He made the most, too, of his opportunities. At a time when there were very few churches or clergymen, and the settlers were widely scattered over large tracts, he frequently made an itinerating ministerial visit amongst them. He was everywhere received with the greatest cordiality and respect. On arriving at a farm, a man on horseback was immediately dispatched to all the neighbours within ten or twelve miles to collect them for public worship. The settlers gladly availed themselves of these opportunities, and assembled, in numbers varying from sixty to eighty, when Divine service was conducted in a vacant barn or under the shade of a verandah. The next day, he proceeded twenty or twenty-five miles further on in the wilds, and again collected a congregation. These tours would often extend over ten days or a fortnight, and were repeated as his more settled duties permitted. Thus his name became a household word, pronounced with love and gratitude far beyond the limits of his parish, or even of the colony; and probably he found some of his most willing hearers amongst those to whom he thus carried in their solitude the glad tidings of a salvation which when offered to them week by week at home they had neglected or despised.
Yet his duties as principal chaplain were not neglected. From a general government order, dated September, 1810, it appears that amongst them were those of an overseer, or chief pastor of the church. “The assistant chaplains are directed to consider themselves at all times under the immediate control and superintendence of the principal chaplain, and are to make such occasional reports to him respecting their clerical duties as he may think proper to require or call for.” A high tribute to his worth under the circumstances in which he was placed by his opposition to the governor. The chaplains frequently sought his protection against arbitrary power, and he willingly fought their battles and his own in defence of liberty of conscience and the right of conducting God’s worship undisturbed. His connexion with his clerical brethren seems to have been uniformly happy, and the same remark is true of the missionaries of various denominations, not a few in number, who, during a period of twenty years, were virtually under his control. He had undoubtedly the rare power of governing others in a very high degree, and it was done noiselessly and with a gentle hand; for the men who govern well seldom obtrude their authority in an offensive manner, or worry those they should control with a petty interference. He had the same kind of influence, and probably from the same cause, over the very horses in his carriage. He used, in driving from Sydney to Paramatta, to throw the reins behind the dash-board, take up his book, and leave them to themselves, his maxim being “that the horse that could not keep itself up was not worth driving.” One of the pair was almost unmanageable in other hands, but it was remarked that “Captain” always conducted himself well when his master drove, and never had an accident.
Amongst his strictly pastoral cares, two schools for orphans had a foremost place. A female orphan school was first proposed, and Mr. Marsden undertook the direction of the work, and became treasurer to the institution. From its formation in 1800 to the year 1821, two hundred children were admitted. It may be a question whether the children of living parents, however ignorant or even dissolute they may be, should be totally withdrawn from parental sympathies. The presence of a child may restrain, and its artless remonstrances are often known to touch, a vicious father or mother whom no other influence can reach; and Dr. Guthrie’s recent experiment in Edinburgh seems to show us that the best method of Christianizing both child and parent is to instruct the former well by day, and to send him home at night a little missionary to his parents, where other teaching would be scorned. But in the case of orphans no such questions occur, and we must look upon an orphan school with unmixed satisfaction. A male orphan school followed in due course, in which the boys were instructed in some trade and then apprenticed. In both schools the moral and religious training was the chief consideration; yet Mr. Marsden’s connexion with them was attributed by his enemies to a sordid motive, and even those in power, who should have known him better, gave public currency to these injurious reports.
The fact was that when the institutions were founded the treasurer was allowed a small per centage upon the receipts, as a clerical fee or stipend; this he allowed to accumulate until he resigned the office, when he presented the whole sum to the institution. The committee absolutely refusing to accept it, he purchased cattle from the government to the full amount, and made a present of them to the orphan schools. Soon after his return from England it became necessary to erect new schools. The work was long and tedious, and owing to the want of labour in the colony, and the idle and drunken habits of the labourers, nearly ten years elapsed before they were completed, and the work too was often at a stand for want of funds. These, however, Mr. Marsden—whom no pecuniary obstacles could daunt—supplied, in a great measure, out of his own purse, till his advances amounted to nearly 900l.; and his disinterested conduct in the end occasioned him very considerable loss. To the latest period he never ceased to take the warmest interest in the prosperity of these institutions.
“I am sure,” says his daughter, “my father’s parish was not neglected. He was well known to all his parishioners, as he was in the habit of constantly calling upon them. He was very attentive to the sick, whether at their own homes or at the government hospital. He also took great interest in the education of the young. It was through his instrumentality that many schools were established. His Sunday school, at the time of which I speak, was in a more efficient state than any I have since seen; but this my brother-in-law, the Rev. T. Hassell, had a great deal to do with, as he was then acting as my father’s curate. The factory for the reception of female convicts was built entirely by his suggestion, and to their religious and moral improvement he devoted a good deal of his time. It was principally owing to his endeavours to get this and other institutions in good order that much of his discomfort with his fellow-magistrates and government officers arose.”
The aborigines of Australia were, even when the colony was first settled, comparatively few in number; and in painful conformity with universal experience, they have wasted away before the white man, and will probably disappear in time from the face of the earth. If the New Zealander stands highest in the scale of savage nature, the native Australian occupies perhaps the lowest place. So low, indeed, was their intellect rated, that when the phrenological system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim began to occupy attention, some forty years ago, the skulls of several of them were sent over to England to be submitted to the manipulations of its professors, with a view of ascertaining whether the Creator had not thrust into existence a whole race of idiots—men who had neither reason to guide them on the one hand, nor well-developed instinct on the other. They are supposed to be a mixture of the Malay and negro races, but they have nothing of the muscular strength of the negro, nor of his mental pliancy, and both in body and mind are far below the pure Malay. In the infancy of the colony they rambled into the town of Port Jackson in a state of nudity, and when blankets were presented to them they were thrown aside as an incumbrance. They seemed to have no wants beyond those which the dart or spear—never out of their hands—could instantly supply. Their food was the opossum, but when this was not to be found they were by no means delicate; grubs, snakes, putrid whales, and even vermin were eagerly devoured, though fish and oysters were preferred. They are a nomad or wandering people, always moving from place to place in search of food, or from the mere love of change. During the winter, they erect a hut, resembling a beehive, of rude wicker-work besmeared with clay; but in general a mere hurdle, such as we use in England for penning sheep, placed to windward in the ground, is all their shelter; under this they lie with a fire kindled in the front of it. Our English stragglers have made themselves well acquainted with their habits, frequently living amongst them for weeks together in the bush. These all agree in admiration of the skill with which they throw the dart, which seldom misses, even from a child’s hand, to strike its prey. They are peaceable and inoffensive to strangers, and kind to their “gins,” or wives, and to their children, unless their savage natures are aroused, when they become horribly brutal and vindictive. Few savage tribes have been found whose ideas on religion are less distinct. They believe in a good spirit, Royan, and a bad one, Potoyan; but like all savages—like all men, we may say, either savage or civilized, who know not God—they dread the evil spirit far more than they love the good one. They offer no prayer, and have no worship or sacrifices. Civil government is unknown; authority in the tribe depends on personal strength or cunning. A wandering life with abundance of provisions, amongst their native woods, shores, and mountains, is the sum of all the little happiness they know or seek.
Some efforts were made in the early period of the colony on their behalf. A district near Port Jackson was assigned them, and they were encouraged to reside in it; but it was very soon deserted. The roving habits of the aborigines made any settled residence irksome; and their wants were so few that they would neither engage in trade, nor submit to labour for the sake of wages. It retained the name of the Black Town for many years; but the black men have long since deserted it. Governor Macquarie, after consulting with Mr. Marsden, then attempted a farm, and, in connexion with it, a kind of reformatory school at Paramatta, where they were to be civilized and cured of their migratory habits, and instructed in the Christian religion. Mr. Marsden took a warm interest in the scheme, as he did in everything that concerned the welfare of the aborigines. Still it failed; for it was founded, as experience has shown, upon wrong principles. Mr. Marsden, however, is not to be blamed for this; since Governor Macquarie, having now conceived a violent prejudice against him, omitted his name from the committee of management, although the institution was placed in his own parish, introducing those of two junior chaplains; and it was not till the governor’s retirement that he took an active part in its affairs. But the character of the institution was then fixed, and its approaching failure was evident.
Two faults were interwoven with it, either of which must have proved fatal. In the first place, the attempt to confine a nomad, wandering tribe within the precincts of a farm, or to bring them to endure, except it had been by force, the discipline of lads in an English workhouse, was upon the very face of it absurd. These, we must remember, were the early days of English philanthropy amongst wild black men. She had yet to make her blunders and learn her first lessons. Why should a nomad race be settled upon the workhouse plan, or even confined to an English farm? Why should they not rather be encouraged to dwell in tents, carry civilization with them into their own woods and mountains, and, roam, free and fearless, over those vast regions which God had given them to possess, until at last they themselves shall wish to adopt the settled habits of European Christians? A roving life in the wilderness is not of necessity an idle or a barbarous one. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were highly civilized, and eminently devout. “Arabians” and “dwellers in Mesopotamia,” wanderers of the desert, heard the word with gladness, and received the Holy Ghost upon the day of Pentecost. But we do not read that they were required to live in cities, and abandon the long-cherished wilderness, with all its solemn associations and grand delights. And we have not so mean an opinion of Christianity as to believe that it can thrive only in towns well paved and lighted, or in farms neatly fenced and artificially cultivated. The true missionary must track the wandering savage into the desert, and there make himself his guide and friend; and teach him that the gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed of God, inasmuch as it is fitted, as no human contrivance can be fitted, for man, whatever his outward circumstances or his mode of life; that it knows no difference between the dweller in the tent, and in “cities, tall and fenced up to heaven.” “Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free,” are all alike welcome to its blessings; and we can see no good reason why there should not be Christian tribes in the wilderness, as there were patriarchal churches in the plains of the Euphrates, long before the law was given on Mount Sinai.
The other mistake was the same which has tainted other missions in their infancy, and to which we have made some allusion. It was thought necessary to prepare the savage mind for Christianity, by the preliminary discipline of a civilizing process. This is inverting the order in which God proceeds: “The entrance of thy word giveth light.” When the voice of God speaks within, and not before, the demoniac quits “his dwelling amongst the tombs;” no longer “tears off his raiment” like a brute beast, unconscious of shame; ceases to be “exceeding fierce,” and is now found “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind.” A few efforts upon this, the right evangelical principle as we conceive, have been made from time to time amongst these degraded aborigines; but the success has not been great. A wide field still remains, thinly peopled and spiritually uncultivated. If these lines should be read by our Christian friends in Australia, to them we would venture to commend the glorious enterprise. Let there be one colony at least in which the aborigines shall share the intruder’s prosperity. Let the vast centre of the Australian continent one day rejoice in its thronging tribes of Christian aborigines.
Mr. Marsden’s view of the native character may be gathered from the following statement, which he published in self-defence when charged with indifference as to their conversion. “More than twenty years ago, a native lived with me at Paramatta, and for a while I thought I could make something of him; but at length he got tired, and no inducement could prevail upon him to continue in my house; he took to the bush again, where he has continued ever since. One of my colleagues, the Rev. R. Johnstone, took two native girls into his house, for the express purpose of educating them; they were fed and clothed like Europeans; but in a short time they went into the woods again. Another native, named Daniel, was taken when a boy into the family of Mrs. C.; he was taken to England; mixed there with the best society, and could speak English well; but on his return from England he reverted to his former wild pursuits.” In reply to the inquiries made by Mr. Marsden, who once met Daniel after he returned to his savage state, he said; “The natives universally prefer a free and independent life, with all its privations, to the least restraint.” Without multiplying instances quoted by Mr. Marsden, the trial he made with an infant shows that his heart was not unfriendly towards these people. “One of my boys, whom I attempted to civilize, was taken from its mother’s breast, and brought up with my own children for twelve years; but he retained his instinctive taste for native food; and he wanted that attachment to me and my family that we had just reason to look for; and always seemed deficient in those feelings of affection which are the very bonds of social life.” This boy ran away at Rio from Mr. Marsden, when returning from England in 1810, but was brought back to the colony by Captain Piper; and died in the Sydney hospital, exhibiting Christian faith and penitence. “I mentioned to the governor,” he adds, “some of these circumstances, but not with any view to create difficulties; so far from it, that I informed him that I was authorized by the Church Missionary Society to assist any plan with pecuniary aid, that was likely to benefit the natives of the colony.” A mission was in fact set on foot by this Society; but from various causes, it failed, and was abandoned.