"He hath an excellent good name."
--Much Ado About Nothing.
When "The Settlement" began, and when, like the pre-Judges time in
Israel, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience of
that ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a male
Deborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, their
early fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even a
much larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely the
same, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, in
the grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator of
authority in Victoria. His figure, rather tall, shapely, well-developed,
surmounted by a noble head, bald with age, just touching the venerable,
and with a genial expression of face, which, however, never descended to
levity, although times without number to a smile or slight laugh, he sat
erect upon the bench, facile princeps, as though institutions were to
bend to him, and not he to them. When we entered the little hut-like
structure in the middle of the Western Market area, so long Melbourne's
only police-office, James Simpson seemed to us as much a part of its
fittings as the rude little bench itself; and it was a disappointment
not to find him there, as the indispensable complement to the scene,
even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How so
striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more
leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of
nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He
took what fell in his way--magistracies, bank directorships, or what
else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means,
always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal
respect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured across amongst the
tag-rags of the earlier Launceston tide, unless indeed under some
benevolent inspiration and prescience about the magisterial needs, is a
mystery which, although I often conversed with him, I never happened to
hear him explain.
DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING.
"A man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."
--Love's Labour Lost.
Almost as early a colonist as Simpson, his intimate friend, his
colleague in the Melbourne branch of the Bank of Australasia, of which
he was himself general manager, with Simpson as director, McArthur fitly
follows the other in this list of early colonial prominents. To the day
of his death he held the first position, active or honorary, in
Victorian banking. But he was even better known, or at least better
regarded, as, par excellence, "mine host" of the early community. During
a long life, of which the later and much the larger half was spent in
Victoria, there was none who entered more readily, constantly, or
acceptably into the varied life of the community. His leisure, such as
he had, his means, his fellowship, were at their command. He was
geniality personified. But he was a banker, and a banker has duties, and
in the ups and downs of colonial business life, he was but too often
reminded to that effect. It was quite a sight if you happened to witness
the scene with a bank customer, to whom, as to "the state of his
account," it was necessary to administer what Mac's countrymen call a
"hearing." Often he had to pity victims of circumstances in the sudden
changes of colonial commerce; but "the gods aboon can only ken" to
discriminate impartially in such cases, and duty to the bank must be
done. First, the humorous twinkle in the eye sensibly abated, but it
still lingered there, unless there must be still stronger stages of the
ordeal, to bring the business culprit to reason. But when the last gleam
went out, a storm was certainly imminent. The storm, however, swept past
on the instant with the provocation. When that eye finally closed, a
veritable sunbeam of the colony went out with it.
Mrs. McArthur, who still survives, went hand in hand with her husband.
That they were an attached couple has the complementary illustration of
his making her his full heir. As they had no family to divide cares and
means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that
distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we
must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit
even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a
man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty
will permit."
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA.
"However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies...
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman."
--Richard II.
The more I saw of the subject of this sketch, over nearly all the
fifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the more
I explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where he
was without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable,
unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribed
line, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney,
he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by the
Governor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community,
a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon the
far southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney was
then the official and business centre. The charge did not then seem to
threaten to be an anxiously large one, and in any case his inauguratory
office might hardly remove him from the accustomed instruction of
superiors. What he did not bargain for was that the child he went to
nurse was to rush almost from the cradle into manhood; and the little
"settlement" he began his reign with to be, ere he had done with it, the
most notable, if not indeed actually the most important, colony of the
empire.
He was a Moravian Christian, of a well-known name in that excellent
body, and possessed of all its virtues; he was, besides, a well-educated
gentleman. The pure and happy home which he transferred to the new scene
was of priceless value to its society, and all the more so at a time
when such virtuous homes, in such high quarters, were by no means over
common thereabout. But with a natural shyness, and, in a socio-political
sense, timidity of character, which in ordinary circumstances are
feelings leaning to the better side, he exemplified how a good man may
not always be a good ruler of men. The diffidence is often mistaken by
the ruled, and always disappointing; and in public affairs it is apt, as
Mr. La Trobe but too well illustrated, to take the inconvenient and
injurious form of personal indecision.
He had not a particle of pride or selfishness, hardly even of the
commoner infirmity of vanity. He would, whenever possible, take a
roundabout to escape observation, but if even the humblest colonist
persisted to address him, unrepelled by the evident tendency to "move
on," he would be as frank and unceremonious as our Queen in a Highland
cottage. We regret that so righteously-stored a man should make a bad
Governor; but so it was, none the less.
There was comparatively little damage during the day of smaller things,
prior to the gold. Still, even then, the characteristics told, in the
reluctance to resolve upon action in any departure from the red tape of
the beaten track, in a young settlement of men nearly all in the
exuberant prime of life, and almost daily called upon, amongst
Australian peculiarities, to confront their novel circumstances. For
instance, upon rumours, oft repeated, that there was good workable coal
at Western Port, a party is formed, with capital in readiness, to give
the case a thorough testing; and they, as of course, apply to the
Government to give them all those aids and concessions, or, at least, a
sufficiency of them, which could most easily have been given in that
quarter, for Mr. La Trobe was practically the Government. He referred
the matter to Mr. Crown-Solicitor Croke, to ascertain what might be the
legal impediments. Impediments, obstacles, difficulties! But who had
asked for them? The application had been for facilities. Of course, Mr.
C.S. Croke, as instructed, and with all the facility of any lawyer worth
his salt, duly found the required impediments; and so the disturbing
enemy was defeated, and the Government left at rest.
But when the goldfields' grand drama of progress opened, when thousands
promptly flowed into Victoria from neighbouring colonies, and, a little
later on, ten thousands from Home, this chariness of action, this
resolute irresolution, or, in Ollivier's description of his master
Napoleon, before he, in an unlucky moment, swayed over to his side, this
"obstinate indecision," proved sadly damaging to the colony, although
indeed, under all the circumstances, it was hardly possible for any
obstacle whatever to arrest materially its marvellous growth. Of course,
the interest of a colony, thus enviably favoured, was to settle as best
it could this throng of enterprising humanity over its vast and all but
empty areas, and that could only have been done by prompt and adequate
access to the land. But some current differences as to the bearing or
rights of squatting leases gave the Governor--the Superintendent being
now in that higher position--the too ready excuse for his infirmity of
indecision. Even the squatting difficulty, which could have been easily
removed by a reserve of compensation for whatever of it might have been
real, was only one part, perhaps not even the chief part, of the
wretched case. Acres by the million, on either side, along the busy
highways, and around the many goldfield outbreaks, small and great, from
which the live stock, where there had been any, were now all driven
away, might have been brought to market at once without real injury to
any interest. The squatters, naturally enough, sided with the Governor,
giving him an encouraging semblance of public principle; for did not the
one-third of united Crown Officials and Crown Nominateds, plus the Crown
Tenants, in our first so-called representative Legislature, show, on
this question, a small majority for "the Crown?"
At last, when the public scandal of so grievous a spectacle made longer
inaction impossible, when the disappointed and shiftless immigrants
began to beat a retreat from the inhospitable colony, the balance
streaming by thousands into "Canvastown," or wandering helpless
elsewhere, and mostly ruined by the cost of living--for a cabbage had
risen to 5 shillings at the goldfields, and to 2 shillings and 6 pence
in Melbourne--the Governor, by an adroit move, in the despair of the
position, referred the case "Home." There common sense decided it at
once, or at least as quickly as might have been expected from the
leisurely ways of the Colonial Office of those far-back times. But the
decision came, in very great measure, much too late. There had been in
the meantime a blazing fire of land speculation, which, unlike other
fires, had blazed all the more intensely from the want of fuel. The
small supply of land, and the fury of multitudinous demands, had driven
up prices to such absurd, and, the utilities considered, such impossible
heights, that the inevitable reaction had already begun, involving
numbers of families in most sudden and unexpected loss, and not a few in
ruin.
But Victoria easily recovered from and forgot this preliminary and bad
physicking, and was soon to be seen galloping on its road of progress as
if nothing to its damage could ever have happened. Full of work for the
day, full of hope for the morrow, the busy colonists saluted cordially
the departing Governor. For my part I do not grudge it to him, for his
motives and conduct were of the purest, and he was ever withal a right
good Christian gentleman.