History affords but few examples of a change such as New South Wales had undergone since Mr. Marsden landed from a convict ship in the penal settlement of Botany Bay in the year 1794. The gold fields had not yet disclosed their wealth, nor did he live to see the stupendous consequences which resulted from their discovery in 1851, the rush of European adventurers, and the sudden transformation of the dismal solitudes of Bendigo and Ballarat into the abode of thousands of restless, enterprising men, with all the attendant circumstances, both good and evil, of civilized life. But Australia was already a vast colony; in almost everything except the name, an empire, self-supporting, and with regard to its internal affairs, self governed, though still under the mild control, borne with loyalty and pride, of the English sovereign. The state of society was completely changed. For many years, the stream of emigration had carried to the fertile shores of Australia not the refuse of our jails, but some of the choicest of our population; the young, the intelligent, the enterprising, and the high principled, who sought for a wider field of action, or disdained to live at home, useless to society, and a burden to their relatives. Large towns such asSydney, Victoria, Geelong and Melbourne, with their spacious harbours crowded with shipping, were already in existence, and English settlers had covered with their flocks those inland plains which long after Mr. Marsden’s arrival still lay desolate and unexplored.
The religious condition of Australia was no less changed. All denominations were now represented by a ministry, and accommodated in places of worship not at all inferior to those at home. The Church of England had erected Sydney into a bishopric, of which the pious and energetic archdeacon Broughton was the first incumbent, and the number of the colonial clergy had been greatly increased; under all these influences the tone of social morality was improved, and real spiritual religion won its triumphs in many hearts. Mr. Marsden was now released from those official cares and duties as senior chaplain which once so heavily pressed upon him. Beyond his own parish of Paramatta his ministerial labours did not necessarily extend, and in his parish duties he had the efficient aid of his son-in-law and other coadjutors.
PARAMATTA CHURCH
The one spot on which no cheering ray seemed to fall, the sterile field which after years of laborious cultivation yielded no return, was the native population, the aborigines of New South Wales.
We have mentioned some of the many futile attempts made for their conversion; more might be added; for various missions were devised,—by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, aided by the colonial government; by the Wesleyan and the Church Missionary Societies; and by the London Missionary Society; but none of these met with much success, and we fear all have been in turn abandoned. The mission of Mr. Threlkeld, on the margin of lake Macquarie deserves especial notice. It was continued for upwards of fourteen years; during the first six years at the charges of the London Missionary Society, but owing to the heavy expense, and the slow progress of the mission, they withdrew from it after an outlay of about three thousand pounds. Mr. Threlkeld was reluctant to give up the mission, and pursued it for some time from his own resources and those of his friends, with a small grant of a hundred and fifty pounds a-year from the British government, who also made over ten thousand acres of land to be held on trust on behalf of the natives. Mr. Threlkeld seems to have been admirably fitted for his work; he had been the fellow labourer of the martyr John Williams, of Erromanga, and left the Tahitian mission in consequence of heavy domestic afflictions. He had spent much time in acquiring a knowledge of the language of the “blacks” or aborigines, of which he drew up a grammar, besides translating some portions of Scripture, Watts’s hymns, and other suitable works. He had generally three or four tribes resident around him upon the land granted for their use. Occasionally he employed from twelve to sixty of them in burning off the timber and clearing the land, an employment which they liked best. At this they would continue for eight or ten days at a time, until some native custom, or the report of the hostile intention of some neighbouring tribe, called them off, perhaps never to return. Harmless as they seemed, their customs were ferocious; the tribes were constantly at war, and upon human life they set no value; they had no law against murder, and consequently no punishment for it. A man may murder his wife, or child, or any other relative with impunity; but if a person murder another who is no way connected with him, the nearest of kin to the murdered person will sometimes avenge his death; though this seldom happens unless the delinquent and the sufferer are of different tribes. It is only as they become acquainted with the customs of Europeans that human life is regarded. In their native wilds they sport with the sufferings both of man and beast.
At different periods, Mr. Threlkeld erected huts, but in these they could not be induced to live, alleging the accumulation of vermin and the fear of other natives coming in the night and spearing them without a possibility of escape. On urging them to plant corn on a piece of ground he had prepared for them, they replied it would be useless, as the tribes from the neighbouring Sugar Loaf Mountain, although on friendly terms, would come down and take it away when ripe. Mr. Threlkeld attributed the failure of his mission partly to the want of funds, but still more to the influx of European settlers. He deeply deplored the want of legal protectors, both to prevent the ferocious attacks of the blacks upon each other, and to protect them from the white man’s atrocities. “I am firmly of opinion,” adds Mr. Threlkeld, in the annual report of his mission for the year 1836, “that a Protector of Aborigines will be fully employed in investigating cases of the cruelty of European settlers, which are both numerous and shocking to humanity, and in maintaining their civil rights.”
He had but too much reason to express himself thus. The cases of oppression which he himself describes, are most revolting. In one instance, a stockman, or herdsman, boasted to his master of having killed six or seven black men with his own hands, when in pursuit of them with his companions; for they were hunted down in mere wantonness and sport. He was merely dismissed from his employer’s service. In another, a party of stockmen went out, some depredation having been committed by the blacks in spearing their cattle, took a black prisoner, tied his arms, and then fastened him to the stirrup of a stockman on horseback to drag him along. When the party arrived near their respective stations they separated, leaving the stockman to conduct the prisoner to his own hut. The black, when he found they were alone, was reluctant to proceed, and struggled to get free, when the stockman took his knife from his pocket, coolly stuck the black in the throat, and left him for dead. The poor fellow crawled to the house of a gentleman dwelling on the plains, told his tale, and died.
These are but specimens of cruelties, too numerous and too horrible to relate. The blacks, of course, retaliated, and military parties were sent out against them. On the 31st October, 1828, the executive council of the colony declared in their minutes, “that the outrages of the aboriginal natives amount to a complete declaration of hostilities against the settlers generally,” but they forgot to add that these hostilities had been provoked in every instance by the wanton aggression of the Europeans. Martial law was again proclaimed in October, 1830, against the natives, and the governor at length determined to call upon the inhabitants to take up arms, and join the troops in forming a military cordon, by means of which he proposed to drive the aborigines into Tasman’s Peninsula. The inhabitants responded to the call, and an armed force of between two and three thousand men were in the field from the 4th October till the 26th November; but the attempt entirely failed.