Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land / With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration, and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America

by W. C. Wentworth

But the future increase in the cleared lands will not be proportioned to the past, because directions have of late been transmitted from this country, to allow future colonists only six months provisions from the king's stores, for themselves and their households, instead of eighteen months, as heretofore. This very material diminution in the measure of encouragement held out to future colonization, will clearly be attended with a threefold operation. It will be a grievous disadvantage to such respectable persons as emigrate from this country, with a real intention, but with funds scarcely adequate to a permanent settlement in the colony; it will still further discourage the existing agriculturist and grazier, by lessening the demand of the government for their produce; and it will increase the general embarrassment, both by narrowing this channel of employment, which was supplied by the liberality of the government, and by curtailing the means of the colonists at large to provide labour for that part of the population, which will be thus turned loose on them twelvemonths sooner than usual.

To the credit of the present governor it must be allowed that he has done all that a benevolent heart and a sagacious head could dictate, to counteract the growing distress and misery. He has exhausted all the means in his power to give employment to the large portion of unoccupied labour, which it has not been within the compass of individual enterprize to absorb. He has effected the greatest improvements in the capital, by enlarging and straightening the streets, and by erecting various public edifices of the highest utility and ornament. The same superintending hand is visible throughout all the inferior towns and townships, many of which indeed are of his own foundation. He has made highways to every cultivated district, thus affording the inhabitants of them the greatest facilities for the cheap and expeditious conveyance of their produce to market. In fine, throughout every part of the colony and its dependent settlements at the Derwent and Port Dalrymple, he has effected improvements which will long continue monuments of the wisdom and liberality of their author. But it cannot be denied, however beneficial these and other improvements of the same nature which are in progress may be, either with respect to their immediate or more remote consequences, that they are but mere temporary sources of alleviation, whose benignant supply will cease with the discharge of the great body of workmen whom they at present maintain in activity. This, indeed, as well as all the other expedients which I have already enumerated, as having been practised in order to find outlets for the superabundant labour, have been productive of no permanent result.

This assertion is satisfactorily substantiated by the present unnatural efforts of the colonists in the establishment of various manufactories, particularly those of cloth and hats. I say unnatural, because in the common course of things, the origin of such establishments ought to be coeval only with an entire occupation of the soil, and redundancy of population. And this chiefly for two reasons: because a greater capital is required in their foundation, and a greater degree of skill and dexterity in their developement. It is on this account that in Canada, and our colonies in the West Indies, which are in a great measure left to the guidance of their native legislatures, and which it is therefore to be presumed, adopt that line of policy at once most consistent with their own interests, and with those of the parent country, since in the persons of her representatives, she approves or annuls their proceedings, we find that manufactures have been altogether neglected, while their agriculture and plantations, while, in fine, the exportation of raw materials, whether the natural or artificial productions of these colonies, has been promoted in every possible manner. That this is the system which ought to have been pursued, we have a still more forcible proof in the instance of the United States of America, and of many of the ancient nations of Europe; which, unfettered by any dependence whatever on any foreign power, and having consequently adopted that policy, which has been found the most consistent with their respective interests, have made but very little progress in manufactures, and are therefore still under the necessity of having recourse for manufactured commodities to other countries. If then the promotion of agriculture be more politic in many independent states, which have not yet attained the same maturity of growth and civilization, that characterize the principal manufacturing nations of the world, by how much more prudent must the encouragement of it be in a dependent colony like this; possessed as it is of all the requisites for an unlimited extension of its agriculture in the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate, and the extent of its territory, and wanting all the essentials for the production of manufactures, skill, capital, and population?

The existing state of things, therefore, is not only contrary to the welfare of the colony itself, but also in diametrical opposition to the interests of the parent country. A great manufacturing nation herself, it is her undoubted policy, and that which on every occasion I believe but the present she has pursued, to augment in her colonies, at one and the same time, the consumption of her own manufactures, and the growth of such productions as she has found essential to her own use, or to the supply of other nations. The toleration, therefore, of a system so averse to her acknowledged interests, can only be attributed to ignorance, or inadvertence. But it is not in the forcible abolition of these manufactories, created by necessity, and still rendered indispensable by the same irresistible law, that the condition of the colony is to be ameliorated or redressed. So long as the same pernicious disabilities which have already reduced the colonists to beggary and despair, and rendered unavailing the resources of a country that might rival in the number and value of its exports, the most favoured of the globe are enforced, this manufacturing system is a lamentable but necessary evil. After putting it out of their power to purchase the more costly clothing of the mother country, it would be an intolerable exercise of authority to prevent them from having recourse to the homely products of their own industry and ingenuity. Under existing circumstances, indeed, there is no alternative between permitting them the use of their own manufactures, and compelling them to go naked, or to clothe themselves like the aborigines of the country in the skins of animals. There is but one remedy for the disease of the colony: it is to give due encouragement to agriculture, and to promote the growth of exportable commodities, which its inhabitants may offer in exchange for the productions of other countries. The manufacturing system which has begun to take root, will then wither away of its own accord; since it will then be the least productive manner in which capital and labour can be employed.

Happy would it have been for the colonists, if these repeated efforts, these distressing and embarrassing expedients to supply their wants, had been the only injurious consequences resulting from the stagnation of agriculture. The day when their wretched situation shall have at length awakened the commiseration of the parent country, would then have witnessed the term and bounds of their sufferings. Alas! far different will be the case. Like a ruined merchant, who would defer, to the utmost length, the disgrace of bankruptcy, in the daily hope of some prosperous adventure to retrieve his fortune and restore his credit, the settlers have gone on contracting debts, which have accumulated with the increasing embarrassments of the community. The engagements of the majority of the cultivators, thus swelled in a few years to a bulk, which they had no longer any chance of reducing: pressed on all sides by their creditors, the mortgage or sale of their farms became inevitable; and even these sacrifices have, in general, been far from cancelling their bonds; so that they not only have ceased to be proprietors, but also still continue debtors to a large amount. Their creditors, in many instances, a set of rapacious, unprincipled dealers, availing themselves of the power which the law would give them over the personal liberty of these, their debtors, immediately took that advantage of their own commanding position, which might have been expected from their characters. They engaged, or more properly speaking, constrained, these poor wretches to cultivate as tenants, the same soil which lately belonged to them, and exacted from them in return, a rent too exorbitant to be paid. Every succeeding year, therefore, has but tended to increase their obligations, and they are, at present, identified with the soil, and reduced to all intents and purposes, except in name, to as complete a state of vassalage as the serfs of Russia. If they should be in need of any trifling supply, it is to their proprietors, and to them only, that they dare have recourse, though they would be able to obtain the same articles a hundred per cent. cheaper elsewhere. To their granaries the whole produce of their industry is conveyed: and, in spite of all their toil and privation, far from discharging their original debts, they find themselves every day more deeply involved. The more they struggle, the more complicated and firm becomes their entanglement. Lamentable as undoubtedly must be such a hopeless state of servitude, it still appears to them preferable to the precincts of a prison. They respire the free invigorating air of their plains, and can still traverse them at their option, or at least when the season arrives which closes their daily task. But this privilege, it must be confessed, is purchased at its uttermost value. We have philanthropists among us, who justly commiserate the condition of that unoffending race of people, who dragged from the scenes of their nativity, and the habitations of their fathers, have been consigned by a gang of merciless kidnappers to perpetual slavery themselves, and to the still more intolerable necessity of bequeathing an existence of similar endurement and degradation to their offspring. After years of strenuous indefatigable exertion these friends of humanity, these noble champions of liberty have succeeded, if not in emancipating those, who had already been consigned to this unmerited doom, at least in preventing the further extension of this infernal traffic. Would it not be an effort worthy the same philanthropy, which has thus secured the protection and deliverance of unoffending Africa, to procure the emancipation of suffering Australasia? to raise her from the abject state of poverty, slavery, and degradation, to which she is so fast sinking, and to present her a constitution, which may gradually conduct her to freedom, prosperity, and happiness?

It must be admitted that this state of slavery, so galling to the subjects of a free country, has been in some measure imposed on the colonists by their own imprudent extravagance. Already but too much inclined by their early habits of irregularity to licentious indulgence, the prosperous state of their affairs during the first fifteen years after the foundation of the settlement, presented the strongest inducements to a revival of their ancient propensities, which had been repressed, but not subdued. Imagining that the same unlimited market, which was then offered for their produce, would always continue, they only thought of consuming the fruits of their industry; not doubting that the same fields, which thus lavishly administered to the gratification of their desires, would amply suffice for the more moderate enjoyments of their offspring. But when once their produce began to exceed the demand of the government, and when in a short time afterwards from the want of due encouragement, all the various avenues of industry that lay open were successively filled, and the means of occupation eithergreatly circumscribed, or entirely exhausted, these people, so long habituated to unrestrained indulgence, found it difficult to support that privation, which became incumbent on their condition; and in order to procure those luxuries of which they so severely felt the want, exhausted their credit, and ended by alienating their possessions. There can be but little doubt if the colonists, instead of expending, had providently accumulated the money which they so profusely acquired during the period of their agricultural prosperity, that their actual situation would have been far preferable; for, though the gradual retrogradation, which I should imagine it must at present be sufficiently evident, that the colony has been undergoing for these last fifteen years, would by this time have greatly diminished, if not have totally absorbed their former savings, still their lands would have remained to them, nor would they have been reduced to that state of vassalage and misery, which they are this day enduring. Lamentable therefore, as is their condition, the consideration that it has thus far been occasioned by their own imprudence, is apt to detract from that unbounded commiseration which it would otherwise excite: if, on the other hand, we do not reflect in extenuation of their thoughtlessness and extravagance, that their former increased means of indulgence, were the result of their industry; that this industry was in the first instance called into activity by the encouragement of the government; that it has since been paralysed by a concatenation of unwise and unjust disabilities imposed by the same power; and that consequently their present wretched and degraded situation is not so much to be ascribed to their former improvidence as to the actual impolicy and injustice of their rulers. If we furthermore consider the short period in which this great change in their circumstances has been effected, we shall feel convinced that so sudden a transition from affluence to poverty could not be patiently endured, and that every method of rendering so unexpected and galling a burthen more supportable, would be naturally and inevitably resorted to. To prove still more satisfactorily that this state of slavery to which so large a proportion of the original settlers are reduced, has not been so much the result of their own imprudence as of the impolicy of their government, numerous instances might be adduced of persons, not indeed skilled in the arts of husbandry, whose habits have always been regular and moderate, who have been for many years stockholders as well as agriculturists, and who, notwithstanding this two-fold advantage, aided by an undeviating economy, have been unable to keep themselves free from the embarrassments in which the bare cultivators of the soil are so generally involved. To what end then, has their frugality been directed, if a few years more will engulph their possessions, and reduce them to the same state of vassalage and degradation, to which their less provident brethren are already subjected? They have, indeed, in the prospective some short period of unexpired freedom; but I doubt much whether the gradual approach of inevitable slavery be scarcely more enviable than slavery itself.

The great concussion which the agricultural interests thus sustained at the epoch when the productive powers of the colony exceeded the consumptive, and the continued shocks to which they have been exposed ever since, have not unfortunately affected the agricultural prosperity alone, but have shaken to the foundation the commercial edifice also. Unluckily both the agricultural and commercial classes seem to have been alike ignorant of the death-blow which had been struck at their welfare. The settler continued in the same career of thoughtless extravagance which his circumstances when they were even in their most flourishing state had scarcely permitted, and the merchant went on without hesitation, advancing him goods in the hope of extricating his old customer from difficulties which he only imagined to be of temporary pressure; never for a moment suspecting that they were the forerunners of deeper embarrassment and ultimate ruin. Need I state the consequences. The extended credits which the first merchants thus gave the settlers on the strength of the progressive increase of their produce, rendered them at last unable to fulfil the engagements which they had contracted with British and East India houses, and they were eventually involved in the destruction which had so suddenly overwhelmed the great mass of their debtors, on whom they were necessarily dependent for support. All of them who had been distinguished by their equitable dealings, and by their liberality of conduct, received at this moment so rude a shock in their affairs that they have been unable amidst the increasing decadence of the community at large to re-establish their credit, and after disposing of the scattered wrecks of their fortune, have not only been reduced to penury, but are still indebted to their correspondents in the amount perhaps of £100,000. These gentlemen thus driven from the commercial circle by their liberality, unwillingly inflicted a deadly wound on the credit of the colony. Foreign merchants would no longer have any account dealings with their successors; and generally ever since the commercial intercourse with England and the East Indies has been maintained without any confidence on the part of the merchants of these two countries; the money has been received in one hand, and the goods delivered in the other. This cautious system has given birth to another race of merchants, much more prudent than their predecessors, but also much less serviceable to the colony, and much less adapted to its emergencies. These in their dealings have been forced to observe the same circumspection which had been adopted towards themselves, and have given no credit but to those whose means of payment were unquestionable. As the majority of the colonists have been always in the back ground, since the epoch which I have just described, and have in consequence been unable to produce ready money, a subordinate class of traders, but still superior in their circumstances and the extent of their transactions to those little inferior dealers, who are to be found in all countries, started up, and have since acted as intermediary agents between the importers and the great body of consumers. The object of this class has been, and continues to be, not so much to realize large fortunes in money, which indeed under existing circumstances would be scarcely possible, as to acquire immense landed possessions: and their system, which, in fact, is the natural consequence of this policy, is to require of the settlers mortgage securities anterior to the supply of such articles as they may be in need of. As they are frequently unable punctually to comply with the conditions of these mortgages, their creditors eagerly embrace the opportunity, whenever it offers, of foreclosing them, and are thus gradually becoming proprietors of the finest estates in the colony; estates which whenever its capabilities shall be called into unrestrained action will ensure them and their posterity fortunes of a colossal magnitude. While this class of traders are thus becoming the most considerable landholders in this settlement, they have not only taken care not to give credit to such an extent as might occasion a diminution in their trading capital, but have even contrived to increase it very materially. This system, therefore, of buying goods, and afterwards selling them at an almost arbitrary profit, the greater part of which is thus converted into landed property, is daily gaining ground, and will infallibly in the end, unless proper measures be speedily taken to counteract it, reduce the great majority of the agricultural body to the same state of vassalage which a large proportion of its members are already enduring. And what renders the increasing wealth and power of the small number who thus profit by the embarrassments of the settlers, and make themselves masters of their persons and properties, still more odious and galling, is the consideration that in most instances they are the least deserving, and yet the only class of the community to whom the present order of things is favourable. While all the rest of the population are groaning under the aggravated pressure of toil, privation, and despair, they are fattening on the surrounding misery, and every day making rapid strides towards the attainment of immense riches, under the propitious shelter of a system which would appear to have been expressly contrived for their especial aggrandisement, at the expence of the freedom, prosperity and happiness of the whole social body besides. Like vultures, that in the midst of combats soar in safety above the destruction raging beneath, but descend at its close and tranquilly devour the mangled carcases which the exterminating engines of war have laid prostrate for their repast, these men out of the influence of the oppressive disabilities which are overwhelming all but themselves, eagerly watch the progress of the surrounding misery, and impatiently await its completion; more cruel than vultures, since covered with the aegis that has unnerved the force and paralysed the energies of their neighbours, they introduce themselves into the midst of the havoc of their own species, and prey upon the living victims who are sinking around them.

And here, it may not be inexpedient to reconcile the existence of so much distress, with so large an income, and so small a population as the colony and its dependent settlements are known to possess. The former, it has been seen, may be estimated in round numbers at £170,000, the latter at 20,000 souls: so that if the annual income were equally divided among the entire population, and they were all agriculturists, and could furnish themselves with food, (I make this supposition, because it is at their option to become agriculturists, and it is consequently a legitimate inference, that it is not the interest of such as have not embraced this alteration to do so) they would each have man, woman, and child, 8l. 10s. yearly for the purchase of articles of foreign growth and manufacture alone. This I am ready to allow, is comparatively a much larger sum than could be appropriated by the inhabitants of this country to similar purposes; and it would therefore appear on the first view, incompatible with the doleful picture of distress which I have drawn. If, however, the remoteness of the colony from England, India, and China, the three principal supplying countries, be duly considered, and the great expence of freight and insurance unavoidably attached to so long a navigation, an expence which in the first of these instances, is augmented in a two-fold degree, by the entire absence of return cargoes; if it be stated that these local disadvantages alone, render it impossible for the importers to dispose of their merchandize for less than fifty per cent. on the prime cost to their immediate purchasers, and that at least three fourths of the population are obliged from the want of ready money, to buy on long credits of these secondary agents, who fashion their prices according to the nature and extent of their customers' embarrassments, sometimes contenting themselves with a second advance of fifty per cent.; but more frequently affixing to their goods a profit of a hundred, a hundred and fifty, and two hundred per cent.: if it be recollected how far these grievous exactions are aggravated by the system of vassalage just described, a system which places all the unfortunate wretches who are reduced to it at the absolute mercy of their rapacious landlords; if the profligate and improvident habits and disposition of the generality of the colonists be taken into the estimate, and their total disregard of order and economy in their domestic arrangements; but above all, if their unfortunate propensity to the excessive use of spirituous liquors be superadded; a propensity which like Aaron's rod swallows up every other passion, and for the momentary gratification of which they willingly sacrifice every prospect of present enjoyment, and deliberately entail on themselves and their families lasting privation and want; I say if due consideration be given to all these circumstances, it will be no difficult matter to believe in the sad reality of the general wretchedness and penury which I have depicted. But it must be further evident that this equal division of the colonial revenue has been assumed merely by way of exemplification, and that it is a fiction, the realization of which is beyond the extreme verge of possibility: a fiction which never has been and never can be verified. In this colony as in every other community, there is a regular gradation of property, and perhaps there is no country on the face of the earth, except Russia, where it is so partially distributed. If then I have reconciled the probability of the wretched condition of the colonists, with the assumption of an equality of wealth, when there is, in fact, the greatest inequality, it must be evident that the picture which I have drawn, pregnant and glowing as it is with distress, is far from surcharged, and still requires both colouring and expression to convey a perfect representation of the scene.

Of the whole colonial income about £100,000 annually may be considered as arising from the labours of the agricultural body. This is undoubtedly that portion of the colonial wealth which gets into most general circulation; but even it is far from undergoing that minute subdivision and universal diffusion which are requisite for the maintenance of a constant internal circulating medium. Created in the first instance by the government in payment of the grain, meat, etc. furnished by the settlers, it is immediately handed over by them to the traders to whom they may be indebted, and from these again passes to the importing merchants, on whom they may be dependent for their supplies of merchandize, who in their turn eventually transmit it to their foreign correspondents. It may consequently be perceived that the purchases and sales which must be incessantly occurring, besides those to which this part of the colonial income is thus devoted, such as the sales of provisions in the markets, the payment of wages, and, in fine, the infinite transactions to which the wants or the whims of society are eternally giving birth, and to which a common medium of determinate value is essential are but little, if indeed at all facilitated by a sum of money, which after passing through a few hands, disappears from the colony for ever. To prevent, therefore, the interchanges and activity of the community from being brought to a stand, it became necessary to create some other circulating medium; and as the government took no part in this highly important affair, the whole burden of the arrangement fell upon the inhabitants. The arrangement itself was, in consequence, such as might have been expected from their circumstances and situation: the whole of them who had any real, or apparent pretensions to responsibility, became with one accord bankers; issuing small promissory notes to provide for their minuter occasions, merely on the strength of their credit, and frequently in anticipation of their means. This "Colonial currency," as it was termed, soon experienced that depreciation in the market, compared with the government, or sterling money, which it was natural to expect from the doubtful circumstances of many of its issuers. In a short time government money could not be had for it under a discount of fifty per cent.; still the drawers of these promissory notes were compelled by the decisions of the court of civil jurisdiction to pay them at par, whenever they were presented; so that all the persons of real responsibility, who had been induced in the first instance from necessity to adopt this system, withdrew their bills from the market, and naturally preferred purchasing with government money the notes of others at this depreciated rate, to the issuing at the same rate notes of their own, which they would be eventually obliged to take up at par. The consequence was that all the subsequent issuers of these notes were needy adventurers, who possessing little or no property adopted this method of supplying their extravagance, or entering into desperate speculations that could hardly succeed, in violation of every principle of honesty, and at the expence of the industrious and responsible part of the community. This subsequent currency, therefore, encountered a still further depreciation; and when government money could be at all obtained for it, it was only at a discount of 100, 150, and even 200 per cent. Such, however, has been the necessity for a circulating medium of some sort or other, that the public, as if by a general implied consent, without any expressed convention, have permitted the existence and increase of this worthless substitute, and have thus affixed a kind of nominal value to that which is in reality worth nothing.

To any one, who has not fully considered the difficulty attending the exchange of one commodity for another, and the impossibility of apportioning at all times, what one man may have to dispose of to the exact value of what another man may have to offer in return, an impossibility that would frequently prevent the exchange altogether, and thus subject the parties to mutual inconvenience and distress, the rude system of barter would appear preferable to so vile a common standard of value as the existing currency. Its badness, indeed, has been the means of introducing the system of barter as far as it was practicable; but as the entire introduction of this system would be hardly compatible with the first imperfect elements of society, the civilization of the colonists has imposed a limit to it, and prescribed a necessity for the toleration of the present circulating medium, which nothing but the creation of a better can supersede. Two attempts were made to remedy this evil, but they both in the event proved abortive; the richer class of the inhabitants on these occasions formed combinations and entered into resolutions not to receive in payment the bills of any individuals who had not been admitted into their society. To prevent a recurrence of the loss, which the original responsible issuers of currency had sustained by its depreciation in the market, they affixed to it themselves a specific depreciation, promising in the body of their notes to pay them on demand in government money at a discount, in the first of these instances, of twenty-five per cent., and in the last of fifty per cent. But it must be evident that a currency of this nature, payable on demand, became of equal value with the sterling money of the government, to those who took it at the stipulated depreciation; and it was accordingly no sooner in circulation, than it got into the hands of the importing merchants, and was presented to the drawers for payment. It was thus too good for its intended purpose; and the old worthless currency, which had been for a while proscribed, gradually returned into circulation. The present governor, sensible of the advantage which the colony would derive from its supercession, and from the substitution of another of intrinsic value in its stead, caused ten thousand pounds worth of dollars to be sent from India, and had a piece struck out of the middle of each, to which he affixed by proclamation, the value of fifteen pence, and to the remainder that of five shillings, making the whole dollar worth six shillings and three pence. This money he caused to be given in payment of the various articles of internal produce received into the king's stores; but as they were exchanged every month, if presented to the commissariat department, for bills on the lords of the treasury, in the same manner as the government receipts had been exchanged previously, they have not realized the hopes of abolishing the currency, with which they were issued. Some few of them, indeed, have from time to time eluded the grasp of the merchants and traders, and got in consequence of the minuteness of their separate value into temporary circulation; but the use of the original currency has neither been superseded nor diminished.