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

[** Many attempts have been made by the legislature to encourage British subjects to carry on this commerce from the ports of the united kingdom, but they have in a great measure failed in this object: see Convention with the King of Spain, 33 Geo, 3. c. 52. Indeed, during the period of the Company's exclusive trade with China, it can only be successfully undertaken by persons residing within the limits of their charter.]

Such are the principal alterations in the policy of this colony which appear most essential to its progress and welfare. All these indeed, and many other privileges, which, though of only secondary consideration, would tend like a constant concurrence of small rivulets to swell and enlarge the stream of colonial prosperity, would be the natural consequences of a free representative government. If I have, therefore, gradually ascended from effect to cause, after the manner of experimental philosophy, I have chosen this mode of elucidation, not because it was the only one which offered for the illustration of my subject, but because I consider the inferences to be drawn from it more satisfactory than those to which the opposite mode of reasoning (that of descending from generals to particulars) conducts; because it would be as easy that the abolition of the various grievances which have been enumerated should be coeval with the creation of the free constitution, by which such abolition would be eventually accomplished; and lastly, because the additional tedious delay which would otherwise intervene between the establishment of a colonial legislature, the representation of grievances by which it would be followed, and their consequent removal,--a process that would occupy two years, might be thus avoided; or in other words, the same period of unnecessary endurance and misery spared to the ill fated inhabitants of this colony. In recommending, however, that the government of this country should authorize the immediate adoption of the measures which I have proposed, I do not mean to imply that such authorization alone would be productive of the important results in contemplation. However extensively beneficial in their present and remote effects the privileges thus conferred might prove, they would nevertheless be unsatisfactory and incomplete, so long as they were unaccompanied with a government competent and willing to watch over and secure their continuance. While it should be in the power of any individual to suspend or annul them, what guarantee, in fact, would exist for their permanence and durability? What solid basis on which the capital and industry, which they might be calculated to elicit, could repose in security?

The confidence, indeed, which an impartial governor might inspire, would most probably, as often as the colony might be blessed with a chief of this description, give a momentary impulse to the activity of the colonists, and create a temporary prosperity among them; but the shortness of his administration will always interrupt the completion of his projects, and the caprice, imbecillity, or injustice of some one or other of his successors, like the blast of the sirocco, wither up the tender shoots of prosperity, which a consistent and protecting government would have nurtured and brought to maturity. The experience of the past has sufficiently evinced the little dependence which is to be placed on the degree of countenance and protection which the system of one governor, however beneficial the prosecution of it might prove, is likely to meet with from his successor. It is, indeed, in the nature of man, to prefer his own projects to those of any other: there is a degree of pleasure in striking off from the beaten path, and rambling in the untrodden wilds of speculation and experiment, which is alone sufficient, without the help of bad motives, to account for the diversity of policy, by which the administrations of the various governors have been contra-distinguished. This inherent principle of our nature, so averse to the realization of every beneficial design, which is not capable of immediate development, ought evidently to be counteracted and not encouraged, as it is at present, to the utmost point to which an uncontrolled and ridiculous caprice may choose to indulge it. The existing system of government is, in fact, a woof of inconsistency, from which no great harmonious tissue can proceed. A gentleman is appointed to this important situation: on his arrival in the colony he finds no council, no house of assembly, not even a colonial secretary to assist him: a stranger, and naturally unacquainted with its interests, he is necessarily obliged to have recourse to some person or other for advice: to avoid the appearance of ignorance, which however he cannot but possess, he will not most probably apply to the gentleman whom he supersedes; and he again, from a principle of delicacy, will not be forward in offering his advice unsolicited: those who had been the assistants, and perhaps able assistants of the latter, will keep aloof, as much out of respect to the gentleman whom they had last served, as from that fear of obtrusion, that feeling of diffidence, which is inherent in persons of real merit and probity; so that it is ten to one but he falls into the hands of the faction who had been the enemies of his predecessor, only perhaps because he had too much honour and integrity to promote their selfish views, at the expence of the public weal. Scarcely, therefore, will this gentleman have quitted the colony, before the whole of the superstructure which he had been rearing will have been pulled down, and another of a different description commenced in its stead. Such has almost invariably been, and such will continue to be the conduct of the actual government; nothing judicious or permanent can ever be expected to proceed from it. How then, it may be asked, can prosperity be expected to flow from sources so precarious and inconstant? Are they calculated to supply that regular equal stream of security and confidence which has been found essential to the progress of improvement? But were the existing system of government essentially conservative in its nature, instead of being virtually destructive, it would still prove inadequate and inefficient. The circumstances and wants of this colony will vary every year, and consequently require either such partial modifications or entire alterations of policy as may be suited to each progressive stage of advancement. Its government, therefore, ought to be so constituted, as not only to possess the power of revising old laws, but also of framing new ones. It ought, in fact, to involve in itself a creative as well as a conservative faculty; a faculty which might enable it to accommodate its measures to every change of situation, and provide an instant remedy for every unforeseen and prejudicial contingency. Nothing short of this will suffice to inspire that confidence which alone can be productive of permanent prosperity. The government of an individual, however respectable he may be, will always engender distrust and cramp exertion. Man is distinguished from the rest of the creation by his circumspection and providence. There must exist a moral probability of reaping before he will venture to sow. This cautious calculating disposition too, is most predominant in those who are in the most easy circumstances: where the liability to incur loss is greatest, the spirit of enterprize is generally most restrained. But this class, which contains the great capitalists of all countries, are precisely those whose means, if they could be enticed into activity, would be productive of the most beneficial results. No soil is so barren, no climate so forbidding, as not to present facilities more or less favourable for the absorption of capital, and the extension of industry. Wherever the tide of improvement is at its height, and a reflux ensues, it is to the impolicy of the government, and not to the sterility of the country, that this retrogradation is to be attributed. Prosperity and happiness belong to no climate, they are indigenous to no soil: they have been known to fly the allurements of the fertile vale, and to nestle on the top of the barren mountain: the plains of Latium could not secure their stay, yet have they freely alit on the snow-capt summits of Helvetia: they have been the faithful companions of freedom in all her wanderings and persecutions: they have never graced the triumphs of injustice and oppression.

I have now hastily sketched the principal incidents which have characterized the march of this colony during the last fifteen years. If I have neglected representing its more early efforts; if I have excluded from view the amazing difficulties and privations with which its immediate founders had to contend; if, in fine, I have altogether omitted in the picture the numerous interesting events that took place during the first fifteen years of its establishment, I have been induced to all these omissions by a conviction, that the existing system of government, if not the most eligible that could have been devised, was at least unproductive of those glaring ill consequences, with which it has subsequently been attended. A singleness of design and a unity of action, could not be deviated from during the period of its infancy by the most ignorant and inexpert bungler in political science. There was a broad path open to its government, which it could not possibly mistake. The colony as yet entirely dependent on external supplies, always precarious from their very nature, but rendered still more so by a tedious, and at that time almost unexplored navigation, would unavoidably turn its whole attention to the single object of raising food, and emancipating itself as soon as possible, from so uncertain and dangerous a dependence. The principle of fear would have sufficed to propel the colonists to a spontaneous application of their strength to the realization of this end, independent of any directing power whatever. It was, therefore, only on the attainment of this most important point, that the impolicy of the present form of government became a matter of speculation, and subsequently, that it has been demonstrated by its practical result,--the wretched situation to which it has reduced a colony, that might be made, as I have satisfactorily established, one of the most useful and flourishing appendages of the empire. It is at the epoch when the produce of the colonists began to exceed the demand, and when their industry, instead of being encouraged and directed into new channels of profitable occupation, was not only left to its own blind unguided impulse, but also placed under the most impolitic and oppressive restrictions, that I have taken up the pencil, and made a rapid but faithful delineation of the deplorable consequences that have been attendant on a concatenation of injudicious and absurd disabilities, which, though not altogether imposed by its immediate government, would have been easily removed by the more weighty influence of a combined representative legislature. I have therefore throughout the whole of this essay, considered the present government not only responsible for its own impolitic conduct, but also for the existence of those grievances which have been created by a higher authority, and of which it has wanted the will or the power to procure the repeal. I have commenced by glancing at some of the most striking events that ancient history affords, to prove that the prosperity of nations has kept pace with the degree of freedom enjoyed by their citizens, and that their decadence and eventual overthrow have been invariably occasioned by a selfish and overwhelming despotism. Descending to more modern times, and adverting to the condition of existing nations, I have shewn that the unparalleled power and affluence of our own country, which I have selected out of them by way of exemplification, are solely to be attributed to the superior freedom of her laws, which have engendered her a freer, more virtuous, and more warlike race of people. From these striking illustrations, this steady coincidence of cause and effect, deduced from the records of the greatest among ancient and modern empires, I have concluded that every community which has not a free government, is devoid of that security of person and property which has been found to be the chief stimulus to individual exertion, and the only basis on which the social edifice can repose in a solid and durable tranquillity. That the system of government adopted in the colony of New South Wales does not rest on this foundation stone of private right and public prosperity, I have proved from the detestable tyranny and consequent arrest of a governor, whose conduct anterior to his being intrusted with this important charge, it will have been seen, was such as might have led without any extraordinary powers of discrimination to a prediction of the catastrophe that befel him. The atrocities perpetrated by this monster, and the events to which they gave rise, are sufficient to convince the most incredulous, that the colonists have no guarantee for the undisturbed enjoyment of their rights and liberties, but the impartiality and good pleasure of their governor; and that they have no resource but in rebellion against the unprincipled attacks and unjustifiable inroads of arbitrary power. So radically defective, indeed, is the government to which they are subjected in its very constitution, that it not only holds out, in the uncontrolled authority which it vests in the hands of an individual, the strongest temptations for the exercise of tyranny to those who may habitually possess an overbearing and despotic temperament, but has also a manifest tendency, as history amply attests, to vitiate the heart, and to produce a spirit of injustice and oppression in those who may have been antecedently distinguished by a well regulated and humane disposition. While it is thus, on the one hand, calculated to beget the most monstrous atrocities within the sphere of its jurisdiction, I have shewn that it has not, on the other, been invested by the power to whom it owes its origin and existence with the ability to perform any extended good; and that while it involves in its essence all the elements of destruction, it possesses no one principle of vitality. Of this assertion the administration of Governor Macquarie, who if you may judge from the length of time during which he has held this high office, would appear to possess a greater portion of the confidence of his Majesty's ministers, than any of his predecessors, furnishes an indubitable proof: for relieved as the mind of the reader will have been from the undivided indignation, disgust, and abhorrence, which the excesses committed in the foregoing government cannot fail to excite, by a review of the prudence and moderation by which his career has been contra-distinguished, he will nevertheless have beheld the colony, from the want of privileges, of which this gentleman has not possessed sufficient influence to procure the authorization, sinking in spite of his upholding hand, from a comparative state of affluence and comfort, to the lowest depth of poverty and endurance. He will have seen the colonists checked in their agricultural pursuits, rushing promiscuously into every avenue of internal industry that lay open to them, and afterwards constructing vessels, and not only exploring every known shore within the limits of their territory, in search of sandal wood, but even discovering unknown islands abounding with seals. He will have viewed them exhausting these temporary sources of relief, and attempting, but obliged to desist by the weight of impolitic imposts, both internal and external, from those inexhaustible fountains of wealth, the valuable whale fisheries that exist in the adjacent seas. He will have beheld them from inability to purchase the more costly commodities of other countries, making the most astonishing exertions in manufactures, and thus impelled by necessity to the adoption of a system not more averse to the interests of the parent country than to their own; and which under a well regulated government, would have been one of the last effects of maturity and civilization. He will have witnessed, notwithstanding these vigorous and unnatural efforts, numbers of them bending every day beneath the pressure of embarrassment, and at length stripped of their lands, and deprived of their freedom, by a set of rapacious and unprincipled dealers, who are gradually rendering themselves masters of the persons and property of the agriculturists; the greater part of whom, if the present system continue a few years longer, will be virtually reduced to a state of bondage, and condemned to minister to the ease and enjoyments of the worthless and the vile. He will have seen that, while the poorer settlers have already in general fallen victims to the unjust and impolitic disabilities with which they are beset, the circle of distress has extended itself from these, the central body of the community, to its circumference; and that the imports have so constantly preponderated in the balance over the united weight of the income and exports, that the whole wealth of the colony has been continually flowing into foreign countries, for the payment of the necessary commodities furnished by them, leaving no money in circulation for the important purposes of domestic economy, and compelling the colonists by a general, constrained, and tacit convention, to tolerate, as a substitute for a legitimate circulating medium, a currency possessed of no intrinsic value whatever. He will have beheld this rapid torrent of distress forcibly driving back the tide of population, both by the difficulties which it throws in the way of rearing up a family, and by the numerous bodies of freed convicts, whom it propels to a return to their native country, the greater part of whom, more from necessity than choice, are led to a resumption of their ancient habits, in order to procure a subsistence, and either impose on the government the expense of retransporting them to this colony, or end their career of iniquity by falling victims to the vengeance of the laws which they had so often violated. He will have seen during these continual and violent concussions, by which the whole social edifice has been shaken to the foundation, that the expenditure of the colony has been in a state of the most rapid increase, and that the existing system of government is incompatible with its diminution. He will, in fine, have been satisfied that the immorality and vice which it was the main object of the legislature to repress and extirpate, are making the most alarming progress and extension.

Looking a little beyond these, the actual results of the present order of things, he will find that it is affording the most efficacious assistance and encouragement to the perfection of the manufacturing system, already in a state of considerable advancement, and that a few years more will so greatly circumscribe the means of the colonists, that the majority of them will be entirely excluded from the use of foreign commodities, and compelled to content themselves with the homely products of their own ingenuity; and that thus not only one of the great ends of colonization, the creation of a market for the consumption of the manufactures of the parent country, will be defeated by her own impolitic conduct, but also a spirit of animosity will be engendered by the recollection of the privations and sufferings encountered by the colonists in their tedious and painful march to this unnatural independence in their resources; a spirit which will be handed down from father to son, acquiring in its descent fresh force, and settling at length into an hereditary hatred, which it will no longer be in the power of the government to extinguish, and which will propel them, whenever an opportunity offers, to renounce the control of such unwise and unfeeling masters. Passing from this gloomy picture of vexatious tyranny and unmerited suffering, he will proceed to the more grateful contemplation of the remedies that are proposed as a cure for the present evils, and as a preventive against the future tremendous eruption with which the existing system, a mountainous agglomeration of impolicy and barbarity, is so fatally pregnant. He will be satisfied that the application of the restoratives prescribed, will both reintegrate the agricultural body, now in the last stage of debility and consumption, and impart fresh life and vigour into the commercial, which is equally impaired; and that while the parent country will by these means restore the tone and energies of the colony, she will be contributing in the most effectual manner to her own strength and greatness. He will be persuaded that all these most desirable ends will inevitably follow the establishment of a free representative government; and that however salutary the adoption of the measures proposed might be, unaccompanied with that internal power of legislation from which they would have eventually proceeded, they would of themselves be utterly inadequate to effect a perfect and permanent cure for the existing evils; and that nothing short of a local legislature, properly constituted, can on the one hand either inspire into capitalists that confidence which is essential to the free unimpeded extension of industry, or be competent on the other, to provide an instant relief for those growing wants, which spring out of the progress of advancement, and are contingent on those changes of circumstances and situation, to which incipient communities are so peculiarly liable. He will, in fine, be convinced even to demonstration, that the erection of a free government in the colony of New South Wales would be a panacea for all its sufferings; that it is the only measure which can ease this country of the enormous burden which it will otherwise entail on her, and save the unspent millions that will be ingulphed, uselessly ingulphed, in the devouring vortex of the present system; and that the creation of an export trade of raw materials, and the consequent extended consumption of her manufactures which the proposed change of government would superinduce, is the only way in which she can ever repay herself for the immense expence that she has lavished on this colony, as well during the period of its really helpless infancy, as during the still longer interval of its restrained growth and fictitious imbecillity.

PART IV.

VARIOUS CHANGES PROPOSED IN THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

It being thus clear and indubitable that free representative governments are the only foundation on which the prosperity and happiness of communities can safely repose, it only remains to ascertain how far the actual circumstances and situation of this colony are compatible with the concession of so great and important a privilege. At my very offset in this essay, after glancing in a cursory manner at the history of the most celebrated ancient and modern empires, and shewing that their progress kept pace with their freedom, and that their retrogradation is to be dated only from the epoch when they fell under the dominion of arbitrary and ambitious despots, whose successors gradually completed the work of destruction which they had commenced, I was compelled in candour to admit that the heterogeneous ingredients of which this colony was compounded, did not at the period of its foundation, afford his Majesty's government the power, if they had even possessed the will, to establish a free representative system. It is therefore incumbent on me, now that I have demonstrated the beneficial influence which free governments have in promoting the prosperity of communities in general, and have proved that this colony has for many years been languishing in a state of impeded growth, and tottering imbecillity, from the inefficiency of its administration to adopt those measures which are necessary to its revigoration; I say it is incumbent on me to shew that the component parts of this body politic, have undergone such a change since the period of its creation, as will warrant its identification in this respect with other states, and justify the conclusion that such institutions are essential to its welfare as have been found conducive to theirs.

It must be almost superfluous to state, that when this colony was formed, it was composed, with the exception of its civil and military establishments, entirely of convicts. It was consequently impossible that a body of men, who were all under the sentence of the law, and had been condemned for their crimes to suffer either a temporary suspension, or total deprivation of the civil rights of citizens, could be admitted to exercise one of the most important among the whole of them, the elective franchise; and to have vested this privilege in the civil and military authorities, both of whom then as at present were subject to martial law, and were besides at that time without landed property, the only standard I conceive by which the right either of electing or being elected can in any country be properly regulated, would have been equally improper and absurd. A council indeed might have been appointed, but even an institution of this kind might have clogged the wheels of the government by its opposition, and could have been of but little assistance with its advice; for as it has been already stated, there was but one object to be pursued, and that was to promote by every means the agriculture of the colony, so as to emancipate it as soon as possible from a precarious and dangerous dependence on other countries. Until, therefore, the free inhabitants of the colony had increased to a sufficient number to exercise the elective franchise, and until its productive powers had outstripped its consumptive, and it became necessary either to create new markets for its produce within, or to direct a portion of its strength to the raising of articles for exportation to other countries, the establishment of a free representative government would not have been expedient had it even been practicable.