commercial monopoly. It would, however, be equally difficult to give any clear account of the colonial policy of the whole Tory party at this period, though the principles upon which New South Wales was founded and governed were sufficiently lucid.
At the time of its foundation it was necessarily a mere military station under autocratic rule. That such a form of Government continued so long may be considered as due to a deliberate policy and as a natural outcome of the Tory principles of the period of reaction. For this theory there is support in the fact that the only other Colony of which England at this time became possessed which was at all similar to New South Wales, the Cape of Good Hope, shared the unenviable distinction of being placed under an autocratic Governor unrestrained by a Council. Both Colonies were to be agricultural, and both were expected to prove self-supporting.[1] Neither could be considered as a mere military station, and the plea that one contained a hostile Dutch, and the other a hostile convict population was not a rational one. In the case of New South Wales at least such a position was ridiculous. In spite of the rising in 1805, no sign of a convict rebellion ever again occurred, either under the military government or after the establishment of a Council in 1825. Yet from 1805 to 1821 the opportunity of the convicts was unique. They far outnumbered the rest of the population, and from 1815 to 1821 the military protection of the Colony was admittedly insufficient.[2] Yet the garrison constituted the only efficient and reliable police. The Home Government did not until 1821 increase it, but they did year by year increase the number of convicts. If the reply to Ellis Bent was that it was still considered necessary to preserve military government, the reason must have been, not fear of risings which would have to be dealt with by rapid decrees (indeed by declaring martial law, that might have been done under any Government), but rather a belief in the efficiency of an autocracy.
Probably the Secretary of State feared more from the
