of so much distress, with so large an income, and so small a
population as the colony and its dependent settlements are known
to possess. The former, it has been seen, may be estimated in
round numbers at £170,000, the latter at 20,000 souls: so
that if the annual income were equally divided among the entire
population, and they were all agriculturists, and could furnish
themselves with food, (I make this supposition, because it is at
their option to become agriculturists, and it is consequently a
legitimate inference, that it is not the interest of such as have
not embraced this alteration to do so) they would each have man,
woman, and child, 8l. 10s. yearly for the purchase
of articles of foreign growth and manufacture alone. This I am
ready to allow, is comparatively a much larger sum than could be
appropriated by the inhabitants of this country to similar
purposes; and it would therefore appear on the first view,
incompatible with the doleful picture of distress which I have
drawn. If, however, the remoteness of the colony from England,
India, and China, the three principal supplying countries, be
duly considered, and the great expence of freight and insurance
unavoidably attached to so long a navigation, an expence which in
the first of these instances, is augmented in a two-fold degree,
by the entire absence of return cargoes; if it be stated that
these local disadvantages alone, render it impossible for the
importers to dispose of their merchandize for less than fifty per
cent. on the prime cost to their immediate purchasers, and that
at least three fourths of the population are obliged from the
want of ready money, to buy on long credits of these secondary
agents, who fashion their prices according to the nature and
extent of their customers' embarrassments, sometimes contenting
themselves with a second advance of fifty per cent.; but more
frequently affixing to their goods a profit of a hundred, a
hundred and fifty, and two hundred per cent.: if it be
recollected how far these grievous exactions are aggravated by
the system of vassalage just described, a system which places all
the unfortunate wretches who are reduced to it at the absolute
mercy of their rapacious landlords; if the profligate and
improvident habits and disposition of the generality of the
colonists be taken into the estimate, and their total disregard
of order and economy in their domestic arrangements; but above
all, if their unfortunate propensity to the excessive use of
spirituous liquors be superadded; a propensity which like Aaron's
rod swallows up every other passion, and for the momentary
gratification of which they willingly sacrifice every prospect of
present enjoyment, and deliberately entail on themselves and
their families lasting privation and want; I say if due
consideration be given to all these circumstances, it will be no
difficult matter to believe in the sad reality of the general
wretchedness and penury which I have depicted. But it must be
further evident that this equal division of the colonial revenue
has been assumed merely by way of exemplification, and that it is
a fiction, the realization of which is beyond the extreme verge
of possibility: a fiction which never has been and never can be
verified. In this colony as in every other community, there is a
regular gradation of property, and perhaps there is no country on
the face of the earth, except Russia, where it is so partially
distributed. If then I have reconciled the probability of the
wretched condition of the colonists, with the assumption of an
equality of wealth, when there is, in fact, the greatest
inequality, it must be evident that the picture which I have
drawn, pregnant and glowing as it is with distress, is far from
surcharged, and still requires both colouring and expression to
convey a perfect representation of the scene.
Of the whole colonial income about £100,000 annually may
be considered as arising from the labours of the agricultural
body. This is undoubtedly that portion of the colonial wealth
which gets into most general circulation; but even _it_ is
far from undergoing that minute subdivision and universal
diffusion which are requisite for the maintenance of a constant
internal circulating medium. Created in the first instance by the
government in payment of the grain, meat, etc. furnished by the
settlers, it is immediately handed over by them to the traders to
whom they may be indebted, and from these again passes to the
importing merchants, on whom they may be dependent for their
supplies of merchandize, who in their turn eventually transmit it
to their foreign correspondents. It may consequently be perceived
that the purchases and sales which must be incessantly occurring,
besides those to which this part of the colonial income is thus
devoted, such as the sales of provisions in the markets, the
payment of wages, and, in fine, the infinite transactions to
which the wants or the whims of society are eternally giving
birth, and to which a common medium of determinate value is
essential are but little, if indeed at all facilitated by a sum
of money, which after passing through a few hands, disappears
from the colony for ever. To prevent, therefore, the interchanges
and activity of the community from being brought to a stand, it
became necessary to create some other circulating medium; and as
the government took no part in this highly important affair, the
whole burden of the arrangement fell upon the inhabitants. The
arrangement itself was, in consequence, such as might have been
expected from their circumstances and situation: the whole of
them who had any real, or apparent pretensions to responsibility,
became with one accord bankers; issuing small promissory notes to
provide for their minuter occasions, merely on the strength of
their credit, and frequently in anticipation of their means. This
"Colonial currency," as it was termed, soon experienced that
depreciation in the market, compared with the government, or
sterling money, which it was natural to expect from the doubtful
circumstances of many of its issuers. In a short time government
money could not be had for it under a discount of fifty per
cent.; still the drawers of these promissory notes were compelled
by the decisions of the court of civil jurisdiction to pay them
at par, whenever they were presented; so that all the persons of
real responsibility, who had been induced in the first instance
from necessity to adopt this system, withdrew their bills from
the market, and naturally preferred purchasing with government
money the notes of others at this depreciated rate, to the
issuing at the same rate notes of their own, which they would be
eventually obliged to take up at par. The consequence was that
all the subsequent issuers of these notes were needy adventurers,
who possessing little or no property adopted this method of
supplying their extravagance, or entering into desperate
speculations that could hardly succeed, in violation of every
principle of honesty, and at the expence of the industrious and
responsible part of the community. This subsequent currency,
therefore, encountered a still further depreciation; and when
government money could be at all obtained for it, it was only at
a discount of 100, 150, and even 200 per cent. Such, however, has
been the necessity for a circulating medium of some sort or
other, that the public, as if by a general implied consent,
without any expressed convention, have permitted the existence
and increase of this worthless substitute, and have thus affixed
a kind of nominal value to that which is in reality worth
nothing.
To any one, who has not fully considered the difficulty
attending the exchange of one commodity for another, and the
impossibility of apportioning at all times, what one man may have
to dispose of to the exact value of what another man may have to
offer in return, an impossibility that would frequently prevent
the exchange altogether, and thus subject the parties to mutual
inconvenience and distress, the rude system of barter would
appear preferable to so vile a common standard of value as the
existing currency. Its badness, indeed, has been the means of
introducing the system of barter as far as it was practicable;
but as the entire introduction of this system would be hardly
compatible with the first imperfect elements of society, the
civilization of the colonists has imposed a limit to it, and
prescribed a necessity for the toleration of the present
circulating medium, which nothing but the creation of a better
can supersede. Two attempts were made to remedy this evil, but
they both in the event proved abortive; the richer class of the
inhabitants on these occasions formed combinations and entered
into resolutions not to receive in payment the bills of any
individuals who had not been admitted into their society. To
prevent a recurrence of the loss, which the original responsible
issuers of currency had sustained by its depreciation in the
market, they affixed to it themselves a specific depreciation,
promising in the body of their notes to pay them on demand in
government money at a discount, in the first of these instances,
of twenty-five per cent., and in the last of fifty per cent. But
it must be evident that a currency of this nature, payable on
demand, became of equal value with the sterling money of the
government, to those who took it at the stipulated depreciation;
and it was accordingly no sooner in circulation, than it got into
the hands of the importing merchants, and was presented to the
drawers for payment. It was thus too good for its intended
purpose; and the old worthless currency, which had been for a
while proscribed, gradually returned into circulation. The
present governor, sensible of the advantage which the colony
would derive from its supercession, and from the substitution of
another of intrinsic value in its stead, caused ten thousand
pounds worth of dollars to be sent from India, and had a piece
struck out of the middle of each, to which he affixed by
proclamation, the value of fifteen pence, and to the remainder
that of five shillings, making the whole dollar worth six
shillings and three pence. This money he caused to be given in
payment of the various articles of internal produce received into
the king's stores; but as they were exchanged every month, if
presented to the commissariat department, for bills on the lords
of the treasury, in the same manner as the government receipts
had been exchanged previously, they have not realized the hopes
of abolishing the currency, with which they were issued. Some few
of them, indeed, have from time to time eluded the grasp of the
merchants and traders, and got in consequence of the minuteness
of their separate value into temporary circulation; but the use
of the original currency has neither been superseded nor
diminished.
That the colonists should have been thus forced during so long
a period, in spite of all their efforts, and contrary to the
desire of their government, to tolerate a medium of circulation
possessing no intrinsic value whatever, and dependent solely on a
general, constrained, and tacit consent for its support and
duration, is, I should apprehend, one of the most forcible proofs
which it is in the nature of things to adduce, in illustration of
their present poverty and wretchedness. It is impossible to offer
a more satisfactory demonstration of the inferiority of their
means to their necessities. Important under every point of view
as is the establishment of a safe currency, such is the
irresistible pressure of their debts, so much is their
expenditure superior to their revenue, that they can devote no
portion of it to the most urgent purpose of domestic economy: the
whole is absorbed, and does not suffice to procure those articles
of foreign supply, which are absolutely indispensable to
civilized life.
By the last intelligence from the colony it appears, indeed,
that a company has undertaken the establishment of a colonial
bank, and obtained a charter for this purpose from the governor;
but I should imagine they cannot possibly succeed in creating a
permanent medium of circulation. The constant run that their
bills will have on them for payment, in consequence of the
imports of the colony being so much greater than its income, will
soon occasion them to exchange the whole of their capital for the
mortgage securities on which they at present issue it; and
although this circumstance will not perhaps detract from the
profits of this institution, it will render the toleration of the
existing currency, if not of undiminished, still of indispensable
necessity.* The introduction, therefore, of a safe and sufficient
medium of circulation may be still pronounced a desideratum, and
one of the first importance to the general prosperity of the
colonists. The government in their present distressed situation,
is perhaps the only power competent to the accomplishment of this
beneficial object, and it is to be hoped that they will no longer
delay effecting such a great and substantial amelioration.
[* This is an event which the colonists do not appear
to anticipate. It is the general belief that the colonial
currency has been crushed for ever; but I am greatly mistaken if
that vile medium of circulation will not again revive before the
expiration of another twelve-month, unless either the capital of
the bank be greatly increased, or its operations be in future
confined to the discounting of bills at a short date, to the
utter exclusion of the system of advancing money on mortgage
securities.]
Amidst the numerous deplorable consequences that have been
attendant on this constant state of embarrassment, none perhaps
is more deeply to be lamented than the great check which this
difficulty of finding a profitable occupation for labour has
proved to the progress of population. Mr. Malthus, who has
immortalized himself by his essay on this branch of political
economy, has so satisfactorily shewn that the increase of
population is proportioned to the facility of procuring
subsistence, and administering to the various wants of a family,
that it is quite unnecessary for me to repeat arguments with
which every one ought to be familiar, to prove that this colony
has not been exempt from the destructive influence of causes
whose operation has been steady and invariable in all ages and in
all countries. The inference that this difficulty has been a
preventive to marriage, and to the consequent progress of
population is self-evident: to be understood it only requires to
be stated. But the numerical increase of the colony has been
checked in a still greater degree, perhaps by the constant
returns from its shores which are daily occasioned by the same
causes. What inducement, in fact, exists for any person to remain
there who has the power of quitting it? Who would voluntarily
become an inhabitant of a country where he has no rights, no
possessions, that are sacred and inviolable? And where to this
insecurity of person and property are superadded the greatest
impediments to the extension of industry? A country of this kind,
it may be easily imagined, possesses no allurements for those who
have ever breathed a freer atmosphere; and it is not to be
wondered at, that hundreds of convicts on the expiration of their
several terms of transportation should be continually leaving a
country, where the freeman and the slave are alike subjected to
the uncontrolled authority of an individual; where the trial by
jury is unknown, and an odious military tribunal substituted in
its stead; and where there is no representative body to protect
them in the enjoyment of their rights, and to secure them either
from the imposition of arbitrary and destructive taxes, or from
the influence of unjust and impolitic laws.
How far these two great checks to population which I have just
mentioned, have operated, may be best ascertained from the last
census taken in the colony in the month of November 1817. At that
time it appears that the population of all the settlements,
whether in New Holland or Van Diemen's Land, amounted only to
twenty thousand three hundred and seventy-nine souls. It is not
in my power to obtain returns of all the convicts who have been
landed at various times in this colony; but as it is now about
thirty years since the period of its foundation, very little
doubt can be entertained that the total of them must have nearly
equalled the amount of the actual population.* The number
transported thither for some years past cannot be estimated at
less than two thousand annually; yet notwithstanding this vast
yearly numerical accession, notwithstanding the unparalleled
salubrity of the climate, and the consequent small proportion
which the number of deaths bears to the number of births, the
population of the colony has been found to advance at a
comparatively slow pace. It cannot be supposed that it could ever
have been in the intention of the government, that those persons
whom the sentence of the law had exiled to these remote shores,
should thus be incessantly returning to those scenes, which had
witnessed their former irregularities and condemnation. However
sincere their reformation, it must be evident that with a
blemished character, the difficulty of obtaining employment and
procuring an honest livelihood, would be almost insuperable. It
has been accordingly found that these unfortunate persons have
generally renewed their ancient habits, and ended their career
either by falling sacrifices on the scaffold to the often
violated laws of their country, or by imposing on the government
a necessity for the second, and in many instances for the third
time of re-transporting them to this colony, where, if sufficient
encouragement and protection had been afforded them in the first
instance, they would have gladly remained, and have continued
good and useful members of society.
[* This conjecture has been verified by a publication
which has lately appeared from the pen of the Honourable Henry
Grey Bennet, M. P. intituled, "A Letter to Lord Viscount Sidmouth
on the Transportation Laws; the State of the Hulks, and of the
Colonies in New South Wales." From this it appears that from May,
1787, to January, 1817, the number of convicts transported
thither amounted to seventeen thousand; so that the entire
increase which has taken place in the population in the course of
thirty years, both from emigration and births, cannot be
estimated at more than four thousand souls, so numerous have been
the returns of convicts after the expiration of their
sentences.]
It is here but candid to confess, that one of the leading
causes why so many of this class are continually quitting the
colony, has been their desire to rejoin their wives and families.
This motive, however, no longer exists; since in a dispatch from
the noble secretary of state for the colonial department, to
Governor Macquarie, of which the receipt has been for some time
past acknowledged, it was directed that "returns should be
occasionally sent home of such convicts as may have applied for
permission for their wives to join them; and that it should be
therein stated whether such persons have the means of maintaining
their wives and families, in the event of their being allowed to
proceed to the colony." Measures have been already taken to carry
the humane intention here manifested by his majesty's government
into effect; and many hundreds who would otherwise have quitted
the colony, will now remain there, and thus both the permanency
of their reformation will be guaranteed, and the march of
colonization greatly accelerated. Generous Britain, not more
renowned in arts and arms, than in mercy and benevolence; may thy
supremacy be coeval with thy humanity! Or if that be impossible;
if thou be doomed to undergo that declension and decay, from
which no human institutions, no works of man appear to be exempt,
may the records of thy philanthropy hold the world in subject awe
and admiration, long after the dominion of thy power shall have
passed away! May they soften the hearts of future nations, and be
a shining sun that shall illuminate both hemispheres, and chase
from every region of the earth the black reign of barbarism and
cruelty for ever!
While the existing system of government is thus rapidly
undermining the general prosperity and freedom, and presenting
the greatest checks to the progress of colonization, it is but
natural to conclude from the pertinacity with which it is
maintained, that it is at least productive of some beneficial
results to the power to which it owes its origin and existence.
It were a species of political anomaly to suppose that any order
of things diametrically opposite to the interests of the
governed, should be persisted in, unless it were attended with
some positive advantage to the governors. Ridiculous, however, as
in every case perhaps but the present such a supposition would
be, it is verified in the instance of this colony; since the
system pursued there, is not only destructive of the vital
interests of the inhabitants at large, but at the same time,
burdensome to this country, and contraventory of the very
intentions with which this settlement was established. This
assertion I shall shortly prove, and then leave it to more
sagacious politicians than myself, to demonstrate the consistency
of what appears to me the most absurd and incongruous paradox
that is to be met with in the history of governments. And first
that the present system is burdensome to this country, and what
is worse, must become every year still more so, is evident from
the gradually progressive augmentation which has taken place in
the expenditure of this colony. From 1788 to 1797, the total
expence was £1,037,230, or £86,435 per annum; from
1798 to 1811, it amounted to £1,634,926, or £116,709
per annum; and from 1812 to 1815, both inclusive, to
£793,827, or £198,456 per annum. In 1816, the expence
was £193,775 10s. 8¾d. and in 1817 it
was £229,152 6s. 3¼d. being nearly
treble the annual amount in the year 1797. This estimate, indeed,
includes the cost of transportation; and the rapid increase that
has taken place of late years in the sum total, has been in a
considerable degree occasioned by the great increase in the
number of criminals sent out to the colony; but still that there
has been a regularly progressive augmentation to the internal
expenditure is quite incontrovertible.
It requires no great portion of discernment to foretel that
while the present prohibitory system remains in force; while the
colony is alike prevented from profiting by its natural
productions, and from calling into life the artificial ones of
which it is capable, that it must continue an increasing burthen
and expence to the power on which it is dependent for support,
and which thus unwisely restrains its exertions. If the
consideration of the benefits which this country might eventually
derive from encouraging the growth and exportation of such
products as this colony might furnish; if the prospect of finding
at no very remote period in a part of our own dominions, various
raw materials essential to the fabrication of some of our staple
manufactures, and for which we are at present wholly dependent on
foreigners; if, in fine, the certainty of extending, instead of
destroying, a market for the consumption of those manufactures
themselves, be not motives of sufficient weight and cogency to
draw the attention of his majesty's ministers to the impolitic
and destructive order of things, which prevents the
accomplishment of these desirable ends; it is at least to be
hoped in these times of universal embarrassment, when the cry of
distress is resounding from one end of the kingdom to the other,
that the desire of effecting a retrenchment in this part of the
public expenditure, which has swelled to so enormous an amount,
solely from ignorance and mismanagement, will at length excite
inquiry, and give rise to a system that will unfetter the
colonists, and by gradually enabling them to support themselves,
no longer render them an unproductive and increasing burden to
this country. It is useless, and indeed absurd, for the
government to be sending out incessant injunctions for economy,
and to be eternally insisting upon the necessity of effecting
retrenchments, which their own impolitic restrictions render
impossible. The addition which is annually made to the population
of the colony must occasion a corresponding expenditure on the
part of the colonial government. The convicts, who are
transported thither, were maintained at a great expence while in
this country, and cannot be supported without cost there. So long
as the avenues to industry and enterprize are closed, it is
ridiculous to imagine that the colonists can undertake the
maintenance of a body of men, for whose labour they can find no
profitable occupation. The expence, therefore, of supporting the
great mass of convicts who are constantly arriving in this
colony, must necessarily increase in spite of all the
exhortations of the government, and all the efforts of the
governor, whoever he may be, to carry them into effect. The
present governor, indeed, has contrived in some measure to comply
with these recommendations of retrenchment with which he has been
harrassed; but his obedience has been attended with the adoption
of a most pernicious and indefensible system, that of granting
too promiscuously tickets of leave to convicts, before sufficient
time had elapsed for ascertaining the reality of their
reformation, and their title to so important an indulgence. This
privilege, which exempts them from the public works, and enables
them to seek employment in every direction throughout the colony,
it may be perceived, turns loose a set of men, who had been
solemnly pronounced to be improper and dangerous members of
society; and affords them an unrestrained opportunity of preying
upon the industrious and deserving, and of committing fresh
enormities, before they have made the atonement affixed to their
original offences, and required not more to uphold the
distinction which ought always to be drawn between virtue and
vice, than from a due regard to their future welfare and
regeneration. It is principally to the introduction of the ticket
of leave system that the considerable reductions which have been
effected of late years in the expences of the colony are to be
ascribed. How far this most pernicious and immoral system has
been carried, may be seen by reference to the colonial
expenditure for the four years anterior to 1816. In 1812 it
amounted to £176,781; in 1813 to £235,597; in 1814 to
£231,362; and in 1815 it had fallen to £150,087. In
the two following years, indeed, it has been seen that there has
been a considerable increase of expenditure; but still such has
been the extension of the ticket of leave system that
notwithstanding four thousand six hundred and fifty-nine convicts
were transported between January, 1812, and January, 1817, the
expences of the colony for this latter year were £6445 less
than for the year 1813; those of 1817 only amounting to
£229,152, while those of the year 1813 were £235,597.
This violent and unjustifiable mode of retrenchment, however, has
not been put into such extensive practice with impunity: it has
been attended with its natural and inevitable results, a
proportionate increase of demoralization and crime. The proof of
this assertion I shall rest on the following government
order:--
"Sydney, 30th August, 1817. In consequence of the
frequent robberies which have been of late committed between
Sydney and Paramatta; his Excellency the Governor deems it
expedient earnestly to recommend to persons in general to travel
only during the day time, and particularly to those who have the
charge of loaded carts, to set out from Sydney and Paramatta
respectively so early after sun-rise as to be enabled to reach
the place of their destination before sun-set. And with a view to
afford all possible protection to travellers, his Excellency
directs the principal superintendant of police at Sydney from and
after Wednesday the 3d of September next, to order two constables
from thence to patrole the road every night between Sydney and
Powell's Half-way House; and in like manner the principal
magistrate at Paramatta to order two constables from that place
to patrole the road every night between Paramatta and Powell's
Half-way House. The duty of such constables to commence at
sun-set and cease at sun-rise, until further orders. "The
magistrates are _particularly enjoined not to grant passes to
convicts either having tickets of leave or otherwise, excepting
on actual duty, or in cases of real emergency where the object is
satisfactorily explained to the magistrate_."
This injunction to the magistrates not to grant the ticket of
leave-men passes except under particular circumstances would afford
the public very little additional security against their depredations;
since their total exemption from public or individual employment,
places them out of all restraint except such as may arise from
the surveillance of the police, which even in Sydney is badly
organized, because not sufficiently numerous, and to which in the
interior towns and districts it would be a farce to apply the
name of "Police" at all.
I am aware that the governor has been induced to this measure
in compliance with positive instructions, rather than in
conformity with his own judgment. But a system in such direct
violation of every principle of justice, morality, and
expediency, can never be long tolerated. Its continuance, in
fact, would soon annihilate all industry, and convert the colony
into a den of thieves and murderers, unfit for the abode of
virtue and honesty, and dangerous to the government itself which
had authorized it.--It is an extreme which cannot endure, and
which is of so violent a nature that it will beget a remedy for
itself, and compel the government to recal into its employment,
and reduce under salutary restraint, a set of persons, who ought
never to have been freed from it till the expiration of their
sentences, or, at most, till they had given the clearest proof of
a sincere reformation. This system, therefore, of granting
tickets of leave to convicts shortly after their arrival, though
undoubtedly attended with a considerable saving to the
government, is of too immoral and dangerous a tendency to be
carried to any considerable extent; so that the expences of the
colony great, unnecessarily great as they are, must infallibly
increase with the progress of transportation, so long as the
grievous disabilities and impolitic restrictions under which the
colonists are groaning, remain unrepealed.
Having thus shewn that this colony has hitherto been an
increasing burthen to this country, and that it must necessarily
continue so under its present unwise constitution, I proceed in
the next place to prove that its existing system of government is
also contraventory of the philanthropic intentions which gave
rise to its foundation. The principal object which the government
of this country had in view was undoubtedly the reformation of
the thousands exiled to these distant shores. The punishment
which it thus inflicted, in banishing them from their native
country, and separating them from their friends and connexions,
was not the end itself, but the means which it employed to effect
this humane and laudable purpose. Has then the colony in any one
point of view realized this comprehensive and philanthropic
scheme of morality and regeneration? It has, indeed, proved a
receptacle for those whose crimes rendered them unfit for the
community which rejected them from its bosom, and in so far has
been of some utility to the public; but have the restraints to
which they have been subjected; has the system, in fact, by which
they have been governed during their exile, generally revived
that morality and virtue, the absence of which propelled them in
the first instance to the commission of crime, and will always
continue them in the same career of vice and punishment? Have
those, who have expiated their original offence, by undergoing
the penalty which the law annexed to it, experienced a
reformation in their principles and conduct? And are they
generally qualified either to return to the country that banished
them, or to become good and useful citizens in the one by which
they have been adopted; and which, since it has constantly
witnessed their deportment, can best appreciate the reality and
extent of their merits? The records of the several courts of
criminal judicature are the surest criterion by which to judge of
this important particular, and will be found decidedly
confirmatory of the alarming augmentation of immorality and
crime, which distinguishes every succeeding year, and that too in
a proportion far exceeding what would be naturally consequent on
the increase in the population.
On reference to the Sydney Gazattes for the year 1817, I find
that there were in all ninety-two persons tried by the criminal
court. The offences with which they were charged were as follow:
1st, For murder eleven; four of whom were convicted and executed:
two were adjudged only guilty of manslaughter; and five were
acquitted. 2dly, For burglaries, eight, five of whom were
capitally convicted, but their sentences afterwards commuted into
transportation to the Coal River for life; five were transported
thither for fourteen years, one for seven years, and one was
acquitted. 3dly, For highway robbery, one, who was transported to
Newcastle for fourteen years. 4thly, One incendiary, transported
for life. 5thly, One for cutting and maiming, acquitted. 6thly,
Nine for cattle stealing; of whom two were capitally convicted,
their sentence afterwards commuted into transportation for life;
five were originally sentenced to the same punishment, one
transported for fourteen years, and one was acquitted. 6thly,
Three for sheep stealing; all capitally convicted, but their
sentences commuted into transportation for life. 7thly, Two for
horse stealing; one of whom was capitally convicted but not
executed, the other sentenced to solitary confinement. 8thly, One
for rape, but acquitted. 9thly, Twenty-seven for privately
stealing in dwelling and out-houses; two of whom were transported
for fourteen years, nine for seven years, one for four years,
four for three years, two for two years, one sentenced to
solitary confinement, and six acquitted. 10thly, Two for forgery,
found guilty, but sentence deferred. 11thly, Two for receiving
stolen goods, one of whom was sentenced to the pillory and to
four years transportation, and the other to transportation alone
for the same period. 12thly, Five for pig stealing; of whom two
were transported to Newcastle for fourteen years, one was flogged
and put in the pillory, one transported to Newcastle for two
years, and one acquitted. Lastly, Nineteen for petty larceny; of
whom one was sent to Newcastle for four years, one for three
years, fourteen were sentenced to various terms of solitary
confinement, and three acquitted.
From this statement, therefore, it appears that during the
year 1817, out of the ninety-two persons who were tried for
various offences, which it will be seen were for the most part of
a heinous nature, no fewer than seventy-three were convicted,
fifteen capitally, four of whom were executed, the remaining
eleven had their sentences commuted into transportation to the
Coal River for life; that there were six others originally
sentenced to the same punishment; that there were five
transported for fourteen years, ten for seven years, and that the
remaining thirty-seven were either transported for terms under
seven years, or were punished by solitary confinement. Appalling,
however, as this catalogue of crime must be acknowledged, when
compared with _that_ which could be produced in any other
community of similar extent, it would still appear on the first
view to argue well in favour of the reformatory influence of this
colony: since Governor Bligh in his examination before the
committee of the House of Commons, in the year 1812, presented a
document purporting to be a list of criminals tried between
August, 1806, and August, 1807, from which it appears that one
hundred and seventeen* persons were arraigned before the criminal
court during this interval. If we were therefore to abide by the
records of the criminal court alone, we should draw the most
satisfactory conclusions with respect to the progress of
reformation in the morals and habits of the people since that
period. The comparison, indeed, between the catalogue of crime in
the years 1806 and 1817, would be most gratifying; as
notwithstanding that the population of the colony rather more
than doubled itself since the former year, the latter presents a
decrease in the number of criminals of twenty-five, or in other
words, crimes would appear to have diminished in the ratio of
about 9/4 to 1. If the records, therefore, of the criminal court
were decisive on the subject, it would be impossible not to
confess that the system pursued in this colony has fully answered
the humane intentions for which it was founded. But unhappily
these records are no standard by which to judge of the
reformatory tendency of the system. During Governor Bligh's
administration, all offenders except those who were charged with
the most trifling misdemeanors, were tried by the criminal court.
He was a second Draco, who considered the smallest offence
deserving of death: and wo to the wretch whom the criminal court
doomed to this punishment, for he invariably carried its sentence
into execution. His successor, however, has acted on more
merciful principles; and, besides, crimes have so rapidly
multiplied of late years, that the judge advocate would not have
sufficient time for presiding in the two civil courts of which he
is the head, were he obliged to dispose of all the culprits that
might be arraigned in the criminal court. But it is well known to
those who are at all conversant with the state of the colony,
that but a very small portion of the offences which are committed
there, are now brought under the jurisdiction of this court. The
majority of the criminals who are now tried by it are either free
persons, or such as have obtained emancipations; i.e. those whom
the various governors have made free in the colony, but who are
not at liberty to quit it. The benches of magistrates, and the
superintendent of police, are delicate of deciding on charges in
which the members of these two free classes are implicated; but
they dispose of offenders already under the sentence of the law
in a summary manner, either by transporting them to the Coal
River, by putting them in the gaol gangs, by sending them (if
they happen to be females) to the factory, or by simply ordering
them corporal punishment, unless they are charged with murder, or
some capital felony; and even in this latter case they frequently
inflict some summary punishment. With respect to the first of
these summary modes of punishment, transportation to the Coal
River, it has already been stated that the population of this
settlement amounted in the year 1817, to five hundred and fifty
souls: of these not more than one hundred, including the civil
and military establishments, and the settlers and their families
on the upper banks of the river, were free. The remaining four
hundred and fifty, therefore, were persons who had been convicted
of crimes either by the criminal court or by the magistracy, and
retransported thither for various periods. Those few, it has been
seen, who are condemned to this punishment by the criminal court,
are for the most part sentenced to long terms of transportation;
but as nine-tenths of the criminals at this settlement are sent
thither either by the benches of magistrates, or by the
superintendent of police, who seldom transport for a longer
period than two years, and more frequently for one year, or six
months, the population may at a very moderate calculation be
considered as undergoing a complete change every two years, or in
other words, it may be concluded that two hundred and twenty-five
persons are annually transported thither by way of punishment. We
must therefore add this number to the culprits convicted before
the court of criminal judicature, and we shall then have a total
of three hundred and eighteen persons annually convicted of
crimes in the colony. This is of itself an alarming sum of
criminality; but we must not stop here, since it only conducts us
to the second of the summary modes of punishment which I have
enumerated; viz. the gaol gangs. There are upon an average about
fifty persons in the gaol gang at Sydney, and about the same
number in the gaol gangs belonging to the other towns and
districts in the colony. These are criminals convicted of smaller
offences than those who are transported to the Coal River; they
are worked from sunrise to sun-set, and are locked up in the
prisons during the night. This mode of punishment is seldom
inflicted for a longer term than four months. It may therefore be
safely computed that these gaol gangs are changed once in this
period, or in other words, that three hundred persons annually
pass through this ordeal. This further addition to the formidable
catalogue of crimes already made out, increases the total to six
hundred and eighteen persons, yet only leads us to the third mode
of summary punishment, viz. labour at the factory at Paramatta.
The number of women sentenced to this mode of punishment may be
averaged at one hundred and fifty, and as the average term of
their sentences does not exceed six months, we have a farther
number of three hundred to add to the above estimate. This
increases it to nine hundred and eighteen persons; but we have
still one other mode of punishment in petto, corporal punishment
simply; and I have no doubt that the numbers on whom it is
annually inflicted will at least swell the grand total of persons
convicted of various criminal offences during the year 1817,
either by the criminal courts, by the benches of magistrates, by
the superintendent of police, or by the district magistrates to
one thousand. We may now draw some sort of a comparison between
the amount of crime in the years 1806 and 1817. I should imagine,
on the highest calculation, that not more than one hundred
persons in addition to those tried by the criminal court during
that year, could, from the system then in practice, have been
summarily dealt with by the magistracy; but allowing even that
there were two hundred, and that the whole number of persons
stated by Governor Bligh to have been tried by that court were
found guilty, a most improbable supposition, the year 1806 will
only then give a total of three hundred and sixteen offenders,
i.e. not one third the amount of those who were convicted in the
year 1817. Crime therefore has been trebled, while the population
has only been doubled, or in other words, the increase of the
former has been to the increase of the latter as three to
two.
[* Page 42 Appendix to the Report of the House of
Commons in 1812.]
What else, indeed, could be expected from a system which is
every day enlarging the circle of poverty and distress? Is it
within the possibility of belief that people should become more
honest as they become more necessitous? That they should
scrupulously refrain from making inroads on the possessions of
their richer neighbours, while they themselves are suffering
under the influence of progressive penury? Under such
circumstances it would be the very height of absurdity to expect
an increase of virtue and honesty. Wherever it is not within the
compass of industry to provide for its wants, a recourse to crime
in order to make up the deficiency is inevitable to a certain
extent even in a moral country. What then must be the result of
this inability in a felon population, long habituated to theft,
and naturally predisposed to criminality? In such a community as
this, the government are doubly bound to neglect no measures
which may be calculated to repress this vicious propensity. If
they adopt the contrary line of conduct; if they administer
stimulants to vice instead of anodynes; if they, in fact, create
incitements to dishonesty too potent even for virtuous misery to
withstand, are not _they_ the authors of a system thus
impregnated with corruption, virtually the parent of the
monstrous litter to which it gives birth? And though according to
the inflexible principles of justice, any violation of the
property of another is not to be exculpated, humanity will always
pity the distressed delinquent, and wish that she had the power
of substituting the primary author of the crime in the place of
the condemned criminal. How would the world be reformed, if the
framers of the unjust and impolitic laws, which are every where
the bane of mankind, and the cause of so much misery and vice,
were arraigned at the bar of justice, and compelled to answer for
all the depravity that might be traced to the demoralizing
influence of their measures?
The picture of the colony which I have presented, aggravated
as it is, faithfully delineates the different descending
gradations by which it has sunk to its present abyss of misery,
and is of itself sufficiently demonstrative of the radical defect
that there is in its polity, and of the necessity for an
alteration in it: nevertheless, it may not be altogether
inexpedient to dive a little into futurity, and to view through
the mirror of the imagination the further results which the
experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the
same course of restriction and disability will infallibly lead
to. It requires not the gift of divination to foresee that the
manufacturing system, which has already taken such deep root, and
so rapidly shot up towards maturity, will still further confirm
and consolidate itself with the increasing poverty of the
community. For several years the importation of British
manufactures, particularly of cottons, has been comparatively
speaking on the decline, in consequence of the competition
occasioned by large importations of those articles from India;
which though in general of inferior quality, have been more
adapted to the circumstances of the colonists from their inferior
price. The consumption of hats and woollen cloths has also been
diminished, but not to the same considerable extent by the
colonial manufactures of the same denomination, which are
likewise much inferior to the British, but have the two-fold
advantage of being cheaper, and to be obtained for wool, grain,
meat, etc. without the intervention of money, which it is
generally out of the power of the consumers to furnish.
This system of barter, which has materially favoured their
growth, and must necessarily still further encourage and extend
it, is not, as might at first be imagined, prejudicial to the
manufacturer; since the wool which he thus receives in exchange
for his commodity is the raw material required for its
reproduction, and therefore saves him the trouble of seeking it
in other quarters; and the meat, grain, etc. are distributed
among his workmen at the market prices of the day, and free him
from the necessity of paying the full value of their labour in
money, which under existing circumstances would most probably be
impracticable. The system itself, therefore, seems to have been
engendered by events, and to be peculiarly adapted to the present
state of poverty and wretchedness, to which the great mass of the
colonists are reduced. And although in other countries, and even
in this, if its agricultural powers were unfettered, the workmen
employed in the fabrication of these manufactures would not
perhaps consent to receive this mixed compensation for their
labour, yet amidst the actual difficulties of procuring a
subsistence, and possessed as they are of trades, for which till
lately there was no demand whatever, and for which at the present
moment there is far from an active competition, they are not only
glad to accept this mode of payment, but would even submit to
much harder conditions. We may therefore perceive, that if the
manufacturer can sell for ready money as much of this commodity
as is requisite to the payment of the residue of their wages, and
at the same time equivalent to the profit which he may derive
from his concern, it is all that he need absolutely require. This
manufacturing system being thus not only suited to the increasing
poverty of the community at large, but also favourable to the
interests of all the parties concerned in it, whether the
proprietors or the workmen, cannot but gain ground. A few years,
in fact, will completely put it out of the power of at least
seven-eighths of the population to have recourse to the
manufactures of this country: the expences of the colony will,
indeed, as I have satisfactorily proved, continue to increase,
but still only in proportion to the augmentation in the body of
convicts and others, maintained at the charge of the government;
while, on the contrary, the population of the colony, in spite of
all the checks imposed on it, will be extending itself more
rapidly within, than by transportation and emigration from
without. Its revenue, therefore, will be every year to be divided
among a number of competitors increasing much more rapidly than
itself. Thus their ability to purchase the more perfect and
expensive commodities of this country, will become daily more
circumscribed, till at length the use of them will be entirely
superseded, or at best confined to the higher orders of society;
who, it is probable, may be induced in the long run both by the
growing perfection of their native manufactures, and by
patriotism, to abjure the consumption of all goods that may have
a tendency to augment the prosperity of their common oppressor.
The colonists, in fact, have only to advance a few steps further
in the manufacturing system to be completely independent of
foreign supply. Already fabricating to a considerable extent
their own cloth, the first perhaps of manufactures in utility and
importance; already furnishing in a great measure their own hats,
leather, soap, candles, and earthenware, they have only to
provide their own linen, and to erect iron founderies, to become
possessed of all that can be termed strictly necessary to their
subsistence and even comfort. And these two objects will
doubtless be soon effected by the active agency of the same
powerful necessity, which has so rapidly given rise to the
various manufactures already mentioned. It is, indeed, rather a
matter of surprise than otherwise, that attempts have not been
already made to establish manufactories of these two highly
important articles; since the colony, on the one hand, is
peculiarly adapted to the growth of flax, and on the other
abounds, as it has been seen, with iron ore of the richest
quality.
To what feelings, then, to what conduct, it may be asked, will
this independence in the resources of the colonists, the bitter
fruit of so much privation and misery, give birth? Will this, the
painful result of so many years' injustice and oppression, tend
to strengthen the bond of union between the colony and this
country? Or will it not be the crisis that will sever it for
ever? England, placed as she is at present on the pinnacle of
glory, and reposing in security on the basis of that commercial
and maritime greatness, from which the gigantic efforts of united
Europe have not been able to remove her, may laugh to scorn the
presumption of any colony, however powerful, that might attempt
to shake off her authority. Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only
to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her
colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies.
No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at
the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for
colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of
this country, dream of its immediate execution. Still let her not
lull herself into a false security; let her not measure the
forbearance of the colony by its own impotency and
insignificance. Despair always begets resources, and inspires an
unnatural vigor. The enmity of the most feeble becomes
formidable, when it has justice ranged under its banners, and
ought not to be excited without necessity. Besides, is it worthy
the character of a nation, who has evinced herself the determined
enemy of tyrants, and the avenger of the freedom of the world, to
become the oppressor of her own subjects, and that too for the
mere sake of oppression, in subversion alike of their interests
and of her own? Has she not, and will she not always have
_external enemies enow_ to contend with, without thus
creating, _unnecessarily_ creating, _domestic ones?_
Let her from the midst of the glory with which she is environed
compare her situation, brilliant and imposing as it is, with what
it might have been: let her look at the consequences of her
former injustice. Is not the most formidable on the list of her
enemies, a nation, which might have this day been the most
attached and faithful of her friends? A nation which, instead of
watching every occasion to circumscribe her power, would, if its
rights had been respected, have been still embodied with her
empire and confirmatory of her strength? Will this terrible
lesson have no influence on the regulation of her future conduct?
Will not this dear bought experience teach her wisdom? Or has she
yet to learn that the reign of injustice and tyranny involves in
its very constitution the germ of its duration and punishment?
Let her ask herself, "what would have been the consequence if,
during the late war with America, the ports of this colony had
been open to the vessels of that nation?" How many hundreds of
the valuable captures, which the Americans made in the Indian
seas and on the coast of Peru, might have safely awaited there
the termination of the war, which were recaptured by her cruisers
in view of the ports of their country? How many hundreds of their
own vessels, that shared the same fate, would have still belonged
to their merchants? And is there no probability, that a
perseverance in the present system of injustice and oppression,
may on some future occasion, urge the colonists to shake off this
intolerable yoke, and throw themselves into the arms of so
powerful a protector? May they not by these means acquire
independence long before the epoch when they would have obtained
it by their own force and maturity? Or at least may they not
place themselves under the government of more just and
considerate rulers? How would this country repent her folly, if
she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if
she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already
the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime
ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions,
at the main external source of her wealth and prosperity?
To those who are acquainted with the local situation of this
colony; who have traversed the formidable chain of mountains by
which it is bounded from north to south; who have viewed the
impregnable natural positions, that the only connecting ridge by
which a passage into the interior can be effected, every where
presents; to those who are aware that this ridge is in many
places not more than thirty feet in width, and have beheld the
terrific chasms by which it is bounded, chasms inaccessible to
the most agile animal of the forest, and that will for ever defy
the approach of man; to those, I say, who are acquainted with all
these circumstances, the independence of this colony, should it
be goaded into rebellion, appears neither so problematical nor
remote, as might be otherwise imagined. Of what avail would whole
armies prove in these terrible defiles, which only five or six
men could approach abreast? What would be the effect of artillery
on advancing columns crowded into so narrow a compass? A few
minutes exposure to such a dreadful carnage, would annihilate the
assailing army; or at best only preserve its scattered remnants
from destruction by raising an intervening barrier of the
carcases of its slaughtered martyrs. If the colonists should
prudently abandon the defence of the sea-coast, and remove with
their flocks and herds into the fertile country behind these
impregnable passes, what would the force of England, gigantic as
it is, profit her? She might, indeed, if they were unassisted in
their efforts by any foreign power, cut off their communication
for awhile with the coast; but her armies entirely dependent on
external supply, and at so great a distance from the centre of
their resources, would gradually moulder away, as well by the
incessant operation of a partisan warfare, as by defection to
their adversaries, whom her troops would be led to combat only
with regret. They would not enter into a war of this description
with the same animosity and desire of vengeance that might
actuate their leaders. They would behold in their opponents,
Britons, or the descendants of Britons, placed in hostile array
against them unwillingly, and not from any ancient and inveterate
spirit of hatred and rivality, but from constrained resistance to
tyranny, and in vindication of their most sacred and indubitable
rights. Nor would they in the midst of their disgust for so
unjust and unnatural a contest, behold the beauty and fertility
of the country without drawing a comparison between their
condition, and what it would be, were they to quit the ranks of
oppression, and become the champions of that independence, which
they were destined to repress. Such will be the consequences of
the impolitic and oppressive system of government pursued in this
colony; such the probable results of the contest to which it must
eventually give rise. If I have been unqualified in expressing my
reprobation of such unwise and unjust measures; if I have evinced
myself the fearless assertor of the rights of my compatriots; and
if I have spoke without reserve of the resistance which the
violation and suppression of those rights will in the end
occasion, I must nevertheless protest against being classed among
those who are the sworn enemies of all authority, and who place
the happiness of communities in a freedom from those restraints
which the wisdom of ages has established, and demonstrated to be
salutary and essential. I hope, therefore, that my principles
will not be mistaken, and that I shall not be exposed to the hue
and cry which have been justly raised against those persons who
are inimical to all existing institutions. There is not a more
sincere friend to established government and legitimacy than he
who mildly advocates the cause of reform, and points out with
decency the excrescences that will occasionally rise on the
political body, as well from an excess of liberty as of
restraint: such a person may prevent anarchy; he can never
occasion it.
These are the views by which I have been actuated in writing
this essay. If my hopes should be realized, if I should happily
be the means of averting the thunder cloud of calamity and
destruction which is even now gathering on the horizon of my
country, and threatens at no very remote period to burst over its
head, and to scatter death and desolation in its bosom, it is all
the recompence I seek. If my efforts should unfortunately prove
abortive; if I should fail to rouse the friends of peace and
humanity to its succour and relief, I shall have experienced a
sufficient mortification, without undergoing the additional one
of being classed with a band of ruffian levellers, who under the
specious pretext of salutary reform seek, like the jacobin
revolutionists of France, the subversion of all order, and the
substitution in its stead, of a reign of terror, anarchy, and
rapine, amidst the horrors of which they may satiate their
avarice, and glut their revenge. Let then the purity of my
motives be unimpeached, if I should be defeated in the
accomplishment of my object. But why should I despair of success,
when I have every support that ought to ensure it? Right, reason,
expediency, morality, religion, are all on the side of my
oppressed country, and must eventually procure the termination of
her sufferings. The disabilities, indeed, under which she has
been so long groaning, grounded as they are in no motives of
policy, but averse to them _all_, ought rather to be
ascribed to inadvertence than design. Engaged as this country has
been in a tremendous conflict, on the dubious issue of which her
very existence as a nation was staked, she has had little or no
leisure for attending to the internal economy of her colonies: in
the midst of her own unparalleled sufferings and sacrifices,
theirs have been disregarded or forgotten. It is the knowledge of
this circumstance that has shed a ray of hope and consolation
athwart the gloom which has been thickening year after year
around the colony. It is this consideration that has enabled its
inhabitants to support burdens which would otherwise have been
found intolerable. Let then their just expectations be at length
fulfilled, and let them not continue the only portion of the
king's subjects, who have no personal reason to rejoice at the
happy termination of this long and arduous contest. Their
moderation and forbearance under their grievances, have given
them an additional claim to redress, scarcely less forcible than
the existence of the grievances themselves. Yet already years
have elapsed, since the consolidation of general peace and
tranquillity, and no attention has been paid to their situation
and remonstrances. Already, therefore, the spirit of discontent
so long repressed by hope, but reviving with the progress of this
unnecessary, this unaccountable delay, has begun to manifest
itself, and will soon assume a determinate shape and form. Let
the government repress this feeling of hostility, while they have
yet the power: a few years further inattention will render it
hereditary and rivet it for ever. It is in the tendency of
colonies to overstep even legitimate restraint; they will never
long wear the fetters of injustice and oppression. I am aware
that it is not one of the least difficult proofs of legislative
wisdom to frame regulations adapted to each progressive stage of
colonization, and that this difficulty increases with the
maturity which the colony in question may have attained; but
although the treatment of colonies upon their arrival at that
degree of ascendency, when the enforcement of ancient
restrictions, founded on the interests, or supposed interests of
the parent country, but contraventory of the prosperity of the
colonies themselves, becomes dangerous or impracticable, is, it
must be allowed, a point of extreme delicacy and tenderness;
there can at no time be any doubt entertained of the propriety of
abandoning a system founded upon error and injustice, and
productive of detriment, as well to those who have imposed it, as
to those who are suffering under its baneful operation. It is
therefore to be hoped that so unwise and unjust a system will no
longer be continued; that his majesty's government will at length
allow the colonists to use freely the natural productions of
their country, and to increase to the utmost its artificial ones;
that they will, permit them to call their own energies, their own
resources, into life and action, and no longer impoverish them by
rendering them the prey of richer colonies, and what is still
more absurd and vexatious, of foreigners; that they will, in
fine, grant them the free unrestricted enjoyment of those
privileges which the bounty of the Creator has extended to them,
and which it is not in any human authority to withhold,
consistently with the eternal, immutable principles of right and
equity.
These privileges consist in the removal of certain
agricultural and commercial restraints, which I shall separately
enumerate; and in a free government, under the protecting shade
of which, the colonists may fearlessly exercise and enjoy their
personal and private rights, without molestation or
hindrance.