temperature of this country and India. There is consequently every probability, that the persons born in these colonies would be able to support the extreme heats of India much better than Englishmen. Be this, however, as it may, there can be no doubt of the advantage which this country would derive from having a valuable nursery for seamen in a situation, from which her navy in the East might at no very remote period be so easily supplied on all occasions of emergency. This prospect cannot fail to prove an additional motive with the government for the abolition of duties, which, if persevered in, will for ever stifle all commercial enterprize, and debar not only the colonists themselves, but the parent country also from the various important advantages, which I should presume it is now evident that an uncontrolled ability to prosecute these fisheries would infallibly secure to one and the other.

With reference now to the commercial disabilities which have been imposed on this colony: the first impediment, the removal of which may be said to be of any material importance to its mercantile prosperity, is the clause in the East India Company"s charter*, which provides, "that it shall not be lawful for any vessel, the registered measurement whereof shall be less than three hundred and fifty tons, other than such vessels as may be employed by the East India Company as packets, to clear out from any port in the united kingdom for any place within the limits of the said company"s charter, or be admitted to entry at any port of the united kingdom from any place within those limits.**" When this act was pa.s.sed, the pernicious bearing of this clause on the colony was most probably overlooked. It has been found prejudicial in the following respects:--First, The demand for British goods is not sufficiently extensive to absorb cargoes of such magnitude; so that when any such have arrived, they have generally been attended with a loss to the owners, who will probably soon become too wise to continue such a hazardous commerce. Those merchants, indeed, who were in the habit of shipping cargoes in smaller vessels for the colonial market, before the pa.s.sing of this act, have already abandoned, in a great measure, their connexion within the colony, which is at present chiefly dependent for its supplies of British manufactures, on the captains of the vessels employed in the transportation of convicts. These supplies, therefore, have naturally become unequal and precarious: sometimes being unnecessarily superabundant and cheap, and at other times being so extremely scarce and dear as to be entirely beyond the reach of the great body of the consumers. Such great fluctuations are obviously not more repugnant to the well being and comfort of the colonists themselves than to the mercantile interests of this country.

[* 53 Geo. 3. c. 155.]

[** The colony of New South Wales is within these limits.]

Secondly, The tendency of this act is not less injurious to the colonists with regard to the few articles of export which they are enabled to produce or collect for the British market.

These indeed are only three in number, wool, hides, and seal skins, and are at present very inconsiderable in quant.i.ty; but the two former articles must necessarily increase every year, and will at length become of great extent and importance. The probable amount of the colonial exports has been already rated at about 28,000, out of which I consider that not more than 15,000 worth is conveyed to this country. The remainder consists of sandal wood, beche la mer, etc. exported princ.i.p.ally to China. It may therefore be perceived that the whole of the annual exports of this colony would not suffice for half the freight of a single vessel of the size regulated by the act in question. It happens, in consequence, that the different articles of export which the colonists collect, frequently acc.u.mulate in their stores for a year and a half, before it becomes worth the while of the captain of any of the vessels which frequent the colony, to give them ship-room; and even then they do it as a matter of _favour_, not forgetting, however, to extort an exorbitant return for their _kindness and condescension_.

The owners, indeed, of these vessels are so well aware of the inability of the colony to furnish them with cargoes on freight, that they generally manage before their departure, to contract for freights from some of the ports in India; a precaution which increases still more perceptibly the difficulty which the colonists experience in sending their produce to market. It must, therefore, be evident that they suffer a two-fold injury from this act, both as it prevents a regular supply of the colonial markets with British manufactures, and as it impedes the conveyance of their exports to this country. It is to be hoped, then, that this unnecessary and oppressive provision of the act will be revised, and that vessels of any burden will be suffered to trade between this country and the colony, until its increased growth and maturity shall have rendered the revision of obsolete efficacy.

The last disability of serious detriment to the colonists, is that their vessels cannot navigate the seas within the limits of the East India Company"s charter. I say _cannot_; because, although since the late renewal of their charter vessels built in this colony are, I should apprehend, ent.i.tled to all the privileges of other British built vessels, so long as they are navigated according to law, it has not yet attained sufficient strength to be enabled to build vessels of the burden of three hundred and fifty tons; and if it even possessed this ability, such vessels could only convey the produce of the countries in the Eastern seas, to which the free trade has lately been opened, to certain ports in the united kingdom. The colonists, therefore, are virtually precluded from trading in their own vessels within these limits; a restriction highly injurious to them, and of no benefit whatever to the company. Till within these few years the vessels built at the Cape of Good Hope were subject to a similar restraint; but its useless and oppressive tendency became so glaring, and the restraint itself so obnoxious to the people who were suffering under it, that it was at length removed by an Order in Council, dated 24th September, 1814, which was made by virtue of an act pa.s.sed so long back as the 49th* year of the reign of his present Majesty. By the 57th Geo. 3. c. 95. this settlement was expressly included, for all the purposes of the act, within the limits of the East India Company"s charter. The same reasons that sufficed for granting this privilege in the one instance, are at least equally conclusive in the other; and it is to be hoped, that the legislature will soon release the colony of New South Wales also from so grievous and unnecessary a restraint. Indeed no new act for this purpose is necessary; for the 57th Geo. 3. c. 1. after reciting, "whereas it is expedient under the present circ.u.mstances, that the trade and commerce to and from all islands, colonies, or places, and the territories and dependencies thereof to his Majesty belonging, or in his possession in Africa or Asia, to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, excepting only the possessions of the East India Company, should be regulated for a certain time in such manner as shall seem proper to his Majesty in Council, notwithstanding the special provisions of any act or acts of parliament, that may be construed to affect the same," enacts, "that it shall be lawful for his Majesty in Council, by any order to be issued from time to time, to give such directions, and make such regulations touching the trade and commerce to and from the said islands, colonies, or places, and the territories and dependencies thereof, as to his Majesty in Council shall appear most expedient and salutary; any thing contained in any act of parliament now in force relating to his Majesty"s colonies and plantations, or any other law or custom to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding."

It may, therefore, be perceived that the disability in question might be removed by a simple Order in Council. Whenever his Majesty"s government shall have freed the colonists from this useless and cruel prohibition, the following branches of commerce would then be opened to them: First, they would be enabled to transport in their own vessels their coals, timber, spars, flour, meat, etc. to the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, Calcutta, and many other places in the Indian seas, in all of which markets more or less extensive exist for these and various other productions which the colony might furnish; Secondly, they would be enabled to carry directly to Canton the sandal wood, beche la mer, dried seal skins, and in fact all the numerous productions which the surrounding seas and islands afford for the China market, and return freighted with cargoes of tea, silks, nankeens, etc. all of which commodities are in great demand in the colony, and are at present altogether furnished by East India or American merchants, to the great detriment and dissatisfaction of the colonial. And, lastly, they would be enabled in a short time, from the great increase of capital which these important privileges would of themselves occasion, as well as attract from other countries to open the fur trade with the north-west coast of America, and dispose of the cargoes procured in China; a trade which has. .h.i.therto been** exclusively carried on by the Americans and Russians, although the colonists possess a local superiority for the prosecution of this valuable branch of commerce, which would ensure them at least a successful compet.i.tion with the subjects of those two nations.

[* Cap. 17.]

[** Many attempts have been made by the legislature to encourage British subjects to carry on this commerce from the ports of the united kingdom, but they have in a great measure failed in this object: see Convention with the King of Spain, 33 Geo, 3. c. 52. Indeed, during the period of the Company"s exclusive trade with China, it can only be successfully undertaken by persons residing within the limits of their charter.]

Such are the princ.i.p.al alterations in the policy of this colony which appear most essential to its progress and welfare.

All these indeed, and many other privileges, which, though of only secondary consideration, would tend like a constant concurrence of small rivulets to swell and enlarge the stream of colonial prosperity, would be the natural consequences of a free representative government. If I have, therefore, gradually ascended from effect to cause, after the manner of experimental philosophy, I have chosen this mode of elucidation, not because it was the only one which offered for the ill.u.s.tration of my subject, but because I consider the inferences to be drawn from it more satisfactory than those to which the opposite mode of reasoning (that of descending from generals to particulars) conducts; because it would be as easy that the abolition of the various grievances which have been enumerated should be coeval with the creation of the free const.i.tution, by which such abolition would be eventually accomplished; and lastly, because the additional tedious delay which would otherwise intervene between the establishment of a colonial legislature, the representation of grievances by which it would be followed, and their consequent removal,--a process that would occupy two years, might be thus avoided; or in other words, the same period of unnecessary endurance and misery spared to the ill fated inhabitants of this colony. In recommending, however, that the government of this country should authorize the immediate adoption of the measures which I have proposed, I do not mean to imply that such authorization alone would be productive of the important results in contemplation. However extensively beneficial in their present and remote effects the privileges thus conferred might prove, they would nevertheless be unsatisfactory and incomplete, so long as they were unaccompanied with a government competent and willing to watch over and secure their continuance. While it should be in the power of any individual to suspend or annul them, what guarantee, in fact, would exist for their permanence and durability? What solid basis on which the capital and industry, which they might be calculated to elicit, could repose in security?

The confidence, indeed, which an impartial governor might inspire, would most probably, as often as the colony might be blessed with a chief of this description, give a momentary impulse to the activity of the colonists, and create a temporary prosperity among them; but the shortness of his administration will always interrupt the completion of his projects, and the caprice, imbecillity, or injustice of some one or other of his successors, like the blast of the sirocco, wither up the tender shoots of prosperity, which a consistent and protecting government would have nurtured and brought to maturity. The experience of the past has sufficiently evinced the little dependence which is to be placed on the degree of countenance and protection which the system of one governor, however beneficial the prosecution of it might prove, is likely to meet with from _his successor_. It is, indeed, in the nature of man, to prefer his own projects to those of any other: there is a degree of pleasure in striking off from the beaten path, and rambling in the untrodden wilds of speculation and experiment, which is alone sufficient, without the help of bad motives, to account for the diversity of policy, by which the administrations of the various governors have been contra-distinguished. This inherent principle of our nature, so averse to the realization of every beneficial design, which is not capable of immediate development, ought evidently to be counteracted and not encouraged, as it is at present, to the utmost point to which an uncontrolled and ridiculous caprice may choose to indulge it. The existing system of government is, in fact, a woof of inconsistency, from which no great harmonious tissue can proceed. A gentleman is appointed to this important situation: on his arrival in the colony he finds no council, no house of a.s.sembly, not even a colonial secretary to a.s.sist him: a stranger, and naturally unacquainted with its interests, he is necessarily obliged to have recourse to some person or other for advice: to avoid the appearance of ignorance, which however he cannot but possess, he will not most probably apply to the gentleman whom he supersedes; and he again, from a principle of delicacy, will not be forward in offering his advice unsolicited: those who had been the a.s.sistants, and perhaps able a.s.sistants of the latter, will keep aloof, as much out of respect to the gentleman whom they had last served, as from that fear of obtrusion, that feeling of diffidence, which is inherent in persons of real merit and probity; so that it is ten to one but he falls into the hands of the faction who had been the enemies of his predecessor, only perhaps because he had too much honour and integrity to promote their selfish views, at the expence of the public weal. Scarcely, therefore, will this gentleman have quitted the colony, before the whole of the superstructure which he had been rearing will have been pulled down, and another of a different description commenced in its stead. Such has almost invariably been, and such will continue to be the conduct of the actual government; nothing judicious or permanent can ever be expected to proceed from it. How then, it may be asked, can prosperity be expected to flow from sources so precarious and inconstant? Are they calculated to supply that regular equal stream of security and confidence which has been found essential to the progress of improvement? But were the existing system of government essentially conservative in its nature, instead of being virtually destructive, it would still prove inadequate and inefficient. The circ.u.mstances and wants of this colony will vary every year, and consequently require either such partial modifications or entire alterations of policy as may be suited to each progressive stage of advancement. Its government, therefore, ought to be so const.i.tuted, as not only to possess the power of revising old laws, but also of framing new ones. It ought, in fact, to involve in itself a creative as well as a conservative faculty; a faculty which might enable it to accommodate its measures to every change of situation, and provide an instant remedy for every unforeseen and prejudicial contingency. Nothing short of this will suffice to inspire that confidence which alone can be productive of permanent prosperity. The government of an individual, however respectable he may be, will always engender distrust and cramp exertion. Man is distinguished from the rest of the creation by his circ.u.mspection and providence. There must exist a moral probability of reaping before he will venture to sow. This cautious calculating disposition too, is most predominant in those who are in the most easy circ.u.mstances: where the liability to incur loss is greatest, the spirit of enterprize is generally most restrained. But this cla.s.s, which contains the great capitalists of all countries, are precisely those whose means, if they could be _enticed_ into activity, would be productive of the most beneficial results. No soil is so barren, no climate so forbidding, as not to present facilities more or less favourable for the absorption of capital, and the extension of industry. Wherever the tide of improvement is at its height, and a reflux ensues, it is to the impolicy of the government, and not to the sterility of the country, that this retrogradation is to be attributed. Prosperity and happiness belong to no climate, they are indigenous to no soil: they have been known to fly the allurements of the fertile vale, and to nestle on the top of the barren mountain: the plains of Latium could not secure their stay, yet have they freely alit on the snow-capt summits of Helvetia: they have been the faithful companions of freedom in all her wanderings and persecutions: they have never graced the triumphs of injustice and oppression.

I have now hastily sketched the princ.i.p.al incidents which have characterized the march of this colony during the last fifteen years. If I have neglected representing its more early efforts; if I have excluded from view the amazing difficulties and privations with which its immediate founders had to contend; if, in fine, I have altogether omitted in the picture the numerous interesting events that took place during the first fifteen years of its establishment, I have been induced to all these omissions by a conviction, that the existing system of government, if not the most eligible that could have been devised, was at least unproductive of those glaring ill consequences, with which it has subsequently been attended. A singleness of design and a unity of action, could not be deviated from during the period of its infancy by the most ignorant and inexpert bungler in political science. There was a broad path open to its government, which it could not possibly mistake. The colony as yet entirely dependent on external supplies, always precarious from their very nature, but rendered still more so by a tedious, and at that time almost unexplored navigation, would unavoidably turn its whole attention to the single object of raising food, and emanc.i.p.ating itself as soon as possible, from so uncertain and dangerous a dependence.

The principle of fear would have sufficed to propel the colonists to a spontaneous application of their strength to the realization of this end, independent of any directing power whatever. It was, therefore, only on the attainment of this most important point, that the impolicy of the present form of government became a matter of speculation, and subsequently, that it has been demonstrated by its practical result,--the wretched situation to which it has reduced a colony, that might be made, as I have satisfactorily established, one of the most useful and flourishing appendages of the empire. It is at the epoch when the produce of the colonists began to exceed the demand, and when their industry, instead of being encouraged and directed into new channels of profitable occupation, was not only left to its own blind unguided impulse, but also placed under the most impolitic and oppressive restrictions, that I have taken up the pencil, and made a rapid but faithful delineation of the deplorable consequences that have been attendant on a concatenation of injudicious and absurd disabilities, which, though not altogether imposed by its immediate government, would have been easily removed by the more weighty influence of a combined representative legislature. I have therefore throughout the whole of this essay, considered the present government not only responsible for its own impolitic conduct, but also for the existence of those grievances which have been created by a higher authority, and of which it has wanted the will or the power to procure the repeal. I have commenced by glancing at some of the most striking events that ancient history affords, to prove that the prosperity of nations has kept pace with the degree of freedom enjoyed by their citizens, and that their decadence and eventual overthrow have been invariably occasioned by a selfish and overwhelming despotism. Descending to more modern times, and adverting to the condition of existing nations, I have shewn that the unparalleled power and affluence of our own country, which I have selected out of them by way of exemplification, are solely to be attributed to the superior freedom of her laws, which have engendered her a freer, more virtuous, and more warlike race of people. From these striking ill.u.s.trations, this steady coincidence of cause and effect, deduced from the records of the greatest among ancient and modern empires, I have concluded that every community which has not a free government, is devoid of that security of person and property which has been found to be the chief stimulus to individual exertion, and the only basis on which the social edifice can repose in a solid and durable tranquillity. That the system of government adopted in the colony of New South Wales does not rest on this foundation stone of private right and public prosperity, I have proved from the detestable tyranny and consequent arrest of a governor, whose conduct anterior to his being intrusted with this important charge, it will have been seen, was such as might have led without any extraordinary powers of discrimination to a prediction of the catastrophe that befel him. The atrocities perpetrated by this monster, and the events to which they gave rise, are sufficient to convince the most incredulous, that the colonists have no guarantee for the undisturbed enjoyment of their rights and liberties, but the impartiality and good pleasure of their governor; and that they have no resource but in rebellion against the unprincipled attacks and unjustifiable inroads of arbitrary power. So radically defective, indeed, is the government to which they are subjected in its very const.i.tution, that it not only holds out, in the uncontrolled authority which it vests in the hands of an individual, the strongest temptations for the exercise of tyranny to those who may habitually possess an overbearing and despotic temperament, but has also a manifest tendency, as history amply attests, to vitiate the heart, and to produce a spirit of injustice and oppression in those who may have been antecedently distinguished by a well regulated and humane disposition. While it is thus, on the one hand, calculated to beget the most monstrous atrocities within the sphere of its jurisdiction, I have shewn that it has not, on the other, been invested by the power to whom it owes its origin and existence with the ability to perform any extended good; and that while it involves in its essence all the elements of destruction, it possesses no one principle of vitality. Of this a.s.sertion the administration of Governor Macquarie, who if you may judge from the length of time during which he has held this high office, would appear to possess a greater portion of the confidence of his Majesty"s ministers, than any of his predecessors, furnishes an indubitable proof: for relieved as the mind of the reader will have been from the undivided indignation, disgust, and abhorrence, which the excesses committed in the foregoing government cannot fail to excite, by a review of the prudence and moderation by which his career has been contra-distinguished, he will nevertheless have beheld the colony, from the want of privileges, of which this gentleman has not possessed sufficient influence to procure the authorization, sinking in spite of his upholding hand, from a comparative state of affluence and comfort, to the lowest depth of poverty and endurance. He will have seen the colonists checked in their agricultural pursuits, rushing promiscuously into every avenue of internal industry that lay open to them, and afterwards constructing vessels, and not only exploring every known sh.o.r.e within the limits of their territory, in search of sandal wood, but even discovering unknown islands abounding with seals. He will have viewed them exhausting these temporary sources of relief, and attempting, but obliged to desist by the weight of impolitic imposts, both internal and external, from those inexhaustible fountains of wealth, the valuable whale fisheries that exist in the adjacent seas. He will have beheld them from inability to purchase the more costly commodities of other countries, making the most astonishing exertions in manufactures, and thus impelled by necessity to the adoption of a system not more averse to the interests of the parent country than to their own; and which under a well regulated government, would have been one of the last effects of maturity and civilization. He will have witnessed, notwithstanding these vigorous and unnatural efforts, numbers of them bending every day beneath the pressure of embarra.s.sment, and at length stripped of their lands, and deprived of their freedom, by a set of rapacious and unprincipled dealers, who are gradually rendering themselves masters of the persons and property of the agriculturists; the greater part of whom, if the present system continue a few years longer, will be virtually reduced to a state of bondage, and condemned to minister to the ease and enjoyments of the worthless and the vile. He will have seen that, while the poorer settlers have already in general fallen victims to the unjust and impolitic disabilities with which they are beset, the circle of distress has extended itself from these, the _central body_ of the community, to its _circ.u.mference;_ and that the imports have so constantly preponderated in the balance over the united weight of the income and exports, that the whole wealth of the colony has been continually flowing into foreign countries, for the payment of the necessary commodities furnished by them, leaving no money in circulation for the important purposes of domestic economy, and compelling the colonists by a general, constrained, and tacit convention, to tolerate, as a subst.i.tute for a legitimate circulating medium, a currency possessed of no intrinsic value whatever. He will have beheld this rapid torrent of distress forcibly driving back the tide of population, both by the difficulties which it throws in the way of rearing up a family, and by the numerous bodies of freed convicts, whom it propels to a return to their native country, the greater part of whom, more from necessity than choice, are led to a resumption of their ancient habits, in order to procure a subsistence, and either impose on the government the expense of retransporting them to this colony, or end their career of iniquity by falling victims to the vengeance of the laws which they had so often violated. He will have seen during these continual and violent concussions, by which the whole social edifice has been shaken to the foundation, that the expenditure of the colony has been in a state of the most rapid increase, and that the existing system of government is incompatible with its diminution. He will, in fine, have been satisfied that the immorality and vice which it was the main object of the legislature to repress and extirpate, are making the most alarming progress and extension.

Looking a little beyond these, the actual results of the present order of things, he will find that it is affording the most efficacious a.s.sistance and encouragement to the perfection of the manufacturing system, already in a state of considerable advancement, and that a few years more will so greatly circ.u.mscribe the means of the colonists, that the majority of them will be entirely excluded from the use of foreign commodities, and compelled to content themselves with the homely products of their own ingenuity; and that thus not only one of the great ends of colonization, the creation of a market for the consumption of the manufactures of the parent country, will be defeated by her own impolitic conduct, but also a spirit of animosity will be engendered by the recollection of the privations and sufferings encountered by the colonists in their tedious and painful march to this unnatural independence in their resources; a spirit which will be handed down from father to son, acquiring in its descent fresh force, and settling at length into an hereditary hatred, which it will no longer be in the power of the government to extinguish, and which will propel them, whenever an opportunity offers, to renounce the control of such unwise and unfeeling masters. Pa.s.sing from this gloomy picture of vexatious tyranny and unmerited suffering, he will proceed to the more grateful contemplation of the remedies that are proposed as a cure for the present evils, and as a preventive against the future tremendous eruption with which the existing system, a mountainous agglomeration of impolicy and barbarity, is so fatally pregnant. He will be satisfied that the application of the restoratives prescribed, will both reintegrate the agricultural body, now in the last stage of debility and consumption, and impart fresh life and vigour into the commercial, which is equally impaired; and that while the parent country will by these means restore the tone and energies of the colony, she will be contributing in the most effectual manner to her own strength and greatness. He will be persuaded that all these most desirable ends will inevitably follow the establishment of a free representative government; and that however salutary the adoption of the measures proposed might be, unaccompanied with that internal power of legislation from which they would have eventually proceeded, they would of themselves be utterly inadequate to effect a perfect and permanent cure for the existing evils; and that nothing short of a local legislature, properly const.i.tuted, can on the one hand either inspire into capitalists that confidence which is essential to the free unimpeded extension of industry, or be competent on the other, to provide an instant relief for those growing wants, which spring out of the progress of advancement, and are contingent on those changes of circ.u.mstances and situation, to which incipient communities are so peculiarly liable. He will, in fine, be convinced even to demonstration, that the erection of a free government in the colony of New South Wales would be a panacea for all its sufferings; that it is the only measure which can ease this country of the enormous burden which it will otherwise entail on her, and save the unspent millions that will be ingulphed, _uselessly_ ingulphed, in the devouring vortex of the present system; and that the creation of an export trade of raw materials, and the consequent extended consumption of her manufactures which the proposed change of government would superinduce, is the only way in which she can ever repay herself for the immense expence that she has lavished on this colony, as well during the period of its really helpless infancy, as during the still longer interval of its restrained growth and fict.i.tious imbecillity.

PART IV.

VARIOUS CHANGES PROPOSED IN THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

It being thus clear and indubitable that free representative governments are the only foundation on which the prosperity and happiness of communities can safely repose, it only remains to ascertain how far the actual circ.u.mstances and situation of this colony are compatible with the concession of so great and important a privilege. At my very offset in this essay, after glancing in a cursory manner at the history of the most celebrated ancient and modern empires, and shewing that their progress kept pace with their freedom, and that their retrogradation is to be dated only from the epoch when they fell under the dominion of arbitrary and ambitious despots, whose successors gradually completed the work of destruction which they had commenced, I was compelled in candour to admit that the heterogeneous ingredients of which this colony was compounded, did not at the period of its foundation, afford his Majesty"s government the power, if they had even possessed the will, to establish a free representative system. It is therefore inc.u.mbent on me, now that I have demonstrated the beneficial influence which free governments have in promoting the prosperity of communities in general, and have proved that this colony has for many years been languishing in a state of impeded growth, and tottering imbecillity, from the inefficiency of its administration to adopt those measures which are necessary to its revigoration; I say it is inc.u.mbent on me to shew that the component parts of this body politic, have undergone such a change since the period of its creation, as will warrant its identification in this respect with other states, and justify the conclusion that such inst.i.tutions are essential to its welfare as have been found conducive to theirs.

It must be almost superfluous to state, that when this colony was formed, it was composed, with the exception of its civil and military establishments, entirely of convicts. It was consequently impossible that a body of men, who were all under the sentence of the law, and had been condemned for their crimes to suffer either a temporary suspension, or total deprivation of the civil rights of citizens, could be admitted to exercise one of the most important among the whole of them, the elective franchise; and to have vested this privilege in the civil and military authorities, both of whom then as at present were subject to martial law, and were besides at that time without landed property, the only standard I conceive by which the right either of electing or being elected can in any country be properly regulated, would have been equally improper and absurd.

A council indeed might have been appointed, but even an inst.i.tution of this kind might have clogged the wheels of the government by its opposition, and could have been of but little a.s.sistance with its advice; for as it has been already stated, there was but one object to be pursued, and that was to promote by every means the agriculture of the colony, so as to emanc.i.p.ate it as soon as possible from a precarious and dangerous dependence on other countries. Until, therefore, the free inhabitants of the colony had increased to a sufficient number to exercise the elective franchise, and until its productive powers had outstripped its consumptive, and it became necessary either to create new markets for its produce within, or to direct a portion of its strength to the raising of articles for exportation to other countries, the establishment of a free representative government would not have been expedient had it even been practicable.

The period at which the produce of this settlement fairly exceeded the internal demand for it, may, as I have already noticed, be dated so far back as the year 1804, being about sixteen years after the period of its foundation. It has been already seen that the harvests of that and the succeeding year were so abundant, that no sale could be obtained for more than one half of the crop;--that had it not been for a tremendous flood which happened in 1806, the majority of the cultivators must have abandoned their farms, and sought for other occupation;--and that since that period there has fortunately been a succession of floods and droughts, which with the exception of two or three seasons of equal plenty, have kept the productive powers of the colony nearly on a level with its consumptive, or else the situation of the settlers, deplorable as it now is, would have been infinitely more so. How radically defective, then, must be the government of this colony, when what would be calamities of the most serious and afflicting nature in a well organized community are here blessings! Is it in the nature of things to adduce more weighty arguments in proof of the necessity which has existed since the above period for its supercession? Ought not a government that would have felt the importance, and have possessed the power of creating new channels of consumption for agricultural produce to have been then inst.i.tuted? This great object, it has been already shewn, could have been in no way so easily accomplished as by the erection of distilleries. To have diverted the attention of any part of the agriculturists from the growth of corn, would have been highly impolitic in a country, where the greatest and most fertile portion of the arable land is subject to such awful inundations.

On the contrary, it was and still is expedient, that the whole agricultural energies of the colony should be confined to the production of grain, until the surplus become so great as to leave no chance whatever of these inundations being any longer attended with their former baneful consequences. But this can only be effected by creating a sure and adequate market for this surplus; and whether such market is to be found in the colony, or to be sought for abroad, no power either would have been, or is so fully competent to accomplish this important purpose, as an independent legislature chosen from the midst of the community, whose interests are identified with its own.

With respect to the expediency or even practicability of inst.i.tuting a body of this nature so long as fourteen years back, I am aware that there exists a great difference of opinion among the respectable cla.s.s of the colonists themselves. For my own part, however small may have been the number of those from or by whom a colonial legislature could at that time have been formed, I consider of but little moment in solving this great problem.

The only question it appears to me to be ascertained, is, whether a legislative a.s.sembly, however small the number of whom it might have been composed, and however limited the body of electors by whom it might have been chosen, would not have done its utmost to promote its own interests, or what would have been the same thing, the welfare of the community which it represented. I cannot conceive the possibility of any one"s doubting that such would have been its conduct; and in this case what power could have been inst.i.tuted in the colony that would have been so well calculated to foster its infant efforts, and develope its nascent prosperity, as one that would have been invested with the faculties of legislation; or in other words, with the authority to enact as a matter of course those measures of which the existing government has not had sufficient influence to procure the authorization.

The expediency, however, of having established a house of a.s.sembly in the colony at the period in question, is at this moment, perhaps, rather a matter of curious speculation, than of profitable inquiry. Extensively beneficial, as would in all probability have been its effects, it is nevertheless useless to deplore an omission which cannot now be remedied. Nor has the absence, perhaps, of this important inst.i.tution been altogether without its advantages. It has at least indisputably proved the inefficiency of the present system of government, and that the colony could not have sunk under any other form of administration whatever, to a lower ebb of poverty and wretchedness, nor have become a heavier and more unproductive burthen to the mother country. The want, therefore, of an internal legislature has combined every consideration that could be adduced in proof of the necessity of changing the present system, and adopting in its stead that form of government which has been found so salutary and efficacious in all countries where it has been established.

The only question that remains to be ascertained, is whether the colony is _now_ in a state of maturity for the reception of so important a privilege as the elective franchise; and this I conceive will be best answered by a reference to the numerical strength of its free population. At the general muster or census concluded on the 19th of November, 1817, there were found to be in all the various settlements and districts of the colony of New South Wales, and its dependencies, twenty thousand three hundred and twenty-eight souls, of whom sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-four were in the various towns and districts belonging to Port Jackson. Out of these there were six hundred and ten soldiers, and six thousand two hundred and ninety-seven convicts, leaving a free population, independent of the military, of nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven souls. At Newcastle, a settlement about sixty miles to the northward of Port Jackson, there were five hundred and fifty souls, about seventy of whom were free. At the settlements of the Derwent and Port Dalrymple, there were in all three thousand one hundred and fourteen souls, of whom two thousand five hundred and fifty-four were at the former place, and five hundred and sixty at the latter: out of these there were about two hundred soldiers, but the number of free persons I have not been able precisely to discover. As these settlements, however, include the majority of the colonists and their families, who were removed from Norfolk Island; and as by far the greater proportion of the convicts who have been transported from this country have been sent to Port Jackson, I have no doubt that the number of free persons there, may be safely estimated at three fourths of their entire population, seeing that it is about two thirds of the population of Port Jackson. According to this rate of computation, therefore, the number of free persons in these two settlements, after previously deducting the two hundred military, will amount to about two thousand one hundred and eighty-six souls. It may, consequently, be perceived, that the grand total of the free population of all these various colonies in the latter end of November, 1817, may be safely estimated to have been eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-three, being an excess of four thousand four hundred and seventy above the number of convicts, or in the proportion of more than three to two.

As the establishment of the legislative a.s.sembly in question could not, however, be well effected before the end of the year 1819, it may not be altogether irrelevant to ascertain what will be the probable amount of the free population at that period. The number of births in the colony cannot at present be computed under two thousand annually, since the increase in these various settlements between the month of November, 1816, and the month of November, 1817, is found to have been three thousand two hundred and eighty-nine souls; and the number of convicts transported thither from the first of January, 1816, to the first of January, 1818, was only three thousand one hundred and eight. Allowing, therefore, that one half of these, or one thousand five hundred and fifty-four, were transported to the colony during the year 1817, the increase that took place there, from birth and emigration will have been one thousand seven hundred and thirty-five: to which if we add five hundred, the number of persons that probably quit the colony annually; the actual rate of increase in the free population in the course of the year 1817, may be fixed at two thousand two hundred and thirty-five souls. Of these the surplus above two thousand, is perhaps composed of emigrants, and the remainder of births. If we add to these one thousand more, who it may be safely calculated yearly become free, by pardon or expiration of servitude, we have an annual augmentation to the free population of three thousand two hundred and thirty-five souls: so that if we take the year 1817, as a standard of computation, and it is evidently a low one, the free population will amount by the end of the year 1819, to at least eighteen thousand four hundred and forty-three souls. This is an elective body much more extensive than is to be found in several of our West India islands, where houses of a.s.sembly have been long established. But as this free population is of a mixed description, and composed as well of persons who have been convicts, and have become free either by the expiration of their respective sentences, or by pardon, as of those who have been born in the colony, or have emigrated to it, and have never suffered the penalties of the law, a very delicate question here arises as to the propriety of extending to the first of these cla.s.ses the privilege of being admitted into the legislative body. There is, I am aware, a party in the colony, by whom the very notion of granting such a privilege to a cla.s.s of men who have been subject to the lash of the law, would be treated as a chimera pregnant with the most fatal consequences to this infant community. In this, as in most other societies, there is an aristocratic body, which would monopolize all situations of power, dignity and emolument, and put themselves in a posture to domineer alike over the governor and the people. If you consult one of this faction (they deserve no milder appellation) he will tell you that it is dangerous to vest any authority beyond the narrow circle of his own immediate friends. Until the administration of General Macquarie, this body considered themselves possessed of an equal right to the governor"s confidence, as if they stood in the same relation to him which the n.o.bility of this country bear to the king, and were _de jure_ his hereditary counsellors. Before his government the great body of the people. I mean such as had become free, scarcely possessed any privilege but that of suing and being sued in the courts of civil jurisdiction. The whole power, and nearly the whole property and commerce of the colony, were in the hands of this faction, who with a very few exceptions were composed of the civil and military, and of persons who had belonged to these bodies formerly. And even in those few solitary instances which could be adduced, of persons originally convicts, who were _allowed_ to acquire an independence, their prosperity was to be traced to the patronage and protection afforded them by some member of the aristocratic junta, to whom they either acted as agents in the disposal of their merchandize (for it was considered by these gentlemen derogatory to their dignity to keep shop and sell openly) or resorted for the purchase of goods on their own accounts. At the prosperity, however, and importance of this faction, the present governor has levelled many a deadly blow within these last nine years; but more particularly in prohibiting the military to hold lands, or to be concerned in traffic, in raising to situations of the highest trust and dignity many deserving persons who had been convicts, and in throwing open the ports of the colony to an unlimited importation of all sorts of merchandize. But he has not effected these radical and salutary changes in the colonial policy without having encountered a long and inveterate hostility. Many have been the attempts which this faction have made to vilify his motives and misrepresent his actions; but to every charge of his enemies his unshaken integrity and unwearied zeal for the conscientious discharge of his duties have proved a sufficient refutation. The opinion of this gentleman with respect to the expediency of adopting a liberal system, that may prove an effectual stimulus to reformation and good conduct in those who have unhappily deviated from the path of rect.i.tude, has been expressed unequivocally both in his dispatches, and in the prominent measures of his government, and will deservedly carry with it more weight than the whole collected opposition which I antic.i.p.ate from those who have been his opponents and calumniators. The covert aim of these men is to convert the ignominy of the great body of the people into an hereditary deformity. They would hand it down from father to son, and raise an eternal barrier of separation between their offspring, and the offspring of the unfortunate convict. They would establish distinctions which may serve hereafter to divide the colonists into _castes_; and although none among them dares publicly avow that future generations should be punished for the crimes of their progenitors, yet such are their private sentiments; and they would have the present race branded with disqualifications, not more for the sake of pampering their own vanity, than with a view to reflect disgrace on the offspring of the disfranchised parent, and thus cast on their own children and descendants that future splendor and importance, which they consider to be their present peculiar and distinguishing characteristics. Short-sighted fools! they foresee not the consequences of their narrow machinations! They know not that they would be sowing the seeds of future discords and commotions, and that by exalting their immediate descendants, they would occasion the eventual degradation and overthrow of their posterity. Such would be the result of their ambition; for it is the curse of injustice that it brings with it sooner or later its own punishment. Happily for the colony the realization of their projects depends not upon themselves; and his Majesty"s ministers will not lend their sanction to schemes of private aggrandizement, which can only be accomplished by the sacrifice of the public good. If these men have not themselves the sagacity to dive into futurity, and to foresee the dangers and contests to which unjust privileges and distinctions must eventually give birth, shall the government be equally blind and improvident? Shall they in the short s.p.a.ce of thirty years forget the benevolent designs for which this colony was founded, and convert what was intended as an asylum for repentant vice, not into a house merely of salutary correction, which may moderate with reviving morality and cease entirely with complete reformation, but into a prison of endless torture, where though the sufferings of the body may terminate, the worst species of torture, the endurements and mortifications of the soul, are to end only with existence? Shall a vile faction be allowed to inflict on the unfortunate convict a punishment infinitely greater than that to which he has been sentenced by the violated majesty of the law? Has not a jury of impartial freemen solemnly investigated the case of every individual who has been transported to this colony? And have not the measure and duration of their punishments been apportioned to their respective offences? Is it then for any body of men to a.s.sert that the law has been too lenient, and that it is necessary to inflict an ulterior punishment which shall have no termination but in the grave? Shall the unhappy culprit, exiled from his native sh.o.r.e, and severed perhaps for ever from the friends of his youth, the objects of his first and best affections, after years of suffering and atonement, still find no resting place,--no spot where he may hide his shame and endeavour to forget his errors? Shall the finger of scorn and derision be pointed at him wherever he betake himself? And must he for ever wander a recreant and outcast on the face of the earth, seeking in vain some friendly sh.o.r.e, where he may at length be freed from ignominious disabilities, and restored to the long lost enjoyment of equal rights and equal protection with his fellows?

I am aware it may be here urged that these men, if they were to return to this country, could never enjoy the privileges for which I am contending; and that the very same laws, which have fixed the bounds of their corporal punishment have deprived them for ever of the most valuable rights of citizens. To this I reply, that in this country, whither if the whole of the convicts who have been exiled from its sh.o.r.es were to return, they would form but an inconsiderable portion of the people, all such disqualifications as the law has annexed to conviction in a court of justice, are good policy; because they tend to promote virtue and discountenance vice. But the very same grounds of policy require that such disqualifications should not exist in New South Wales. There the great ma.s.s of the people are composed of persons who have been under the operation of the law, and who were transported with the avowed intention of the legislature to effect their reformation. How then is this great philanthropic end to be best attained? Is it by holding out no inducements to good conduct, no distinction between repentant vice and incorrigible enormity? Those who have been convicted of the higher order of offences, and have been in consequence transported for life, are from the very nature of their sentences precluded from ever enjoying the privilege in question, unless, indeed, their very exemplary conduct subsequently induce the governor to extend to them the benefit of the king"s pardon.

This, however, is an indulgence at present so rarely accorded, that the whole of this cla.s.s may be in a manner considered as being without the pale of citizenship; and it is therefore such only as have been convicted of crimes to which the law has annexed the minor penalties of seven or fourteen years transportation, who could generally become candidates for a seat in the legislative a.s.sembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between _them_ and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities? Shall the _novice_ in crime and the _veteran_ be placed on the same footing and held in equal estimation? To what end do they profess themselves to be Christians who can maintain such infernal doctrines? How can they reconcile them with that universal charity and good will inculcated in their religion? How can they themselves expect pardon of their G.o.d, who would thus withhold oblivion from their repentant fellow creatures? If it be then alike conformable to the principles of Christianity and sound policy, to make a discrimination between the reformed sinner, and the still hardened and abandoned profligate, what incentive to good conduct would prove so efficacious as the prospect of regaining, after years of unimpeachable integrity, all those civil rights which they had forfeited, of becoming once more privileged to act as jurymen, magistrates, and legislators? Such a possibility would quickly revive the latent sparks of virtue wherever they were not quite extinct, and electrify the mind when all other applications would fail to rouse it from its despondence and lethargy. And shall not this _sole efficacious remedy_ be administered, because a set of _interlopers_, persons in no wise connected with the purposes for which this colony was founded, wish to monopolize all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, power, and dignity to themselves? Shall the vital interests of the whole community sink before the ambitious projects of a few designing individuals, who have no object in view, but their own personal aggrandizement, and the maintenance of a self-a.s.sumed aristocratic importance? And who would build their own and their families" prosperity on the ruins of the social edifice, on the misery and degradation of thousands? But it is useless to enlarge on this topic: ministers will not allow their judgments to be warped by the subtle representations of this faction. In organizing that new const.i.tution for this colony, of which every motive of humanity and policy conspires to demonstrate the necessity, they will be actuated solely by those principles that are best calculated to further the philanthropic and enlightened ends which were contemplated by the legislature at the period of its foundation.

The good of the many will not be sacrificed to the sordid views of the few, and no disqualifications will be permitted, but such as are confessedly necessary for the repression of vice, and the promotion of morality and religion.

But, while I am thus contending against the total exclusion of such as may have been convicts from the enjoyment of this great privilege, I would by no means imply that the doors of the legislative a.s.sembly should be thrown open to _all indiscriminately_ who may _happen_ to be _free_. An unrestricted ability to exercise a function of such great confidence and dignity, would superinduce consequences equally fatal with those against which I would guard: in endeavouring to shun one extreme, it behoves us equally to avoid falling into the other. The very principle which _forbids_ their _utter inadmissibility_ to become legislators, demands that _none_ should be able to arrive at that dignity, but those whose conduct during their abode in the colony shall have been _absolutely unimpeachable_. Retrospection should not be pushed _beyond_ the period of their _arrival;_ but their _subsequent_ behaviour should be subjected to the _severest tests_, to the _most rigorous scrutiny_.

_Conviction_ either before a court or a magistrate, for any _offence_ of a _criminal nature_, should be a _bar_ to their pretensions _for ever_. Crimes committed in this country should be overlooked when followed by _adequate_ atonement and _indubitable_ reformation; but the _interests_ as well of the _rising generation_, as of the _great body_ of the _convicts themselves_, require that the _re-convicted_ felon, whom neither the _hope_ of _distinction_ can _reclaim_, nor the _fear_ of _punishment deter_ from a recurrence to his old iniquities, should be branded with the _lasting impressions_ of _infamy_, and rendered for _ever afterwards incapable_ of exercising so respectable and important a function as the one in question.

With respect to the nature and extent of the property to be possessed by the members of the legislative a.s.sembly, I am of opinion, that a freehold estate of five hundred acres in any part of the territory of New South Wales, or its dependent settlements on Van Diemen"s Land, should be considered a sufficient qualification, and that in the case of electors twenty acres of freehold should give the right of voting at elections for the districts in which such freehold property may be situated; and that either a leasehold of the value of 5 a year, or paying a house rent of 10 a year, that of voting at elections for towns. Excepting conviction, therefore, in this country as a ground of exclusion both as respects the candidates and the const.i.tuents, and making the above variation in the standard of their respective qualifications as to property, I think that every cause of rejection which is deemed in Canada of sufficient efficacy to invalidate the claims of either party, should be held of equal force in this colony, not only with persons who may have been convicts, but with all such as may wish either to vote for the return of members, or to become members of the legislative body themselves. In framing, indeed, a const.i.tution for the colony, that of Canada would, I suspect, be upon the whole the best model for imitation; since there is not only a much stronger affinity between the great body of its inhabitants, and those of New South Wales, than exists in any of our other colonies; but every succeeding year will render the approximat

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