EMANCIPISTS AND FREE POPULATION.
Respecting the next class of which the population consists in our
penal colonies,--that of emancipists, or persons formerly in bondage as
convicts, they appear to be pretty nearly what might be expected of a
body of men under such circumstances. Although there are many honourable
exceptions to the general rule, yet it would seem to be a general rule
that roguery and industry are usually connected among them; and that
where an emancipist is less inclined to be dishonest, he is more
inclined to be idle and improvident; while it often occurs that both
faults are found together in one person. Of course, it would be vain to
hope that _all_ convicts, or even the majority, perhaps, should become
completely reformed; but it is sickening to the heart that has any
christian feeling, to find descriptions like the following, given by one
amply qualified to judge, of the deplorable moral and social state of
many of those unhappy men after their time of service has expired. "The
newly-arrived convict" (Mr. MacArthur states) "sees examples immediately
before him of men, formerly in the same condition with himself,
wallowing in licentiousness, and possessed of wealth, amassed generally
by dishonest means, which they continue, in many instances, still to
augment, by keeping grog-shops and gambling-houses, by receiving stolen
goods, and by other nefarious practices. This is the general conduct of
the class of emancipated convicts who acquire property, as well as of
some unprincipled adventurers in the class of free emigrants. There are,
however, among the emancipated convicts of property exceptions from this
prevalent depravity; rare, indeed, and on that account the more
honourable."[199] And numberless, in the earlier history of New South
Wales, are the evil consequences which are recorded to have arisen from
the necessity which then existed of employing either convicts, or else
men recently emancipated, in places of the highest trust and importance.
One striking example may suffice; and it is believed that no injustice
is done to the class of men now alluded to, when it is stated that the
guilty parties were persons belonging to that body. Soon after the
departure of Governor Hunter, in 1800, it was discovered that the clerks
who were admitted to the registers of the terms of the transportation of
the convicts, had altered the sentences of nearly 200 prisoners, on
receiving from each a sum equal in value to ten or twelve pounds.[200]
Of these examples the early history of the colony is full; but, in later
years, it may be hoped, that time, and public opinion, and the tide of
emigration, have combined to render the conduct of persons belonging
to this class less generally objectionable than it formerly was. The
greater portion of the shop-keepers, and what may be called the middling
classes in Sydney, were emancipists; and their wealth and influence were
so great, that, during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, one-fourth of the
jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts belonged to that
body. These persons are often very little educated; and young men
possessed of from 1000_l._ to 2000_l._ a-year in stock, can sometimes
neither read nor write. Cock-fighting, driving, and badger-baiting, are
pursuits that occupy youths of this class very frequently; and a showy,
tawdry style of dress, engages the attention of the young women.
Certainly, it is not of materials of this kind, that the English
constitution would have juries composed; and it is not surprising that
so large a proportion of jurors, who have themselves once stood at the
bar of justice, should be the means of carrying undue partiality for the
guilty into the jurors' box, and also of keeping out of that responsible
station all those who can in any way escape its duties.[201] Respectable
men will not, if they can avoid it, sit in the same box with men who go
in with their minds entirely made up to acquit the guilty, whatever may
be the tenor of the evidence to which they have just been listening,
whatever the sacredness of the oath they have recently taken. If
practical experience is of any real value, then it may safely be
pronounced that men, who are scarcely fit to enjoy the privilege of
sitting upon juries, are certainly at present unprepared for the
introduction of a representative form of legislation and government.
The civil juries of New South Wales have held the scales of justice
uncommonly even, for they have managed to acquit about 50 per cent. of
the persons tried; whereas in Great Britain, and even in Ireland, the
acquittals are 19 per cent., and the convictions 81 per cent. A strange,
but not unaccountable difference, which, so long as it may continue,
will furnish a strong argument of the unfitness of the colony for a
representative assembly. Men that have not the principle to put good
laws into execution, are very ill qualified to make good laws, or to
elect good legislators. And when, to suit party purposes, a clamour is
raised about the injustice of denying fresh "constitutional rights"
to our fellow-subjects in Australia, we may quietly dispose of this
(hitherto absurd and mischievous) claim by referring the very parties
raising it to the accounts published, under the sanction chiefly of men
of their own opinions, respecting the use made of those rights with
which the inhabitants of the penal colonies are already invested. When
the evils of the system of transportation are to be exposed, the truth
may be told respecting the state of the Australian juries;[202] but
why should it not be still declared,--why should not truth _always_ be
told,--even at the hazard of checking "liberal principles," and delaying
representative houses of assembly for the Australian colonies, until the
time when they may know how to use them, so that these may prove a
benefit instead of an evil to them?
[199] Evidence of J. MacArthur, Esq., before the Committee on
Transportation, in 1837, No. 3371-2, p. 220. The richest man in the
colony, an emancipist, was said, in 1837, to be worth 40,000_l._ or
45,000_l._ a year. For an account of the shameless roguery, and drunken
folly, by means of which so vast an income was amassed, see Report of
Transp. Com. 1837, p. 14 and 104.
[200] Barrington's History of New South Wales, p. 421.
[201] For the mode in which the law admitting emancipists into the
jurors' box was passed, see Lang's New South Wales, vol. i. p. 317-320.
"Two absent members of the Legislative Council were known to be opposed
to it. Of those present, the governor (Bourke) and five others were in
favour of it, while six were against it. The governor gave a second and
casting vote."
[202] See Report of Transportation Committee, 1838, p. 31. "A large
proportion of the persons who have appeared and served," as jurors,
"are publicans," to whose houses prosecutors, parties on bail, or
witnesses, resort, for the purpose of drinking, while in attendance
upon the court. Once, when a jury was locked up all night, much foul
and disgusting language was used; and to gain a release from this
association, the disputed point was yielded; "no greater punishment can
be inflicted upon a respectable person than to be shut up with such
people for a few hours, or for the night."
See Burton's Letter, Appendix to Transportation Committee's Report,
1837, p. 301-2. Dr. Lang's book on New South Wales abounds in wretched
puns, but one rather favourable specimen may be given, when, in
allusion to the Englishman's right of being tried by his peers, the
Doctor styles the jurors above described "_the Colonial Peerage!_"
Respecting the last and highest class of society in our penal colonies,
the _free population_, no great deal need be said in particular, since,
except from peculiar circumstances, they are pretty much the same in
character with the bulk of the population in any other country. But
their peculiar circumstances must, in fairness to the class last
mentioned, be briefly noticed. Undoubtedly, without any disrespect to
emigrants, it may be laid down as an acknowledged fact, that hitherto
this class, though it has comprised many excellent, clever, and good
men, has not usually been composed of the flower of the English nation.
Supposing that things are now altered for the better, time was--and that
not many years ago--when "every one that was in distress, and every one
that was in debt, and every one that was discontented," was apt to swell
the tide of emigration to our British colonies in Australia. Upon
arriving there they found a regular system of _caste_ established; and
since as members of the _free_ population they were at once exalted to
the highest places, this was a system which in most cases flattered the
pride of the settlers. Possibly many of the faults of the emancipist
class might be traced to the treatment they have received at the hands
of the free, and these faults react again as causes and excuses for
keeping them at still greater distance than ever. And however natural,
however necessary, a distinction of ranks is and must be in every
society of men, yet nothing can be more unnatural or mischievous than a
system of dividing men into _castes_. Unhappily, this division, the
fruitful source of all kinds of evil feeling, has to a great extent
prevailed in our penal colonies; and nothing, it may be boldly asserted,
except religion will ever root it out. Attempt to continue the exclusive
privilege of _caste_ to the free population, and you sow the seeds of a
servile rebellion. Open your hands to give concessions and privileges to
the emancipists, and you scatter good seed upon the stony rock, you
vainly endeavour to satisfy the daughters of the horse-leech. But infuse
a christian feeling into all classes, get them to meet in the same
church, to kneel at the same table, to partake in the same spiritual
blessings, and then you may hope that all, whether free or emancipists,
will feel themselves to be members of one another, portions of the same
body, held in union of heart and soul by means of the same head; "for by
One Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or
Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink
into One Spirit."[203]
[203] 1 Cor. xii. 13.
After all that has been stated respecting the three great classes into
which society in Australia is divided, it need scarcely be added that
the taste displayed by many of the inhabitants of the metropolis of
New South Wales is none of the purest or best. Gay equipages, dashing
horses, tandems, and racers, are among the favourite exhibitions of
the wealth of the emancipist. For music or paintings but little taste
prevails in Sydney, and for books, except those of a very low and
worthless character, there is no great demand. A fine house, a fine
carriage, fine horses, plenty of spirits to drink, appear to be thought
the chief goods of human life; and among persons in every class, the
acquisition of money is the one great object. Indeed this last passion,
the love of gain, can scarcely be mentioned among the perverted habits
by which the Australian colonies are infested, since it seems scarcely
possible that the worship of Mammon can be practised more openly or
carried much further than it is in the mother country. Yet the
temptations to prefer gain to every thing else are unusually strong
in these settlements. Professions have been abandoned because they
are laborious and unprofitable, while clergymen, medical gentlemen,
soldiers, government officers, in short, all classes of men, have made
haste to get rich by holding land and stock. An estate, which originally
cost little or nothing, grows yearly in value, without a penny being
spent upon it; stock speedily increases at very small cost, for there is
abundance of pasture for it; and when the settler finds these means of
gaining wealth opened to him, he is too apt to devote all his thoughts
and energies to this one object. "I have known," says Captain Grey, "an
honourable member of council, and leading magistrate in a colony, take
out a retail licence, and add to his already vast wealth from the
profits of a gin-shop."[204]
[204] Grey's Travels in Western Australia, vol. ii. pp. 192-3.
The evil spirit of covetousness assumes to itself various shapes and
appearances according to varying circumstances; and among the characters
which it calls into life in Australia, that of a _land shark_ is one of
the most remarkable and hateful. When an emigrant arrives at Sydney, he
is able, perhaps after considerable delay, to give notice to Government
of his wish to purchase some desirable spot of land, which is then
selected to be put up to auction; and when it has been duly surveyed,
the sale at last takes place. But to the poor emigrant's astonishment
and disappointment the land, which he has chosen so as not to interfere
with other property, which is unoccupied, and entirely useless both in
a public and private sense,--is bid for, and finally knocked down
to another at an unreasonable price.[205] This other person is a
"land shark," who has gained, perchance, a fortune by regularly attending
sales and buying up land that is known to be desired by another. The
"shark," true to his name, wishes either to get his opposition bought
off by a bribe, or else hopes to sell his bargain at a profit from the
unwillingness of his victim to lose any more time or money in gaining
a settlement, with the risk of meeting, after all, with a second
disappointment. In case of the "shark's" scheme proving unsuccessful,
there is only the small trifle required as earnest of the purchase to be
paid; of course he never completes the engagement, and in due time, in a
year possibly, the land is declared forfeited to the crown again. Such
is the occupation of a "land shark," and it would be well if these and
similar pests of society were confined, like their namesakes of the
ocean, to the more sultry latitudes, but unfortunately they are not
altogether without their antitypes and imitators in Great Britain.
[205] The system of starting from a certain fixed sum per acre, named
"the upset price," and selling land at whatever it will fetch beyond
this, is established in most of the Australian colonies. The fund thus
produced is spent in encouraging emigration and providing labourers.
There is another character, which, if not peculiar to Australia, is
called into being only in those colonies where a large extent of land
in its natural state remains unappropriated to any individuals. The
_squatters_, as they are called, are men who occupy with their cattle,
or their habitations, those spots on the confines of a colony or estate,
which have not as yet become any person's private property. By the
natural increase of their flocks and herds, many of these squatters have
enriched themselves; and having been allowed to enjoy the advantages of
as much pasture as they wanted in the bush, without paying any rent
for it to the government, they have removed elsewhere when the spot was
sold, and have not unfrequently gained enough to purchase that or some
other property. Thus the loneliness, the privations, and the perils of a
pastoral life in the bush, have often gained at length their recompense,
and the squatter has been converted into a respectable settler. But this
is too bright a picture to form an average specimen of the class which
we are describing. Unfortunately, many of these squatters have been
persons originally of depraved and lawless habits, and they have made
their residence at the very outskirts of civilization a means of
carrying on all manner of mischief. Or sometimes they choose spots of
waste land near a high road, where the drays halt to get water for the
night, and there the squatters knock up what is called "a hut." In such
places stolen goods are easily disposed of, spirits and tobacco are
procured in return for these at "the sly grog shops," as they are
called; and in short they combine the evils of a gypsy encampment and a
lonely beer-shop in England, only from the scattered population, the
absence of influential inhabitants, and the deplorably bad characters of
the men keeping them, these spirit shops are worse places than would be
tolerated in this country. It is stated that almost all the men by whom
these resorts of iniquity are kept, are either ticket-of-leave men or
emancipists. It is no easy thing to suppress these people, for the
squatters, like the black natives, can find a home wherever they betake
themselves. And it must be owned, that considerable good has resulted in
many instances from these forerunners of civilization having penetrated
into a district, and learned some of its peculiarities and capabilities
before a settlement in it has been regularly formed. Indeed, it would
have been unjust to have been severe with the poor squatter, and his two
or three sheep and cattle, when it had long been the practice of the
most wealthy landowners in the colony, to send their stock-man with
their hundreds of heads of cattle into the bush, to find support exactly
in the same way, and without paying anything to government. The rich
proprietors have a great aversion to the class of squatters, and not
unreasonably, yet they are thus, many of them, squatters themselves,
only on a much larger scale; nor are they more inclined, in many
instances, to pay rent for their privileges than their more humble
brethren. It would appear to be the fairest and best way of dealing with
these various descriptions of squatters, to endeavour to cut up, root
and branch, the "sly grog shops," and road-side gentry, while the owner
of one sheep, or he that possesses 10,000, should be equally compelled
to pay a trifle to government, in proportion to the number of his stock
grazing in the bush, and should likewise have his location registered.
Some regulations of this kind are, it is believed, proposed, if they
have not by this time been brought into operation; and thus we may hope,
that whatever benefits the system of _squatting_ may have produced,
either as an outlet for restless spirits, or as a means of extending
colonization, may still be retained, while the numerous evils that have
sprung up along with it may be checked or got rid of. Respecting one
thing connected with this subject,--the religious knowledge and
spiritual condition of these inhabitants of the wilderness and their
children, the christian inquirer cannot but feel anxious. The result of
christian anxiety upon this matter cannot be better stated than in the
words of one deeply interested about it, and well qualified to weigh the
subject with all its bearings. After expressing his thanks to that
Divine Providence, which had enabled him, quite alone, to travel through
many miles of country almost without cultivation or visible dwellings,
the Bishop of Australia finishes his account of his visitation westward,
in the year 1841, with the following reflections:--"It would be
impossible for any one, without personal observation, to comprehend from
mere description what a field for future labour is now opening in these
as yet uncultivated, unpeopled tracts which I am continually traversing.
But the time is not far distant when many portions of them will be
thronged with multitudes; and in what manner those multitudes are to
be provided with means of instruction sufficient to retain them in the
christian faith, I am not able to foresee; as yet, no such provision is
made or promised. But when, in passing through these scenes, reflections
such as these have crowded upon me, and I am unable to return a
satisfactory answer to the question, 'How shall this be accomplished?'
I can find no better resource than to silence myself with '_Deus
providebit_;'[206] my trust shall be in the tender mercy of God for ever
and ever."
[206] Jehovah Jireh, that is, "the Lord will see or provide." See
translation in margin of Gen. xxii. 14.
Among the beings which, although not natives of the bush, appear to be
peculiar to the wilds of Australia, the class of men called Overlanders
must not be omitted. Their occupation is to convey stock from market to
market, and from one colony to another. They require, of course, a
certain capital to commence business with, and the courage and skill
that are needful in these enterprises must be very great, so that many
of the overlanders are said to be really men of a superior class. The
love of a roving life, the excitement of overcoming dangers both from
natural causes and from the fierce attacks of the natives, and the
romantic and novel situations in which they are frequently placed,
all combine to render some men exceedingly fond of this occupation,
which has also another strong recommendation, that it is often very
profitable. The magnitude of the adventures thus undertaken would
scarcely be credited, and often a whole fortune is risked in the shape
of cattle driven across the wilderness. One very important route pursued
by the overlanders recently has been in the same direction with Captain
Sturt's daring voyage, namely, from New South Wales to South Australia
by the course of the Murray. An instance is mentioned by Captain Grey of
an overlander who arrived at Adelaide in March 1840 from Illawarra, and
his stock at the end of his journey is reckoned up, and found at a
moderate computation to be worth no less than 13,845_l._[207] And during
fifteen months, including the whole of 1839 and part of 1840, there were
brought by the overlanders from New South Wales into South Australia
11,200 head of horned cattle, 230 horses, and 60,000 sheep, the value of
the whole of which amounted to about 230,800_l._ Importations of stock
immediately add a value to land, for what is the use of pasture without
animals to feed upon it? And indeed so large an introduction of those
primitive riches, flocks and herds, is almost sure to give a spur to
industry, and to assist the increasing prosperity of a rising colony.
Under the influence of this cause it is related that land in Western
Australia, which was bought for 23_l._ an acre in December, 1839, was
sold for 60_l._ an acre in February, 1840. And in other colonies where
overland communication takes place, instead of the cattle being brought
by sea, as in Western Australia, the effect is yet more astonishing.
There is much that is noble to admire in the character of the
overlanders, and their efforts have been productive of great advantage
to our recent colonies; indeed, it is perhaps in a great measure to
their exertions that the very rapid progress of Port Phillip and South
Australia may be ascribed. But there appears to be a certain wildness
about their character, which, while it fits them admirably for the
pursuit which they have chosen, renders them restless and uneasy in more
quiet and domestic spheres. The love of gain, too, is rather more of a
ruling passion with them than it ought to be, but that is a fault by no
means peculiar to the overlanders. Yet it affords a curious comparison
and a fresh proof of our nature being a fallen one, when we come
quietly to contrast the pains taken, the toils endured, and the risks
encountered, in order to supply a colony with "the meat that perisheth,"
against the indifference, feebleness, and apathy, which are exhibited
about the spiritual necessities of its inhabitants. Erect the standard
of worldly profit, and thousands will flock to it, unscared by danger,
unwearied by labour. But, meanwhile, how slow is the banner of the
Church in being unfurled, how few rally around it, when it is displayed;
in short, how much wiser in their generation are the children of this
world than the children of light!
[207] See Grey's Travels in Western Australia, vol. ii. p. 188.