A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
LAND, LABOUR AND COMMERCE.
Authorities.—Despatches, etc. (especially Appendix to Bigge's Reports). Record and Colonial Offices. Printed: Sydney Gazette. P.P., 1812, II.; 1816, XVIII.; 1819, VII.; 1822, XX.; 1823, X.
In 1820, 356,845 acres of land had been granted by the Crown in New South Wales.[1] Macquarie was responsible for grants amounting to 239,576 acres—the remaining 117,269 acres having been alienated by his predecessors. Thus in the twenty years before his arrival less than half as much land had been lost to the Crown as was granted by Macquarie in ten years. But the increase was fully justified by the growth of population from 10,452 in 1810 to 24,939 in 1820, and, according to the ideas of the time, he had shown great moderation. With regard to the distribution of the land the returns of 1819 are found to be more complete and more accurate than those of 1820. Referring, therefore, to the muster of 1819 it appears that 337,114 acres were then held by settlers in the Colony, of which 145,054 acres belonged to free emigrants or native-born, and 192,060 acres to those who had been convicts and had become free by pardon or servitude.[2] At this time[3] there were in the whole population 2,804 persons (excluding children) who had never been convicts, and 1,497 of these had been born in the Colony. The whole adult population reached 19,232, so that the number of men and women who had been transported and were still in New South Wales was 16,428. The free population, hardly a fifth of the whole, held more than half the land. Naturally the "emancipists" looked with jealousy on the free settlers, who swallowed up vast estates, while they in return regarded the "emancipists" and convicts in the light of labourers for their benefit and resented their establishment upon the land. "Both parties," as Bigge said, "look upon each other as intruders."[4]
The "emancipists" did not owe all their land to the Government. Nearly two-thirds had been acquired by purchase from private individuals, a fact which illustrates the wealth they had at their command as well as the extent to which Crown grants changed hands.[5] But in spite of the ease with which land could be obtained, or more likely because of it, agriculture made very slow progress. In 1820 Oxley, the Surveyor-General, one of the most cautious of men, declared that not one-eighth of the people were occupied in farming, and he condemned unsparingly the careless and indolent means of production pursued by the majority of emancipists.[6]
What the Colony wanted, if its staple produce was to be found in agriculture, was men trained to farming, or else with money enough to employ those who were. The Colonial Office, however, long entertained a doubt whether New South Wales should be treated as an agricultural or pastoral country, and this doubt was reflected in their regulation of free emigration.
Before 1810 the number of emigrants had been so small that each individual case had been treated on its own merits. No general lines had been laid down, but the tendency was to make large grants. In 1804, for example, Macarthur was promised 10,000 acres (afterwards reduced to 5,000) in the Cow Pastures, on the tacit understanding that he was to carry on sheep-farming on a large scale.[7] Blaxland, who went out in 1806, engaged to employ a capital of £6,000 in the Colony, and was to receive 3,000 acres. In his case there was no reference to the use to be made of the land. Townson, in 1807, was promised 2,000 acres, but owing to the overthrow of Bligh's government his grant was not made out until 1810, nor received by him until May, 1811. He found in the grant certain conditions of which he complained angrily, stating that in the original compact in 1807 there had been no mention of conditions as to capital, cultivation or residence.[8] Sir John Jamison, who had some property left to him in New South Wales and went out in 1814, asked for a grant of 2,500 acres. His request was refused, and Goulburn wrote to him that such promises had been made in the past "when the inconvenience of improvident grants had not been sufficiently known".[9]
These words give the key to the policy pursued with tolerable consistency from 1812 until Bigge's Report of 1823, a policy to which Macquarie fully assented.[10] "Large grants of land to individuals," wrote Goulburn in 1820, "have been the bane of all our Colonies, and it has been the main object of Lord Bathurst's administration to prevent the extension of this evil by every means in his power."[11]
From 1810 onwards no acreage was specified in any order for land given by the Colonial Office, but settlers were furnished with letters to the Governor from the Secretary or Under-Secretary of State directing him to grant them land in amounts proportionate to the capital of which they could show themselves to be possessed. The area and location of a grant was thus placed within the Governor's discretion. His Commission restricted the former to 2,000 acres, unless special recommendation were transmitted to the Secretary of State. The Colonial Office was probably not aware how often Macquarie overstepped these limits without making any reference to the subject in his despatches.[12]
In 1812 the following circular letter was drawn up for the information of applicants:—
"Mr. Peel is directed by Lord Liverpool to acquaint … in answer to his application for permission to proceed to New South Wales, that no persons are allowed to go out as free settlers to that Colony, unless they can prove themselves to be possessed of sufficient property to establish themselves there without the assistance of Government, and who can produce the most satisfactory testimonials and recommendations from persons of known respectability."[13]
Free passages on convict transports were granted to suitable emigrants.
In 1813 there were twenty-nine applications for permission to go to New South Wales. Ten of these were accepted, sixteen refused, and to the remaining three no answers appear to have been given. From the correspondence in this and other years one or other out of four qualifications seem to have always been necessary. They were (1) a capital of at least £400; (2) references as to character; (3) friends or relatives in the Colony who could provide the applicants with a home or with employment;[14] (4) influential friends in England. There was not much patronage to dispense in regard to offices in New South Wales, but a gift of land was valuable, and there were many applications from political allies urging the claims of relations or dependents. Such men were not usually the best of emigrants[15] and occasionally the Colonial Office refused to pass them altogether.[16] But Macquarie had already reason to complain in 1812 that it was "becoming almost a constant practice for persons who wish to get rid of some troublesome connections, to obtain permission from the Secretary of State's Office for their being allowed to come out here".[17]
He was indeed constantly impressing upon Ministers that gentlemen-settlers, encouraged by "extraordinary concessions," did not further the Colony's progress in agriculture, and that they were the most discontented, unreasonable and troublesome persons in the whole country.[18] Macquarie firmly believed that the best settlers were the emancipated convicts, and he put this view forward so often and so urgently that the Colonial Office naturally accepted it. But English sentiment could not allow them to submit without misgiving to the whole Colony being turned into a penal settlement, and in various ways free emigration was continued.
In 1814 the custom was still followed of placing new settlers "on the stores" and providing them with convict servants, also "on the stores," for eighteen months. Macquarie was urgent for some reduction in this, and readily agreed to Lord Bathurst's proposal to reduce the time to six months.[19] But when the latter suggested in 1816 doing away with the indulgence altogether, Macquarie demurred, and although in the following year he admitted that there was no longer any need to put free settlers on the stores, he took no step in that direction.[20] The difficulty was that many of the "gentlemen-settlers," or settlers of the "first class," came out so miserably poor that in the absence of Government assistance they would have starved. But before 1817 the Colonial Office had much relaxed their regulations. In 1814 they had given up the practice of granting free passages, largely because they found that many emigrants who pleaded the costliness of the voyage returned whenever they found their private business required it without suffering any severe hardship. On rare occasions passengers were still permitted to make the voyage on transport vessels, but they had to pay for their own provisions, which was then no small item of expense.[21] In 1815 emigrants were openly discouraged, doubtless owing to Macquarie's representations, and emigration to the North American Colonies suggested in place of New South Wales. In 1816 the Government removed all restrictions on emigration, allowing any persons to go to New South Wales on private vessels without further question, but did not in all cases give them letters to the Governor supporting their requests for land.[22] The consequence was that in 1816 many settlers arrived in New South Wales without letters to the Governor, who was in some doubt what to do with them. Several had no means of maintaining themselves, and one was a Methodist preacher, or, as Macquarie said, a sectary, and, the Governor thought, unsuitable to such a Colony.[23]
He therefore proposed "that instructions should forthwith be given by His Majesty's Government to the Commissioners of the Customs (more particularly at all the out-ports) never to permit any person whatever, whether male or female, to embark or sail in any private trading-ships or vessels bound for this Colony, unless they produce properly authenticated passports from your Lordship's office, authorising them to come to this Colony and specifying in what capacity."[24]
This step was not taken, for emigration, which had during the war been anxiously restrained, was now eagerly desired.[25]
In 1818 Macquarie again urged that no poor settlers, but only monied men of respectability, should be sent out. The Colony did not need "decayed adventurers" who as soon as they took possession of their farms sought to sell them and engaged in objectionable pursuits, keeping public houses, hawking and the like.[26] He thought an emigrant should have at least £500, and so be able to take "six or eight male convicts off the store," and reduce the expenses of the Colony.
The stream of emigration, good and bad, was very slow. In the four or five years before 1818 Riley could not remember that more than twenty settlers had arrived. Many of these knew nothing of farming, and if they stayed on their land had a hard struggle to make a living after the six months for which they were "on the stores" had elapsed. If there was any delay in getting the land the six months' indulgence counted for nothing at all.[27] There was an effort made to prevent this from occurring in 1817, but it does not appear to have been enforced.[28]
In 1819, the Secretary of State began to advertise New South Wales as a good place for emigration.[29] A short note in the Gentleman's Magazine reported his intention to encourage free settlement there, and stated that emigrants should be persons "possessing considerable science, activity, integrity and property". Such "alone could redeem the character of the Colony and make it a fit residence for civilised man," and "enable it to become an assistance instead of a burden to the mother country".[30]
The way in which emigration was encouraged was simply by making it easier to obtain grants. But the increase in the number of settlers in 1819 and 1820 was remarkable. A merchant ship from Leith took out seventy passengers early in 1820, and as many more were expected to leave the same port in June. This sudden influx piled up great arrears of work in the Surveyor's office, and Macquarie had much difficulty in finding land for the newcomers and the growing numbers of emancipists. One numerous class of settlers whom he much disliked were discharged soldiers who had served in the Colony, and were permitted the usual indulgences by the Secretary of State. Macquarie characterised them in the lump as "lazy, dissipated, turbulent and discontented".[31] These old soldiers were allowed grants of land without having any capital at all, but other emigrants had to be possessed of a capital of £400 or £500. However, the Colonial Office did not inquire very particularly into its existence, and Macquarie often found that it was "fictitious". In many cases the settler brought goods on credit, and his "capital" was simply his expectation of profit on the adventure. In order to find out more certainly what was the real amount of an emigrant's resources Macquarie adopted the system of requiring any one he suspected of exaggeration or fraud to make an affidavit of the exact value of his property and of the uses to which it was to be turned.[32]
By 1821 the majority of emigrants were going to Van Diemen's Land instead of New South Wales. This change was due in part to the favourable reports of the island colony circulating in England, and in part to the fact that all the land within one hundred miles of Sydney had already been granted.[33] Since Macquarie's arrival he had opened for settlement the district of Airds, near Sydney, in 1810, and in 1816 the plains of Bathurst, one hundred and forty miles away over the Blue Mountains. Port Jervis would have been settled in 1818, but that the military strength in Sydney was too weak to allow of a detachment being sent thither. Illawarra and Emu Island[34] had been opened for selection in 1819, and by 1821, 20,550 acres had been granted there. There was, however, one tract of land within easy distance of Sydney to which only two settlers had access. This was the famous Cow Pasture country where Macarthur and his friend Davidson had their estates long before Macquarie's arrival. Over the rest of the pastures the wild cattle roamed at will. The history of this herd is both quaint and interesting. When Phillip arrived in 1788 he brought with him a few cattle from England. Almost the whole herd[35] escaped from a careless herdsman and were given up for lost. But a few years afterwards they were discovered already greatly multiplied in the rich pasture land beyond Parramatta. Here they remained, and when Macquarie made a tour of the country in 1811 he reckoned their number at several thousands. As in theory they belonged to the Government, great efforts were made to preserve them,[36] but they were a standing menace to security, for the pastures made a fine hiding-place for evildoers and the herds provided a constant temptation to cattle-stealing. Stringent regulations were made forbidding any one to cross the river which formed their eastern boundary, and killing or stealing the wild cattle was made a felony without benefit of clergy.[37] No one could go into the pastures without a pass from the Governor except, of course, Macarthur, Davidson and their families, friends and servants. The regulations were so stringent that they were very reluctantly enforced, and the preservation of the cattle became altogether too troublesome. A determined effort was made to tame as many as possible and to shoot the rest, using the skins and carcases. Macarthur was eager to assist in getting rid of them, for they were a temptation to his servants and a danger to his crops. Finally in 1819 Macquarie decided to incorporate as many as he could with the tame Government herds during the next twelve months and then open the whole area to settlement.[38] In 1820 he had gathered in about 320, but he delayed making any grants in the Cow Pastures, and by the end of 1821 it was still a project and nothing more.[39]
Besides the settlers from England and those who had been transported, there were the native-born colonists whose demands for land had to be satisfied. This class were indeed at some disadvantage, for the convicts on regaining their freedom had a certain right to a grant[40] and the settlers from England had the support of the Secretary of State, while the native-born had only their own unaided merits. Bigge thought that these young people had been treated with neglect, especially those who were the children of convicts. He suggested that the same capital need not be required from them as from immigrants, and that they might receive small grants of land with greater generosity.[41] In general, land was given to any one who asked for it and who had the means of cultivating and stocking it. But the Governor had complete, unfettered and unquestioned power to refuse such a request without further explanation.[42] Under these circumstances some obtained land very easily while others had to wait for it. Occasionally old settlers received new grants and with them the indulgences of new settlers; but though, on the face of it, this seemed a corrupt practice, Bigge, who inquired into it, decided that it had only been permitted in cases of hardship where the settler had suffered some unexpected or overwhelming misfortune.[43]
The failure to increase in any great degree the agricultural output of the Colony is obvious from the figures alone. While Macquarie was writing vague but favourable accounts of progress, the returns of the General Musters were telling a tale of agricultural stagnation. In 1810, 21,000 acres had been cleared, and 7,500 acres had been under cultivation. In the five years which followed some progress was made, for in 1815, 36,700 acres were returned as cleared and 19,000 under cultivation; and the progress is the greater because the population had altered very little.[44] But between 1815 and 1820 the population nearly doubled. Nevertheless in 1820 the acreage under crop was only 31,000 and the area cleared 55,000.[45]
The agricultural future of the Colony was therefore not regarded as hopeful. It was suggested in 1819 that Van Diemen's Land would become the great wheat-producing centre, supplying New South Wales as well as herself, and that New South Wales would be to her as Ireland then was to England.[46] Yet it had already been found from experience that there was no product of the Temperate Zone which could not be cultivated with success in New South Wales.[47] The profound discouragement of the colonists was not therefore based upon any particular vagaries of climate. The leading settlers all gave three reasons, the ignorance and indolence of the small proprietors, the restricted market, and the inefficiency of labour.
The worst of the small proprietors were the emancipists, who were totally unused to farming, and cropped their land continuously until it reached the stage of exhaustion, and then sold it for what it would fetch. Macquarie, who always wrote as though he held a brief for the emancipists, blinded himself to the fact that the majority of them would not farm and did not care to learn to do so. They took all they could out of the land in as short a time as possible, and returned with their profits to the delights and dissipations of the town.
The need of a wider market for grain was a more serious trouble. An attempt to export flour to the Cape of Good Hope in 1815 proved a failure and was not repeated. All distillation being forbidden, the demand of the people for food alone regulated the corn supply. The Government was the greatest buyer and consequently the farmers were at the mercy of the Governor's regulations. In 1810 the Government had given 3,630 weekly rations, and in 1819 the number had increased to 7,292, i.e., the Government which victualled 34 per cent. of the population in 1810, victualled 28 per cent. in 1819. In the latter year the ration consisted of seven pounds of meat and seven pounds of wheat a week, a slight increase in the ration of earlier years.[48]
The Government did not go into the market and buy wheat at a competitive price, nor did it call for tenders. It simply fixed a price per bushel and opened the Government stores at certain times and allowed the settlers to bring in their wheat in the amount required. In 1813 the price fixed by Macquarie was eight shillings a bushel, which he considered would "repay the expense of labour and allow a reasonable profit".[49] In 1814 he raised it to ten shillings per bushel. "The principal farmers," he wrote, "all acknowledge that ten shillings per bushel for wheat is a fair liberal price and that it allows them a handsome profit. Yet in scarce and unfavourable seasons these same persons will not sell their wheat to the Government under fifteen or sixteen shillings, and they have repeatedly[50] even raised the price on Government to twenty shillings per bushel".[51]
This puts the real ground of the farmer's complaint in a nutshell, and the Treasury suggested to Lord Bathurst in 1816 that the stores should be supplied by tender at a competitive price. The Deputy-Commissary in New South Wales had favoured this alteration, pointing out that the fixing of a low price in times of scarcity made it impossible to get all the grain required, while in years of plenty the Government paid too much.[52] Macquarie, however, thought the fixed price necessary to afford protection to the poorer settlers,[53] and gave no opportunity or temptation to the rich to buy up and engross the corn. On one occasion in 1814 "there was an artificial scarcity created and industriously circulated by a few capricious and wealthy settlers on the plea of the unproductiveness of the three past harvests. On this … taking place I called on the grain growers to give in tenders for supplying the King's stores—on which the Government was compelled to pay as high as fifteen shillings per bushel for the greater part … although afterwards it was proved that there was more than a sufficient supply of wheat in the Colony at that moment for maintaining the whole of the population."[54]
That was the way in which the matter presented itself to Macquarie, but it takes on a rather different light when the whole of the facts are laid bare. In 1813 the harvest was so bountiful that in Macquarie's words it could have supplied twice the population, but in consequence of the restricted demand the greater part of it was wasted. The Government bought what they required at eight shillings a bushel, and much of what was left, instead of being bought at a low price and stored against a bad season, was thrown to the pigs and cattle and treated as valueless.[55] Under any circumstances the position would have been discouraging, but on this occasion there were specially disastrous features. In 1812 there had been a scarcity, and Macquarie had imported from Bengal a shipment of corn at eight shillings the bushel which arrived in 1813. Thus even the Government made a very small demand upon the settlers; and as the harvest was so plentiful, prices in the open market fell as low as three shillings and sixpence a bushel.[56] In the following year (1814) only 1,300 acres were put under crop, although an additional 4,000 acres of land was alienated by the Crown within the same period.
In 1817 the settlers were again in difficulties. "Proceeding to the year 1817," said Riley, in his evidence before the Committee on Gaols, "I see by the Gazette the stores were ordered by the Governor not to open until the 1st of March, and then only one day in the week. The harvest is so early in New South Wales that the settlers would have been able to commence supplying in the middle of January. Previous to the 1st of March … a most disastrous flood took place and overwhelmed the unfortunate cultivators of the Hawkesbury and Nepean in ruin; the greatest distress was also experienced throughout the Colony from the consequent scarcity. In February this year wheat was reduced as low as seven shillings and maize to two shillings and sixpence sterling in the market, as in consequence of the stores not being opened the growers were compelled to sell it at this low rate; but in October in the same year the average of wheat rose to twenty-five shillings and sixpence sterling per bushel and maize to twenty shillings."
This was stated before the Committee on Gaols, who asked:—
"Was that part of a general system—the opening of the stores at so late a period in the year. …?"
"Of late years it has been," Riley answered.
"Can you give to the Committee any reason why such order was issued?"
"I really cannot."[57]
Riley laid great stress on the injuries suffered by the settlers from the importations of Bengal, several of which took place between 1812 and 1817. The injudiciousness of the Government in taking such a course is obvious. The whole raison d'être of a fixed price was to give constant encouragement to growers and to equalise the ups and downs of the market. By importing from India, Macquarie made the demand quite as precarious as it could have been under a competitive system, while the producers gained none of the profit to be reaped from a free trade. The farmers were unable to take full advantage of a scarcity, and yet not allowed the compensation of a fair price in time of surplus. The small settlers suffered severely in 1813 and 1814, although a few wealthy men may, as Macquarie said, have been lucky in extorting high prices from the Government.
Macquarie himself was ready to admit that something further in the way of encouragement was needed by the settlers.
He thought much would be accomplished by permitting the establishment of distilleries which would provide a wider market for surplus grain.[58] The opposition of the Colonial Office being finally overcome in 1819, Bigge and Macquarie held consultations with leading colonists in 1820 as to the regulations for the trade.[59] These were published in 1821[60] and distillation commenced in 1822. Wheat, rye, barley, oats and Indian corn were to be used in the distilleries, but if on two successive days the price of wheat in the market was above ten shillings a bushel, the Governor might prohibit distillation from any grain, and peaches could be used as a substitute.
To prevent distillation falling into the hands of a few wealthy settlers only, the license to distil was issued at the moderate cost of £25, and stills with as small a capacity as forty-four gallons might be used. The distilleries might be established in any district, and it was hoped that the settlers would thus be able to dispose of their grain without having the expense of bringing it down to Sydney.
At the end of Macquarie's governorship, therefore, the future for the agriculturist was considerably brighter than it had been for the preceding ten years.
The other important branch of production was that of stock-raising. The Government ration included a pound of meat a day, and so constituted the chief market for the settler's supplies. The reasons against supplying the stores by tender were even stronger here than in regard to grain, for it would have been far easier to engross stock than wheat. The system adopted, however, was not quite the same.
The Governor issued an order stating the price at which meat would be received, and stock-owners then tendered a certain number of pounds at that price. Soon after the Commissary published in the Gazette a list of names of those whose tenders were accepted, the amount which would be received from each, and the dates and place of delivery. Only the actual owners of the stock could tender supplies, a rule enforced with some strictness to prevent engrossing and check cattle-stealing.[61]
For some time after Macquarie's arrival the price of meat stood at 9d. a lb. In December, 1816, the Governor, finding that the herds and flocks were greatly increased, reduced the price to 6d. from the 24th of the following January.[62] Tenders which had been made at 9d. were declared null and void and new tenders at 6d. called for.[63] Riley described the results of this measure in 1819.[64] "I consider," he said, "that they (the settlers) have also suffered severely by the reduction of the price of meat … by which the property of every stock-holder in the Colony was most considerably lowered, so much so, that many settlers, when sued to pay their debts to Government for cattle purchased at £28 per head, were incapable of finding a market for them at £10; it was a measure that injured the property of every individual in the Colony. …"
In 1818 the price was further reduced to 5d. a lb., and Macquarie congratulated himself on the savings he was making for the Government. These amounted to no less than £9,000 for the year; but it is doubtful whether, when the effects on the settlers are taken into account, the real saving amounted to anything at all. It was, as Riley said, "a very expensive economy".[65] Macquarie's own theory differed rather from his practice. Thus he wrote in 1819:[66] "Such is the overruling influence that this Government must necessarily possess in the market, that were a Governor to order the price of animal food to be reduced from its present rate of 5d. per lb. to 2d., and that of wheat from 10s. to 5s. a bushel, I have no doubt the grazier and cultivator would furnish the stores so long as their present stock on hand would enable them; but such would be the inhuman policy of doing so, that in less than two years' time there would not be a bushel of wheat grown for the supply of the stores, nor further attention paid to the increase of herds or flocks, and the country, so far as it depended on the free population, would be abandoned and once more become a desert."
As it was, Bigge thought the cattle were being slaughtered in too great a number, and that the herds were not increasing rapidly enough. The great number of convicts arriving in 1819 and 1820 had placed a severe strain on the colonial resources, for their rations had to be provided from the time of their disembarkation. Bigge urged that the old practice of sending salt-meat provisions sufficient to supply each batch of convicts for six months should be reverted to.[67] In 1810 the cattle, sheep and pigs in the settlement numbered 57,000.[68] In 1820 they numbered 178,000. The pasture lands in 1810 had covered 75,000 acres, and in 1820 they covered 334,000 acres. The increase was of course great, but the land was less heavily stocked than it had been, and Bigge's precautionary advice was probably needed.
So far comparatively few settlers had turned their attention to wool-growing. In fact for practical purposes Macarthur may be said to be the representative of the whole wool-trade of the Colony. It was he who first brought New South Wales wool to England, and it was on account of this wool that he received his grant of 5,000 acres in the Cow Pastures with a promise of 5,000 more when his flocks had so increased as to require them. Above all it was his triumphant success that stirred others to follow in his footsteps.
The first notice of New South Wales wool sold in England appeared in the Sydney Gazette in 1813.[69] "Ten or twelve packs" had been sold and had averaged 5s. a lb. The duty was then 7s. 11d. per cwt.[70] From that time each year some wool was exported. In 1818 it amounted to 71,299 lb., in 1819 to 112,616 lb. and in 1820 to 175,433 lb. The price in 1820 ranged from 10s. 4d. a lb. for one especially fine bale to 1s. 2½d. per lb. for coarse wool. The duty was then increased to 1d. a lb. and the freight varied from 3d. to 4½d. a lb.[71]
In 1819 Riley stated that the settlers in general wished to cultivate wool, but the Government offered them no assistance.[72] Both Macquarie and Lord Bathurst, in discouraging large estates, effectually discouraged sheep-farming. Macarthur, for example, had not received his additional 5,000 acres, and although in 1821 he had altogether 9,600 acres, it was not all in one place, and he considered himself unable to add to his flocks, which then amounted to 7,000 head. He occupied by permission 1,000 acres besides his own estate in the Cow Pastures, and was anxious to have it granted him outright so that he need have no fear of suddenly being deprived thereof.[73]
Bigge was altogether in favour of large grants and of fostering by every possible means the wool-trade of the Colony. A proposal submitted to Macquarie in 1820 with this purpose in view met with his approval. The promoters proposed to form -a joint-stock company for the growth of fine wool and "pecuniary assistance was requested by advances from the Police Fund; the assignment of agricultural labourers as they arrived from England; an unlimited range for flocks of sheep in the interior, not approaching nearer to the settled estates than five miles, and an importation of sheep of the pure Merino breed at the expense of Government, the cost of which was to be repaid at a future period, and in the meantime to be secured upon the shares of the subscribers and the flocks of sheep as they might be produced.
"The objection made by Governor Macquarie to this proposal appears to have arisen from an apprehension of the consequences of placing so many convict labourers in remote situations, under no better control than that of the individual superintendent of the establishment whom it was proposed to appoint. This circumstance forms certainly the essential objection to the extension of settlements in which convicts are employed, or their removal to a great distance from the residence of some individual clothed with authority to control and punish them; and as far as the proposal made to Governor Macquarie limited the number of superintendents, I concur with him in the objection he made. I am not aware that the proposal was founded upon any general support from individuals in the Colony; I am disposed to believe that, from the indisposition already adverted to in the proprietors of stock to leave their establishments in the settled districts and to repair to those more remote for the purpose of devoting themselves more exclusively to the growth of fine wool, they would gladly have embraced any proposition that had a tendency to exempt them from individual exertion, and in which no other or greater degree of risk or expense was to be incurred than that of paying the salary of the superintendent and the subsistence of a certain number of convicts."[74]
The uncertain conditions of labour due to the convict system, which raised a difficulty in this case, affected every kind of colonial enterprise. Yet the existence of a supply of servile labour was considered in England to be one of the great advantages of emigration to New South Wales.[75] Convict servants were held out to intending settlers as a kind of bait, not only those servants for whose keep the Government made themselves responsible during a short period for the benefit of new settlers, but also the convict servants whom they were allowed to receive at any period under conditions laid down by the Governor.
Owing partly to these conditions, and partly to the bad qualities inherent in all forms of servile labour, convict labour was not a success. The whole tendency of this branch of Macquarie's policy was to raise the status of the assigned servant to that of a free labourer, but he could not alter the legal condition of prisoner or the moral irresponsibility of forced labour. In 1820 there were 8,864 men and 587 women who were still prisoners. Of the women there is little to be said. About 250 worked in the Government wool factory at Parramatta and the remainder either went into domestic service, married,[76] or lived with convicts or free men in Sydney or the other districts. Some of them were joined by their husbands from England and started with them in trade, usually as licensed victuallers.[77] In accordance with Government Orders female convicts were assigned as domestic servants only to married men, and the master had to enter into indentures to keep the servant three years, to clothe and feed her suitably, and pay her wages amounting to £7 a year.[78] For the most part they made very bad and quarrelsome servants, and complaints were universal.
The male convicts were assigned to settlers or kept to work for the Government. At the end of 1819 there were in Government service altogether 2,476 male convicts, and 200 were serving colonial sentences at Newcastle. The remaining 6,388 prisoners were in the service of the inhabitants of the Colony both free and freed. Their masters were not all employed in agricultural pursuits. In Sydney, for example, and the district surrounding it, there were 2,368 assigned servants, most of the masters of whom were occupied in the town. Great landowners, such as Macarthur and William Cox, had as many as a hundred convicts, and Wentworth and an emancipist named Terry, who owned the two largest estates in the Colony, probably had still more. Settlers with farms of five to fifty acres usually received one servant with their grant, and were allowed to retain him at their own expense if they wished. This was something of an innovation, for before 1811 a convict servant was not allowed to any one farming less than twenty acres.[79] For reasons which will appear later it was an innovation which received little approval from the magistrates.
While the convicts were being thus distributed over wider and wider areas their distribution was in another way restricted. It had for long been customary to allow to each of the civil officers of the Government and of the officers of the garrison a domestic servant subsisted at Government expense. Lord Bathurst learnt of this practice for the first time from one of Macquarie's despatches, and immediately directed him to bring it to an end. This was done by a Government Order in 1814, and at the same time it was announced that Government would no longer give rations to the families of officers on the civil staff.[80] It was thought necessary, however, to exempt from this rule the subordinate officers, the superintendents, overseers, clerks and members of the police force, to whom convict servants on or off the stores were assigned as part of their remuneration. The only advantage to these employees from the possession of servants was the chance of hiring them out to others or permitting them, in return for their weekly rations and a payment of a few shillings, to work for themselves or, as it was called, "be on their own hands". The superintendent of convicts in 1819 reckoned that such a servant "on the store" was worth 10s. a week, and "off the store" was worth 5s. Thus the remuneration was equal to a salary of £13 to £26 a year. Indirectly it cost more than this to the Government, for these servants were the worst class of people in the Colony and it was almost impossible to control them. Macquarie made an attempt to improve the system in 1814. In order that these convicts should be known and their place of residence properly registered, all those masters (who were, many of them, convicts themselves) who hired out their servants "shall immediately send in to the principal superintendent a report in writing, and signed by them, of the names and present places of residence of their said Government men, and also the names of the persons by whom they are hired. On receiving this report the principal superintendent is to grant a certificate to each man so transferred, specifying to whom he belongs and how, where and by whom employed.
"The Government men thus disposed of, when possessed of the prescribed certificate … are not to quit the employ of the person or leave the district mentioned therein without applying to and obtaining the permission of the next District Magistrate, the person obtaining it is to obtain a fresh certificate from the principal superintendent … surrendering the certificate granted on the former occasion. …
"All such lists and changes are to be transmitted once in each month to the respective magistrates concerned therein."[81]
These regulations did not touch the evil of the servants who did odd jobs on their own account, or carried on iniquitous practices such as the receiving of stolen goods for their masters. Nor was it strictly enforced, and by 1819 had been completely forgotten. In 1817 Macquarie wished to abolish this mode of payment, but hesitated to do so under the impression that the colonial funds did not warrant the commutation. He could not grasp the fact that the "unseen" expense was far greater than the "seen". The whole system was unsparingly condemned by Bigge in his report of 1822. It had indeed no possible ground of justification. It gave practical freedom, without even an obligation to work for a living, to a class of men neither able nor anxious to profit by it, and it let loose upon the town some hundreds of convicts ripe for every dissipation that was offered them.
The number of convicts not in Government service who received Government rations amounted in 1819 to 1,821, while there were 4,567 who did not receive them assigned to settlers. It was this body of men who constituted the most important factor of the labour problem.
The following method was that adopted in their distribution. After the arrival of a convict transport the prisoners were mustered on board by the Governor's Secretary, who inquired into their treatment on the voyage. The chief engineer[82] and superintendent of convicts then asked each man what was his trade or to what work he was accustomed. All those who were artisans or mechanics were at once set aside for the Government gangs, where their knowledge was needed to carry out the public works. As men of skill were few, a good workman was kept a long time in the service, and found it difificult to procure tickets-of-leave or other mitigations of sentence, and the more skilful and steady he was the less chance he had of freedom. The good mechanics, hearing of these things from old hands transported for a second time, or in some of the mysterious ways in which they managed to procure information which the authorities studiously strove to keep back, would try to conceal their trade from the superintendent On the other hand unskilled workmen who wanted to stay in Sydney, instead of being sent to the country, often made a pretence of being mechanics and skilled labourers.[83]
The Government having thus attempted to pick out the most useful men and any others that were needed, the servants for settlers were selected from the remainder. Applications were made for them to the principal superintendent, who sent whomsoever he thought fit. Occasionally the Governor gave him directions to supply some well-known settler with men of a particular stamp.[84] But the settlers generally were not permitted to apply to the Governor, and applications for men of particular trades were forbidden.[85] Those prisoners who were still left were sent to country districts in numbers proportionate to the requisitions made by the resident magistrates. Large proprietors applied to the superintendent, but smaller folk applied through the magistrates who distributed the convicts on their arrival from Sydney. A few even of the large landowners preferred to get their servants in this way, not caring to have anything to do with the superintendent, who had himself been a convict. They disliked Macquarie's system, which took the place of drawing lots and then choosing from the whole number of convicts in the order thus ascertained. The magistrates often conducted the distribution in this way, and Marsden introduced a refinement upon it which was very illustrative of colonial feeling. The lots were drawn in two divisions, and those of the first division chose their men before the second draw took place. The first division consisted of free men and the second of emancipists.
Such was the manner of distributing the prisoners on the arrival of a transport. But throughout the year constant applications for servants were made both to the superintendent and the magistrates. These were satisfied by assignments from the Government gangs in Sydney by the superintendent and in the other districts by the magistrates. But in 1820 the latter were ordered to refer all applications to Sydney on the ground that the superintendent would best know what men could be spared from Government service.[86]
In this service the work was very varied. A few men were employed in the Commissariat and Secretarial Departments but the great majority of them were put to manual labour. They were employed in clearing the land, in making roads and bridges, public buildings and churches, lighthouses and fortifications and processes subsidiary to these, brick-making, stone quarrying, sawing timber, rough carpentering, nail-making and rough iron casting.[87] A small Government farm and a market garden required the labour of a few gangs, but both these enterprises were commenced only a few years before Macquarie's departure.
The increase in the number of convicts transported necessarily increased the number employed by the Government. Between 1810 and 1820, 16,943 male convicts arrived at Sydney, and 11,250 of these came after 1816.[88] Macquarie had great difficulty in supplying work for them, and it was impossible to assign all that he did not require to the settlers. He attributed their inability to take a greater number off his hands to losses due to two floods of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers in 1816 and 1817.[89] Another flood in 1819 caused many settlers to send back their servants, whom they were no longer able to support, and this further increased the Governor's difficulties. In 1820 Macquarie wrote that "if any more male convicts arrived he would have to settle Port Macquarie[90] or Port Jervis," and the necessity of detaching some of the garrison at Sydney to protect and keep order in the new settlement was, in the weak state of the 48th regiment, a very heavy responsibility.[91] Meanwhile the scale and expense of the public works were increasing at a furious rate. In 1811, £3,005 were disbursed from the Police Fund on their account, and in 1815, £6920, but in 1819 and 1820 the amount reached £16,486 and £14,568 respectively. In the face of this Macquarie wrote: "The cost and expense of these public buildings and other works consist chiefly in the number of artificers and labourers employed in them, the feeding and clothing of them being almost the entire expense—the whole of the material (with the exception of the iron-work, glass and paint) being made and procured by these Government men—and as such a vast number of male convicts at present unavoidably remain in the hands of Government, who must be clothed and fed at all events, the expenses of erecting these public edifices are comparatively small, whilst they afford employment for the prisoners who could not be distributed amongst the settlers".[92] This statement of the case is disingenuous, for the iron, glass and paint could not amount to £14,000. Much of the labour indeed was paid for, being done either by free or freed men or in overtime by prisoners, and much of the raw material was bought from private individuals who supplied the Government by tender. The expense too of superintending the work was often heavy, and occasionally the whole undertaking was carried out by contract.[93] Bigge considered many of Macquarie's public buildings unnecessary, all of them too ornate and most of them jerry-built, and the section of his first report which deals with the subject is admirably scathing.[94]
Until 1819 the Government servants were not housed in barracks but left to find their own lodgings. In order that they might have money for this purpose they were allowed to work for themselves—"to be on their own hands"—after three o'clock each day. On the whole, the men thus left at liberty found it easier to rob and plunder for this money than to work for it. Indeed for the ordinary workman there was not much employment to be found, though a man with a trade had no difficulty.[95]
But in 1819 a new convict barrack was opened at Sydney, and at the end of the year there were 688 men lodged within it. This left 1,252 prisoners outside who regarded it as a special favour that they were allowed to find their own lodgings. The men in barracks having no longer any need to work for themselves, the hours were extended to six o'clock, and somewhat unreasonably the longer hours were required of the men outside as well as inside. But all the convicts were allowed to "be on their own hands," on Saturday and Sunday, although on the latter day they still had to muster for church-parade, "shaved and in clean clothes". At the same time an increase in rations which brought them up to 1 lb. of meat and 1 lb. of wheat a day was expected to compensate them for the increase in the hours of labour.[96] Those within barracks enjoyed also a liberal supply of vegetables, and they were, on the whole, the only men who greatly benefited by the change. In the summer Government gangs commenced work at six o'clock, had one hour off for breakfast and one for dinner, and thus had a ten hours' day and a fifty hours' week. In the winter they commenced work after breakfast at nine o'clock and continued until six, with an hour's intermission for dinner, thus doing eight hours' work or forty hours in the week.
The Saturday holiday was necessary for the men out of barracks that they might make their lodging money, to the men in barracks that the overseers might bring their men's rations from the Government store. But this freedom on Saturday and Sunday to a great extent undid the wholesome effects of the restraint throughout the week. Wentworth found that Monday was his heaviest court-day and that most of the Government servants spent their free time in drinking, fighting, gambling and committing petty larcenies.[97]
When Macquarie wrote to Lord Bathurst about the new barracks, the latter was rather troubled by the account of its advantages given by the enthusiastic founder. He feared that Macquarie's attention to the convict's comforts rendered transportation an ineffective punishment.[98] The rations were too liberal and the week's work too easy.[99]
This opinion was shared by most of the colonists, especially those who were not themselves in Government service. As interested spectators they quickly saw that discipline in the Government gangs was very slack,[100] and that the work was done in a leisurely and slovenly manner. Much was to be accounted for by the inefficiency of the overseers; who were usually convicts themselves and had little influence over the men. The overseers and men played into each other's hands, and the former were reluctant to report misconduct or neglect of work. [101] It was also the unanimous opinion of the magistrates and landowners that "the convicts" did best at task-work as long as it was strictly measured. Druitt, the chief engineer, opposed such a system, giving as sufficient reason that if put to a task the men scamped the work, and that it was unfair to conscientious or slow workers. He pointed also to its failure when he did give it. But he really never allowed it a fair trial, for no man was permitted to leave the labour yard until the six o'clock bell whether his task were finished or not. Occasionally work had been allotted in weekly tasks, but in such a way that the men often finished on Wednesdays and spent the remainder of the week in idleness. [102]
It was no wonder that the Government service became popular amongst all the prisoners except the good mechanics [103] and that the landowners thoroughly disapproved of Macquarie's system. It was not merely their poverty which prevented them from taking men off the Government's hands. The disinclination of the men themselves to go into the settler's service, their consequent unwillingness to work, and the cost of their keep and wages, all constituted serious hindrances.
In 1804 a Colonial Regulation had decreed that every master to whom a servant was assigned must agree to feed and clothe him in a satisfactory manner and to give him ₤10 a year as wages. No agreement was drawn up, but by taking a convict servant a settler necessarily accepted the conditions. The rations were expected to be equal to those given by Government and the wages were in payment for work done after three o'clock. These regulations were republished by Macquarie in 1814 [104] and in 1816 he ordered the wages to be paid, if the servants desired it, in money, [105] but a deduction of £3, might be made for clothing. [106]
The Order issued in 1814 discloses the difficulties of the small settlers with their Government men.
"It having come to the knowledge of the Governor," the Order runs, "that the practice of remunerating Government men for their extra time and labour either by permitting them to employ certain portions of their time for their own benefit, wherever they may choose to engage themselves, or to cultivate grain or rear pigs or other animals in lieu of giving them the wages prescribed by the established regulations of the Colony, his Excellency cannot avoid calling the attention of the public to the consideration of the ill consequences necessarily resulting from either the one commutation or the other. Those persons who have been in the habit of giving up portions of their[107] time to their Government men, must be aware that they thereby enable idle and disorderly persons in the class of assigned convicts to pass into parts of the country where their persons are not known; whilst the latter, availing themselves of that circumstance, commit the most flagrant and atrocious acts under the idea that they will avoid detection.
"That robberies very frequently escape detection by the sudden retreat of the perpetrators from that part of the country where they committed their depredations, is too notorious to be controverted: This fact fully evinces the necessity for doing away the practice.
"Those Government men who have the indulgence of cultivating ground and rearing stock instead of receiving their prescribed wages, frequently become the receivers of stolen grain and provisions, which, being blended with that of their own rearing, baffles detection, and justice is thereby defeated.
"Settlers or others who do not require the entire services of the men assigned to them, or who cannot afford to pay them for their extra labour, are required to return them forthwith to the principal superintendent of convicts at Sydney, or to the magistrates of the district to which they respectively belong."[108]
But the evil against which this Order was directed was the result of collusion between master and man, and therefore one which was difficult to stamp out.
The payment of wages in money was very generally condemned by masters on the ground that their servants spent the money as soon as they could on liquor. The settlers preferred to pay the regulation wages and any extra remuneration in what was called "property"—that is, tea, sugar and tobacco. This was profitable to the master because the price of these goods was usually from 40 to 70 per cent. above ready-money wholesale cost, and 25 to 35 per cent. above the Sydney retail price.[109] On the other hand the servant did in reality get more for his money in this way than if it went straight into the publican's pocket.
The servants of small settlers usually sat at their master's tables and shared their food. Their ordinary diet consisted of tea, sugar, bread and meat, and spirits as often as possible. The social position of the poor man's servant, who sometimes farmed a few acres of his master's land for himself and often married his master's daughter, was higher than that of the servants of wealthy settlers, but the latter were better fed. They received the Government rations with an additional 7 lb. of wheat, tea, sugar, milk and vegetables. Compared with the diet of the peasants and artisans of the United Kingdom they lived exceedingly well.[110] Their clothing, however, was bad. In the Government service, owing to delays in sending slop-clothing, the men were often very ragged. It was costly to supply them with colonial-woven garments, and the Governor would not risk such an expense. Bigge, however, stoutly condemned this economy, saying that the convicts might have been justified in revolting, forced to go about, as they were, indecently clothed in rags.[111]
The settlers' complaints of their servants were very numerous and of increasing frequency during Macquarie's governorship. In earlier days severe punishment for insubordination, and a more suitable class of field labourers, had largely accounted for the smaller number of complaints. Cox described the convicts who arrived in 1819 as a quarter boys under twenty-one and more than half the remainder artisans, factory-hands or "forgers who were not used to any work at all".[112] Riley also described the majority as being quite useless and not worth their keep to the settlers. The Governor by an Order in 1815[113] and another in 1818[114] tried to stifle the settlers' complaints and force them to keep whatever men were sent to them, but the Orders were never enforced.[115] As the class of labourer deteriorated, their demands rose. Many indulgences which had previously been given as rewards of merit were now claimed as matters of right. Good and bad servants alike had to be paid the minimum wage of ₤10, and masters found themselves forced to offer more than that in order to secure good workmen. Some of the settlers, who had, or were supposed to have, influence with the Governor in gaining pardons for their men,[116] had no difficulty in making them work, but others, although they treated them well, found them more insubordinate every year. Of these Macarthur was the most notable, and he gave a full account of his methods to Bigge.[117] "My servants," he wrote, "are not often tasked, for they will not perform a task without continual reference to the magistrate to compel them by punishments, which I always very reluctantly do."[118] The method I adopt is to find them well, clothe them comfortably, and give sometimes extra rewards. I cannot, however, boast of my success, for most of the farm servants are idle and neglectful, and the losses I sustain amongst my stock, in consequence of their carelessness, are alarmingly great. … I require my servants to work from sunrise to sunset, allowing them one hour for breakfast and another for dinner.
"Each man receives weekly 7lb. of beef or mutton and one peck of wheat; in clothes, tea, sugar, tobacco and money to the value of £15 a year, unless they are idle and worthless, when I confine the allowance to £10, which is the rate of wages established by Government. To those who behave well I give gratuities varying from £1 to £5, but I regret to say this practice does not much swell the amount of my expenditure."
His house-servants he paid from £10 to £15, and that he was a good master is evinced by the fact that not one of his servants ever attempted to run away.
In addition to the convicts he employed some ticket-of-leave men and free labourers, whom he paid according to contracts made with each of them individually, and not in accordance with the scale of wages drawn up by the Governor in 1816. Cox, who had 120 convict servants as well as some who were not convicts, paid his ploughmen (convict or free) £10 to £15 a year, and his mechanics £15 to £25, but as he may have paid the whole amount in "property" it is difficult to draw any comparison between Macarthur's and his methods.[119]
| Work. | King's Scale. | Macquarie's Scale. |
Week's Work, King. | ||||||
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||||
| Felling forest timber per acre | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 1 acre. | ||
| Burning off forest timber per acre | 1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 65 rods. | ||
| Felling timber brush ground per acre | 0 | 12 | 0 | ||||||
| Breaking up new ground per acre | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 65 rods. | ||
| Chipping in wheat | 0 | 6 | 8 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 1½ acres. | ||
These are about half the items. The lower price in Macquarie's scale is due to the fact that the wages are to be paid in sterling money. In King's scale they are "colonial currency," which was much depreciated. In King's time, the working hours were fifty a week.
Such were the general conditions of the workmen in the settlement in 1821. There was practically no distinction between free and convict labourers.[120] In Sydney the wealthy ticket-of-leave men, who had in many cases brought money with them from England, insulted the eyes of the free with their lavish ostentation, their rings and chains and their dashing curricles.[121] The old distance and respect were things of the past. The convict prisoner or ticket-of-leave man passed the civilian without salute—nay, he even took the inner side of the path. Labour was fast becoming an ordinary market commodity to be bought and paid for, instead of a debt due from the outcast to those within the ranks of respectability. Meanwhile as the economic power of the convict labourer increased, his social ostracism became yet more rigorous.[122] An objection universally taken by the colonists to the convict system throughout this period was that large bodies of convicts were kept in Government service in the towns, and that by such an arrangement the object of their reform was lost. Macquarie himself felt the truth of this, but could see no alternative. Bigge collected the opinions of the magistrates and other leading settlers, who showed a quite remarkable agreement.[123] They suggested the distribution of the convicts over the country and their employment in agriculture. All of them, they considered, would be fit, no matter what their previous lives had been, to clear the ground, grub up the stumps and burn off the wood. Thus employed they would have hard work for their bodies, be separated from bad associates, and enjoy time for reflection on past misdeeds. The difficulties of superintendence were admittedly great. Convict overseers were not approved of, some considering that the convicts gained great advantages simply from having "gentlemen" set over them.[124] Macarthur said frankly that there never had been a good system of convict management and evidently thought there never would be. As he was himself a strong man with a gift for organisation, he favoured a system which gave more freedom to the employer.
"If a large body of respectable persons could be induced to settle in the Colony," he wrote, "much good might be accomplished. Provided the new settlers were of a description to compel their servants to execute a due quantity of work to determine the amount of their rewards, and to make the quality and to some extent the quantity of their food depend upon the convicts' industry and good behaviour. … I am sensible that such an authority as I have described would sometimes be misused by harsh and selfish men … and that such abuses of power might escape detection. But that portion of evil, or, I fear, a greater one, must be submitted to; for experience has proved … the pernicious and demoralising operation of general regulations which place the good and bad servant, the honest man and the thief, upon the same footing, and authorising him not only to claim but to insist upon the same indulgence." He summarised his views by saying that a convict should be compelled to work for his living and to refrain from vicious practices, but that he should be duly rewarded for good work and good conduct.
Thomas Moore, an experienced settler and magistrate, made a proposal of a novel kind to which unfortunately no attention was paid.
"All persons," he suggested, "receiving convicts into their employ should take the entire management and superintendence of them themselves, and in every agricultural district I would recommend a village or small town to be established in the most central part of it, where there should be fixed such Government mechanics as may be necessary for the benefit of that particular district. In each of these towns a magistrate should preside, and three respectable settlers should be appointed to act as appraisers, who, with the magistrate, should be empowered to fix the quantity and price of every kind of agricultural labour that may be performed by convicts within that district."[125]
No one approved of the method of payment. Some considered it inconsistent with a state of servitude that convicts should receive wages at all, food, clothing and shelter being all to which they had a right. Cox objected that that would have placed them altogether in the position of slaves. Marsden, after thirty years' experience, could suggest no alternative scheme and yet condemned the one in force. The opinion of the majority was that the Regulations had not sufficient elasticity and gave no opportunity for grading the men according to their merits.
Bigge himself came to the very lame conclusion that Government servants ought not to receive wages but only occasional rewards, and that more settlers should be encouraged to come from England. Thus more employment would be provided for the convicts and less encouragement for them on regaining their freedom to become "prematurely proprietors and masters". Like those who were sheep-farmers, he dwelt much on the moral value of shepherding, and indeed there was a certain fascination in the picture of the London thief watching his lambs beneath the she-oaks and haply repenting on the evil of his past.[126] The ignorant townsman, used to the noise and hubbub of cities, must have trembled at many a ghost in the quiet melancholy of the Australian forest.
Riley, who with the exception of Macarthur was the most far-sighted of the settlers, and who seems to have been slightly inoculated with the theory of free trade, put his finger on the real need of the Colony—free labourers with a knowledge of agriculture. He thought more convicts would then be employed, for "the settlers would be enabled so to extend their cultivation in many instances, that they would require the addition of other servants to assist them. I know that many persons are at this moment prevented entering into the cultivation of hemp and flax solely from the want of servants who are adapted to the raising and preparing these articles, and one man capable of giving directions for the produce of them could give occasion to the employ of many inferior labourers."
He calculated that £30 a head would cover the cost of sending out such labourers, and that immediately on their arrival at Sydney they would find masters ready to give them £20 a year and their board. The masters might then become responsible to the Government for the passage money, and Riley suggested that it should be repaid in three yearly instalments of £10, deducted from the man's wages.[127] There were not sufficient colonists who recognised the great "indirect" cost of convict labour to press this experiment upon the Government, and no attempt was made to carry it out. Many contented themselves by agreeing with Cox that after all the work of the convicts during thirty-two years had been incredibly great and successful, especially when it was called to mind that "a great many of them never did nor could be made to labour in England".[128]
From the first Macquarie attempted to make the occupation of the land a real thing. All grants issued by him contained three conditional clauses which had not been included before. The chief one was the prohibition of any transfer or alienation within five years of the receipt of the grant. If the condition were violated, the transfer or alienation would be null and void and the land revert to the Crown. The other two directed, under the same penalty of reversion to the crown, the clearing and cultivation of certain proportions of the whole area within five years.[129]
Theoretically the conditions were admirable, in practice no one paid any attention to them. Judge-Advocate Bent himself sold his own grant and a grant made to his twin sons before five years had passed, and his case was not an isolated one.[130] Many emancipists being devoid of inclination and capital, sold their farms immediately at about 5s. an acre. Sometimes a grantee was allowed to occupy his land before it had been measured or the grant made out. In such cases the land was frequently sold and another owner in possession under the "permissive occupation" before the first grantee had completed his title; and instances had occurred of the Provost-Marshal carrying out execution against the "permissive occupant".[131] Sometimes the land was not sold outright but purchased by instalments, and when the five years were up the "tenant" applied to have the grant made out in his name.[132] In no case within Oxley's knowledge had the Crown resumed or threatened to resume any grant even though the violation of the conditions had been notorious.[133]
The others had been equally disregarded. If the farm was small and the owner continued in possession, he did as a rule clear and cultivate the required area.[134] If it was too small for pastoral purposes he had indeed no other way of making a living. But the restricted and uncertain market, the great varieties of soil and climate, made it impossible to carry them out in all cases—and to enforce the conditions would have been unjust and impolitic. Marsden attributed the delay in getting the land under cultivation to lack of discrimination in making grants to emancipists who did not attempt to cultivate but sold it at once, thus reducing the supply of labour and increasing the amount of land on the market; especially as the land purchased was usually added to the great estates for pasture. This was probably true[135] and much good might have been done by requiring the emancipists to produce at least £20 before making them grants of more than ten acres.[136] Bigge thought that when distillation should be permitted, the conditions might well be enforced.[137]
While the conditions laid down by Macquarie were neglected by the colonists, those laid down by the Secretary of State were neglected by Macquarie. His Instructions ordered him to reserve 500 acres for the Crown adjacent to every 1,000 acres allotted to settlers.[138] In 1815 Lord Bathurst called his attention to the neglect of these Instructions and directed his compliance therewith.[139] Macquarie consulted Oxley, and they agreed in opposing this policy. It had not been done in other colonies, and the Crown, Oxley said, had not suffered from its neglect, and in New South Wales it had been wisely disregarded from the first. Lord Bathurst admitted the first part of the statement and the second so far as to agree that the Colony's progress had been ameliorated by these means.[140] But he went on to say: "I see no reason why in future the reserves on behalf of the Crown should not be in such situations as to ensure the rapid augmentation of their value from the cultivation of the adjoining allotments. It may, indeed, in some cases expose settlers to temporary inconvenience to have their respective establishments separated by an uncultivated reserve, but it must be recollected that this inconvenience is in general the only price paid for the land they cultivate, and it is not therefore just that the Crown should lose the only benefit which it derives from its liberality to them. I must therefore leave it to your discretion in future to make these reserves in such a manner as may give to the Crown every fair advantage without materially interrupting the comfort and safety of the inhabitants."[141]
Macquarie, relying upon his discretion, therefore made no change in his previous practice, reserving pieces of land here and there for the Crown as he thought fit.
The next omission was in the collection of the quit-rents. In 1814 Lord Bathurst proposed to raise them 1s. an acre on the land of free settlers. Macquarie, with the advice of the Surveyor-General, demurred.[142] Macquarie proposed a rate of 2d. an acre for emancipists and 1s. for fifty acres for free settlers. Oxley suggested that there should be a diminution in the rate for grants of 500 and over, but Macquarie pointed out that the larger the grant was the more easily could the owner pay the quit-rent.[143] Finally no alteration was made. The exact amount was for the moment quite unimportant, as few quit-rents were collected before 1821 at the earliest.[144] In 1820 the Assistant-Surveyor was appointed collector and assigned an extra allowance for that duty. He proposed that where old grants had been consolidated and new ones given he should wait until the quit-rent became due under the new grant; and that where land had been transferred he should collect from the last person to whom it had been transferred.[145] The amount then due including arrears was no more than £375.[146]
In 1821 Macquarie found that so many settlers arrived by each ship that his old system of inquiring separately into each case and giving grants in accordance with the settlers' merits was no longer practicable. With Oxley's help he drew up a scale of grants proportionate to the amount of capital at the settlers' disposal, which came into force in 1821.[147]
| Settlers with a capital of | £100 | received grants of | 100 | acres. |
| „„„ | 200 | „„ | 200 | „ |
| „„„ | 300 | „„ | 300 | „ |
| „„„ | 400 | „„ | 400 | „ |
| „„„ | 500 | „„ | 500 | „ |
| „„„ | 750 | „„ | 640 | „ |
| „„„ | 1,000 | „„ | 800 | „ |
| „„„ | 1,500 | „„ | 1,000 | „ |
| „„„ | 1,700 | „„ | 1,280 | „ |
| „„„ | 2,000 | „„ | 1,500 | „ |
| „„„ | 2,500 | „„ | 1,760 | „ |
| „„„ | 3,000 | „„ | 2,000 | „ |
To those who had larger capital than this Oxley proposed to sell Crown lands at 10s. or 7s. an acre. He proposed, also, the following changes in the system of land distribution, all of which met with Bigge's approbation.
"(1) That the country intended to be settled should be previously surveyed and laid out in districts, subdivided into farms of such sizes as are most usually granted, and that with reference to the localities of the country and its natural divisions, each district should not contain more than thirty-six square miles, and that the farms should form squares in similar proportions. …
"(2) That the districts should be surveyed and submitted to the approval of the Governor at least six months prior to being open to the selection of individuals. The maps of the different and vacant districts being open to the inspection of all persons having orders for land, would enable such persons to know what lands the Governor intended to settle, and also give them sufficient time to examine the lands and make their selection, which having done, the settler could experience no delay in being put in possession or receiving their title deeds.
"(3) Whatever portion of land may be given to the free settlers, it should be optional for them to purchase a further quantity in addition to their free grant, in proportion to that grant, at 5s. an acre, paying a deposit of 10 per cent., and the remainder by instalments every six months, giving in the whole a credit of three years, when, on the purchase being completed, a grant should pass to them. A failure in payment of any instalments should not deprive the purchaser of his right, provided the whole arrears were made good with interest at the period the last payment came due; a failure in the ultimate would necessarily subject the original purchaser to the loss of his deposits, and the land would revert to the disposal of the Governor.
"(4) Certain portions of each district should also be set apart for public sale to individuals who have already received grants as settlers. … A similar deposit should be paid by and credit given to purchasers of this description as to those of the first, and the lowest price at which the public lands should be set up for sale should be 5s. an acre."[148]
Oxley thought he could carry out all these reforms with the addition of two assistants to his staff. He had, however, very heavy arrears to make up in 1821, and numbers of settlers were waiting for their land to be surveyed and grants made out.
It was at this time unusual to give leases of Crown lands except in the towns. Occasionally permission was given to pasture sheep on vacant land adjoining an estate, and rights of common had been given to settlers at Richmond in the Hawkesbury district as early as 1804.[149] In 1820 many farms were let by their owners on leases of seven or fourteen years at rents of 20s. an acre if paid in money, and 30s. if paid in grain. These were usually small estates of five to twenty acres.[150]
The land in the townships, in Parramatta and in Sydney, was generally leased from the Crown for periods of seven or fourteen years. Before Macquarie's time it had never been made the subject of grants, but in 1810 he strongly advised that good building should be encouraged by alienating the land outright, and his advice was adopted.[151] On the Hawkesbury the settlers had built their houses on the low lands in the midst of their corn-fields, and whenever the river rose in flood their houses were devastated. Macquarie offered them additional allotments on the high land, to be considered inseparable from their farms, that they might build homesteads above the danger line, but very few consented to move. Probably they were afraid to leave their corn unprotected in the fields below.[152]
The houses in the country were very plain and cheap, costing as a rule no more than £100. The convict servants on large estates built huts of mud and bark, each two sharing one between them. Macarthur had thought of building them large mess-houses, but they had a distaste of living in great numbers, due, he suspected, to the fear of each that plans of mischief, and especially cattle-stealing, would be discovered and betrayed by others.[153]
Riley believed house rent to be higher in Sydney than in England, and building was costly if much imported material was used.[154] In 1820 there were 1,084 houses in Sydney, thirty-one of which belonged to the Government. Sixty-eight were built of stone and 259 of brick, but they were not of an imposing appearance.[155] The situation of the town, however, was so lovely that under any circumstances its appearance must have been attractive.
At this time more than half the population of the Colony lived in the town, 12,079 men, women and children being housed in 1,084 buildings.[156] Such a population was wholly disproportionate to the rest of the settlement, and sufficient employment could not be found for its inhabitants. Riley, speaking of the condition of things in 1817 or 1818, said that there were at least a hundred convicts and a majority of the ticket-of-leave men who could find nothing to do,[157] and this number must have greatly increased by 1821. It was not possible that there could in so young a settlement be enough work to employ so large a city population. There were, according to Riley, six or eight people who would have been called merchants in England, and a considerable number of traders, but how many he did not say.[158] At least the civil and military officers were no longer ostensibly amongst that number. After a long fight Macquarie had succeeded in putting an end to their open trading operations. At the end of 1810 he had begun by writing to O'Connell, who was in command of the 73rd regiment, pointing out that his instructions both from the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief forbade his officers to carry on commercial, agricultural, cattle or grazing speculations, "as being derogatory to the character of any officer, subversive to military discipline and contrary to the customs of the army". But having heard that certain officers had been engaged in such enterprises, he requested O'Connell to inform them publicly that these practices must not continue, and that if such facts came to his notice in the future the offenders would be brought before a court-martial.[159] In 1814 a somewhat similar warning was given to the civil officers,[160] and in 1816[161] the warning was made stronger by quotations from a despatch of Lord Bathurst's. After that time there were no complaints of a public nature, and though Macquarie wrote to the Secretary of State that several officers of the 46th had entered into grazing speculations, he took no action against them in the Colony. Very likely they managed their business through agents, or at least made it appear as though they themselves were not actually engaged therein. So long as grants of land were given to civil and military officers, it was of course impossible to prevent them turning their estates to as profitable uses as they could. The civil staff continued throughout this period to have grants almost as matters of right, and indeed to the judges they were offered as inducements to taking the posts. But with regard to the military officers, Macquarie as early as 1813 asked for written instructions prohibiting him from making them grants, wishing to have Lord Bathurst's support publicly given in following an unpopular course.[162] Although Lord Bathurst did not give the instructions required, Macquarie consistently refused to give further grants to any officer or officer's wife.[163] As land was selling at as low a price as 5s. an acre, those who wished to have farms of their own might purchase them, but in many ways the Governor strove to prevent them from touching trade concerns. Thus in 1814 he put an end to a profitable business which had long been carried on by Government servants of buying articles from the King's stores ostensibly for their own use and then selling them with great profit to the settlers.[164]
The markets of the Colony had been opened to importation at the beginning of 1815, and apparently at that time, or more likely before that time, the placing of a maximum price on imported goods came to an end.[165] But when there were no longer any Government regulations the magistrates controlled in many ways the price of goods on the market. Thus they ordered a shoemaker brought before them to sell boots at the reasonable price of 10s. instead of the exorbitant cost of 25s. Butchers and bakers had both to take out licenses and to conform to a fixed scale of prices. Hawkers also had to take out licenses, but that was for reasons of order and policy rather than anything else, for servants assigned to the lower officials of Government or poorer settlers, escaped prisoners, ticket-of-leave men and all the disorderly characters in the settlement, made a pretence of hawking goods to cover every sort of fraud and knavery. To prevent this the hawker's license was placed at the high price of £20 a year, and the applicant had to produce a certificate as to character before getting it. These regulations were only issued in 1818, and their effect cannot be computed, for there are not any means of knowing whether the conditions were strictly enforced.[166]
The business population was almost entirely engaged in trading, and there was but one factory owned by a private individual in the whole Colony. That was the establishment of Simeon Lord, where cloth, hats, blankets and stockings were manufactured. But on many estates home industries were carried on, and in the Government labour yard many articles were made by the convicts. The colonial-made goods, however, were still so costly that it was more economical to buy imported wares.
All imports save those of British manufacture were subject to duties, but these might often be evaded. The masters and officers of the convict transports, for example, made a practice of bringing trade adventures of all kinds. Sometimes they brought goods from England, more often spirits and tobacco from Rio Janeiro or the Cape. In the first case the goods were not entered at the Customs House in England, in no case did they pay any freight, and finally Macquarie often allowed shipments (especially of tobacco and spirit) to be landed by the master or surgeon without paying even the colonial dues.[167]
In 1816 Riley and Jones, the largest firm of merchants in Sydney, complained to the Colonial Office[168] pointing out that these trade ventures were an infringement of the Charter-party[169] and took up the tonnage which properly belonged to the convicts. What was more important from the merchants' point of view was that these surreptitious cargoes injured their custom. The Colonial Office, who heard of these practices for the first time, at once instructed Macquarie to bring them to an end. He was directed to order a careful examination of the stores brought by the convict vessels, and a comparison between those and the official list sent in the Charter-party. He was not to allow any surplus to be sold in Sydney.[170] Macquarie received this despatch on the 11th May, 1818, but did not at once impose any order. There were at the moment several transports in the harbour, and to prohibit the sale of their cargoes would, he thought, have been unjust to them as well as a "loss to the revenue".[171] They had so long been allowed to break the law that perhaps he had some reason to speak of the "injustice" of making them suddenly conform to it. Eventually he made a prohibitory order in October.[172] A few weeks later he received a memorial from "many principal inhabitants" including Macarthur, Lord and Townson, praying that the prohibition might not be continued.[173] They pointed out that it would greatly check "the diffusion of manufactures of the mother-country," but admitted that their chief reason for advocating the continuance of the importation of goods by the transports was the restrictive nature of the Charter of the East India Company. According to its regulations no vessels of less than 250 tons could trade with New South Wales. The return freights were so small that under this restriction the incentive to private owners to send vessels to New South Wales was very weak, and the cost of freight thither exceedingly high. Thus the convict transports were a valuable channel of trade. But there would be no need of them if vessels of, say, 150 tons were permitted to trade with the Colony. According to Macquarie the transports and the ships belonging to Riley and Jones carried on the whole import trade, and Riley and Jones sold badly selected shipments at "griping extravagant prices". He was therefore very ready to comply with the memorial and removed the prohibition until further representations should have been made to the Secretary of State.[174] Thus the matter remained until 1820, when the restriction as to tonnage was removed by Act of Parliament.[175] There remained then no reason for the continuance of the indulgence, save Macquarie's desire to retain it. In 1820 Goulburn, the Under-Secretary of State, proposed that private ventures might be taken on board the convict transports on payment of the usual freight, and the Treasury were asked to make arrangements for carrying this out, not only in England but at the Cape and Rio Janeiro also.[176] Shipowners of course protested, but without success, and the trade continued to be carried on under these regulations.[177]
The eagerness which Macquarie showed throughout to permit this indulgence to masters and officers of transports was probably due to his great liking for all "discretionary" powers, a liking shared by every autocratic Governor. It was a tolerated illegality and therefore wholly dependent on his favour. His obstinacy had also been aroused by the attempt made by a colonist to seize two convict ships, the Tottenham and the Elizabeth in the act of landing goods.[178] The Tottenham brought a varied cargo valued at more than £1,000[179] and was seized by Mathew, a Sydney trader, on the 20th November, 1818, while she was landing goods under the Governor's permit―Mathew had great difficulty in getting his information against the ship sworn to, and after some trouble it was accepted by the Registrar of the Court of Vice-Admiralty.[180] The Judge-Advocate proposed to open the court for the hearing of the case on the 19th December. This long delay seemed to Mathew a proof that the Judge-Advocate desired to deny him justice. The truth of the matter was that Wylde, who knew very little Vice-Admiralty law and was in that respect not unlike the rest of the colonists, was at first in doubt whether the matter was one for his court to take cognisance of, and when he had persuaded himself that it was, had the more difficult task of persuading the Governor. Macquarie insisted that in allowing Mathew to bring his case, the Judge-Advocate was acting in a manner hostile to the Governor's measures and derogatory to his authority. When the Judge-Advocate persisted, a complete estrangement took place between them which lasted until the 29th of December.
When the court opened on the 19th, Mathew claimed that the cargo should be condemned on the grounds that the goods had been shipped contrary to the regulations of the Navy Board and without paying customs duties, and that the ship had no legal clearance. The information against the Tottenham was thus laid for a breach of the Revenue and Plantation Laws, and Wylde saw no way in which he could refuse to adjudicate. Macquarie, however, held that once his permission had been given to the ship's master to land the cargo, any attempt to seize the ship or goods or question the legality of the ship's clearance was an insult to his supreme authority as Governor, and as such not within the jurisdiction of any court in the Colony. Wylde was by nature a placid man and had borne with Macquarie for two years, but he knew that in giving way here he would be taking upon himself a very grave responsibility. However, though he went through with the hearing of the case, he probably felt relieved that he was able to give judgment against Mathew, "dismissing the information with costs". The grounds of the decision were a want of legal right in the party to seize boat or goods, that right being limited to certain parts of the coast and to certain customs officers,[181] and also a want of jurisdiction in the court as a court of revenue to take cognisance of mere disobedience to the orders of the Navy Board.[182]
The revenue collected by the naval officer who was the chief customs official consisted of duties and taxes on shipping. The latter were exceedingly heavy, the dues on clearances, permission "to wood and water," to anchor, to land goods, varying from £1 to £7 according to tonnage. Coasting vessels paid the same rates as vessels from England or elsewhere, and found these taxes very burdensome at the end of each short voyage.[183]
The duties levied in New South Wales comprised the 5 per cent. ad valorem on all goods and manufactures not the produce of Great Britain, first levied in 1805; the duties on spirits of 7s. a gallon and on wine of 9s. dating from December, 1814; the duties on whale-oil, skins and timber, from June, 1813; and on shells, sandalwood and bêche-de-mer from the South Sea Islands, levied from 1807.[184] Those on oil, timber, shells, etc., were practically duties on export. The sperm and black whale oil which paid £2 10s. and £2 per ton respectively, were not for home consumption but for the English market, and no drawback was allowed on exportation. So also with the duties of ½d. and 1½d. on fur and hair sealskins, and of ½d. on kangaroo-skins. The duty on cedar of is. a solid foot or £1 on twenty spars was likewise a tax paid in the Colony on exportable produce. For these reasons such duties were unhesitatingly condemned by Riley in 1819, and by his brother in his evidence before Bigge in 1820. The only argument in their favour was the revenue to be thus obtained, but as they nearly succeeded in putting an end to the whaling trade, at any rate, even this purpose was not achieved.[185] The duty on sandalwood and pearl-shells of £2 10s. a ton, and on bêche-de-mer of £5 a ton, put a severe burden on commerce in the South Seas, but the trade was not injured so much as the whaling trade, probably because the pressure of the duty had merely the effect of increasing the pressure exercised by the masters and crews of the South Sea vessels on the natives who collected these products. The New South Wales duties, combined with those levied in England, brought the whole amount paid on each ton of oil placed on the English market up to £27 8s. 9d., while the Americans, who were the most prominent rivals in the South Seas, paid £7 more. But the freight from New South Wales was high, being £3 a ton to India alone. In 1817 there were forty tons of oil in bond at Sydney[186] waiting until the owners could pay the duty, and in 1819 a shipment was bonded in England for the same reason.[187] The duty as it stood altogether crushed the trade. Riley advocated a bounty in place of the tax on oil, for whaling would have been a good occupation for young colonials and have provided freight for ships returning to England.[188] The Government would have profited indirectly, for transport vessels were paid by tonnage, and the easier it was for them to find return cargoes, the lower would be the cost for their trip outwards.[189]
The duties on South Sea products, save those on oil, had been levied first by Bligh, and those on oil by Macquarie.[190] But the latter was far from defending them, and wrote that they were "as impolitic in principle as they have been proved by the experience of several years to be unproductive in revenue".[191] He dwelt on the lack of other exports and the expensive outfit necessary for whaling, proposing that a drawback should be allowed. Lord Bathurst agreed to this, and by an Act of Parliament of 1819 this drawback was permitted.[192] The duties on timber were withdrawn by order of the Governor in 1821.[193] Two additional imposts were laid in 1818, a duty of 6d. a lb. on tobacco and an increase in the duty on spirits, which brought the whole up to 10s. a gallon. The purpose of the latter was "to lighten the burthen of this Colony on the mother country" as well as to restrain "the present immoderate consumption of spirituous liquors".[194] The actual effect of the measure was to increase the revenue without achieving any reduction in consumption. As a matter of fact it could not have done both. The tax on tobacco—a tax which it could easily stand—was intended to serve as a protective duty and foster home-production; but towards that end it was ineffective.
The duties were not exacted very strictly, and the Government were usually ready to take security for their payment. In 1820 no less a sum than £4,024 was owing, and the Governor held unrealised securities, some of which dated back to the time of King and Bligh.[195]
The cotton goods, sugar, rice and tea, which formed a great part of the colonial trade, were imported direct from India and China under licenses from the Bengal Government and the regulations of the committee of super-cargoes at Canton.[196] The voyage to and from China lasted about three or four months, and the delays in port at Sydney were the cause of many complaints. These delays were due to the system of "detainers" and the manner of mustering the ship's crew.
The system of detainers was an old one in the Colony, and except for the period of Johnston's and Foveaux's administration had been always in force. Macquarie had reimposed it immediately on his arrival and made no alterations in the system from that time.[197] In accordance with his regulations any person about to leave the Colony must give notice of his intending departure in the Sydney Gazette at least ten days before sailing. This notice had to be inserted in two successive issues. At least eight days subsequent to the first notice the person about to depart had to procure from the Judge-Advocate's office a certificate stating that no detainer had been lodged against him. Until 1817 any one might lodge a detainer without even swearing to the debt therein alleged, but Wylde insisted on this being done. The total number of detainers lodged between 1816 and 1820 was 671, and in 1820 they showed a distinct falling off.[198] Wylde stated that under his administration the number had decreased, but no record has been kept of those in previous years. When the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature was closed, from 1815 to 1816, the only way in which to secure payment was to lodge a detainer and so prevent the debtor from leaving the country,[199] and detainers for as much as £3,000 were lodged. They could at any time be made the means of fraud. A man who had arranged all his affairs for departure could be hurried into giving security even for a debt which he did not owe, and might in the end have to pay it. Those upon whom the regulation fell most hardly were the masters of ships frequenting the ports. When Wylde became Judge-Advocate he found that the greater number of detainers were lodged by publicans against men of the ships' crews. The masters, impatient to weigh anchor, would either have to pay the debts or leave the men behind. At Wylde's suggestion Macquarie included in the Port Regulations issued in 1819 a clause which gave them some alleviation, by allowing masters to cry down[200] the credit of their men. Only masters of British or Indian vessels, however, were allowed this privilege, and not those of colonial ships unless the names of the crew had been advertised in the Gazette. This was reasonable, for the crews on the colonial ships were constantly changing. The detainers were intended to serve the double purpose of preventing the escape of prisoners and securing the payment of debts, which under the colonial system of judicature could not be recovered in the court against persons out of the Colony. With all its defects and possibilities of imposing hardships, it was found on the whole to serve its purpose with tolerable efficiency.[201]
But the regulations for mustering the ship's crew and passengers were more burdensome and less efficient. It was obviously the duty of the Government to make sure that no prisoners escaped, and for that reason it was necessary to make a thorough examination of each ship before its departure, to muster its crew and see the passengers. But the work was badly done, and by holding the muster on shore at the Secretary's office, instead of on the ship, no useful purpose was served. The following description sent to Bigge by the master of a convict ship shows clearly the objections to Campbell's methods.
"The was in the first place detained ten days after it was advertised ready for sea; at the expiration of which time the Secretary would not muster the crew though applied to for an earlier muster. On the tenth day, as some of my crew had deserted, Mr. Campbell appointed that day week for the purpose; … I wrote to the Governor … on which an earlier day was fixed by him. That day came, and I brought my crew on shore (the ship at this time being left entirely to the mercy of those who might plunder her),[202] some of whom thought proper to go into the town against all the efforts used by the officers and myself to prevent them; I represented this to Mr. Campbell, showed him the men walking away, asked what I was to do? how I could act? was in a manner laughed at by him; during that day I was employed in looking after magistrates, sending constables after my people; still unable to clear my ship for sea—I threatened again to write the Governor on the subject. The next day I received information that my clearance was made out, on getting which I had to pay £20 16s. without any reason given why, nor could I gain any information on the subject, nor even a receipt for the money.[203] The departments of Government receive with pleasure the penalties and forfeitures on the ship and crew, without a wish or effort to assist the captain in the execution of his duty, though robberies of every description are practised to (and) from his ship."[204]
To supply the Colony with a sound currency had been one of the problems before each Governor since the time of its foundation. In the very early days there had been no metal coinage at all. Two legitimate substitutes—the Government store receipts and bills on the Treasury—and the promissory notes of individuals, the so-called "Colonial Currency," had competed at a considerable disadvantage with the rum-currency. The former—the Government bills—were the more stable of the two, for the colonial currency was subject to continual fluctuations. Attempts were several times made by colonists to regulate the value of these notes by combining among themselves to raise or lower their exchange against the Government issues. To prevent this Macquarie forbade these combinations, and also the issue of promissory notes with the exchange value named upon them. This was in 1813, when a supply of silver dollars had been received from India, and from that time it was declared that only those notes which were payable on sight in sterling money were to be legal tender. To keep the silver coins in the country Macquarie mutilated each by cutting out a small coin for exchange. The value of the large coin was 5s. and of the small 1s. 3d.[205]
The Proclamation insisting that the notes should be immediately payable in sterling money was a failure, and the courts were unable to enforce it.[206] Its objects were made more unattainable by the action of Commissary Allan, who arrived in June, 1813. He persuaded the Governor to allow him to replace the old system of store receipts at the Commissariat by the issue of promissory notes signed by the Commissary, pointing out the greater convenience and simplicity of the method. But Allan issued notes for private as well as public purposes, and improved his own while injuring the Government's credit. Had he kept, as he promised to do, within his monthly estimate, he would have run no risk. But he did not, and Macquarie was practically forced to restore the old custom of store receipts. He did it, however, so suddenly as to cause Allan great financial embarrassment, and to procure him the sympathy of the whole settlement.[207] In 1816 a determined effort was made to do away with the depreciated paper currency. At the end of November the tender of sterling money for the face value of the currency notes was again made compulsory, but finding that this could not be enforced, on the 7th December a Proclamation was issued containing a schedule of the rates at which they were to be exchanged, and this was carried out very leniently.[208] Wylde in his desire to find a stable currency to replace the promissory notes proposed that a bank should be established, a scheme which had long been advocated by Macquarie but opposed by the Colonial Office.[209] Now, however, without further consultation with Downing Street, Macquarie went straight ahead. The project was mooted in November, and the foundation of the Bank of New South Wales was decided upon at a meeting held on 22nd of that month, 1816. Macquarie granted a Charter of Incorporation, and in 1817 the bank opened for ordinary business and for the issue of notes.[210] In 1820 it had a capital of £20,000 in shares of £100 each, of which 120 were paid up and the shares stood at par. The expectations of the founders had been fulfilled and the circulating medium of the Colony for the first time placed on a satisfactory basis.
Macquarie granted the charter for seven years with "the usual rights and privileges of a corporation … provided the same shall meet … the approbation of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent".[211] This was the only support lent by the Government, except that after 1819 the colonial revenues were deposited with it.
The Governor considered that his Commission empowered him to grant the charter and Wylde agreed with him. The latter based his opinion on the fact that the Commission "allowed the Governor to raise boroughs, create turn-pikes and tolls, impose port duties and imposts, and determine from time to time the legal tender, regulate the value of the sterling medium and of the public money and interest thereon, establish and direct public markets, and to dispose at discretion of the Crown lands of the territory".[212] But Wylde would gladly have made a reference home upon the question before taking any steps had he not thought the delay likely to hasten the "almost inevitable final consequences of such a fictitious capital and circulating medium". Only by the establishment of a bank could the colonial currency be checked. An attempt had indeed been made to check it, but had met with signal failure. "And yet," he continued, "in a community like this no great public confidence can perhaps be even expected for some years to be found, and no contributions could have been obtained for a common stock but on the strongest Government and legal assurance of personal indemnity from all general liability or partnership risk. Such an indemnity could only and reasonably satisfy, and such it appeared to me could only be afforded, as in the one usual way, in the grant of Letters of Incorporation and the constitution of a Joint Stock Company."[213] But the charter met with disapproval from the Secretary of State who, after consulting the Law Officers, informed the Governor that he was not legally empowered to grant it and that it was consequently null and void.[214] "You will therefore," wrote Lord Bathurst, "intimate to the gentlemen composing that establishment that they can only consider themselves in the situation of persons associated for the purposes of trade, and as such not entitled to any of those special privileges which it was the object of the charter to confer." "So long as the bank is conducted on sound principles it will of course derive from the Government a due degree of support; but you will carefully avoid incurring any responsibility on account of it, or in any degree implicating the faith of the Colonial Government in its pecuniary transactions."
Macquarie in reply referred to Wylde's opinion and enumerated the advantages which had already accrued. "Antecedent to the opening of the bank," he said, "there was scarcely a mercantile transaction which did not become the subject of a lawsuit before payment could be effected. … Now in consequence of the facilities rendered by the bank, mercantile contracts and payments are as punctually observed and as promptly made, as they could be among the most eminent merchants on the Royal Exchange. These, my Lord, are effects that could never have been looked forward to, by any other means, in a new country like this, unprovided with any kind of specie, except what may remain of the ten thousand pounds in dollars sent … by order of Government from India."[215]
The charter apparently remained in force although it had been declared null and void.[216] Bigge considered the bank a beneficial institution, but that no royal charter was necessary. Without it indeed he thought a more cautious policy would be ensured.
A curious incident had arisen when the Articles of Incorporation were drawn up and put before a meeting of the shareholders, which was described by Wylde in his evidence to Bigge. The Governor was dissatisfied with the 7th article, which excluded persons who had been convicts from the direction of the bank. "But," said Wylde "had an ex-convict been appointed (and it was known that one would be proposed) all the other directors would have resigned." Wylde saw what was the feeling of the meeting, and proposed and carried the exclusion clause. When he waited upon the Governor later to submit the articles to him, he found that this affair had already been reported, with the result that it had "excited in him a strong opinion and feeling insomuch that I retired from all explanation."[217]
The New South Wales Bank was nevertheless largely patronised by the convict and ex-convict class. They much preferred its facilities to those of the Savings Bank, which gave a lower interest and from which it was troublesome to draw money at short notice.[218] The Savings Bank was founded by the exertions of Mr. Justice Field in June, 1819, for the benefit of convicts and the poor people generally; and its rules, prefixed by "A Plain Address," were printed and distributed to all convicts arriving in the Colony.
"Many of you," so ran the address, "bring small sums of money from England, your own savings or the bounty of your friends, and have no place of safe deposit for them upon landing in this Colony. Instead of trusting those sums to any private individual, you are recommended to place them in the Public Savings Bank". … The convicts, however, responded feebly to this invitation. They preferred to trust to some friend who knew of an investment which promised quick though uncertain profits or to leave their money in the New South Wales Bank, from which they could draw it at a moment's notice. The principal superintendent of convicts also acted in his private capacity as banker and money-lender, a calling not very consonant with his official station.
With a sounder currency, a more hopeful agricultural outlook, a prospect of encouragement to the wool-trade and lighter duties on South Sea products, the future looked brighter in 1821 than it had done for many years. But the social conditions of the Colony were very troubled. The increasing number of free settlers, both those from England and those born in the Colony, even the children of the convicts, began to gather together against them. These, as they grew richer and freer, became more disliked, and after 1821 began to lose ground. Under Macquarie's rule they reached their highest point socially and economically, and with his departure their day declined.
- ↑ The figures are those in Appendix to Bigge's Reports, R.O., MS., reduced by one-twelfth in accordance with his statement as to their accuracy in Report III.
- ↑ The returns (Appendix, Bigge's Reports) give 1,502 free proprietors and 9,861 freed. But the wives and families of the proprietors appear to be counted—so that these figures are quite misleading. There were in 1819, 794 free men, and 4,002 freed. A few ticket-of-leave men held land.
- ↑ 1819.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, I.
- ↑ The figures in 1820 of land held by emancipists give (in round numbers) 35,000 acres by grant and 50,000 by purchase.
- ↑ See Evidence in Appendix to Bigge's Report, R.O., MS.
- ↑ Macarthur to Bathurst, 18th October, 1821. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Townson, enclosure to letter of Wilberforce to C.O., 19th April, 1817. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Goulburn, Under-Secretary of State to Jamison, 3rd January, 1814. C.O., MS.
- ↑ D., 30th April, 1810. H.R., VII., p. 335.
- ↑ Goulburn to the Lord-Register of Scotland, 1st December, 1820. R.O., MS. He mentions 1,500 acres as too large a grant to be given to one man.
- ↑ Jamison, who only received a grant of 1,500 instead of 2,000 acres, gives five instances of grants of 3,000 and four of 2,000 acres each. No special representations had been made of any of these. Letter to C.O., 10th July, 1819. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See Appendix 36, C. on T., 1812.
- ↑ An "emancipist," e.g., wrote to his wife, "with the affection of a friend and the sincerity of a husband," urging her to join him in Sydney. R.O., MS.
- ↑ They were often bad Government servants too. Davey, e.g., who was a very expensive failure as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, was forced on Lord Bathurst by Lord Harrowby. See Correspondence. R.O., MS.
- ↑ They refused one man who had lost all his money on the race-course and whose friends wished to give him a fresh start. They also declined to assist in sending out a young man whose father deplored that the Grand Jury, "out of mistaken clemency," had thrown out a bill for theft against him. The father had hoped that his son would have been safely transported and England well rid of him. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 6, 17th November, 1812. R.O., MS. He thought too much attention was paid to friends in England. "Mr. Lord," he wrote in 1813, "thinks, because he happens to have a wealthy brother who is a Member of Parliament, he ought to receive whatever he asks for." D.1, 28th June, 1813. R.O., MS. Lord (Lieutenant Edward Lord of Van Diemen's Land) did receive an extra grant through his brother's intercession a little later.
The more suitable type of emigrant was the one thus described "… he would be everywhere and under any Government a peaceful subject. I believe he has no taste whatever for politics, and a natural dislike … for all those discussions which are so common, so bitter and so calculated to alienate the mind from the Government and introduce malevolent feelings." See Letter to C.O., 1821. MS., R.O.
- ↑ D. 8, 17th November, 1812. MS., R.O. The persons to whom Macquarie refers are mostly those who came out in Bligh's time with promises from the Secretary of State, which for one reason and another were never fully carried out. But Macquarie's opinion of "gentlemen-settlers" never materially altered.
- ↑ Bathurst to Macquarie, D.4, 3rd February, 1814. C.O., MS., and Macquarie'a reply, D., 7th October, 1814. R.O., MS. Also G.G.O., 28th December, 1816. Reduction of time to six months then first put in force.
- ↑ D. 3, 31st March, 1817. R.O., MS. He wished emancipists still to have the six months' indulgence. In 1821 all settlers, emancipists and free, were still allowed to be six months on the stores.
- ↑ See C.O. Domes. Corresp., 1814. MS.
- ↑ C.O. Domes. Corresp., 21st August, 1816. MS.
- ↑ "We require regular and pious clergymen of the Church of England, and not sectaries, for a new and rising Colony like this." D. 7, 1816. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 7, 1816. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Becket, e.g., Under-Secretary at the Home Office, wrote to Goulburn in 1820: "Can you not tempt some of our superabundant population to go to New South Wales?" and an official at the Treasury wrote: "Is there no way for a man to get there but by stealing?" R.O., MS., 1820. There are numbers of letters in which the need of emigration is taken for granted and the means discussed.
- ↑ D. 8, 16th May, 1818. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley and Jones, Evidence to C. on G., 1819. Riley probably refers only to emigrants who had some property or standing, not to the many labourers and artisans who were for the most part the husbands of convicts.
- ↑ Riley makes no mention of it. It was an Order of the 24th May, 1817. "The public will take notice that persons seeking to be put on the stores and to obtain other indulgences by virtue of their having obtained locations or promises of grants of land will not be considered as having any claim thereto until they shall have taken out their grant, cleared a portion of the lands assigned to them, and built a dwelling-house thereon; and none of the accustomed indulgences will be extended in future unless where a full and complete compliance has been rendered to the present rule on that head." See later in this chapter.
- ↑ It became a more frequent subject of reference in the English newspapers generally at about this time.
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1819, p. 175.
- ↑ D. 19, 22nd August, 1820. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 32, 28th November, 1821. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ This was a tract of land in the interior.
- ↑ i.e., about five or six head!
- ↑ It was expected that they might in time spread over the whole continent. Many strayed cattle belonging to settlers mixed with the original stock, but the original breed remained easily recognisable, and on this ground the Government claim the whole number.
- ↑ See enclosure to D. 18, 4th April, 1817. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 20, 24th March, 1819. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See Macarthur to Bigge, Appendix to Reports, 8th October, 1811. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See Governor's Instructions, H.R., VII. The "right" was, of course, not a legal right, but it was a kind of moral one.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III. Bigge also suggested the foundation of a school of agriculture where youths of this class especially might learn practical farming at Government expense. Macquarie refused altogether to give grants to single women. A Miss Walker, a woman of some fortune, asked for one and received the answer that, "according to the regulations laid down," the Governor could not give grants to ladies. See Correspondence with Bigge, 19th January, 1821. R.O., MS. Appendix to Bigge's Reports.
- ↑ This was recognised by the Colonial Office, who seldom took up any settler's complaint.
- ↑ Bigge, Report III.
- ↑ The figures are given in round numbers. In 1810 the population was 10,452, in 1815 it was 12,911.
- ↑ The following table may describe the position more clearly:—
1788-1810, 21,000 acres cleared.
7,500 acres under crop.
Population in 1810, 10,452.
1810-1815, 17,500 acres cleared.
11,500 acres under crop.
Population in 1815, 12,911.
1816-1820, 18,300 acres cleared.
12,000 acres under crop.
Population in 1820, 23,939.Figures for 1820 are slightly over-stated. See Bigge, III. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Ibid., 1819. He gives a long list of successful experiments.
- ↑ This was the ration for prisoners, and was less than the ration to Government officials and gentlemen-settlers.
- ↑ D. 1, 28th June, 1813. R.O., MS.
- ↑ This is a mere rhetorical flourish. It had happened twice only.
- ↑ D. 40, 12th December, 1718. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Enclosure. Treasury to C.O. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 3, 31st March, 1817. R.O., MS. Macquarie suggested that the system of supplying by tender might be safely introduced by the end of 1818, but let the matter rest and made no such change when the time arrived.
- ↑ D. 3, 31st March, 1817. R.O., MS.
- ↑ The Government and perhaps a few landowners alone had storage room.
- ↑ The demand even at that price was very weak. Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Examination of Riley, C. on G., 1819. Out of the seven floods on the Hawkesbury between 1806 and 1820 five were in February, March or April. See Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See above, Chapter IV.
- ↑ S.G., 30th December, 1820.
- ↑ Regulations, 10th February, 1821. S.G.
- ↑ If a man tendered cattle for the stores who had not given in any returns of cattle at the previous General Muster, his tender was refused unless he could make some conclusive explanation of how he became possessed of it. See S.G., 9th January, 1817.
- ↑ S.G., 28th December, 1816.
- ↑ S.G., 18th January, 1817.
- ↑ C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ D. 26, 12th June, 1819. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Macquarie to Bathurst at suggestion of Bigge, D. 11, 3rd July, 1821. R.O., MS.
- ↑ In round numbers.
- ↑ S.G., 17th April, 1813.
- ↑ S.G., 11th September, 1814.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Macarthur to Bigge, 18th October, 1821, Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. He held 7,000 acres by grant or permission and 2,600 by purchase.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ See, e.g., Westminster Review, April, 1825, Article on Emigration. Also Wentworth's Account of Australia, first published 1819, 3rd ed., 1824, p. 92.
- ↑ If they married they were usually given tickets-of-leave, sometimes pardons. There were 270 women with tickets-of-leave in 1820.
- ↑ These also usually received tickets-of-leave.
- ↑ The cost of clothing appears to have been deducted from the £7.
- ↑ According to the scale drawn up by Oxley in 1821, servants were thus allotted. Farms of 100 acres or less, 1 servant; 200 to 400, 2; 500 to 750, 3; 1,000 to 1,700, 4; 2,000 to 2,500, 5; 3,000 or over, 6.
- ↑ G.G.O., 3rd September, 1814. The Order quotes the words of Lord Bathurst's Despatch, which was usually done when an order likely to be unpopular had to be enforced. Of course officers could still have convict servants if they undertook to provide for them.
- ↑ G.G.O., 1st October, 1814.
- ↑ He was the head of the Public Works Department of Government.
- ↑ Notice in S.G., 12th April, 1817. Convicts who do this are threatened with hard labour at Newcastle.
- ↑ e.g., Some for Sir John Jamison; a gardener for Hannibal Macarthur; a blacksmith for Cox. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ G.G.O., 10th January, 1817. Humbler persons found it very hard to get mechanics. A tanner, who had great difficulty in getting a workman fit for his trade, said, " I did apply and was told none had arrived; but I know that one was sent to Mr. Cox, another to an overseer as an assigned man on the store; this man I employed by paying the overseer 5s. per week!" Evidence, Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ From 1814 to 1820, 2,418 mechanics arrived and of these 1,587 were assigned to Government. Macquarie to Hannibal Macarthur, 20th November, 1820. For the whole of this subject see Evidence and Documents in Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ i.e., Of imported iron, chiefly odd pieces from the transport vessels, etc.
- ↑ All were embarked before the end of 1820. Some may have arrived early in 1821. Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 8, 16th May, 1818. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Now Brisbane, Queensland.
- ↑ D. 28, 1st September, 1820. R.O., MS. The garrison received reinforcements, and it was decided to settle Port Macquarie in 1821.
- ↑ D. 20, 24th March, 1816. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See any of quarterly accounts of the Police Fund, and also Evidence in Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. and Report III.
- ↑ See also Bigge's Ds. to Lord Bathurst, 1819 to 1820. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley, C. on T., 1819.
- ↑ There was nearly a mutiny among the sawyers at Penmant Hills on account of the longer hours. See Evidence of Major Druitt, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Wentworth's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 5, 27th March, 1820. CO., MS.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Discipline in the Government service naturally affected the men in the settlers' service.
- ↑ Major Druitt did not agree in this opinion. According to him it was easy to keep discipline in the barracks because the men were always ready to inform against each other. But the man who tells tales is quite a different individual to the man who reports neglect of duty. See, however, Druitt's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Report. R.O., MS.
- ↑ e.g., in the saw-mills and on the road-gangs. For the discussion in regard to task-work see magistrates, etc., to Bigge in Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ One mechanic was kept for fifteen years in Government service. See Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ G.G.O., 10th September, 1814.
- ↑ G.G.O., 7th September, 1816.
- ↑ Ibid., December, 1816.
- ↑ i.e.,The servants
- ↑ G.G.O., 10th September, 1814.
- ↑ See Appendix, Bigge's Report. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Cf., e.g., Sir F. Eden's The State of the Poor, 1797, vol. i. Meat even once a week was a luxury with many, wheaten bread a rarity, and tea and sugar scarcely used at all.
- ↑ Report I. It was, however, very difficult to prevent the men from selling their new clothes.
- ↑ Cox's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ G.G.O., September, 1815.
- ↑ Ibid., 18th January, 1818. If a servant were returned as useless, the settler was not to receive any more Government men in the future. In 1819, 234 boys arrived and 2,708 men. See statistics in Appendix to Bigge's Reports, MS. (Boys probably include only those under eighteen).
- ↑ Evidence of Superintendent of Convicts. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ e.g., William Cox. See Bigge's Reports, I. and III.
- ↑ Macarthur to Bigge, Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS. Macarthur had then about 100 convict servants.
- ↑ He would have to pay their wages whether they finished their tasks or not, unless they absolutely refused to work at all.
- ↑ See Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. The G.G.O., 7th December, 1816, regulates the wages of labourers, making no distinction for a few agricultural operations between convict and free. It may be compared with the scale drawn up by King, 31st October, 1801. H.R., III., p. 252.
- ↑ The convict, however, was subject to what was really a criminal jurisdiction of the magistrates.
- ↑ See, e.g., Sir John Jamison. Correspondence with Bigge. Also Dr. Harris, same, Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ There is not the least doubt that the feeling between convict and free was far more bitter at the end of 1820 than it had been at the beginning of 1810. See whole of Bigge's Reports and Evidence and Documents, passim.
- ↑ See answers to circular sent by Bigge in Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS. The worth of the answers, of course, varies very much, and the fact that they were more or less all agriculturists probably gave them a bias in favour of that form of labour.
- ↑ See, e.g., Lieutenant Bell's reply. Whether the convicts would profit by the severity or by the example of the "gentleman," he does not say.
- ↑ This is, perhaps, too simple and patriarchal—but it would have been a good idea to form such small settlements of Government men all over the country. Fixed regulations were a virtual necessity for convict labour unless Macarthur's view was to be adopted.
- ↑ See Reports III. and I.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Cox, Reply to Bigge's Circular. See above.
- ↑ This condition was suggested in letter of Plummer. See Chapter III. above. Macquarie in his first despatch (30th April, 1810. See H.R., VII.) wrote as though he varied the proportion according to the circumstances of each grant. Bigge (Report III.), wrote as though the same proportion was named in each. In Townson's grant the amount to be cultivated was 167 acres out of 2,000, a rather odd number (enclosed in one of Wilberforce to Cox, letter R.O., MS., 1817). This is the only case in which the amount is mentioned. Probably custom regulated the proportion, and, in any event, no attention was paid to the condition, and "an appearance of an attempt to cultivate" was considered sufficient compliance.
- ↑ D. 1, 24th February, 1815. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, I. Sometimes they borrowed money on it at a dollar (5s.) an acre.
- ↑ Oxley's Evidence. He was Surveyor-General. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ In August, 1804, a grant was held to be cancelled by reason of non-fulfilment of conditions. No other case arose on the point until March, 1821, when Judge Field, on circuit in Van Diemen's Land, reversed the previous judgment. He gave judgment as follows: "In the case of a conditional grant, though the condition be unperformed, the king cannot regrant without office found, by 18 Henry VI., c.6; that is, without the inquest of a jury to ascertain whether the condition be performed or not. … If this were not so all the grants of the Colony would be mere tenancies at the will of the Crown." See Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, I.
- ↑ Marsden to Bigge in Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Par. 17, H.R., VII. See above. See also Chapter I.
- ↑ D. 57, 3rd December, 1815, C.O., MS., and D. 18, 4th April, 1817, R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 16, 24th August, 1818. R.O., MS. See quotations from Oxley in this despatch.
- ↑ See D. 11, 7th October, 1814. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ See D. 11, 7th October, 1814. R.O., MS.
- ↑ i.e., since 1809. Certainly none had been collected in the towns, and there are no accounts of its collection anywhere else.
- ↑ See Meehan to Macquarie, 3rd February, 1821. Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ Bigge recommended this scale. See Report, III., and D. 32, 28th November, 1821. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III. It was granted by Governor King, and the document which is printed in Report III. is a very strange one. Bigge held that it was good in law. Macquarie set aside commons for some of the townships he founded. See H.R., VII., p. 468. G.G.O., 15th December, 1810.
- ↑ Cox, Evidence to Bigge, Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D., 30th April, 1810. H.R., VII. See also Plummer's letter, Chapter III., above.
- ↑ G.G.O., 15th December, 1810, p. 468. H.R. VII. He made similar efforts later.
- ↑ Macarthur's Evidence, Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ The population includes the people in the surrounding districts, and the houses are probably those within the town limits only. The barracks is, of course, counted as one building and so is the gaol. But nevertheless there seems a great number of people in excess of the houses. Probably there were some huts not included in the Return.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ H.R., VII., p. 471, 15th December, 1810.
- ↑ G.G.0., 1814.
- ↑ Ibid., 1816.
- ↑ D., July, 1813. R.O. He had up to that time given only three grants to members of the garrison. One to Lieutenant-Colonel O'Connell, "in his civil capacity of Lieutenant-Governor, on his marrying the daughter of Governor Bligh," the second, to the wife of Major Geils, because "they had so large a family"; and the third, to the wife of Paymaster Birch, made at the time when the latter was insane "as a provision for his young family, he having purchased a large stock of horned cattle while he was labouring under that mental derangement."
- ↑ Lieutenant Blomfield complained to the Colonial Office that the Governor refused to give him a grant when he married Miss Brooks, which he thought a very great hardship as her dowry consisted of a herd of cattle.
- ↑ See G.G.O., 1814, above.
- ↑ G.G.O., 31st December, 1814. There is a passage in D. 74, 24th July, 1816, C.O., MS., from Lord Bathurst which implies that the prices were still fixed; but that is an error of the Secretary of State.
- ↑ Proclamation, 2nd May, 1818. In connection with this subject of trading facilities attention may be called to a curious monopoly created by Macquarie by G.G.O., 7th June, 1816. A merchant of Hobart Town fitted out a vessel which circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land and discovered Macquarie's Harbour and Port Davey. As a reward Macquarie gave him the monopoly of trading to both these ports, at which there were no settlements, for twelve months.
- ↑ See case of Dr. Bromley. Bigge's Report, III. and also Piper's Evidence in Appendix. R.O., MS.
- ↑ 2nd November, 1816. R.O., MS.
- ↑ i.e., Charter-party entered into by Masters of Transports and Navy Board.
- ↑ D. 101, 12th December, 1817. C.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 2, 1st March, 1819. R.O., MS. Evidently he meant to make these pay duty.
- ↑ It was an order given to the naval officer, not a public Government Order.
- ↑ Enclosure to D. 2, 1st March, 1819. Memorial is dated 19th November, 1818. R.O., MS.
- ↑ G.G.O., 21st November, 1818.
- ↑ 59 Geo. III., c. 122. Passed in 1819 but came into force in 1820.
- ↑ Goulburn to Treasury, 20th March, 1820. C.O., MS.
- ↑ Jackson to C.O., 1st April, 1820. R.O., MS. There is no doubt that Macquarie greatly overrated the need of this trade. In 1820, between January and April, six private merchant vessels of tonnage from 370 to 500 sailed to New South Wales. See Jackson above.
- ↑ The case of the Elizabeth was never proceeded with.
- ↑ See Ship's Manifest, Appendix, Bigge's Report. R.O., MS.
- ↑ J. T. Campbell, the Governor's Secretary.
- ↑ 12 Geo. I., cap. 28, and 26 Geo. III., cap. 40.
- ↑ This is a doubtful point. Of course, as constituting a breach of contract, it might have been heard in the Civil Court. For whole matter see Mathew to C.O., 26th March, 1819, R.O., MS., and Evidence of Wylde, Appendix, Bigge's Reports, R.O., MS.
- ↑ See enclosure to D. 4, 23rd February, 1820. R.O., MS. See also Appendix to Bigge's Reports, R.O. A distinction had been made before Macquarie's time between foreign and British vessels and between the latter and colonial vessels, but it was discontinued.
The dues at the port of Sydney for five ships all under 500 tons were as follows:—
They were more than double the dues at the Cape of Good Hope. See Appendix Bigge's Reports. R.O. MS.£Ocean52 David Shaw38 Fame41 Melville44 Recovery33 - ↑ See enclosure to D. 4 above. Macquarie was not sure of the accuracy of the Return, and some alterations have been made when no Orders of the dates given in the Return could be found. Probably some of the dates given are those of Orders re-enforcing older Orders.
- ↑ Edward Riley's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Evidence, Edward Riley. See above. R.O., MS.
- ↑ C. on G., 1819, and Edward Riley. See above. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ G.G.O., 26th June, 1813.
- ↑ D. 21, 15th May, 1817, R.O., MS.
- ↑ 59 Geo. III., cap. 114.
- ↑ G.G.O., 31st March, 1821.
- ↑ D. 3, 15th May, 1818. R.O., MS. Macquarie was always dissatisfied with the 5 per cent. ad valorem duty, wishing to substitute a more complicated scale at a higher rate levied on weight and quantity, but Bathurst did not approve it. See D. 3.
- ↑ Bigge's Report, III. See also Chapter X.
- ↑ In accordance with Charter of East India Company.
- ↑ Government Public Notice, 10th February, 1810.
- ↑ Wylde's Evidence and Return in Appendix, Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Moore's Evidence, Appendix, Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ i.e., to publish a notice warning publicans and traders that they would not be responsible for debts incurred by their crews.
- ↑ One objectionable feature was the tax paid to the Judge-Advocate's clerk for each certificate of "no detainer," which amounted in four years to £3,000. This of course was specially heavy for the masters of ships who had to pay for all their crew. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. Sometimes persons against whom detainers were lodged did get away without paying. Blaxcell, e.g., left the Colony in 1817 when there was a detainer lodged against him for duties due to the Crown of £2,385. There were probably many similar instances in which private and no less important creditors were involved.
- ↑ According to Piper, the Naval Officer, no ship ever had been robbed or in any way injured during these occasions. Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ These were fees on clearance and on certificates from the Secretary's office after the muster had been held.
- ↑ Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 5, May, 1812, Bathurst to M., R.O., MS. also D. 1, 28th June, 1813. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Proclamation, 11th December, 1813. Bent and Wylde both admitted actions founded on the notes which by this Proclamation were declared illegal. See Evidence of Wylde, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 6, 23rd June. 1815. R.O., MS. A similar attempt was made by Allan's successor in 1817 with precisely the same result.
- ↑ Wylde described the state of affairs when he arrived in 1816 in the following words: … "I very soon … had to discover, that to give effect and validity to any of the currency notes, for the non-payment of which actions were brought, it would be necessary altogether to overlook and dismiss from the consideration of the Court in Judgment several colonial Proclamations and Orders not only of old but of very recent date, which declared all such notes as (were) in question and their negotiations to be absolutely null and void". Wylde to Goulburn 3rd March, 1817. R.O., MS. The Proclamations were those of 1813. It was this state of affairs which gave rise to the above-mentioned meetings, etc., and the Proclamation, 7th December, 1816.
- ↑ D. 2, 29th March, 1817. R.O., MS. See also Ds. of 1810 and 1811. H.R., VII., especially 30th April, 1810.
- ↑ The notes were of value of 2s. 6d., 5s., 10s., £1 and £5. See D. above. In 1821 notes in circulation amounted to £5,902. See Bigge's Report, III.
- ↑ D. 2, 29th March, 1817. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Wylde to Goulburn. Enclosure to D. 26, 1st September, 1820. R.O., MS. Macquarie had done these things, but many of them were not justified by his Commission.
- ↑ Wylde to Goulburn. Enclosure to D. 26, 1st September, 1820. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 22, 29th October, 1818. C.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 26. See above.
- ↑ This seems the only inference to be drawn from the statement of Bigge in 1823 that the "present" charter will expire in 1824. Report, III.
- ↑ Wylde's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Interest in Savings Bank was 1s. 6d. per £1.