TRIALS OF A GOVERNOR.
Except the waiter at a commercial inn, no man has so much upon his
hands, or so many faults to answer for, as the Governor of a colony.
If public affairs go wrong, every voice is raised, requiring him
immediately to rectify them; and as every one has a particular plan
of his own, the Governor is expected instantly to adopt them all.
Nor has he public calamities only to answer for; the private
misfortunes of individuals are, without hesitation, laid at his door.
He is expected to do something, and not a little, for all who are in
trouble; he has to devise expedients for those whose own wits are at
fault: it is among his duties to console, to cheer, to advise, to
redress, to remedy; and, above all, to enrich.
As men set up a block of wood in a field to become a rubbing-post for
asses; as bachelors take to themselves wives, and elderly spinsters
individuals of the feline race, in order to have something on which
to vent their occasional ill-humours, so is a Governor set up in a
colony, that the settlers may have a proper object or mark set apart,
on which they may satisfactorily discharge their wrongs, sorrows,
wants, troubles, distractions, follies, and unreasonable
expectations. A Governor is the safety-valve of a colony; withdraw
this legitimate object of abuse, and the whole community would be at
loggerheads. A state of anarchy would be the immediate consequence,
and broil and blood-shed would prevail throughout the land.
Sometimes a Governor forgets the purpose for which he was sent out
from home, and placed on high in a colony, as a rubbing-post; he
sometimes lapses into the error of fancying himself a colonial Solon,
and strives to distinguish his reign by the enactment of laws, which
only increase the natural irritability of the settlers, and cause him
to be more rubbed against than ever. On these occasions he is not
always entitled to much sympathy; but when private parties come
crowding round him to have the consequence of their follies averted,
or merely in a state of discontented irritation, to have their backs
scratched, his poor Excellency is much to be compassionated.
Almost every morning a long-eared crowd assembles around the
Government-offices, where the rubbing-post is set up, and one after
another they are admitted to find what relief they may from this
cheap luxury. It is pleasant to observe that they almost all come
out again with smiling countenances. For a moment, the sense of pain
or discontent has been alleviated by the gentle application.
Sometimes an honest farmer has ridden fifty miles in order to have
the pleasure of complaining to his Excellency of the
mal-administration of the post-office department, evidenced by the
non-delivery of a letter, which, after a vast deal of investigation
and inquiry, turns out never to have been posted. Sometimes a man
comes for advice as to the propriety of going to law with his
neighbour about a bull which had taken the liberty to eat some of his
turnips. One man wishes to have his Excellency's opinion upon a
disease which has lately broken out among his pigs; another has
mysteriously carried a piece of iron-stone in his pocket for a
hundred miles, and claims the reward for the discovery of a
coal-mine; a third has a plan to propose for fertilizing the
sand-plains around Perth, by manuring them with sperm oil. Some are
desirous that their sons should be made Government clerks, and insist
upon their right to all vacant appointments on the plea of being "old
settlers." Others have suggestions to make the neglect of which
would prove ruinous to the colony: general misery is only to be
averted by the repeal of the duty on tobacco: no more ships need be
expected (this is after a gale and wreck,) unless a break-water be
constructed, which may be done for ninety-five thousand pounds, and
there was a surplus revenue last year over the expenditure of
thirteen shillings and sixpence, the local government being also
indebted to the Commissariat chest in the sum of nine hundred pounds
odd. Some complain of roads and bridges being in a defective state,
and wonder why two thousand pounds extra per annum are not laid out
upon them; these are succeeded by a deputation from the inhabitants
of Rockingham, requesting, as a matter of right, that half that sum
may be applied in ornamenting their principal square with a botanical
garden. Then the Governor has to attend to complaints against public
officers. The Commissioner of the Civil Court has proved himself to
be an unjust judge by deciding for the defendant contrary to the
truth, as proved by the plaintiff; or the Commissioner of the Court
of Requests has received a bribe of three-and-fourpence, and refused
to listen to the complainant's story. The magistrates have granted a
spirit license to a notorious character, and denied one to the
applicant, an unimpeachable householder. The Post-Master General has
embezzled a letter, or the Colonial Secretary has neglected to reply
to one.
All these things, and a thousand others, the Governor is expected to
listen to, inquire about, remedy, or profit by.
One day, I remember, I went myself to complain of the absurdity of an
Act of Council which I thought might be advantageously amended by the
aid of a little light which had lately dawned upon me.
Among those who haunted the ante-room, waiting for admittance to the
rubbing-post was a tall Irish woman, who had seen better days, but
was now reduced to much distress, and was besides not altogether
right in her intellects.
She was in the frequent habit of attending there, for the purpose of
complaining against the Advocate General, who never paid her proper
attention when she went to lay her grievances before him. This woman
was the terror of the Government officers. She never allowed her
victim to escape when once she had begun her story; -- in vain might
he try to edge away towards the door -- if he were not to be retained
by the fascination of her voice, she would seize him by the coat with
a grasp of iron, and a fly might as well try to escape from a
pot-bellied spider. Whenever she appeared, no public officer was
ever to be found. A general epidemic seemed to have fallen upon the
offices, and exterminated all the inhabitants. The Colonial
Secretary would rush out to luncheon, deaf as an adder to the cries
of female distress that rang in the troubled air behind him. The
Advocate General, hearing the well-known voice inquiring for him in
no friendly key, would hurry away through an opposite door, and dive
into the woods adjoining Government-house, and there gnaw his nails,
in perturbation of spirit until he thought the evil was overpast.
His Excellency himself would sooner have seen the Asiatic cholera
walk into the room than Miss Maria Martin, and invariably turned
paler then his writing-paper, and shuddered with a sudden ague. She
had so many wrongs to complain of, which no human power could
redress, and she required so much to be done for her, and insisted
upon having reiterated promises to that effect, that no wonder she
excited the utmost terror in the minds of all whom she approached.
She was, moreover, a huge, brawny, fierce-looking creature, and
though upwards of fifty years of age, had the strength of an Irish
porter. She was reported on one occasion to have taken a gentleman
of high reputation, and unimpeachable morals, by the collar of his
coat, and pinned him up against the wall, until he had promised to
speak for her to the Governor; and when he subsequently accused her
of this violence, she retorted by saying that it was in self-defence,
as he had attempted improper liberties. The fear of such an
unscrupulous and cruel accusation made Government officers,
especially the married ones, extremely shy of granting a tete-a-tete
conversation to Miss Martin; and as no one was, of course, more
correct in his conduct than his Excellency the Governor, no wonder
that he should feel extremely nervous whenever he was surprised into
an interview with this interesting spinster.
When I found her in the ante-room I naturally recoiled, and tried to
back out again, smiling blandly all the time, as one does when a
violent-looking dog comes up, and begins sniffing about your legs.
Miss Martin, however, was used to these manoeuvres, and suddenly
getting between me and the door, intercepted my retreat, and insisted
on telling me, for the twentieth time, how villanously the Advocate
General had deceived her. Escape was impossible; I groaned and
sweated with anguish, but listen I must, and had to suffer martyrdom
for an hour, when the Governor's door opened, and he himself looked
out. On seeing the Gorgon he tried to withdraw, but she pounded like
a tigress through the door-way, and slamming the door after her,
secured an audience with his Excellency, which she took care should
not be a short one. I could remain no longer, and therefore owe the
rest of the story to public report. After an hour's tete-a-tete, his
Excellency's voice grew more imperative. The clerks, highly
interested, conceived that he was insisting upon her withdrawing. It
is supposed that he could not possibly escape himself, as she of
course cut off all communication with either the door or the
bell-rope. The lady's voice also waxed higher; at length it rose
into a storm. Nothing more was heard of the poor Governor beyond a
faint, moaning sound; whether he was deprecating the tempest, or
being actually strangled, became a matter of grave speculation. Some
asserted that they heard his kicks upon the floor, others could only
hear convulsive sobs; then all fancied they could distinguish the
sounds of a struggle. The officials debated whether it would be
proper or indelicate to look in upon the interview; but it became so
evident that a scuffle was going on, that the private secretary's
anxiety overcame all other considerations. The door was opened just
as his Excellency, escaping from the grasp of the mad woman, had made
a vault at the railing which ran across the farther end of the
Council Room (to keep back the public on certain days), in hopes of
effecting his escape by the door beyond. Nothing could have been
better conceived than this design; but unhappily the lady had caught
hold of his coat-tail to arrest his flight, and therefore instead of
vaulting clear over the rails, as he had anticipated, his Excellency
was drawn back in his leap, and found himself seated astride upon the
barrier, with a desperate woman tugging at his tail, and trying to
pull him back into the arena. Nothing, we believe, has ever exceeded
the ludicrous misery displayed in his Excellency's visage on finding
himself in this perilous situation. But seeing the private secretary
and a mob of clerks, with their pens in their hands, hastening to his
rescue, he made a desperate effort, and cast himself off on the other
side; and finally succeeded in rushing out of the room, having only
one tail hanging to his coat, with which he escaped into an adjoining
apartment, and was received into the arms of the Surveyor General in
a state of extreme exhaustion.
Such are some of the troubles and afflictions incident to the
unenviable office of Governor of a colony. Those innocent country
gentlemen who have expended the better part of their property on
contested elections, and now weary heaven and Her Majesty's Principal
Secretaries of State for colonial appointments, little know what they
invoke upon themselves. In my opinion Sancho Panza had a sinecure,
compared with theirs, in his Governorship of the island of Barrataria.*
[footnote] *Our love of the ludicrous frequently makes us delighted
to find even the most estimable characters in a ridiculous position.
The above anecdote is perhaps exaggerated, but it is here recorded as
a moral warning to those who yearn like Sancho Panza for a
government, and not from a desire to cast ridicule upon one who was
universally respected and esteemed, for the quiet decorum of his
life, his high principles, his strict impartiality, and the
conscientious discharge of all the duties of his office.