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