Of the prodigious strides they have made in material prosperity, Mr. Therry, in his interesting Reminiscences, gives the following striking illustration:
“It has been ascertained that our South Pacific colonies take from us in imports for every man, woman, and child of their respective populations, on the average, from £8 to £10 per head per annum, while the United States were only customers to us in 1859 (before the war began), at the rate of 17s. per head. The amount of imports received by Canada, which comes nearest to Australia, is £5 per head; that of New South Wales alone is £21 3s. 4d. per head; of Victoria, £25” (p. 9).
The commerce of these colonies with all parts of the world is nearly three times larger in money value than was the whole export commerce of England less than a century ago; and they receive from the United Kingdom upwards of twenty times the value of exports which the North American colonies were receiving at the time of their separation from the mother-country. To crown the social edifice, a contented people live and prosper under the shadow of the freest institutions, in many respects surpassing, in this particular, the much-vaunted model on which they have been framed.
It is certain that the prevailing motive of the English government in despatching a penal colony to Botany Bay was to supply the place of her lost American colonies. No doubt the idea of colonizing the country was present to their minds. But it never went beyond words. Not a single provision was made for colonial development. On the contrary, the whole constitution of the exiled community was fatal to such an object. For nearly half a century the inherent vices of the system struggled against and forcibly restrained any [pg 653] efforts to profit by the advantages of a country of such wonderful promise; nor was it before the original government scheme had been quite abandoned that the colony rose from its inaction, like an unfettered giant, and, as it were, almost at a stride, arrived at a pitch of prosperity unexampled, in so short a period of time, in the annals of the world, with the single exception of the American colonies after they had disembarrassed themselves of the yoke of the mother country.
The defection of those colonies had stopped an important outlet for the criminal population of the three kingdoms. We are told by Bancroft, in his History of the United States, that
“The prisoners condemned [in England] to transportation were a salable commodity. Such was the demand for labor in America that convicts and laborers were regularly purchased and shipped to the colonies, where they were sold as indented servants.”
The Irish malcontents, moreover—of whom, owing to the long misgovernment of the kingdom, Ireland was full, and whose disaffection had been stimulated by the revolt of the North American colonies—threatened to increase the convict population by a large and particularly unmanageable element. It was only a year or two before that a country happened to be explored and taken possession of in the name of England so happily fitted for colonization, and of which such admirable use has since been made. The discovery was the result of sheer accident, so far as the British government was concerned. The expedition to which it owes it was sent out by the Royal Society for scientific purposes; the object being to make accurate observations of the transit of Venus from the island of Otaheite. The islands of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland were explored on the way home. The astronomical expedition returned to England in the midsummer of 1771.
In 1786, the government decided on establishing permanent settlements on the coast lately explored by Captain Cook, accompanied by Messrs. Green and Banks and Dr. Solander. The colony consisted exclusively of the convicts and the military in charge; of prisoners and their jailers. Any class out of which a free civil community might be formed could only arise out of chance settlers, or of those among the convicts whose position was the result rather of untoward circumstances than of any irreclaimable criminality of disposition, and who were prepared to re-commence in those distant lands a career from which their misfortune or their fault had shut them out at home.
The constitution of the expedition was as follows: A governor, lieutenant-governor, judge-advocate, commissary, and chaplain; a surgeon and two assistant surgeons; an agent for the transports; two hundred and twelve soldiers and mariners, including officers; their wives, numbering forty, and their children; five hundred and forty-eight male convicts, and two hundred and thirty female.
The neighborhood of Botany Bay having been judged unsuitable for the new settlement, the expedition landed at a spot situated at the head of one of the coves of Port Jackson Harbor, which had been judiciously selected by the governor as the site of the future capital. The 26th of January, 1788, was the day of disembarkation, and it was on the evening of that day that the inaugural rite, to which we have before alluded, was solemnized. After a lapse of eleven days, consumed in putting up the [pg 654] public and private structures needful for the new colony, the ceremony of inauguration was supplemented by one of a yet more imposing character. On the seventh of February was held a formal assembly of all the members of the new commonwealth. An occasion of greater interest could not be imagined. Upon no band of colonists was ever lavished a greater wealth of hope and fortune. No guilt of diplomatic fraud or commercial overreaching marred their title to the new territory. Through no bloodshed, no violence, but quite unopposed, they had entered on its peaceable possession. No foreign power, to whom the new state might be calculated to give umbrage, threatened its future welfare. A magnificent harbor sheltered its ships and transports; and it was only one of many such with which a coast of vast extent was indented. A whole continent of virgin soil stretched out before them, which, under the influence of the finest climate under heaven, waited only the bidding of man to quicken within itself an exhaustless luxuriance of vegetable life. A mighty Empire of the South offered itself to any hands that were willing and able to grasp it. It was only reasonable to expect that England, having just lost her supremacy in the New World, would have devoted her utmost resources of civilization and statesmanship to laying deep and wide the foundations of her new dominion. If none of the members of an aristocracy enjoying more advantages and more power than were ever possessed by the most privileged class of any the most privileged nation, were willing to leave the home of their ancestral traditions, the softness of hereditary ease, and an absolute independence of fortune's caprice, in order to join in the struggling life of a young community, we should at least have expected that the mother-country would despatch a contribution from each of the other classes of her citizens to assist in the formation of the new settlement. Her system of jurisprudence, admirable in spite of the inextricable jumble of statutes and precedents amidst which it has been reared, would be represented, one would have thought, by a sufficient number of lawyers of character; her merchant princes would be encouraged to carry their spirit of enterprise to so rich and promising a field; still more, that which forms the only true and solid basis of material prosperity—agriculture—would be abundantly cared for in the shape of a due supply of competent masters and sturdy laborers; last, though not least, some provision would be made, not only for the moral and religious training of the people, but for such mental cultivation as was compatible with the condition of an infant community. What no one in his senses could have anticipated was that the government of a great and ancient nation should have sent out as the founders of a new colonial empire a contingent of malefactors, guarded by a few marines. Upon the occasion of the formal inauguration ceremony the whole colony were assembled around the governor. Nearest to himself were the lieutenant-governor, the judge-advocate, provost-marshal, commissary, adjutant, doctor, and chaplain. The two hundred and twelve marines, including no less than fifteen commissioned officers, were drawn up in battle array. Apart from the rest, as under the ban of crime, stood the bulk of the community—namely, the convicts. To this assemblage the judge-advocate read the royal commission and the act of Parliament which constituted the court of judicature. After the reading of which documents the one hundred [pg 655] and ninety-seven marines shouldered old “Brown Bess,” made ready, presented, and fired three times.