When "The Settlement" began, and when, like the pre-Judges time in Israel, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience of that ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a male Deborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, their early fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even a much larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely the same, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, in the grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator of authority in Victoria. His figure, rather tall, shapely, well-developed, surmounted by a noble head, bald with age, just touching the venerable, and with a genial expression of face, which, however, never descended to levity, although times without number to a smile or slight laugh, he sat erect upon the bench, facile princeps, as though institutions were to bend to him, and not he to them. When we entered the little hut-like structure in the middle of the Western Market area, so long Melbourne's only police-office, James Simpson seemed to us as much a part of its fittings as the rude little bench itself; and it was a disappointment not to find him there, as the indispensable complement to the scene, even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How so striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He took what fell in his way—magistracies, bank directorships, or what else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means, always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal respect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured across amongst the tag-rags of the earlier Launceston tide, unless indeed under some benevolent inspiration and prescience about the magisterial needs, is a mystery which, although I often conversed with him, I never happened to hear him explain.
DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING.
"A man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."
—Love's Labour Lost.
Almost as early a colonist as Simpson, his intimate friend, his colleague in the Melbourne branch of the Bank of Australasia, of which he was himself general manager, with Simpson as director, McArthur fitly follows the other in this list of early colonial prominents. To the day of his death he held the first position, active or honorary, in Victorian banking. But he was even better known, or at least better regarded, as, par excellence, "mine host" of the early community. During a long life, of which the later and much the larger half was spent in Victoria, there was none who entered more readily, constantly, or acceptably into the varied life of the community. His leisure, such as he had, his means, his fellowship, were at their command. He was geniality personified. But he was a banker, and a banker has duties, and in the ups and downs of colonial business life, he was but too often reminded to that effect. It was quite a sight if you happened to witness the scene with a bank customer, to whom, as to "the state of his account," it was necessary to administer what Mac's countrymen call a "hearing." Often he had to pity victims of circumstances in the sudden changes of colonial commerce; but "the gods aboon can only ken" to discriminate impartially in such cases, and duty to the bank must be done. First, the humorous twinkle in the eye sensibly abated, but it still lingered there, unless there must be still stronger stages of the ordeal, to bring the business culprit to reason. But when the last gleam went out, a storm was certainly imminent. The storm, however, swept past on the instant with the provocation. When that eye finally closed, a veritable sunbeam of the colony went out with it.
Mrs. McArthur, who still survives, went hand in hand with her husband. That they were an attached couple has the complementary illustration of his making her his full heir. As they had no family to divide cares and means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty will permit."
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA.
"However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies…
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman."
—Richard II.
The more I saw of the subject of this sketch, over nearly all the fifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the more I explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where he was without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable, unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribed line, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney, he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by the Governor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community, a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon the far southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney was then the official and business centre. The charge did not then seem to threaten to be an anxiously large one, and in any case his inauguratory office might hardly remove him from the accustomed instruction of superiors. What he did not bargain for was that the child he went to nurse was to rush almost from the cradle into manhood; and the little "settlement" he began his reign with to be, ere he had done with it, the most notable, if not indeed actually the most important, colony of the empire.
He was a Moravian Christian, of a well-known name in that excellent body, and possessed of all its virtues; he was, besides, a well-educated gentleman. The pure and happy home which he transferred to the new scene was of priceless value to its society, and all the more so at a time when such virtuous homes, in such high quarters, were by no means over common thereabout. But with a natural shyness, and, in a socio-political sense, timidity of character, which in ordinary circumstances are feelings leaning to the better side, he exemplified how a good man may not always be a good ruler of men. The diffidence is often mistaken by the ruled, and always disappointing; and in public affairs it is apt, as Mr. La Trobe but too well illustrated, to take the inconvenient and injurious form of personal indecision.
He had not a particle of pride or selfishness, hardly even of the commoner infirmity of vanity. He would, whenever possible, take a roundabout to escape observation, but if even the humblest colonist persisted to address him, unrepelled by the evident tendency to "move on," he would be as frank and unceremonious as our Queen in a Highland cottage. We regret that so righteously-stored a man should make a bad Governor; but so it was, none the less.