There are Macquarie County, Marshes, and Plains, and the Lachlan district. Macquarie Place and Macquarie Street are in Sydney. Tasmania has Macquarie Harbour, and the town thereon, Macquarie Plains, and Macquarie River. Macquarie Island, south of Tasmania, was discovered in 1811.
On 21 Dec. 1821 he was relieved of the government and returned to England, amid the general regret of the colonists, who took the unusual step of presenting him with a piece of plate as a memorial. He resided in London till his death, which took place at his house in Duke Street, St. James's, on 1 July 1824. His body was removed to Ulva, to be buried in the ancestral home, which he had himself bought back from his father's creditors (Anderson, Scottish Natum).
Macquarie had all the faults of military governors, but possessed their good points in a marked degree. His want of judgment and impatience of opposition were accentuated by his personal vanity and ambition. But 'there was a vigour about Governor Macquarie's administration of which it was long afterwards refreshing to contemplate the effects, and which under the guidance of a better regulated judgment would undoubtedly have led to the happiest results.' He has established some sort of claim to the title of 'father of the colony which some admirers sought to bestow on him. He was twice married, first to Miss Baillie of Jerviswood; secondly, to Miss Campbell of Airds, by whom he had one son, who survived him, but died without issue.
[Gent. Mag. 1824, pt. i. p. 397, pt ii. p. 276; Heaton's Australian Dict. of Dates and Men of the Time; Sidney's Three Colonies of Australia, 1862, chap. vii.; Lang's Historical and Statistical Account of New 8outh Wales, ed. 1875, vol. i. chap. vi.; Epitome of Official History of New South Wales, chap. iv.; pamphlets by Grey Sennet, M.P., and by Samuel Marsden, attacking Macquarie's administration, with Macquarie's reply.]
MACQUEEN, JAMES (1778–1870), geographer, was born in 1778 at Crawford, Lanarkshire. In 1796 he was resident in Grenada, West Indies, as manager of a sugar plantation, and subsequently made repeated voyages through all the West Indian colonies. His attention was first drawn to African geography, a subject on which he became a leading authority, by the perusal of Mungo Park's 'Travels' (1799). He collected much information concerning the features of the country on the Upper Niger, not only from the Madingo negroes under his charge, but from the merchants and slave agents with whom he had dealings. He was the first to point out, in a treatise on the subject (Edinburgh, 1816, 8vo) that in the Bights of Benin and Biafra the Niger certainly entered the ocean.
By 1821 Macqueen had settled at Glasgow, where he became editor and part-proprietor of the 'Glasgow Courier.' In that Journal, then published three times a week, he ably defended what he regarded as the rights of the so-called 'West India interest.' As a writer he was trenchant and vigorous, and could present statistics attractively. Macqueen also distinguished himself in the projection and organisation of the Colonial Bank and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Eventually he settled in London, and wrote largely on politics, geography, economics, and general literature in the newspapers and magazines. He communicated to the Royal Geographical Society several interesting memoirs, many of which were printed in the 'Journal' and 'Proceedings' of the Society. His letters in the 'Morning Advertiser' on Captain Speke's pretended discovery of the source of the Nile were deemed by Captain Sir Richard F. Burton so 'valuable and original' that he obtained permission to reprint them in his memoir on 'The Nile Basin' (1864).
Macqueen died on 14 May 1870 at 10 Norton Street, Kensington. He had prepared two volumes, partly of an autobiographical character, but did not live to publish them.
Apart from pamphlets Macqueen's writings are:
- 'A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern Central Africa: containing a particular Account of the Course and Termination of the great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean,' 8vo, Edinburgh, 1821, with maps drawn by himself.
- 'The West India Colonies: the Calumnies and Misrepresentations circulated against them … examined and refuted,' 8vo, London, 1824.
- 'The Colonial Controversy, containing a Refutation of the Calumnies of the Anti-Colonists,' 8vo, Glasgow, 1825, letters reprinted from the 'Glasgow Courier.'
- 'General Statistics of the British Empire,' 8vo, London, 1836.
- 'A General Plan for & Mail Communication by Steam between. Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World,' 8vo, London, 1838.
- 'A Geographical Survey of Africa, … to which is prefixed a Letter … regarding the Slave Trade,' 8vo, London, 1840, with a map—'the first approaching to correctness'—of the interior of Africa.
- 'Statistics of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce,' two series, 8vo, London, 1861.
- 'The War: Who's to Blame? or the Eastern Question investigated from the Official Docu-
