man’s mouth, it is not a little humiliating to find the peculiar
institutions under which such abuses thrive, held up, in a volume
of _Essays on Reform_, apparently as a pattern by which England may
profit in remodelling her own. I have neither space nor inclination to
examine the essay in detail. The account which it gives of Australian
prosperity is, no doubt, true enough. Indeed, as regards Victoria,
nobody need be otherwise than sanguine about the ultimate prospects of
a colony of such extraordinary natural wealth. It will require very
bad legislation, and a very bad legislature indeed, to inflict any
irretrievable blow on its material prosperity. The Council is as yet
sound, and works well. Above all, the Bench is excellently filled. It
is true that there are many unrefined and wholly uneducated persons
in the wealthiest class; the largest proprietor (in fee) of land in
Australia, and probably in the world, was once a retail butcher. But
this will right itself by degrees. And, on the other hand, the lowest
class in Victoria is decidedly superior in energy and intelligence to
the same class in England, as is to be expected of the first generation
of colonists who have come out each of his own individual will, and
not forced in a promiscuous mass by any political convulsion. It is a
pleasure to see a man breaking stones on the road, he does it with such
vigour, and one knows he is earning thereby about five shillings a day,
and not only a pittance at the workhouse. Victorian society is like
English, with a thick slice cut off the top and a thin slice off the
bottom. There is, perhaps, more to be said for universal suffrage in
Victoria than in most countries.
But admitting all this, the utmost that the writer of this essay has
proved by it is that these colonies have not been retarded in their
growth by their peculiar institutions. He does indeed contrast the
excellent judges of the present time with a drunken Judge-Advocate
under Governor Bligh. But in those days New South Wales had scarcely
ceased to be anything more than a huge prison, and he might as well
compare a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench to an Old Bailey
practitioner. The press of the present time, no doubt, is superior
to that of fifteen or twenty years ago. So is the press of London
to that of Birmingham or Dublin; but is that because London has a
better political constitution than they have, or because it has many
times their population, and is able to demand and pay for better and
more expensively conducted publications? As to public expenditure,
it is idle to compare old and burdened countries with new ones in
this respect, but is it so great a triumph for a Legislature which
entered upon its labours with no debt, no foreign ministers, no
pauperism, almost no military or naval expenses, no possibility of
war, a population extraordinarily wealthy, and millions of acres of
land to sell when it pleased, not to have exceeded its income (though
in Victoria the Government has fallen back on Protection for revenue),
while England, with more than a third of her revenue going to pay
interest of debt, with the pauperism of an overcrowded country, and
with foreign war constantly threatening, has yet managed, however
little, to continue paying off her debt?
Nobody disputes the desirability of representative institutions for
colonies which have reached a certain stage of development. The
point is whether they have worked the better in Australia for being
so democratic, and this the essay scarcely even attempts to prove.
Still less does it prove that such institutions, even if they are the
best it was practicable to obtain for Australia, would be equally
applicable under utterly different circumstances in England. With
respect to the glaring evils I have alluded to, the writer may perhaps
agree with the author of another essay in the same volume, that
corruption in the Legislature is, ‘except in extreme cases,’ merely
‘an annoying and offensive, and not a dangerous disease.’ This is the
old cry of ‘measures, not men,’ revived. For my own part, I believe
that the tardiest and feeblest legislation is far less pregnant with
fatal consequences than the habitual contemplation of dishonesty in
high places and amongst public men. This is an ever-present pattern
and incentive to evil, which, entering every household, offers its
drop of poison to every ambitious and aspiring man, and slowly
and imperceptibly brings all that is sterling and honourable into
disrepute.
VI.
TASMANIA.
The heat, and drought, and dust of summer begin to make Melbourne
unpleasant by December. In Sydney and Adelaide it is hotter still, and
in Queensland there is almost as great heat as in India, without all
the elaborate Indian appliances and luxuries for making it bearable.
Christmas holidays and lawyers’ Long Vacation are just beginning.
Hence there is a considerable migration about this time of year of
Australians on the mainland who may be ailing or wanting a holiday, to
the cool fresh air of Tasmania; and well filled steamers go about twice
a week from Melbourne to either Launceston or Hobart Town, and once a
fortnight from Sydney.
Our long narrow vessel, crowded with passengers and incommoded with an
unpleasant deck-cargo of two or three hundred sheep, which makes her
roll like a porpoise, steams swiftly away from Melbourne down the dirty
sluggish Yarra-Yarra, between flat marshy banks, more malodoriferous
than the worst parts of the Thames in its worst days. By sunset we
are out of Port Phillip and in Bass’s Straits. Next morning we pass
high jagged rocky islands, rising abruptly and precipitously out of
deep water; then through Banks’s Straits, which seem to be a funnel
for collecting the wind, for it is almost always blowing hard there
from the west; and in the afternoon we glide suddenly out of the rough
water into the serenest and calmest of seas, protected from the fierce
westerly winds by Tasmania, the east coast of which lies a few miles
off to starboard, a pretty peaceful shelving shore, with bold mountains
rising up in the distance. Another night at sea, and we wake up at
daylight as the vessel is rounding the fine precipitous headlands of
Cape Pillar and Cape Raoul, with basaltic columns like those in the
cliffs of the Giant’s Causeway, and is entering Storm Bay with its
wooded islands, narrow-necked peninsulas, and deep inlets running far
into the country, till the eye is puzzled to discern where our course
will be, and to distinguish island from coast. Two hours more and the
estuary of the Derwent is reached, broad, but as we proceed wholly
land-locked by hilly shores, rising gently from the water’s edge, and
green with cultivation near their base, their summits dark with trees
and half-cleared bush. I can think of nothing to compare it with unless
it be the Lake of Thun without its snow mountains, or the Dart at its
widest near Dartmouth; but both are bad comparisons. Soon after, the
dark blue-grey wooded mass of Mount Wellington faces us, rising up
four thousand feet and more; and on the sloping shores of the little
bay below it lies Hobart Town, with wharves along the water’s edge,
and water deep enough for a man-of-war within two hundred yards of the
shore. Sea, river, mountain, forest, farm, and city, are before the eye
almost at once. It is the most beautiful spot for a city I ever saw in
the world.
The steamer comes alongside a deserted looking wharf, occupied only
by two or three drays and carriages, and a knot or two of lounging,
ill-conditioned porters; and with the picture of busy, thriving,
restless, eager Melbourne fresh upon our minds, we land, to find
ourselves in what looks like a pleasant, neat, old-fashioned English
country town, perhaps twice as large and straggling as Dorchester,
Ipswich, or Bury, but ten times more stagnant, dull, and lifeless. A
greater contrast in every way to Melbourne could hardly be conceived.
At Melbourne most people seem to be there only for business, that they
may accumulate and save money and retire with it to England. Of Hobart
Town the most conspicuous and characteristic feature is the number of
small, quiet, comfortable houses in small, pretty, gay gardens, such as
men with incomes of from 300_l._ to 800_l._ might inhabit, and which
look like the abodes of retired sea-captains, merchants, or tradesmen.
The House of Assembly and Custom-house, the Post-office, and other
public offices, are very well placed in a central position not far
from the wharves—handsome, stone-faced, neatly-finished buildings,
free from attempts at florid ornamentation, and though small and
unpretending, more appropriate, and in better taste, than many of the
public buildings of Melbourne or Sydney. They were planned and begun,
most of them, in the days when there was any amount of convict labour
available, and have been finished since, at heavy cost owing to the
dearness of labour, by the help of loans, the interest of which presses
somewhat heavily on the colony. But so seldom is anyone to be seen
passing in or out of them, that one doubts at first sight whether they
can be in use.
The streets are almost empty. Nobody looks busy. Nobody is in a hurry.
Converse with anyone about the state of the Colony, and the word
_depression_ is one of the first you hear, and it will come over and
over again till you are weary of it. Different people mean different
things by it, and feel the tendency from prosperity to adversity in
different ways, but few or none dispute the fact. Elderly ladies lament
the old days when there was more society, and a more abundant supply
of soldier and sailor ball-partners; merchants and tradesmen the time
when Hobart Town promised to be the emporium if not the metropolis
of Australia. It is seldom indeed that anyone can be heard to speak
cheerily of the present, or hopefully of the future of Tasmania. Nor is
the colony suffering merely from one of those temporary checks in the
advance of prosperity, which always occur from time to time in young
colonies,—such as, for instance, the wide-spread ruin in Queensland,
which was mainly, and so strangely, caused by the commercial panic in
London, and which is already passing away. Tasmania (or Van Diemen’s
Land, as it was originally called—the name was changed to efface, if
possible, the very memory of its identity and existence as a convict
colony) is the oldest next to New South Wales of the Australian
colonies, and till twenty or twenty-five years ago was still, next to
it, the most important. Now it is thrown completely into the shade by
Victoria, South Australia, and even by Queensland. For the last fifteen
years the revenue, the trade, the shipping, and the general prosperity
and enterprise of the colony have been steadily decreasing. And
although the population has increased, the increase has been due solely
to the excess of births over deaths, and not at all to immigration—the
number of persons who have left the colony during this period being
considerably in excess of those who have arrived in it, in spite of
very large sums spent out of the public money on immigration—and hence
the population of adults has remained nearly stationary, while only
that of old people and children has increased. A settler of twenty or
thirty years’ standing, especially in the southern part of the island,
can perhaps point to only one or two houses in his township which have
been built since he came.
It is not difficult to account for this state of things. Wool first,
and then gold have been the two principal causes of prosperity in
Australia. Of gold there is not sufficient quantity in Tasmania to pay
for working it. Wool it does produce according to its capabilities;
but it must not be forgotten that the island is comparatively small
(roughly, about as big as Ireland), that much of it is thickly timbered
or for other reasons useless, and only a small proportion available
for pasture. What there is has been almost all taken up and made the
most of, for nearly thirty years past. And so mere excess of numbers
drove men, and young men especially, away from Tasmania, to become
Squatters in Victoria, and in younger colonies where there was more
room for them. For the most profitable sheep-farming, according to the
present system and condition of things, is that which is done on a
large scale. Ten thousand acres is a very small station. I have heard
of as much as seven hundred thousand acres, the size of a large English
county, belonging to one cattle-station in a remote part of Queensland.
It is said that sixty thousand sheep is about the best and most
economical number for a Squatter to have, that being large enough and
not too large for him to manage, with the assistance of his overseer
and shepherds. And sixty thousand sheep take a great many acres of the
thin thirsty Australian grass to keep them alive through the summer
droughts.
It is true that Tasmania with its excellent and temperate climate
is especially suitable for agriculture. According to the government
statistics the average produce of an acre of wheat is about eighteen
bushels. In England the average is said to be twenty-eight, in Ireland
twenty-four, and in France only fifteen and a half.[5] And bearing
in mind that in a new country the cheapness of land and dearness of
labour and of capital renders farming almost of necessity slovenly,
this may be considered a comparatively large yield. But there are
great difficulties in the way of the agriculturist. Most of the rich
chocolate-coloured soil in the north is very heavily timbered, and
requires much labour to clear it. It is seldom indeed that farming
is made remunerative, even by settlers who have had many years’
experience, except in the immediate neighbourhood of a large town. For
it must be remembered that the population of an Australian colony is
very small, comparatively, and its market soon glutted; and that as the
town and manufacturing population is small compared with the country
population, the tendency is always in the long run rather towards over
supply of agricultural produce, and consequent low prices. Now and
then of course there is a violent reaction; but the great fluctuation
in price is of itself an evil and a difficulty. The crop that pays
best one year may, however abundant, be a loss the next.[6] A farmer
needs something of the judgment and experience of a merchant and of
a speculator to enable him to succeed, as well as skill to grow good
crops. And often capital is thrown away upon a soil which is too poor
to repay cultivation; for it is difficult to form a correct opinion of
the value of land which has never been cultivated. One often passes
fields which have been abandoned, and in one place I saw a whole valley
left to return into its original condition of bush.
Tasmania has suffered, too, more perhaps than even New South Wales,
though in a way that is less likely to be permanent, from the abuse
of the convict system. I say the _abuse_ of it, for looking upon
transportation to Australia as a whole, I find it impossible to avoid
the conclusion that it has been a great and conspicuous success. But
poor Tasmania was very hardly treated. In 1840—rashly and needlessly
as Lord Grey thought[7]—transportation to New South Wales was suddenly
stopped, and the whole stream turned on the unfortunate island. For
many years after this the convicts far outnumbered the free population.
In 1845 there were 25,000 male convicts in the island, and the country
was simply a huge penal settlement without even sufficient room for
expansion, the moral sink and sewer of England. It is true that in this
colony the convicts were seldom able to marry or leave children, or
settle on the land, as they did in New South Wales, and that the great
majority left the country as soon as their sentences expired, so that
considering the immense number brought there, the number now remaining
is surprisingly small. It may also be true, as is asserted (though I
hardly believe it), that crime measured by the number of convictions is
now not more frequent than in England, in proportion to the population.
Still in one way or another they have left a curse behind them. The
settlers were demoralized by the assignment system, which while it
lasted gave them almost the power of slave-holders. A convict could be
hired for little more than the cost of maintaining him; sometimes in
consideration of leisure allowed him, he even paid money to his master
in addition to his services; and the master could get him even punished
at the public expense by sending him to the nearest magistrate with the
written message, ‘Please give the bearer twenty lashes, and return him
to yours truly.’
Free labour, as is always the case, suffered from contact with forced
labour. The convict taught the free labourer many bad lessons, and one
of them was how to do the least possible amount of work for a day’s
wages. The accepted standard of a day’s work became a low one. Wages
might fall, but such labour was dear at any price. All this time the
Home Government was spending about half a million annually in the
colony, and was making roads, harbours, and wharves, on a magnificent
scale by convict labour; so that the cost was not felt in taxation.
Government originated everything, planned everything, paid for
everything. An unhealthy artificial condition of society was produced
which tended to enervate all classes, and left the colony ill prepared
to stand against, or profit by, the events which followed. In deference
to the general outcry at its gross abuse, transportation was suddenly
stopped, and with it ceased most of the annual half million from
England. At this time Victoria had for some years past been attracting
from Tasmania many of the most enterprising and adventurous of its
population, but from the moment when the wonderful news of the gold
came, it seemed as if none would be left behind but old men, women,
and children. Most would indeed have done better to stay behind and
cultivate the land. For wheat rose till it sold for five to six pounds
a quarter in Melbourne, and hay at from twenty to forty pounds a ton. A
great trade sprang up with Melbourne in corn, timber, vegetables, and
fruit, and there was a hope that Tasmania would establish itself as the
granary of Victoria. But year by year this trade has been diminishing,
and now American flour and even American timber undersell Tasmanian in
the Melbourne market. Some fortunes indeed were made in those years of
gold, but they were comparatively few and small, and those who made
them have for the most part invested them elsewhere, or been content
to live quietly on the interest of the money rather than risk their
capital in doubtful enterprises.
For there more than elsewhere in Australia—as much, perhaps, take the
whole year round, as anywhere in the world—do scenery and climate
invite retirement to country life. It is the Capua of the Australias.
Snow scarcely falls except to ornament the summits of Mount Wellington
and of the distant ranges of the uninhabited and almost unexplored west
coast. The frosts are seldom fatal even to the tenderest plant. The
stifling hot winds of the continent are cooled by a hundred miles of
sea before they reach the island. Nor is the air stagnant or sultry.
Hot as the sun is by day, the summer nights are cooler than in England.
English trees, flowers, and fruits, flourish with a rare luxuriance,
side by side with pines from Norfolk Island and New Zealand. Geraniums
blaze out in huge pink and scarlet masses, growing in almost wild
profusion. The English sweet-briar has been introduced, and has spread
of itself till in its luxuriance it has become a noxious weed to
the farmers. Fruit follows fruit so fast under the early summer sun
that apples ripen almost before strawberries are over. It is in such
profusion that it lies rotting on the ground for want of mouths to eat
it. Life is long here, and you seldom see the pale, thin, dried-up,
prematurely old faces and lean figures of the other colonies, which
almost make one doubt whether the English race was meant to live in
climates such as those of Queensland and of South Australia. Sometimes
indeed it seems as if the climate were _too_ Capuan, too little
compelling to exertion. Invalids bask in it, rheumatic people find in
it relief from pain, and the consumptive live out the full tale of
their days. But the strong and active seem to lose something of their
vigour, to ride where they used to walk, to walk where they used to
run, to drink stimulants when they used to eat. Children seem to grow
up less hardy for want of the nipping of the keen frost and the bitter
blast of the English east wind to compel them to activity and to make
repose for half the year, except by the fire-side, impossible.[8]
VII.
TASMANIA (_continued_).
Circumstances have made Tasmania lean more than any other of the
Australian Colonies towards sober conservatism in its ideas and its
social and political aspect. Perhaps the youthful ideal of those
who are now middle-aged and influential was generally the British
regimental officer, as he was to be found, some twenty or thirty years
ago, in quarters at Hobart Town, or retired and occupied with his
grant of land up the country. For in those days there were sometimes
a couple of regiments in the colony, which formed no unimportant
or inconsiderable proportion of its population, besides a number
of government officials in various capacities. The original landed
proprietors were mostly retired officers of the army or navy, army
doctors, or other government officials, to whom up to about thirty-five
years ago grants of land were made by the Crown.
Land was not worth very much then. Ploughing your field with a sentry
keeping guard at one end of it lest you should be speared by a black
fellow crawling out of the bush, was farming under difficulties: to
say nothing of the probability of having the station cleared out by
bushrangers from time to time, and the chance of being shot, as a
precaution against identification, by men who had already forfeited
their lives.
It is better than any novel to get an old Tasmanian settler to tell
you about those old times, the uproarious, dare-devil, killing and
robbing heroic age of the colony. The crowning event, the great joke of
the time—soon after which things began to get comparatively peaceable
and prosaic—was the ‘black war,’ as it is ironically called. This was
one of the wildest and most impracticable schemes ever devised by a
really wise man, for catching the black fellows alive and unhurt and
deporting them to some island where they might be both harmless and
safe. All available soldiers and settlers were mustered and posted in a
continuous line across the south-eastern corner of the country, which
line, advancing day by day and gradually converging, was at length
to enclose and catch them as in a trap. It was like sending half a
dozen mastiffs to drive rabbits out of a wood, as almost every one
knew beforehand it would be. Somebody caught (I think) one black man
and a woman, very much by accident, and no more were even _seen_. But
30,000_l._ or 40,000_l._ had been spent on the campaign, and when the
campaigners sent the bill home accompanied by a memorial setting out
magniloquently the glorious results attained, John Bull unsuspectingly
paid it, and the colony was so much the richer for its ‘black war.’
Very soon after this—but in no sort of way in consequence of
it—the whole race of aborigines came one by one and voluntarily
gave themselves up to a man named Robinson, who had acquired an
extraordinary influence over them, and who deserves to be nominated
patron saint of the colony. They were settled on Flinders Island and
kindly treated, but nevertheless died off fast. The small remnant
was afterwards settled at Oyster Cove, an exquisitely lovely spot
on D’Entrecasteaux’ Channel, where the survivors, now only three in
number, are to be seen.