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

The period at which the produce of this settlement fairly exceeded the internal demand for it, may, as I have already noticed, be dated so far back as the year 1804, being about sixteen years after the period of its foundation. It has been already seen that the harvests of that and the succeeding year were so abundant, that no sale could be obtained for more than one half of the crop;--that had it not been for a tremendous flood which happened in 1806, the majority of the cultivators must have abandoned their farms, and sought for other occupation;--and that since that period there has fortunately been a succession of floods and droughts, which with the exception of two or three seasons of equal plenty, have kept the productive powers of the colony nearly on a level with its consumptive, or else the situation of the settlers, deplorable as it now is, would have been infinitely more so. How radically defective, then, must be the government of this colony, when what would be calamities of the most serious and afflicting nature in a well organized community are here blessings! Is it in the nature of things to adduce more weighty arguments in proof of the necessity which has existed since the above period for its supercession? Ought not a government that would have felt the importance, and have possessed the power of creating new channels of consumption for agricultural produce to have been then instituted? This great object, it has been already shewn, could have been in no way so easily accomplished as by the erection of distilleries. To have diverted the attention of any part of the agriculturists from the growth of corn, would have been highly impolitic in a country, where the greatest and most fertile portion of the arable land is subject to such awful inundations. On the contrary, it was and still is expedient, that the whole agricultural energies of the colony should be confined to the production of grain, until the surplus become so great as to leave no chance whatever of these inundations being any longer attended with their former baneful consequences. But this can only be effected by creating a sure and adequate market for this surplus; and whether such market is to be found in the colony, or to be sought for abroad, no power either would have been, or is so fully competent to accomplish this important purpose, as an independent legislature chosen from the midst of the community, whose interests are identified with its own.

With respect to the expediency or even practicability of instituting a body of this nature so long as fourteen years back, I am aware that there exists a great difference of opinion among the respectable class of the colonists themselves. For my own part, however small may have been the number of those from or by whom a colonial legislature could at that time have been formed, I consider of but little moment in solving this great problem. The only question it appears to me to be ascertained, is, whether a legislative assembly, however small the number of whom it might have been composed, and however limited the body of electors by whom it might have been chosen, would not have done its utmost to promote its own interests, or what would have been the same thing, the welfare of the community which it represented. I cannot conceive the possibility of any one's doubting that such would have been its conduct; and in this case what power could have been instituted in the colony that would have been so well calculated to foster its infant efforts, and develope its nascent prosperity, as one that would have been invested with the faculties of legislation; or in other words, with the authority to enact as a matter of course those measures of which the existing government has not had sufficient influence to procure the authorization.

The expediency, however, of having established a house of assembly in the colony at the period in question, is at this moment, perhaps, rather a matter of curious speculation, than of profitable inquiry. Extensively beneficial, as would in all probability have been its effects, it is nevertheless useless to deplore an omission which cannot now be remedied. Nor has the absence, perhaps, of this important institution been altogether without its advantages. It has at least indisputably proved the inefficiency of the present system of government, and that the colony could not have sunk under any other form of administration whatever, to a lower ebb of poverty and wretchedness, nor have become a heavier and more unproductive burthen to the mother country. The want, therefore, of an internal legislature has combined every consideration that could be adduced in proof of the necessity of changing the present system, and adopting in its stead that form of government which has been found so salutary and efficacious in all countries where it has been established. The only question that remains to be ascertained, is whether the colony is now in a state of maturity for the reception of so important a privilege as the elective franchise; and this I conceive will be best answered by a reference to the numerical strength of its free population. At the general muster or census concluded on the 19th of November, 1817, there were found to be in all the various settlements and districts of the colony of New South Wales, and its dependencies, twenty thousand three hundred and twenty-eight souls, of whom sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-four were in the various towns and districts belonging to Port Jackson. Out of these there were six hundred and ten soldiers, and six thousand two hundred and ninety-seven convicts, leaving a free population, independent of the military, of nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven souls. At Newcastle, a settlement about sixty miles to the northward of Port Jackson, there were five hundred and fifty souls, about seventy of whom were free. At the settlements of the Derwent and Port Dalrymple, there were in all three thousand one hundred and fourteen souls, of whom two thousand five hundred and fifty-four were at the former place, and five hundred and sixty at the latter: out of these there were about two hundred soldiers, but the number of free persons I have not been able precisely to discover. As these settlements, however, include the majority of the colonists and their families, who were removed from Norfolk Island; and as by far the greater proportion of the convicts who have been transported from this country have been sent to Port Jackson, I have no doubt that the number of free persons there, may be safely estimated at three fourths of their entire population, seeing that it is about two thirds of the population of Port Jackson. According to this rate of computation, therefore, the number of free persons in these two settlements, after previously deducting the two hundred military, will amount to about two thousand one hundred and eighty-six souls. It may, consequently, be perceived, that the grand total of the free population of all these various colonies in the latter end of November, 1817, may be safely estimated to have been eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-three, being an excess of four thousand four hundred and seventy above the number of convicts, or in the proportion of more than three to two.

As the establishment of the legislative assembly in question could not, however, be well effected before the end of the year 1819, it may not be altogether irrelevant to ascertain what will be the probable amount of the free population at that period. The number of births in the colony cannot at present be computed under two thousand annually, since the increase in these various settlements between the month of November, 1816, and the month of November, 1817, is found to have been three thousand two hundred and eighty-nine souls; and the number of convicts transported thither from the first of January, 1816, to the first of January, 1818, was only three thousand one hundred and eight. Allowing, therefore, that one half of these, or one thousand five hundred and fifty-four, were transported to the colony during the year 1817, the increase that took place there, from birth and emigration will have been one thousand seven hundred and thirty-five: to which if we add five hundred, the number of persons that probably quit the colony annually; the actual rate of increase in the free population in the course of the year 1817, may be fixed at two thousand two hundred and thirty-five souls. Of these the surplus above two thousand, is perhaps composed of emigrants, and the remainder of births. If we add to these one thousand more, who it may be safely calculated yearly become free, by pardon or expiration of servitude, we have an annual augmentation to the free population of three thousand two hundred and thirty-five souls: so that if we take the year 1817, as a standard of computation, and it is evidently a low one, the free population will amount by the end of the year 1819, to at least eighteen thousand four hundred and forty-three souls. This is an elective body much more extensive than is to be found in several of our West India islands, where houses of assembly have been long established. But as this free population is of a mixed description, and composed as well of persons who have been convicts, and have become free either by the expiration of their respective sentences, or by pardon, as of those who have been born in the colony, or have emigrated to it, and have never suffered the penalties of the law, a very delicate question here arises as to the propriety of extending to the first of these classes the privilege of being admitted into the legislative body. There is, I am aware, a party in the colony, by whom the very notion of granting such a privilege to a class of men who have been subject to the lash of the law, would be treated as a chimera pregnant with the most fatal consequences to this infant community. In this, as in most other societies, there is an aristocratic body, which would monopolize all situations of power, dignity and emolument, and put themselves in a posture to domineer alike over the governor and the people. If you consult one of this faction (they deserve no milder appellation) he will tell you that it is dangerous to vest any authority beyond the narrow circle of his own immediate friends. Until the administration of General Macquarie, this body considered themselves possessed of an equal right to the governor's confidence, as if they stood in the same relation to him which the nobility of this country bear to the king, and were de jure his hereditary counsellors. Before his government the great body of the people. I mean such as had become free, scarcely possessed any privilege but that of suing and being sued in the courts of civil jurisdiction. The whole power, and nearly the whole property and commerce of the colony, were in the hands of this faction, who with a very few exceptions were composed of the civil and military, and of persons who had belonged to these bodies formerly. And even in those few solitary instances which could be adduced, of persons originally convicts, who were allowed to acquire an independence, their prosperity was to be traced to the patronage and protection afforded them by some member of the aristocratic junta, to whom they either acted as agents in the disposal of their merchandize (for it was considered by these gentlemen derogatory to their dignity to keep shop and sell openly) or resorted for the purchase of goods on their own accounts. At the prosperity, however, and importance of this faction, the present governor has levelled many a deadly blow within these last nine years; but more particularly in prohibiting the military to hold lands, or to be concerned in traffic, in raising to situations of the highest trust and dignity many deserving persons who had been convicts, and in throwing open the ports of the colony to an unlimited importation of all sorts of merchandize. But he has not effected these radical and salutary changes in the colonial policy without having encountered a long and inveterate hostility. Many have been the attempts which this faction have made to vilify his motives and misrepresent his actions; but to every charge of his enemies his unshaken integrity and unwearied zeal for the conscientious discharge of his duties have proved a sufficient refutation. The opinion of this gentleman with respect to the expediency of adopting a liberal system, that may prove an effectual stimulus to reformation and good conduct in those who have unhappily deviated from the path of rectitude, has been expressed unequivocally both in his dispatches, and in the prominent measures of his government, and will deservedly carry with it more weight than the whole collected opposition which I anticipate from those who have been his opponents and calumniators. The covert aim of these men is to convert the ignominy of the great body of the people into an hereditary deformity. They would hand it down from father to son, and raise an eternal barrier of separation between their offspring, and the offspring of the unfortunate convict. They would establish distinctions which may serve hereafter to divide the colonists into castes; and although none among them dares publicly avow that future generations should be punished for the crimes of their progenitors, yet such are their private sentiments; and they would have the present race branded with disqualifications, not more for the sake of pampering their own vanity, than with a view to reflect disgrace on the offspring of the disfranchised parent, and thus cast on their own children and descendants that future splendor and importance, which they consider to be their present peculiar and distinguishing characteristics. Short-sighted fools! they foresee not the consequences of their narrow machinations! They know not that they would be sowing the seeds of future discords and commotions, and that by exalting their immediate descendants, they would occasion the eventual degradation and overthrow of their posterity. Such would be the result of their ambition; for it is the curse of injustice that it brings with it sooner or later its own punishment. Happily for the colony the realization of their projects depends not upon themselves; and his Majesty's ministers will not lend their sanction to schemes of private aggrandizement, which can only be accomplished by the sacrifice of the public good. If these men have not themselves the sagacity to dive into futurity, and to foresee the dangers and contests to which unjust privileges and distinctions must eventually give birth, shall the government be equally blind and improvident? Shall they in the short space of thirty years forget the benevolent designs for which this colony was founded, and convert what was intended as an asylum for repentant vice, not into a house merely of salutary correction, which may moderate with reviving morality and cease entirely with complete reformation, but into a prison of endless torture, where though the sufferings of the body may terminate, the worst species of torture, the endurements and mortifications of the soul, are to end only with existence? Shall a vile faction be allowed to inflict on the unfortunate convict a punishment infinitely greater than that to which he has been sentenced by the violated majesty of the law? Has not a jury of impartial freemen solemnly investigated the case of every individual who has been transported to this colony? And have not the measure and duration of their punishments been apportioned to their respective offences? Is it then for any body of men to assert that the law has been too lenient, and that it is necessary to inflict an ulterior punishment which shall have no termination but in the grave? Shall the unhappy culprit, exiled from his native shore, and severed perhaps for ever from the friends of his youth, the objects of his first and best affections, after years of suffering and atonement, still find no resting place,--no spot where he may hide his shame and endeavour to forget his errors? Shall the finger of scorn and derision be pointed at him wherever he betake himself? And must he for ever wander a recreant and outcast on the face of the earth, seeking in vain some friendly shore, where he may at length be freed from ignominious disabilities, and restored to the long lost enjoyment of equal rights and equal protection with his fellows?

I am aware it may be here urged that these men, if they were to return to this country, could never enjoy the privileges for which I am contending; and that the very same laws, which have fixed the bounds of their corporal punishment have deprived them for ever of the most valuable rights of citizens. To this I reply, that in this country, whither if the whole of the convicts who have been exiled from its shores were to return, they would form but an inconsiderable portion of the people, all such disqualifications as the law has annexed to conviction in a court of justice, are good policy; because they tend to promote virtue and discountenance vice. But the very same grounds of policy require that such disqualifications should not exist in New South Wales. There the great mass of the people are composed of persons who have been under the operation of the law, and who were transported with the avowed intention of the legislature to effect their reformation. How then is this great philanthropic end to be best attained? Is it by holding out no inducements to good conduct, no distinction between repentant vice and incorrigible enormity? Those who have been convicted of the higher order of offences, and have been in consequence transported for life, are from the very nature of their sentences precluded from ever enjoying the privilege in question, unless, indeed, their very exemplary conduct subsequently induce the governor to extend to them the benefit of the king's pardon. This, however, is an indulgence at present so rarely accorded, that the whole of this class may be in a manner considered as being without the pale of citizenship; and it is therefore such only as have been convicted of crimes to which the law has annexed the minor penalties of seven or fourteen years transportation, who could generally become candidates for a seat in the legislative assembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities? Shall the novice in crime and the veteran be placed on the same footing and held in equal estimation? To what end do they profess themselves to be Christians who can maintain such infernal doctrines? How can they reconcile them with that universal charity and good will inculcated in their religion? How can they themselves expect pardon of their God, who would thus withhold oblivion from their repentant fellow creatures? If it be then alike conformable to the principles of Christianity and sound policy, to make a discrimination between the reformed sinner, and the still hardened and abandoned profligate, what incentive to good conduct would prove so efficacious as the prospect of regaining, after years of unimpeachable integrity, all those civil rights which they had forfeited, of becoming once more privileged to act as jurymen, magistrates, and legislators? Such a possibility would quickly revive the latent sparks of virtue wherever they were not quite extinct, and electrify the mind when all other applications would fail to rouse it from its despondence and lethargy. And shall not this sole efficacious remedy be administered, because a set of interlopers, persons in no wise connected with the purposes for which this colony was founded, wish to monopolize all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, power, and dignity to themselves? Shall the vital interests of the whole community sink before the ambitious projects of a few designing individuals, who have no object in view, but their own personal aggrandizement, and the maintenance of a self-assumed aristocratic importance? And who would build their own and their families' prosperity on the ruins of the social edifice, on the misery and degradation of thousands? But it is useless to enlarge on this topic: ministers will not allow their judgments to be warped by the subtle representations of this faction. In organizing that new constitution for this colony, of which every motive of humanity and policy conspires to demonstrate the necessity, they will be actuated solely by those principles that are best calculated to further the philanthropic and enlightened ends which were contemplated by the legislature at the period of its foundation. The good of the many will not be sacrificed to the sordid views of the few, and no disqualifications will be permitted, but such as are confessedly necessary for the repression of vice, and the promotion of morality and religion.

But, while I am thus contending against the total exclusion of such as may have been convicts from the enjoyment of this great privilege, I would by no means imply that the doors of the legislative assembly should be thrown open to all indiscriminately who may happen to be free. An unrestricted ability to exercise a function of such great confidence and dignity, would superinduce consequences equally fatal with those against which I would guard: in endeavouring to shun one extreme, it behoves us equally to avoid falling into the other. The very principle which forbids their utter inadmissibility to become legislators, demands that none should be able to arrive at that dignity, but those whose conduct during their abode in the colony shall have been absolutely unimpeachable. Retrospection should not be pushed beyond the period of their arrival; but their subsequent behaviour should be subjected to the severest tests, to the most rigorous scrutiny. Conviction either before a court or a magistrate, for any offence of a criminal nature, should be a bar to their pretensions for ever. Crimes committed in this country should be overlooked when followed by adequate atonement and indubitable reformation; but the interests as well of the rising generation, as of the great body of the convicts themselves, require that the re-convicted felon, whom neither the hope of distinction can reclaim, nor the fear of punishment deter from a recurrence to his old iniquities, should be branded with the lasting impressions of infamy, and rendered for ever afterwards incapable of exercising so respectable and important a function as the one in question.

With respect to the nature and extent of the property to be possessed by the members of the legislative assembly, I am of opinion, that a freehold estate of five hundred acres in any part of the territory of New South Wales, or its dependent settlements on Van Diemen's Land, should be considered a sufficient qualification, and that in the case of electors twenty acres of freehold should give the right of voting at elections for the districts in which such freehold property may be situated; and that either a leasehold of the value of £5 a year, or paying a house rent of £10 a year, that of voting at elections for towns. Excepting conviction, therefore, in this country as a ground of exclusion both as respects the candidates and the constituents, and making the above variation in the standard of their respective qualifications as to property, I think that every cause of rejection which is deemed in Canada of sufficient efficacy to invalidate the claims of either party, should be held of equal force in this colony, not only with persons who may have been convicts, but with all such as may wish either to vote for the return of members, or to become members of the legislative body themselves. In framing, indeed, a constitution for the colony, that of Canada would, I suspect, be upon the whole the best model for imitation; since there is not only a much stronger affinity between the great body of its inhabitants, and those of New South Wales, than exists in any of our other colonies; but every succeeding year will render the approximation of their character and pursuits still more complete.

There is but one topic more connected with the establishment of a house of assembly in this colony, on which I intend to comment; and I notice it not so much with a view to offer fresh arguments in support of the necessity of this measure, which I consider I have already sufficiently demonstrated, as to state all the prominent reasons which might be adduced on the occasion. It is a fundamental maxim of the British constitution, that no taxes shall be levied on the subject without his consent expressed by his representatives, and yet duties have been exacted in this colony for the last fifteen years, by the mere authority of the various governors. These, it has been seen, are appropriated to various purposes of internal economy, all of great public importance and utility, to which it is but equitable that the colonists should contribute. This system of taxation originated, I believe, with Governor King, but whether with the sanction of his Majesty's ministers, or from his own suggestion I am not able to determine. Since his time I should imagine that not less than two hundred thousand pounds have been levied in this unconstitutional manner; and until the administration of the present governor, those who paid this money had not even the satisfaction of knowing how any part of it was applied. From the secrecy indeed which was observed in the expenditure of this fund, and the rapacious character of his predecessor, many of the colonists suspected that very little of it was appropriated during his time to the purposes for which it was intended. This misapplication of it, however, is but a matter of conjecture; and it was probably to shelter himself from the possibility of falling under a similar imputation, that the present governor has caused quarterly accounts, which are first verified by a committee consisting of the lieutenant governor and the judge advocate, and afterwards examined and approved by himself, to be published for the general information. This custom, however, is a deviation, although it must be confessed a good one, from precedent: and the colonists have no guarantee that his successors will not revert to the same mysterious application of this fund that has been practised by his predecessors. In this case it may be converted into a fruitful source of peculation and plunder, and be at last in a great measure diverted from the public objects for which it was instituted to the satiation of private rapacity, and the colonists become gradually burdened with an overbearing load of taxation, merely for the purpose of enriching their governors. Be this, however, as it may, the illegality of levying money by the authority of any individual, is, I should presume, quite unquestionable; and I have no doubt that if any of the colonists had public spirit enough to resist the payment of these duties, the court of civil jurisdiction would not enforce it; since the decisions of this court are solely founded on acts of parliament. The magistrates of the colony might indeed take upon themselves to direct the execution of the governor's orders, which authorize the levying of these taxes, but I have doubts, since resistance to these orders would not amount to an act of a criminal nature, and the point at issue would be a mere matter of debt between an individual and the government, whether they even would consent to give such an illegal method of taxation the sanction of their support. At all events an appeal would lie in the shape of a writ of certiorari to the civil court, which could not avoid annulling the judgment of the magistrates, and consequently declaring the governor's conduct unwarranted and illegal. Such an occurrence would evidently be attended with the most prejudicial effects; for not to dwell on the mortification which the governor for the time being would experience at discovering in so disagreeable a way that by treading in the footsteps of his predecessors, he had been exercising a power to which his situation gave him no claim, there can be little doubt that a victory of this nature gained by an individual over the executive would be the signal for the institution of suits against the government for the recovery of all the money that has been levied under such an illegal and arbitrary authority. To prevent the probability of being forced to refund so large a sum of money to the persons or their heirs from whom it has been thus illegally wrested, and to legalize all future levies of duties in the colony, the establishment of a colonial legislature certainly offers the only judicious and constitutional expedient.

I would not that it should be considered from the foregoing remarks that the colonists are averse to taxation. On the contrary, it is my belief that they would cheerfully contribute whatever may be necessary for the promotion of objects purely colonial; but they expect, and have a right to do so, that all such objects should be submitted to the consideration and approval of their representatives, and that their money should not be taken out of their pockets, whether they will or not, by the mere ipse dixit of a governor. Few are discontented with the present rate of taxation, because it is moderate; and, with the exception of that small part of the colonial revenue which arises from duties on articles of export, may be even considered judicious; inasmuch as the great bulk of the duties falls on luxuries which can be dispensed with, without occasioning any material diminution of comfort and enjoyment. But all are averse to the manner in which these duties are levied; for if they once admit that a governor has the right to exact one farthing by his single authority, what limits can be afterwards assigned to the exercise of this power? He may on the very same principle tax every article of consumption, and on the plea of public contributions undermine the whole prosperity and happiness of the community. That the different governors have been allowed to prosecute this system without opposition for so many years, could only have arisen from the peculiar constitution of this colony; but its population has now attained a degree of consequence and respectability, which will not much longer tamely permit such an unprecedented deviation from all constitutional authority; and the best way to obviate the unpleasant circumstances of the contest, to which a continuance of the present system must shortly give rise, is to create a body legally endowed with the powers of legislation.

On the expediency of appointing a council, his Majesty's ministers are, I believe, themselves agreed; and I will not, therefore, enter at great length on the subject. The arbitrary and revolting acts, which the want of a controlling body of this nature has already occasioned, furnish the most convincing proof of its necessity. No power, in fact, could be established, which would at one and the same time prove so firm a defence to the subject, and so stable a support to the executive. A council in the colonies bears many points of resemblance to the House of Lords in this country. It forms that just equipoise between the democratic and supreme powers of the state, which has been found not less necessary to repress the licentiousness of the one, than to curb the tyranny of the other. Besides, it at all times provides a remedy for the inexperience or ignorance of governors; and is a sort of nucleus, round which all new bodies may easily agglomerate. Like a handful of veterans in a newly raised regiment, it will be capable of setting in motion the whole machinery of the government, and establishing with the greatest celerity that organization and discipline which are as requisite in administration as in war. There is but one precaution to be observed in the formation of the council: it is to give the members of it an adequate salary, or in other words to insure the independent and conscientious discharge of the duties of their highly important office.