THE GROWTH OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Large amount of convict labour available for employment--Free
settlers too few to utilise it--Applied chiefly to public
works--Premature erection of public edifices--Convicts given good
wages and plentiful drink--Many grow rich--Governor Macquarie
favours convicts unduly--Hostility shown him--Strong antagonism
between classes--Great impetus to free emigration--Convict labour
in demand--System of assignment revived--Discipline maintained by
the "cat"--Efforts toward fair administration.
The peculiar condition of the colony now was the presence therein of a
supply of convict labour, growing larger also from day to day as vessels
with their cargoes arrived, for which there was no natural demand. When
General Macquarie assumed the government the influx of male convicts had
been so great in the five years preceding 1809, that the free settlers
were unable to find employment for more than an eighth of the total
number, though the labour was to be had for the asking, and cost nothing
but the price of raising the food the convicts consumed. In point of
fact, the free settlers were still too few and their operations too
limited. Seven-eighths of the whole supply remaining on hand, it became
necessary for the governor to devise artificial outlets. He was
anxious, as he tells Earl Bathurst, "to employ this large surplus of men
in some useful manner, so that their labour might in some degree cover
the expense of their feeding and clothing." The measures by which he
endeavoured to compass this shall now be described.
There is a stage in the youthful life of every colony when the
possession of an abundant and cheap supply of labour is of vital
importance to its progress. Settlers in these early days were neither
numerous enough nor wealthy enough to undertake for themselves the work
of reclaiming land, of establishing harbours and internal communications
on a scale sufficiently wide to insure the due development of the young
country. At such an epoch a plentiful supply of convict labour pouring
in at the cost of the home government is certain to be highly valuable.
Merivale points out how some such timely assistance to British Columbia
in more recent years would have given an enormous impetus to the
development of those provinces. It would be premature to discuss, at
this period of my narrative, the question whether the advantages gained
would outweigh the positive evils of a recurrence to transportation on
any grand scale. Some of these evils might disappear if the system were
carried out with all the safeguards and precautions that our lengthened
experience would supply. But the main objection--the excessive
costliness of the scheme--would remain.
This stage New South Wales had now reached, and the governor, finding
himself amply supplied with the labour so urgently needed, bent all his
energies to bringing forward the latent resources of the colony. His
reign began at a period of great scarcity. Repeated inundations on the
Hawkesbury had entailed disastrous losses on the whole community. He
decided, therefore, to form new towns at points beyond the reach of the
floods, and to open up to them, and throughout the province, those means
of communication which are so essential to the progress of a new
country. Upon the construction of these roads he concentrated all his
energies and all the means at his disposal. Not much skilled labour was
needed, yet the work was punitive and was also beneficial to the whole
community. No better employment could have been devised for the
convicts. Under his directions, towns before disconnected were joined by
means of excellent highways, while other good roads were driven through
wild regions hitherto unsettled if not altogether unexplored. The
greatest exploit of that period was the construction of the road across
the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, the whole length of which was 276 miles;
and there were, besides, good wooden bridges at all necessary points.
Beyond doubt, to these facilities of intercommunication is to be
attributed the early advance of the colony in wealth and prosperity.
But Governor Macquarie's other undertakings, though well intentioned,
were not equally well designed either for the improvement of the colony
or the amelioration of its people. No doubt his was a difficult task,
his course hard to steer. He had means almost unlimited, a glut of
labour, and behind him were the open purse-strings of the
mother-country. How was he to make the most of his advantages? This
labour, of which his hands were full, came from a mass of convicts, each
one of whom already represented a considerable charge on the imperial
funds. It had been expensive to transport him; now he was costly to
keep. Could he not be made in some measure to recoup the treasury for
the outlay he occasioned? It was obvious that he should, if possible,
contribute to his own support. Yet Governor Macquarie, in spite of his
promises, aimed at nothing of the kind. His chief object--next after
making roads--was to embellish the principal towns of the colony with
important public works--works for the most part unnecessary, and hardly
in keeping with the status of the young settlement. Roads were urgently
needed; but not guildhalls, vast hospitals, spacious quays, churches,
schools, houses and public offices. In these earlier years, buildings of
more modest dimensions might well have sufficed for all needs. But under
the Macquarie regime Sydney sprang from a mere shanty town into a
magnificent city. It was almost entirely reconstructed on a new plan,
the lines of which are retained to this day. The convict huts gave
place to prisoners' barracks, the mean dwellings of the settlers to
streets of imposing houses. The whole external aspect of Sydney and
Parramatta was changed. In all, the new public buildings numbered more
than 250, and the list of them fills ten closely printed pages of a
parliamentary report.
Yet all this expenditure was not only wasteful and at the time
unnecessary, but its direct tendency was to demoralise the population.
The labourers required for works of such importance were of course
collected together upon the scene of operations. In other words, crowds
of convict artisans were congregated in the towns, and countenanced each
other in vice. Many of the works were carried out by contract, the
contractors employing convict hands, bond or free, still serving or
emancipated; and in both cases they paid wages half in cash, and half in
property, which consisted of groceries and ardent spirits. This was the
"truck system," neither more nor less, which the contractors made still
more profitable to themselves by establishing public-houses close to
their works, at which the cash half of the wages soon returned to them
in exchange for the drink supplied. Naturally vice and immorality grew
apace. The condition of the towns was awful, and the low pleasures in
which they abounded attracted to them many people who might otherwise
have been contented to live quietly upon their grants of land. But the
choice between congenial society with plenty of drink, and the far-off
clearing with honest labour for its only joy, was soon made in favour of
the former, and every one who could, flocked into the towns. The
governor had indeed tried hard to form an agricultural population. With
this object he had conceded larger grants than his predecessors, in the
hopes that emancipated convicts would settle upon them and reform. It
was thought that "the hope of possessing property, and of improving
their condition and that of their families, afforded the strongest
stimulus to their industry, and the best security for their good
conduct." But these advantages were remote, and gave way at once before
the present certainty of being able to barter away the land they got for
nothing or in exchange for ten or fifteen gallons of rum. If this plan
of manufacturing industrious small proprietors out of the recently
emancipated convicts was meant to answer, the grant of land should have
been made conditional on actual residence thereon, and accompanied by
tangible results gained by actual labour done, which must be shown
before the acres were finally conveyed. Now it was proved that many of
Governor Macquarie's grantees never took possession of their land at
all: the order for thirty acres was changed at once for the much coveted
means of dissipation. Hence, though towns grew fast in beauty and
importance, the forest lands or wild tracts in the interior remained
unsettled; and the crowds of ex-criminals who might, by judicious
treatment, have turned into virtuous farmers, rapidly degenerated into
a mass of drunken dissipated idlers.
These were indeed fine times for the convicts. There was labour for all,
remunerative, and not too severe; liquor was cheap, and above all the
governor was their friend. It would be, however, more than unfair to
charge General Macquarie with any but the best motives in his tenderness
for the convict class. He conceived that the unfortunate people who
composed it were the especial objects of his solicitude. To promote
their reform, and to bring them to that prosperity which should make
this reform something more than mere idle profession--these, as he
thought, were among the first of his duties as the governor of a penal
colony. In his prosecution of such views he did not halt half way. The
manner in which he favoured and encouraged the emancipists came to be a
by-word. It was said in the colony that the surest claim on Governor
Macquarie's confidence and favour was that of having once worn the badge
of a convicted felon. Very early in his reign he made it clear that this
would be his policy. The year after his arrival he advanced one
ex-convict to the dignity of a justice of the peace; another was made
his private medical adviser; and both, with many others, were admitted
to his table at Government House. Nor were the recipients of these
favours always the most deserving among their fellows for the honours
showered upon them. It was taken for granted that the possession of
considerable wealth was proof positive of respectability regained; yet
in the case of Governor Macquarie's emancipist magistrate, it was
notorious that he had become rich by methods of which honest men would
hardly be proud. Transported as a lad for rick burning, after serving
his time in the colony he had been a shop-keeper, a constable, and last
a publican; in which line, by means of liberal credit, he had soon
amassed a fortune. His case was only one of many in which ex-convicts
had grown rich, chiefly by preying on their still more unfortunate
comrades, taking mortgages on grants as payment for long arrears of
accounts for groceries and drink, and by and by seizing all the land.
But no more emancipists were made magistrates after 1824.
Then, in many instances, members of the convict class were by far the
shrewdest and best educated in the whole community. Settlers of the
better class were few in number, so the sharp rogues had it all their
own way. They had capital moreover. Several brought money with them to
the colony, the fruit of their villainies, or their wives followed them
with considerable sums acquired in similar fashion. For these men,
especially if they had held fairly good positions at home,
transportation was almost a farce. It merely meant removal at the public
expense to a land, remote certainly, but in which they were little less
comfortable than at home, and where they moreover had exceptional
facilities for making money fast; and they had it all to themselves.
Governor Macquarie discouraged free emigration. He did not want to see
settlers. He looked upon them as out of place, nay more, as a positive
encumbrance to the colony. New South Wales was a settlement, he said,
made by convicts for convicts--"meant for their reformation; and free
people had no right to come to it." So he continued to pat his
favourites on the back: gave them land, and more land, as many assigned
servants--their former partners possibly in many a guilty scheme--as
they wished; and last but not least, provided a market for the very
crops he had assisted them (by convict labour) to raise. It was not
strange, then, that with a yearly influx of thousands of new hands, and
the rapid upward advance of all who were ordinarily steady and
industrious, the emancipists should come as a class to gain strength far
in excess of their deserts, and sufficient from their numbers to swamp
all other classes in the community.
There were frequent heartburnings in New South Wales during the reign of
Governor Macquarie on account of his overstrained partiality. The
discontent was heightened by his plainly spoken desire to force his own
views down the throats of those nearest him in the social scale: not
satisfied with openly countenancing them himself, he insisted that the
officers of regiments receive emancipists as guests at mess. Bigge says
on this point: "The influence of the governor's example should be
limited to those occasions alone when his notice of the emancipated
convicts cannot give offence to the feelings of others, or to persons
whose objections to associate with them are known. The introduction of
them on public occasions should, in my opinion, be discontinued. And
when it is known that they have been so far noticed by the governor of
New South Wales as to be admitted to his private table and society, the
benefit of the governor's example may be expected to operate; and it
will also be exempt from the fatal suspicion of any exercise of his
authority." Again, when Mr. Bent, judge of the Supreme Court, refused to
allow certain attorneys, ex-convicts but now free, to practise as
solicitors, the governor complained to the home government that this
judge was "interfering unwarrantably with a salutary principle which he
(the governor) had been endeavouring to establish for the reformation of
the convicts." Now at this very time an act was in force which deprived
all persons convicted of perjury or forgery from ever again practising
in the courts at home, and Judge Bent in refusing to administer the
oaths to these emancipist attorneys was but carrying out the law; yet on
the governor's representation he was removed from the bench.
There were other cases not less plainly marked. As a natural
consequence, the antagonism was deepened between the two classes which
were so widely distinct--the virtuous Pharisees, that is to say, and
the thriving publicans. The former despised all who had come out "at
their country's expense;" and the latter hated the settlers, as people
of a lower class not seldom hate social superiors to whose "platform"
they are forbidden to hope to rise. Eventually, as we shall see, after a
long protracted warfare and varying successes, the free population
gained the day; but not till the lapse of years had strengthened their
numbers out of all proportion to their antagonists, and given them the
preponderance they at first lacked.
The struggles between these two classes fill up the whole of the annals
of the next years of the colony. All said, however, it cannot be denied
that under the administration of General Macquarie the colony prospered.
The population was nearly trebled between 1809 and 1821, and there was a
corresponding increase in trade and in the public revenue. Just before
this governor left the colony it contained 38,788 souls; there were
102,929 horned cattle, 290,158 sheep, 33,000 hogs, and 4,500 horses; and
32,267 acres had been brought under cultivation. The moral tone of the
community, too, was slightly raised; marriage had been encouraged in
place of an indifferent and disreputable mode of life which till then
had been largely prevalent. "In externals, at least," says Laing, "the
colony itself assumed quite a different aspect under his energetic and
vigorous management from what it had previously worn."
Speaking of his own administration and his efforts to elevate the
convict population in the scale of society, Governor Macquarie said for
himself, as against his detractors, "Even my work of charity, as it
appeared to me sound policy, in endeavouring to restore emancipated and
reformed convicts to a level with their fellow-subjects--a work which,
considered in a religious or a political point of view, I shall ever
value as the most meritorious part of my administration--has not escaped
their animadversions."
And yet, however praiseworthy his efforts, they were misdirected; and
beyond doubt, in his desire to discourage the influx of free people, he
committed a fatal error. It was his wish, of course, to further the
development of the colony; but he could not do this half so
satisfactorily by the establishment of penal agricultural settlements,
as could substantial emigrants working with capital behind them for
their own profit. Moreover, these agricultural settlements started by
Governor Macquarie cost a great deal of money. Again, the free classes
of the community would not have found themselves for a long time
outnumbered had not immigration been systematically discouraged. The
formation of an independent respectable society, armed with weight and
influence, was, as I have said, much needed in the colony. In this
respect General Macquarie had departed from the policy of his
predecessors. Captain Philip was eager enough, as we have seen, to
attract settlers, and had his recommendations been persistently followed
the colony would have found itself the sooner able to raise grain enough
for its own consumption.
Sir Thomas Brisbane, on the other hand, who came after Governor
Macquarie, recognised the full importance of the principle, and his
reign is memorable as marking the period when settlers in any
considerable numbers first flocked to the colony. But it was no longer
the humbler classes who came. None of these did the governor want, but
persons who were well-to-do, who could take up larger grants and find
plenty of employment for the rapidly increasing convict population. Sir
Thomas Brisbane held out every inducement to attract such persons. At
this period, thanks to the unceasing arrival of new drafts, the number
of felon exiles on charge continued to form a serious item in the
colonial expenditure. To get quit of all or any the governor was only
too glad to offer almost any terms. The grants of land were raised from
500 to 2,000 acres, which any one of moderate respectability might
secure, provided only he would promise to employ twenty convicts;
rations also were to be given from the King's store for self and
servants for the first six months, and a loan of cattle from the
government herds. The newcomers therefore were mostly gentlemen farmers,
younger sons of land-owners, or commercial men who had saved something
from a general crash in business. Most of these people were
sufficiently alive to their own advantage to realise the opportunity now
held out to them. Land for nothing, food and stock till the first
difficulties of settlement were overcome--these were baits that many
were ready enough to swallow. Labour was also gratuitously provided by
the same kind hands that gave the land.
For some years this more than parental encouragement continued, till at
length the influx of settlers came to be thoroughly felt. The labour
that was so lately a drug, was now so eagerly sought that the demand
grew greater than the supply. The governor was unable to comply with all
the requisitions for servants made by the land grantees. This at once
brought about the abandonment of the agricultural penal settlements
established by General Macquarie. Their success had always been
doubtful: although land to a considerable extent had been cleared,
timber felled, buildings erected, and farming attempted, no great
results had ever been obtained. Indeed now when the land which had thus
been occupied was again resumed, it was found to have been little
benefited. One by one they were broken up. They were costly and
unproductive. On the other hand, the settlers, old and newly arrived,
were clamorous for the hands thus wastefully employed. "So steadily,"
says Laing, "did the demand for convict labour increase on the part of
the free settlers that, during the government of Lieutenant-General
Darling, there were at one time applications for no fewer than 2,000
labourers lying unsatisfied in the office of the principal
superintendent of convicts."
We have now really arrived at the second stage in the history of
transportation. Although from the first origin of the settlement convict
servants were readily provided for any master who might ask for them,
the applications, as I have said, were few and far between, amounting in
1809 to an eighth only of the total numbers available, and requiring, as
late as 1821, to be accompanied by the bait of distinct and tangible
bribes. But now had dawned the days of "assignment" proper, the days of
wholesale slavery, where private persons relieved the state of the
charge of its criminals, and pretended to act, for the time being, as
gaolers, taskmasters, and chaplains, in return for the labour supplied
at so cheap a rate. How far the persons thus called upon to exercise
such peculiar functions were entitled to the confidence reposed in them
was never in question till the last few years. Emancipists got their
convicts too, and of course among the settlers many were quite unsuited
for so serious a charge.
The failure of assignment as a method of penal discipline will be seen
later on, when its great inherent evils had had time to display
themselves. At first the chief fault was over-leniency--so much so that
General Darling came out as governor charged with orders to subject the
convicts to more rigorous treatment. Dr. Laing, in his "History of New
South Wales," is of opinion that, about this date, much unnecessary
severity was noticeable in the carrying out of the sentence of
transportation. He states that convicts were now treated by the
subordinate agents, who saw that severity was the order of the day,
"with a reckless indifference to their feelings as men which their
situation as criminals could never have warranted."
Nevertheless it must be confessed that the condition of convicts could
not be irksome when soldiers envied it, and committed crimes on purpose
to become felons too. This was proved in the case of certain soldiers
who had turned thieves in Sydney simply that they might be sentenced to
transportation. They were caught, convicted, and sentenced to seven
years at Moreton Bay or Norfolk Island. Had their story ended here the
bare record of it might suffice, but it so happened that very serious
consequences ensued, and these I cannot refrain from recounting. As it
came out quite clearly upon their trial what had been the object and
design of their theft, Governor Darling resolved that they should be
treated with extra rigour, "it being an intolerable and dangerous idea
that the situation of a soldier was worse than that of a convict or
transported felon." The seven years at a penal settlement was therefore
commuted to seven years hard labour in chains on the roads of the
colony. The intention of this change was doubtless that their old
comrades should sometimes see them as they were marched to and fro; but
besides this, it was ordered that at the end of their sentence they
should return to their regiments. Therefore, after the proceedings of
the trial had been promulgated, the prisoners were publicly stripped of
their uniforms, iron collars with spikes projecting were placed around
their necks, from which iron chains hung and were fastened to basils on
their legs. Thus arrayed they were drummed out of their regiment (the
57th) to the tune of the Rogues' March. Under the horrors of this
punishment one man, Sudds, immediately sank, and died the following day.
The survivor then made a statement to the effect that Sudds complained
bitterly of his chains. The projections on the collar prevented the
prisoners from stretching at full length when lying on their backs. They
could not lie at full length without contracting their legs, nor could
they stand upright. The collar was too tight for Sudds' neck, and the
basils too tight for the other's legs.
In reporting this whole case to the Secretary of State, Governor Darling
says, "However much the event is to be regretted, it cannot be imputed
to severity; none was practised or intended.... With respect to the
chains which are designated instruments of torture, it will be
sufficient to state that they weigh only 13 lbs. 12 ozs.; and though
made with a view of producing an effect on those who were to witness the
ceremony, the extreme lightness of their construction prevented them
from being injurious in any respect to the individual." On the other
hand, Laing says the irons usually made for the road gangs in the colony
did not weigh more than from 6 to 9 lbs.; while those brought out for
convicts on board prison ships from England weighed only from 3½ to 4
lbs.
Following all this came vituperative attacks in the press. Papers
inspired by the government defended General Darling, and the fight was
long and bitter. One result was the passing of several acts known as
"Gagging Acts," intended to check the virulent abuse perpetually aimed
at the government, but they failed to have the desired effect. Governor
Darling grew more and more unpopular, and on leaving the colony he was
threatened with impeachment. A Parliamentary commission did, eventually,
inquire into his administration, and completely exonerated him from all
charges.
Speaking of the trial and sentence of these soldiers, Laing
observes,--"It would be unjust to consider Sir Ralph Darling's sentence
by the light of public opinion in England. He was governor of a colony
in which more than half the community were slaves and criminals; he had
to arrest and punish the progress of a dangerous crime; but he fell into
the error of exercising by _ex post facto_ decree, as the representative
of the sovereign, powers which no sovereign has exercised since the time
of Henry VIII, and violated one of the cardinal principles of the
British Constitution by rejudging and aggravating the punishment of men
who had been already judged. At the present day it is only as an
historical landmark that attention can be called to this transaction,
which can never be repeated in British dominions." It is more than
probable that, as a military officer of rank, he was doubly disposed to
reprobate the offence recorded. All his soldierly instincts were
doubtless hurt to the quick by the notion that the private men of an
honourable profession preferred an ignominious sentence to service with
the colours of their corps. From this came his uncompromising attitude,
and the seemingly unjustifiable violence of his measures.
But except in this one instance, Sir Ralph Darling proved himself an
efficient administrator. His sympathies were certainly with the
"exclusionists" as against the "emancipists;" and therefore, by the
latter and their organs, he was persistently misrepresented and abused.
But he was distinctly useful in his generation. A most industrious
public officer, he spared himself neither time nor trouble. Every
matter, however unimportant, received his closest personal
consideration. He may have made mistakes, but never through omission or
neglect; besides which, he introduced order and regularity in the
working of the state machine. Method followed disorganisation; ease and
freedom, where before had been friction and clogging interference
between its several parts. One of his earliest acts had been to regulate
the system of granting land, which under the previous administration
had fallen into some confusion. It was he who established a Land Board,
and who ruled that grants were to be made to people only according to
their means of improving the acres they got, and not as heretofore,
simply in answer to mere application.
In these and other useful labours the lead he gave was consistently
followed by his immediate successor, Sir Richard Bourke, who came to the
colony in December, 1831. Although by the extension of the colony the
personal character of the governor was no longer of such paramount
importance as in earlier days, the arrival of an efficient administrator
was a distinct benefit to the whole settlement. Sir Richard Bourke was
unquestionably a man of character and vigour. The measures he introduced
were all salutary. Not only did he encourage free immigration, but he
made fresh laws for the distribution and coercion of the convict
population. His regulations for assignment--to which I shall refer
directly--were wisely planned; and the reforms he introduced in the
constitution of the courts of justice were as sensible as they were
necessary. He had found that the decisions of local magistrates in the
cases of the misconduct of convict servants were extremely unequal: some
were ludicrously lenient, others out of all proportion severe. He
thought it advisable to establish some uniform system by which
magistrates should be guided in the infliction of summary punishments;
and he passed, therefore, an act known henceforth as the "Fifty Lashes
Act." This substituted fifty lashes for the first offence cognisable in
a summary way, in lieu of one hundred and fifty; and made the powers of
a single magistrate somewhat less than those of a bench of two or more.
At the same time it was ruled that a "cat" of uniform pattern should be
used in every district. "Each bench had before superintended, or left to
its inferior officers, the construction of its own scourges, which
varied according to accident or caprice; nor could it ever be
ascertained by the mere number of lashes ordered what degree of pain the
culprit was likely to have suffered." This restriction of their power
was not palatable to all the magistrates, and petitions were presented
to His Excellency, protesting against his new act. They urged that now
their authority was utterly derided. "Such a feeling," says Sir Richard,
commenting on their petition, "is not to be considered extraordinary, as
it requires much judgment and moderation to overcome the instinctive
love of power.... The magistrates who felt the diminution of their power
as a grievance may perhaps have been excited to expressions of complaint
by the annoyance to which, in their character of settlers, they are
exposed from the misconduct of their assigned servants. They do not
perhaps consider that the natural dislike to compulsory labour, which is
part of human nature, and has existed and ever will exist under every
form or mode of government, must offer great difficulties to those who
seek to carry on their business by such means. Severity carried beyond a
certain point, especially towards men of violent and turbulent feelings,
will only tend to inflame this indisposition to labour with more
dangerous acts of desperation and revenge."
However, to give the petitioners no just cause for complaint, he
instituted a formal inquiry into "those circumstances connected with the
discipline of the prison population which formed the subject of the
petitions." Reports were called for from the police of the several
districts. From them it was clearly apparent that fifty lashes with the
new cat were quite enough for any one, provided they were properly
administered. "The sufficiency of the law and of the instrument of
corporal punishment, in all cases where proper superintendence is
exercised, being thus established on unexceptionable evidence," His
Excellency considered it would be inexpedient, nay, dangerous, to add to
the severity of either, "merely because, in some instances, the
wholesome vigour of the existing law has been impeded by a negligent or
corrupt execution. In reading the reports which have been presented, the
governor could not fail to observe that where punishments have been duly
inflicted, the power of the magistrates has been anything but derided.
While perusing these painful details, His Excellency has indeed had
abundant reason to lament that the use of the whip should of necessity
form so prominent a part of convict discipline in New South Wales; but
believing it to be unavoidable, the governor must rely on the activity
and discretion of the magistracy for insuring its wholesome and
sufficient application."
The clear-sighted policy adopted by Sir Richard Bourke in carrying out
the last mentioned reform was no less observable in his treatment of the
question of assignment. The system by which servants were assigned to
settlers was undoubtedly not altogether free from abuses. It was alleged
that successive governments worked it quite as a source of patronage to
themselves. Governor Darling had however established an assignment
board, which to some extent equalised the distribution of the convicts
among the settlers. But it remained for Sir Richard Bourke to put the
whole question on a thoroughly satisfactory footing. The rules he
promulgated did not make their appearance till he had been four years in
the colony; after he had gained experience, that is to say, and time to
consider the subject in all its practical bearings. Excellent though
they were, they were rather late in the field. From the date of their
appearance to that of the final suspension of transportation there were
but five years to run. The pains taken by Sir Richard Bourke are evident
from his despatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, dated
June, 1835. He observes, "My chief object in this measure has been to
substitute for the invidious distinction hitherto more or less vested in
the officers entrusted with the duty of assigning convicts to private
service, strict rules of qualification, intelligible alike to the
dispenser and receiver of penal labour, and from which no deviation
shall be permitted. It is not until after much delay, and after maturely
weighing the suggestions of the various parties, that I have ventured to
deal with this important and difficult subject."
The main principle of the new regulations was that servants were to be
assigned solely in proportion to the land the masters occupied. A
carefully prepared scale was drawn up fixing this proportion, which,
speaking roughly, was at the rate of one servant per 160 acres of
ordinary land, and one per 20 acres under plow or hoe culture. At the
same time it was ruled that, as all mechanics were more valuable than
mere labourers, each of the former should be equal to two and sometimes
three of the latter. Thus one blacksmith, bricklayer, carpenter, or
cooper, counted as three labourers; while a plasterer, a tailor,
shoemaker, or wool-sorter, counted only as two. An entirely new process
of application for these servants was also laid down. A special sessions
was to be held in every district in September, for the purpose of
receiving and reporting on all such applications. It was the duty of the
magistrates in sessions to "inquire into the correctness of the facts
stated in each, requiring such evidence thereof as to them shall seem
proper; and they shall in no case recommend the claim of any applicant
unless perfectly satisfied of the truth of the statement on which the
application is founded."
Over and above this they were also required to look into the moral
qualifications of the assignee. They were not to recommend any person
"who is not free, of good character, capable of maintaining the servants
applied for, and to whose care and management they may not be safely
entrusted." Had this regulation been enforced at an earlier date the
system of "assignment" might have been worked with greater success. The
applications having been duly passed at sessions were then forwarded to
the assignment board at Sydney. Throughout, the greatest care was taken
to prevent underhand dealing: when eventually the time for actual
assignment arrived, it was done by drawing lots, or rather numbers from
a box in the office of the assignment board, and it was impossible for
the officials to show favour or affection even had they been so
inclined. The whole spirit of these regulations was thoroughly equitable
and straightforward. The only object was to be fair to every one. Thus
the land qualification was not insisted upon in the case of tradesmen
who wanted assistance in their own calling; and respectable householders
were also allowed to obtain indoor servants, though without an acre of
land in the colony. With these rules were included others requiring
masters to remove their servants without delay, and establishing
certain pains and penalties against contravention of the new law.
These arrangements were indeed admirable, all of them, but they should
have been earlier enforced. Not that Sir Richard Bourke was to blame for
this. The change he instituted should have been made by his
predecessors. But he was probably superior as an administrator to most
who had gone before. At least he was clear-sighted enough to perceive
that New South Wales had already outgrown the conditions of a mere penal
settlement. He was of opinion that convict labour was no longer
required, and that the abolition of transportation would be really a
benefit to the colonial community. He was in this ahead of his time, but
within a year or two of the close of his reign the same views began to
be widely entertained both in Great Britain and her colonies. In fact,
the period was now approaching when the idea of the possible abandonment
of transportation was to take a tangible and substantial form.