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

Having thus shewn that this colony has hitherto been an increasing burthen to this country, and that it must necessarily continue so under its present unwise constitution, I proceed in the next place to prove that its existing system of government is also contraventory of the philanthropic intentions which gave rise to its foundation. The principal object which the government of this country had in view was undoubtedly the reformation of the thousands exiled to these distant shores. The punishment which it thus inflicted, in banishing them from their native country, and separating them from their friends and connexions, was not the end itself, but the means which it employed to effect this humane and laudable purpose. Has then the colony in any one point of view realized this comprehensive and philanthropic scheme of morality and regeneration? It has, indeed, proved a receptacle for those whose crimes rendered them unfit for the community which rejected them from its bosom, and in so far has been of some utility to the public; but have the restraints to which they have been subjected; has the system, in fact, by which they have been governed during their exile, generally revived that morality and virtue, the absence of which propelled them in the first instance to the commission of crime, and will always continue them in the same career of vice and punishment? Have those, who have expiated their original offence, by undergoing the penalty which the law annexed to it, experienced a reformation in their principles and conduct? And are they generally qualified either to return to the country that banished them, or to become good and useful citizens in the one by which they have been adopted; and which, since it has constantly witnessed their deportment, can best appreciate the reality and extent of their merits? The records of the several courts of criminal judicature are the surest criterion by which to judge of this important particular, and will be found decidedly confirmatory of the alarming augmentation of immorality and crime, which distinguishes every succeeding year, and that too in a proportion far exceeding what would be naturally consequent on the increase in the population.

On reference to the Sydney Gazattes for the year 1817, I find that there were in all ninety-two persons tried by the criminal court. The offences with which they were charged were as follow: 1st, For murder eleven; four of whom were convicted and executed: two were adjudged only guilty of manslaughter; and five were acquitted. 2dly, For burglaries, eight, five of whom were capitally convicted, but their sentences afterwards commuted into transportation to the Coal River for life; five were transported thither for fourteen years, one for seven years, and one was acquitted. 3dly, For highway robbery, one, who was transported to Newcastle for fourteen years. 4thly, One incendiary, transported for life. 5thly, One for cutting and maiming, acquitted. 6thly, Nine for cattle stealing; of whom two were capitally convicted, their sentence afterwards commuted into transportation for life; five were originally sentenced to the same punishment, one transported for fourteen years, and one was acquitted. 6thly, Three for sheep stealing; all capitally convicted, but their sentences commuted into transportation for life. 7thly, Two for horse stealing; one of whom was capitally convicted but not executed, the other sentenced to solitary confinement. 8thly, One for rape, but acquitted. 9thly, Twenty-seven for privately stealing in dwelling and out-houses; two of whom were transported for fourteen years, nine for seven years, one for four years, four for three years, two for two years, one sentenced to solitary confinement, and six acquitted. 10thly, Two for forgery, found guilty, but sentence deferred. 11thly, Two for receiving stolen goods, one of whom was sentenced to the pillory and to four years transportation, and the other to transportation alone for the same period. 12thly, Five for pig stealing; of whom two were transported to Newcastle for fourteen years, one was flogged and put in the pillory, one transported to Newcastle for two years, and one acquitted. Lastly, Nineteen for petty larceny; of whom one was sent to Newcastle for four years, one for three years, fourteen were sentenced to various terms of solitary confinement, and three acquitted.

From this statement, therefore, it appears that during the year 1817, out of the ninety-two persons who were tried for various offences, which it will be seen were for the most part of a heinous nature, no fewer than seventy-three were convicted, fifteen capitally, four of whom were executed, the remaining eleven had their sentences commuted into transportation to the Coal River for life; that there were six others originally sentenced to the same punishment; that there were five transported for fourteen years, ten for seven years, and that the remaining thirty-seven were either transported for terms under seven years, or were punished by solitary confinement. Appalling, however, as this catalogue of crime must be acknowledged, when compared with that which could be produced in any other community of similar extent, it would still appear on the first view to argue well in favour of the reformatory influence of this colony: since Governor Bligh in his examination before the committee of the House of Commons, in the year 1812, presented a document purporting to be a list of criminals tried between August, 1806, and August, 1807, from which it appears that one hundred and seventeen* persons were arraigned before the criminal court during this interval. If we were therefore to abide by the records of the criminal court alone, we should draw the most satisfactory conclusions with respect to the progress of reformation in the morals and habits of the people since that period. The comparison, indeed, between the catalogue of crime in the years 1806 and 1817, would be most gratifying; as notwithstanding that the population of the colony rather more than doubled itself since the former year, the latter presents a decrease in the number of criminals of twenty-five, or in other words, crimes would appear to have diminished in the ratio of about 9/4 to 1. If the records, therefore, of the criminal court were decisive on the subject, it would be impossible not to confess that the system pursued in this colony has fully answered the humane intentions for which it was founded. But unhappily these records are no standard by which to judge of the reformatory tendency of the system. During Governor Bligh's administration, all offenders except those who were charged with the most trifling misdemeanors, were tried by the criminal court. He was a second Draco, who considered the smallest offence deserving of death: and wo to the wretch whom the criminal court doomed to this punishment, for he invariably carried its sentence into execution. His successor, however, has acted on more merciful principles; and, besides, crimes have so rapidly multiplied of late years, that the judge advocate would not have sufficient time for presiding in the two civil courts of which he is the head, were he obliged to dispose of all the culprits that might be arraigned in the criminal court. But it is well known to those who are at all conversant with the state of the colony, that but a very small portion of the offences which are committed there, are now brought under the jurisdiction of this court. The majority of the criminals who are now tried by it are either free persons, or such as have obtained emancipations; i.e. those whom the various governors have made free in the colony, but who are not at liberty to quit it. The benches of magistrates, and the superintendent of police, are delicate of deciding on charges in which the members of these two free classes are implicated; but they dispose of offenders already under the sentence of the law in a summary manner, either by transporting them to the Coal River, by putting them in the gaol gangs, by sending them (if they happen to be females) to the factory, or by simply ordering them corporal punishment, unless they are charged with murder, or some capital felony; and even in this latter case they frequently inflict some summary punishment. With respect to the first of these summary modes of punishment, transportation to the Coal River, it has already been stated that the population of this settlement amounted in the year 1817, to five hundred and fifty souls: of these not more than one hundred, including the civil and military establishments, and the settlers and their families on the upper banks of the river, were free. The remaining four hundred and fifty, therefore, were persons who had been convicted of crimes either by the criminal court or by the magistracy, and retransported thither for various periods. Those few, it has been seen, who are condemned to this punishment by the criminal court, are for the most part sentenced to long terms of transportation; but as nine-tenths of the criminals at this settlement are sent thither either by the benches of magistrates, or by the superintendent of police, who seldom transport for a longer period than two years, and more frequently for one year, or six months, the population may at a very moderate calculation be considered as undergoing a complete change every two years, or in other words, it may be concluded that two hundred and twenty-five persons are annually transported thither by way of punishment. We must therefore add this number to the culprits convicted before the court of criminal judicature, and we shall then have a total of three hundred and eighteen persons annually convicted of crimes in the colony. This is of itself an alarming sum of criminality; but we must not stop here, since it only conducts us to the second of the summary modes of punishment which I have enumerated; viz. the gaol gangs. There are upon an average about fifty persons in the gaol gang at Sydney, and about the same number in the gaol gangs belonging to the other towns and districts in the colony. These are criminals convicted of smaller offences than those who are transported to the Coal River; they are worked from sunrise to sun-set, and are locked up in the prisons during the night. This mode of punishment is seldom inflicted for a longer term than four months. It may therefore be safely computed that these gaol gangs are changed once in this period, or in other words, that three hundred persons annually pass through this ordeal. This further addition to the formidable catalogue of crimes already made out, increases the total to six hundred and eighteen persons, yet only leads us to the third mode of summary punishment, viz. labour at the factory at Paramatta. The number of women sentenced to this mode of punishment may be averaged at one hundred and fifty, and as the average term of their sentences does not exceed six months, we have a farther number of three hundred to add to the above estimate. This increases it to nine hundred and eighteen persons; but we have still one other mode of punishment in petto, corporal punishment simply; and I have no doubt that the numbers on whom it is annually inflicted will at least swell the grand total of persons convicted of various criminal offences during the year 1817, either by the criminal courts, by the benches of magistrates, by the superintendent of police, or by the district magistrates to one thousand. We may now draw some sort of a comparison between the amount of crime in the years 1806 and 1817. I should imagine, on the highest calculation, that not more than one hundred persons in addition to those tried by the criminal court during that year, could, from the system then in practice, have been summarily dealt with by the magistracy; but allowing even that there were two hundred, and that the whole number of persons stated by Governor Bligh to have been tried by that court were found guilty, a most improbable supposition, the year 1806 will only then give a total of three hundred and sixteen offenders, i.e. not one third the amount of those who were convicted in the year 1817. Crime therefore has been trebled, while the population has only been doubled, or in other words, the increase of the former has been to the increase of the latter as three to two.

[* Page 42 Appendix to the Report of the House of Commons in 1812.]

What else, indeed, could be expected from a system which is every day enlarging the circle of poverty and distress? Is it within the possibility of belief that people should become more honest as they become more necessitous? That they should scrupulously refrain from making inroads on the possessions of their richer neighbours, while they themselves are suffering under the influence of progressive penury? Under such circumstances it would be the very height of absurdity to expect an increase of virtue and honesty. Wherever it is not within the compass of industry to provide for its wants, a recourse to crime in order to make up the deficiency is inevitable to a certain extent even in a moral country. What then must be the result of this inability in a felon population, long habituated to theft, and naturally predisposed to criminality? In such a community as this, the government are doubly bound to neglect no measures which may be calculated to repress this vicious propensity. If they adopt the contrary line of conduct; if they administer stimulants to vice instead of anodynes; if they, in fact, create incitements to dishonesty too potent even for virtuous misery to withstand, are not they the authors of a system thus impregnated with corruption, virtually the parent of the monstrous litter to which it gives birth? And though according to the inflexible principles of justice, any violation of the property of another is not to be exculpated, humanity will always pity the distressed delinquent, and wish that she had the power of substituting the primary author of the crime in the place of the condemned criminal. How would the world be reformed, if the framers of the unjust and impolitic laws, which are every where the bane of mankind, and the cause of so much misery and vice, were arraigned at the bar of justice, and compelled to answer for all the depravity that might be traced to the demoralizing influence of their measures?

The picture of the colony which I have presented, aggravated as it is, faithfully delineates the different descending gradations by which it has sunk to its present abyss of misery, and is of itself sufficiently demonstrative of the radical defect that there is in its polity, and of the necessity for an alteration in it: nevertheless, it may not be altogether inexpedient to dive a little into futurity, and to view through the mirror of the imagination the further results which the experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the same course of restriction and disability will infallibly lead to. It requires not the gift of divination to foresee that the manufacturing system, which has already taken such deep root, and so rapidly shot up towards maturity, will still further confirm and consolidate itself with the increasing poverty of the community. For several years the importation of British manufactures, particularly of cottons, has been comparatively speaking on the decline, in consequence of the competition occasioned by large importations of those articles from India; which though in general of inferior quality, have been more adapted to the circumstances of the colonists from their inferior price. The consumption of hats and woollen cloths has also been diminished, but not to the same considerable extent by the colonial manufactures of the same denomination, which are likewise much inferior to the British, but have the two-fold advantage of being cheaper, and to be obtained for wool, grain, meat, etc. without the intervention of money, which it is generally out of the power of the consumers to furnish.

This system of barter, which has materially favoured their growth, and must necessarily still further encourage and extend it, is not, as might at first be imagined, prejudicial to the manufacturer; since the wool which he thus receives in exchange for his commodity is the raw material required for its reproduction, and therefore saves him the trouble of seeking it in other quarters; and the meat, grain, etc. are distributed among his workmen at the market prices of the day, and free him from the necessity of paying the full value of their labour in money, which under existing circumstances would most probably be impracticable. The system itself, therefore, seems to have been engendered by events, and to be peculiarly adapted to the present state of poverty and wretchedness, to which the great mass of the colonists are reduced. And although in other countries, and even in this, if its agricultural powers were unfettered, the workmen employed in the fabrication of these manufactures would not perhaps consent to receive this mixed compensation for their labour, yet amidst the actual difficulties of procuring a subsistence, and possessed as they are of trades, for which till lately there was no demand whatever, and for which at the present moment there is far from an active competition, they are not only glad to accept this mode of payment, but would even submit to much harder conditions. We may therefore perceive, that if the manufacturer can sell for ready money as much of this commodity as is requisite to the payment of the residue of their wages, and at the same time equivalent to the profit which he may derive from his concern, it is all that he need absolutely require. This manufacturing system being thus not only suited to the increasing poverty of the community at large, but also favourable to the interests of all the parties concerned in it, whether the proprietors or the workmen, cannot but gain ground. A few years, in fact, will completely put it out of the power of at least seven-eighths of the population to have recourse to the manufactures of this country: the expences of the colony will, indeed, as I have satisfactorily proved, continue to increase, but still only in proportion to the augmentation in the body of convicts and others, maintained at the charge of the government; while, on the contrary, the population of the colony, in spite of all the checks imposed on it, will be extending itself more rapidly within, than by transportation and emigration from without. Its revenue, therefore, will be every year to be divided among a number of competitors increasing much more rapidly than itself. Thus their ability to purchase the more perfect and expensive commodities of this country, will become daily more circumscribed, till at length the use of them will be entirely superseded, or at best confined to the higher orders of society; who, it is probable, may be induced in the long run both by the growing perfection of their native manufactures, and by patriotism, to abjure the consumption of all goods that may have a tendency to augment the prosperity of their common oppressor. The colonists, in fact, have only to advance a few steps further in the manufacturing system to be completely independent of foreign supply. Already fabricating to a considerable extent their own cloth, the first perhaps of manufactures in utility and importance; already furnishing in a great measure their own hats, leather, soap, candles, and earthenware, they have only to provide their own linen, and to erect iron founderies, to become possessed of all that can be termed strictly necessary to their subsistence and even comfort. And these two objects will doubtless be soon effected by the active agency of the same powerful necessity, which has so rapidly given rise to the various manufactures already mentioned. It is, indeed, rather a matter of surprise than otherwise, that attempts have not been already made to establish manufactories of these two highly important articles; since the colony, on the one hand, is peculiarly adapted to the growth of flax, and on the other abounds, as it has been seen, with iron ore of the richest quality.

To what feelings, then, to what conduct, it may be asked, will this independence in the resources of the colonists, the bitter fruit of so much privation and misery, give birth? Will this, the painful result of so many years' injustice and oppression, tend to strengthen the bond of union between the colony and this country? Or will it not be the crisis that will sever it for ever? England, placed as she is at present on the pinnacle of glory, and reposing in security on the basis of that commercial and maritime greatness, from which the gigantic efforts of united Europe have not been able to remove her, may laugh to scorn the presumption of any colony, however powerful, that might attempt to shake off her authority. Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies. No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of this country, dream of its immediate execution. Still let her not lull herself into a false security; let her not measure the forbearance of the colony by its own impotency and insignificance. Despair always begets resources, and inspires an unnatural vigor. The enmity of the most feeble becomes formidable, when it has justice ranged under its banners, and ought not to be excited without necessity. Besides, is it worthy the character of a nation, who has evinced herself the determined enemy of tyrants, and the avenger of the freedom of the world, to become the oppressor of her own subjects, and that too for the mere sake of oppression, in subversion alike of their interests and of her own? Has she not, and will she not always have external enemies enow to contend with, without thus creating, unnecessarily creating, domestic ones? Let her from the midst of the glory with which she is environed compare her situation, brilliant and imposing as it is, with what it might have been: let her look at the consequences of her former injustice. Is not the most formidable on the list of her enemies, a nation, which might have this day been the most attached and faithful of her friends? A nation which, instead of watching every occasion to circumscribe her power, would, if its rights had been respected, have been still embodied with her empire and confirmatory of her strength? Will this terrible lesson have no influence on the regulation of her future conduct? Will not this dear bought experience teach her wisdom? Or has she yet to learn that the reign of injustice and tyranny involves in its very constitution the germ of its duration and punishment? Let her ask herself, "what would have been the consequence if, during the late war with America, the ports of this colony had been open to the vessels of that nation?" How many hundreds of the valuable captures, which the Americans made in the Indian seas and on the coast of Peru, might have safely awaited there the termination of the war, which were recaptured by her cruisers in view of the ports of their country? How many hundreds of their own vessels, that shared the same fate, would have still belonged to their merchants? And is there no probability, that a perseverance in the present system of injustice and oppression, may on some future occasion, urge the colonists to shake off this intolerable yoke, and throw themselves into the arms of so powerful a protector? May they not by these means acquire independence long before the epoch when they would have obtained it by their own force and maturity? Or at least may they not place themselves under the government of more just and considerate rulers? How would this country repent her folly, if she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions, at the main external source of her wealth and prosperity?

To those who are acquainted with the local situation of this colony; who have traversed the formidable chain of mountains by which it is bounded from north to south; who have viewed the impregnable natural positions, that the only connecting ridge by which a passage into the interior can be effected, every where presents; to those who are aware that this ridge is in many places not more than thirty feet in width, and have beheld the terrific chasms by which it is bounded, chasms inaccessible to the most agile animal of the forest, and that will for ever defy the approach of man; to those, I say, who are acquainted with all these circumstances, the independence of this colony, should it be goaded into rebellion, appears neither so problematical nor remote, as might be otherwise imagined. Of what avail would whole armies prove in these terrible defiles, which only five or six men could approach abreast? What would be the effect of artillery on advancing columns crowded into so narrow a compass? A few minutes exposure to such a dreadful carnage, would annihilate the assailing army; or at best only preserve its scattered remnants from destruction by raising an intervening barrier of the carcases of its slaughtered martyrs. If the colonists should prudently abandon the defence of the sea-coast, and remove with their flocks and herds into the fertile country behind these impregnable passes, what would the force of England, gigantic as it is, profit her? She might, indeed, if they were unassisted in their efforts by any foreign power, cut off their communication for awhile with the coast; but her armies entirely dependent on external supply, and at so great a distance from the centre of their resources, would gradually moulder away, as well by the incessant operation of a partisan warfare, as by defection to their adversaries, whom her troops would be led to combat only with regret. They would not enter into a war of this description with the same animosity and desire of vengeance that might actuate their leaders. They would behold in their opponents, Britons, or the descendants of Britons, placed in hostile array against them unwillingly, and not from any ancient and inveterate spirit of hatred and rivality, but from constrained resistance to tyranny, and in vindication of their most sacred and indubitable rights. Nor would they in the midst of their disgust for so unjust and unnatural a contest, behold the beauty and fertility of the country without drawing a comparison between their condition, and what it would be, were they to quit the ranks of oppression, and become the champions of that independence, which they were destined to repress. Such will be the consequences of the impolitic and oppressive system of government pursued in this colony; such the probable results of the contest to which it must eventually give rise. If I have been unqualified in expressing my reprobation of such unwise and unjust measures; if I have evinced myself the fearless assertor of the rights of my compatriots; and if I have spoke without reserve of the resistance which the violation and suppression of those rights will in the end occasion, I must nevertheless protest against being classed among those who are the sworn enemies of all authority, and who place the happiness of communities in a freedom from those restraints which the wisdom of ages has established, and demonstrated to be salutary and essential. I hope, therefore, that my principles will not be mistaken, and that I shall not be exposed to the hue and cry which have been justly raised against those persons who are inimical to all existing institutions. There is not a more sincere friend to established government and legitimacy than he who mildly advocates the cause of reform, and points out with decency the excrescences that will occasionally rise on the political body, as well from an excess of liberty as of restraint: such a person may prevent anarchy; he can never occasion it.

These are the views by which I have been actuated in writing this essay. If my hopes should be realized, if I should happily be the means of averting the thunder cloud of calamity and destruction which is even now gathering on the horizon of my country, and threatens at no very remote period to burst over its head, and to scatter death and desolation in its bosom, it is all the recompence I seek. If my efforts should unfortunately prove abortive; if I should fail to rouse the friends of peace and humanity to its succour and relief, I shall have experienced a sufficient mortification, without undergoing the additional one of being classed with a band of ruffian levellers, who under the specious pretext of salutary reform seek, like the jacobin revolutionists of France, the subversion of all order, and the substitution in its stead, of a reign of terror, anarchy, and rapine, amidst the horrors of which they may satiate their avarice, and glut their revenge. Let then the purity of my motives be unimpeached, if I should be defeated in the accomplishment of my object. But why should I despair of success, when I have every support that ought to ensure it? Right, reason, expediency, morality, religion, are all on the side of my oppressed country, and must eventually procure the termination of her sufferings. The disabilities, indeed, under which she has been so long groaning, grounded as they are in no motives of policy, but averse to them all, ought rather to be ascribed to inadvertence than design. Engaged as this country has been in a tremendous conflict, on the dubious issue of which her very existence as a nation was staked, she has had little or no leisure for attending to the internal economy of her colonies: in the midst of her own unparalleled sufferings and sacrifices, theirs have been disregarded or forgotten. It is the knowledge of this circumstance that has shed a ray of hope and consolation athwart the gloom which has been thickening year after year around the colony. It is this consideration that has enabled its inhabitants to support burdens which would otherwise have been found intolerable. Let then their just expectations be at length fulfilled, and let them not continue the only portion of the king's subjects, who have no personal reason to rejoice at the happy termination of this long and arduous contest. Their moderation and forbearance under their grievances, have given them an additional claim to redress, scarcely less forcible than the existence of the grievances themselves. Yet already years have elapsed, since the consolidation of general peace and tranquillity, and no attention has been paid to their situation and remonstrances. Already, therefore, the spirit of discontent so long repressed by hope, but reviving with the progress of this unnecessary, this unaccountable delay, has begun to manifest itself, and will soon assume a determinate shape and form. Let the government repress this feeling of hostility, while they have yet the power: a few years further inattention will render it hereditary and rivet it for ever. It is in the tendency of colonies to overstep even legitimate restraint; they will never long wear the fetters of injustice and oppression. I am aware that it is not one of the least difficult proofs of legislative wisdom to frame regulations adapted to each progressive stage of colonization, and that this difficulty increases with the maturity which the colony in question may have attained; but although the treatment of colonies upon their arrival at that degree of ascendency, when the enforcement of ancient restrictions, founded on the interests, or supposed interests of the parent country, but contraventory of the prosperity of the colonies themselves, becomes dangerous or impracticable, is, it must be allowed, a point of extreme delicacy and tenderness; there can at no time be any doubt entertained of the propriety of abandoning a system founded upon error and injustice, and productive of detriment, as well to those who have imposed it, as to those who are suffering under its baneful operation. It is therefore to be hoped that so unwise and unjust a system will no longer be continued; that his majesty's government will at length allow the colonists to use freely the natural productions of their country, and to increase to the utmost its artificial ones; that they will, permit them to call their own energies, their own resources, into life and action, and no longer impoverish them by rendering them the prey of richer colonies, and what is still more absurd and vexatious, of foreigners; that they will, in fine, grant them the free unrestricted enjoyment of those privileges which the bounty of the Creator has extended to them, and which it is not in any human authority to withhold, consistently with the eternal, immutable principles of right and equity.