Atlas Page 5
By G. B. Barton

SIR THOMAS BRISBANE landed in Sydney in November, 1821, and on the 1st of December following, the King’s commission appointing him Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief was read at an official gathering in Hyde Park.

The retiring Governor, Macquarie, who was present on the occasion, read a farewell address to the inhabitants, in which he contrasted the state of the colony on his arrival with its flourishing condition at the time of his departure. His successor was a man of very different and in some respects very much higher qualifications. At the time of his appointment he was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and being devoted to astronomy, he brought with him two assistants and a collection of scientific books and instruments, and soon after his arrival built an observatory at Parramatta, where he usually resided. The results of the observations conducted under his supervision during his term of office were published in 1835, and are still valuable.

Astronomy, however, did not absorb the Governor’s attention. Like most of his predecessors, he showed his interest in the work of exploration, and his efforts in that direction were attended with great success. In 1823 Surveyor-General Oxley was despatched to survey Port Curtis and Moreton Bay. The expedition resulted in the discovery of a river, which Oxley named the Brisbane, and the formation of a convict settlement on its banks —also named after the Governor —which has since become known to the world as the capital of Queensland. In the following year, Brisbane despatched another expedition, this time to the south, under the command of Hamilton Hume, accompanied by Hovell, a sailor. The object in view was to ascertain whether any large rivers poured their waters into the sea on the eastern coast. Brisbane suggested that the exploring party should be landed at Western Port, and left to make their way overland to Sydney. Hume preferred taking his party from Lake George to Western Port and back. That plan was agreed to, and the work was successfully accomplished in sixteen weeks —the Murray and Murrumbidgee being discovered on the way.

Brisbane showed his sympathy with freedom of opinion by abolishing the rigid censorship of the Press, which had been maintained up to his time. On the 15th of October, 1824, the editor of the Sydney Gazette —which, till then, had been merely a medium for the publication of Government notices was officially informed that the censorship would cease. Trial by jury —that is, by non-military jurors —was introduced at the same time, mainly through the exertions of Chief Justice Forbes. The first civil jury empanelled in the colony, sat in the Court of Quarter Sessions, on the 2nd of November, 1824. The dawn of free institutions may be traced in an Act of the British Parliament passed in 1823, which virtually created a new Constitution for the colony. It greatly modified the old system, under which the Governor was an arbitrary ruler, with no other check than that of the Colonial Office. A Legislative Council was created, consisting of seven members, comprising the principal officials. Purely nominee as it was, this Council contained the germs of constitutional government in the colony.

A still more important question occupied the minds of the colonists at this time, in which Wentworth was destined to find his greatest distinction. The colony had outgrown the system of arbitrary government under the rule of a Governor, and the popular party demanded those constitutional rights in the administration of their own affairs which, they said, were the birthright of Englishmen. They held frequent public meetings on this subject, at which Wentworth was the principal and most enthusiastic speaker. Memorials were sent home to the British Parliament, in which the claims of the colonists to be represented in their own legislature were forcibly urged. Taxation by representation being a fundamental doctrine of the Constitution, they dwelt upon the injustice to which they were subjected, in being taxed by a legislative body in which they had no voice. Their cause was advocated in the House of Commons by Sir James Macintosh, Mr. Charles Buller, and other celebrated members of Parliament.

Another distinguished man also entered upon his public career during Brisbane’s administration. John Dunmore Lang, a young Presbyterian minister, who had been ordained in 1822, came to the colony in the following year. For many years his energies were mainly devoted to the furtherance of religious and educational interests; but his active and comprehensive mind naturally led him to take a prominent part in the various public questions of the day. As a speaker at public meetings, and as a writer in the press, he was not less enthusiastic than Wentworth in his advocacy of popular rights, He published many volumes on various subjects connected with the colony; in particular, a historical and statistical account of New South Wales, published in 1834, which went through several editions.

IT was unfortunate for himself, as well as for the colony, that General Darling’s ideas of government —like those of his immediate predecessors were strongly: coloured by his military associations. If Phillip, and the, naval men who succeeded him —Hunter, King, and Bligh —ruled the colony as they had been accustomed to rule on the quarter-deck, the military men who followed them —from Macquarie onwards —were not less distinguished by their love of absolute command. Darling was a strict disciplinarian in every sense of the word; and not being disposed to encourage the growth of an independent or popular party in the little community of which he was the head, he soon became involved in fiery squabbles with their leaders. From his standpoint, no doubt, they appeared to him little better than rebels or mutineers; while in their eyes he was simply a tyrant. They attacked him violently in their newspapers (of which they had four); while in return he prosecuted the editors and publishers for seditious libel. And not content with the heavy penalties imposed upon them, he passed a Bill through his Legislative Council making a second conviction for libel punishable with banishment from New South Wales. That provision was aimed at Wentworth and his friends; but the Home Government thought it a little too severe, and Darling was obliged to repeal it. His notions as to the liberty of the press may be judged from the fact that the publisher of the Australian newspaper was fined, £100 and imprisoned for six months, for saying that in a certain case, which then excited great public interest, the Governor had substituted his will for the law.

Notwithstanding the bitter feud between Darling and the emancipist party, their efforts to secure admission to the jury lists met with some success during his administration. Convicts who had served their term of transportation were declared eligible as jurors; but on a second conviction in the colony, they were to be disqualified; A further advance towards constitutional government was made in the new Constitution Act, passed by the Imperial Parliament in 1828, by which the Legislative Council was enlarged to fifteen members. The Bushranging Act, one of the most remarkable measures known in the colony, was passed by this Council in 1830, at a single sitting. Bushranging, which had become prevalent many years before, had reached such a height at this time as to cause a general feeling of alarm. Sometimes the escaped convicts who took to the bush formed large gangs, and attacked the police as well as the settlers. On one occasion a pitched battle was fought at Campbell’s River, in the Bathurst district, between a party of bushrangers over fifty in number, and a large gathering of settlers; but neither side was victorious. The police were next attacked, and some of them killed. Reinforcements were then sent from Goulburn, and having come upon the bushrangers at the Lachlan River, another engagement took place, but without much result. The whole gang, however, soon after surrendered to a detachment of the 9th Regiment sent from Sydney, and ten of them were hanged at Bathurst.

To suppress such outrages as these, the Act provided that all suspected persons might be apprehended without a warrant; that any one carrying arms might be arrested, and any one suspected of having them might be searched; that general warrants to search houses might be granted, armed with which the police might break and enter any house by day or night, seize firearms found therein, and arrest the inmates. Robbers and housebreakers were to suffer death on the third day after conviction. The effect of this Act in suppressing crime and restoring order was described as magical. But the alarm caused by the bushrangers must have been great indeed to justify such an extension of the Powers entrusted to the police.

Considerable progress in the noble work of discovery was made during Darling’s administration. Allan Cunningham, a celebrated botanist, was despatched in 1827 on an inland expedition to the north. Starting from the head of the Hunter River, he traversed the affluents of the Namoi and the Gwydir, and discovered the Darling Downs. Two years later, he set out on a second expedition from Moreton Bay —whither he had gone by sea —explored the sources of the Brisbane River, took up the traces of his former journey, and gave the name of Cunningham’s Pass to an opening in the range of mountains near the Darling Downs.

Another distinguished explorer was commissioned by Darling in 1828, to make researches in the interior. This was Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th Regiment, Hamilton Hume being associated with him. They struck out towards the region which had baffled Oxley, discovered the Darling River, thence turned north, and after some months of labour, found that the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers, with the Namoi and the Gwydir, were tributaries of the Darling.

Sturt was sent out on another expedition in the following year —this time to the south. Accompanied by George, the son of Alexander Macleay, who had arrived soon after Darling as Colonial Secretary, he made for the Murrumbidgee River, descending it in a boat; passed its junction with the Hume, which Sturt named the Murray —not knowing that it had been named the Hume by its discoverer —and traced the united waters of the Murrumbidgee, Murray, and Darling, till they fell into Lake Alexandrina, and thence into the sea in Encounter Bay.

The designs of the French to form settlements in Australia and Van Diemen’s Land were so strongly suspected by the British Government, that repeated instructions were sent out to the Governors of New South Wales to keep watch and ward along their coasts. The alarm was kept up for many years by the appearance of French ships off the coast, nominally equipped for purposes of discovery or scientific research; but in reality —as it was then believed —to take possession of any unoccupied territory they could find. In Darling’s time, for instance, a French corvette, the "Astrolabe," sailed into Port Jackson, the commander of which informed his Excellency that the expedition was a purely scientific one. In his despatch to the Home Government, the Governor said that it was perhaps fortunate that three men-of-war were then anchored in the harbour, and that another had just sailed for Western Port; facts which, he said, might make the Frenchman a little "more circumspect in his proceedings than he otherwise would have been."

To prevent the French from occupying the territory, Darling sent out two expeditions in I826 —one to Western Port, and the other to King George’s Sound. In the event of the officers in charge finding the French already in occupation at either of those places, they were thus instructed: "You will, notwithstanding, land the troops, and signify to the Frenchmen that their continuance with any view to establishing themselves, or colonisation, would be considered an unjustifiable intrusion on his Britannic Majesty’s possessions." The settlements were formed accordingly; but the reports made by the officers in charge were so unfavourable that in 1828 Western Port was abandoned. A site for the intended settlement at King George’s Sound was fixed at a place called Albany, but it made no progress so far as colonising was concerned. It was, however, maintained as a military post until 1830, when it was transferred from the Government of New South Wales to that of Western Australia.

A third settlement was formed at Swan River for the same purpose as the others. Captain Stirling was sent to survey it in 1827, and was afterwards appointed Governor of the settlement established there two years afterwards by certain land speculators, with the approval of the British Government. The scheme, unfortunately, proved a total failure.

Although Governor Darling was greatly troubled by political agitators on the one hand and bushrangers on the other, he was still able to give a good account of his five years’ administration, the colony having made substantial progress during the period. At the time of his departure the population had increased to 51,155. The export of wool reached 1,500,000 lbs.; the total exports amounting to £500,000.

THE clouds of unpopularity which closed round Darling’s administration served to make his successor popular almost before he landed in the colony. Governor Bourke was received with every demonstration of welcome, and an address from the free inhabitants presented to him, stated that "after nearly six years of public endurance, arising partly from the visitations of Providence, but more from an inveterate system of misgovernment," they hailed his Excellency’s arrival "as the dawn of a happier era." And so indeed it proved; for the six years during which Bourke administered the affairs of the colony were not only free from class warfare, but were distinguished by the rapid growth of industry and commerce, and the steady development of national life under new forms. In fact, the history of the colony as a free State, so to speak, may be said to date from Bourke’s time. It was then that the aspirations of the popular party for the constitutional rights of freemen first began to be realised, although in a very modified form. Trial by jury in the superior Courts —that is, by civilian instead of military jurors —was granted in an optional form in 1833; and although representative government was still withheld by the Home Government, the administration of public affairs was conducted by Bourke on constitutional principles, with very little resort to the arbitrary power which had made his predecessor’s rule distasteful to the whole community. Bourke, who was a Major-General at the time of his appointment, did not allow his military training or career to petrify his ideas of government. Being essentially liberal and high-minded, with too much tact to make personal enemies, or suffer himself to be embroiled in petty squabbles, but at the same time not wanting in firmness, he generally succeeded in having his own way. Some proof of his temper and moderation will be found in the fact that no Government prosecutions for libel took place during his term of office. Many valuable reforms were carried out by him both in government and administration: the convict system was amended by providing for a more equitable distribution of assigned servants among the settlers, and at the same time regulating the amount of punishment by the lash to which convicts were subjected at the will of their masters; the system of Government aid to the churches of different denominations was improved by establishing religious equality among the sects —a policy by which it was hoped, in the language of Bourke, that "the people of those persuasions will be united together in one bond of peace, and taught to look up to the Government as their common protector and friend ;" the immigration of free settlers was promoted by the joint action of the Home and Colonial Governments ; and he endeavoured —but vainly —to establish a system of national education. The estimates laid before the Legislative Council shortly after his arrival, contained the first vote in aid of immigration —the Home Government having expressed its intention to contribute double the amount voted by the colony. The first immigrant ship entered the harbour a few months before his arrival, bringing fifty young women from an orphan school in Cork. The second ship had on board fifty-nine mechanics (principally stonemasons and carpenters), who came out under arrangements with the Rev. Dr. Lang, for the purpose of building the Australian College projected by him.

The progress of exploration during this period is distinguished by the expeditions conducted by Major (afterwards Sir Thomas) Mitchell, the Surveyor-General who had succeeded Oxley. The first was directed to the north, to the Liverpool Plains; the second to explore the country between the Bogan and the Macquarie; the third had for its object a survey of the Darling; and the fourth was to the west and south-west, resulting in the discovery of Australia Felix.

In the year 1838 the French again appeared off the coasts, two ships —the "Astrolabe" and "Zelie" —turning up at Raffles Bay, soon after an English expedition, under Sir Gordon Bremer, had fixed upon the site of a settlement at Port Essington. In his narrative of the event, Captain Stokes says that "the officers of the two nations seemed to vie with each other in courtesy; but the question whether foreign Powers were entitled to take possession of points on the coast of Australia was much debated at the time, and it was popularly believed that the French had entertained some intentions of forestalling our settlement." Shortly after this event they nearly succeeded in taking possession of New Zealand.

In 1836 Sir Richard Bourke prevailed upon the Home Government to waive its objections to the proclamation of a new settlement at Port Phillip, and despatched Captain Lonsdale, of the 4th Regiment, in H.M.S. "Rattlesnake," commanded by Captain Hobson, to take charge of it. In March of the following year, Bourke himself visited the new settlement, gave the name Melbourne to the township, and laid out several of the streets. In his despatch to the Secretary of State, he said: —"I found on my arrival, on the spot selected for a settlement by Mr. Batman on the banks of the Yarra River at the head of the inland sea called Port Phillip, an assembled population consisting of from sixty to seventy families. The situation appearing to be well chosen, I directed a town to be immediately laid out, which your lordship will perceive by the map has received the name of Melbourne."

That the popularity which Bourke obtained on his arrival was not lessened by his public career in the colony, is amply proved by the statue erected in his honour, and which still forms one of the most conspicuous monuments in Sydney.

THE history of the colony during the administration of Sir George Gipps assumes proportions altogether unknown to it under the rule of his predecessors. It is no longer occupied with the melancholy records of the convict class, or the bitter feuds between the emancipists and the exclusives. The state of society had changed; free immigration had begun to flow in; capital was introduced by settlers from abroad and invested in sheep and cattle stations; the system of assigned servants ceased in 1838, and transportation itself was abolished by an Order in Council two years later, although it was not finally extinguished until 1851.

Among the first questions with which the new Council was called upon to deal, the most important related to the extreme distress which existed more or less among all classes. From 1840 to 1846, the colony was plunged in a state of depression which brought the shadow of ruin to every man’s door. This was to some extent the result of a reaction from the inflated state of prosperity which had existed a few years before, when prices of land and stock rose to a fictitious value, and speculation in land absorbed all the floating capital in the country. Among the immediate causes of depression were the cessation of Imperial expenditure ion transportation and the withdrawal of Government funds from the banks; the consequent pressure brought to bear by those institutions on their customers; the substitution of free labour for that of the assigned servants, necessitating cash payment of wages; the locking up of capital in large purchases of land, which up to that time had been sold at five and subsequently twelve shillings an acre; and indulgence in excessive speculation, by which the ordinary industries of the country were deprived of capital. The result was that every branch of trade and industry fell into a state of utter collapse; property became unsaleable; sheep (ordinary ewes) that had been purchased shortly before at two guineas each, were hardly saleable at five or six shillings; money had almost disappeared from circulation; and finally, as if to intensify the crisis, the Bank of Australia closed its doors with liabilities amounting to a quarter of a million.

One of the first remedies for this state of things proposed in the Council was a "Monetary Confidence" Bill, passed in the session of 1844 on the motion of Mr. Richard Windeyer. The bill proposed to "avert ruin" by pledging the public credit, but the Governor withheld the Royal assent, and the project was never carried out. During the debate an amendment was moved by Mr. Charles Cowper, in which, after declaring that "the miseries of the time were increasing with frightful rapidity, and were likely to involve in ruin the whole community," it was suggested that the Government should relieve the strain by issuing Exchequer bills. That proposal, however, was rejected. Another desperate remedy, in the shape of a Lottery Bill, was submitted with more success by Mr. Wentworth, who had now become the most conspicuous figure in the country. The failure of the Bank of Australia, established on the principle of unlimited liability, had not only rendered it necessary for the bank to realise its assets —comprising a great deal of landed property —but the shareholders had become involved in its fall. It was contended that if they were subjected to levy and distress, the immediate result would be 64 a panic which would annihilate the value of property." The bill empowered the proprietors of the bank to dispose of its assets by lottery; its author justifying the scheme on the ground that a lottery was ‘¨ the only adequate remedy for a great public danger, which threatens nothing less than the disorganisation of society by the confiscation of that property for whose protection it mainly exists." The bill passed, three members only opposing it; but it was disallowed by the Home Government. However, the pressure was so intense that the terrors of the law were felt to be insignificant when compared with the terrors of unlimited liability. The lottery tickets were sold, and the scheme successfully completed before the law could be set in motion against it.

A more practical remedy than legislation, however, was needed to revive the flagging industries of the colony, particularly on the sheep and cattle stations. A settler at Yass, named Henry O’Brien, hit upon a happy idea which did more to restore prosperity than anything that mere legislation could effect. As Wentworth had taken a hint from the West Indies, so O’Brien availed himself of the practice in Russia, where surplus stock was boiled down for fat, and the trade in tallow was large and profitable. Boiling-down began at Yass in January, 1843, and the results showed that at least six shillings a head might be obtained for ordinary sheep. The effect was magical. Sheep and cattle at once rose in value; boiling-down became universal throughout the pastoral districts, and the unfortunate stock-owners were saved at the last moment from absolute ruin. A new trade was thus established with Europe, and the export of tallow, hides, and skins, which originated in the collapse of local industry, began to take rank among the permanent sources of colonial wealth.

Politics at this time gave rise to a bitter struggle. Certain Crown Lands Regulations which the Governor had framed and issued in 1844, provoked determined opposition on the part of the squatters, whose views were advocated by Wentworth and Lowe. Their opposition did not confine itself to the Council, but was carried on in the Press with a degree of animus which must have told severely on the Governor. His proposal to tax the holders of Crown lands was denounced as tyranny, the argument being —as stated by Wentworth —that "the right claimed by the Government of imposing arbitrary and unlimited imposts for the occupation of Crown lands affected the vital interests of the whole community, and rendered the right of imposing taxes by the representatives of the people almost nugatory." To that argument, Gipps replied that "to take a payment for the use of Crown lands is not to impose a tax." The constitutional question thus raised by Wentworth attracted universal attention, and the Governor found himself engaged in a struggle with the whole community. His license fees for the occupation of Crown lands were compared with the ship-money which King Charles attempted to levy and Hampden resisted; and the contest itself was termed a question between prerogative and the liberty of the people. The ultimate result was that the Council refused to renew the Land Act framed by Gipps, which had been passed for one year, and the Governor’s land policy was at an ‘end. Sir George Gipps closed his career in New South Wales in July, 1846, and died in the following February in England.

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