Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 115

The Exclusives in NSW sent impassioned letters about the state of affairs under Macquarie to various people in power and with influence in Britain. And most people in Britain completely shared the Exclusives’ attitudes.

Although Macquarie and people in NSW might have thought it perfectly reasonable that an emancipated convict shouldn’t be forever marked, socially and legally, by their previous crime, in Britain it was shocking. There, a person convicted of any of the various larcenies, embezzlements, forgeries or assaults that those transported had committed was ejected forever from respectable society. There could be no coming back. And your legal status was forever altered too — even after serving time, a convicted felon couldn’t give evidence in court or hold property.

In NSW, the economic and legal order would simply collapse under the regimen upheld in Britain — convicts owned more than half the wealth in the colony, frequently used the courts to sue and protect their various rights, and were involved with just about every economic transaction that took place. Different realities had bred different attitudes, which Macquarie discovered and then championed.

While the Exclusives were the singular minority in the colonies, their attitudes reflected what most people thought back home. Members of the British Parliament, and readers of popular periodicals, were duly outraged when they heard and read that a society made up largely of ex-criminals had so lost its sense of respectable decency that ex-thieves not only enjoyed the most luxurious mansions in Sydney town but also served as magistrates and dined regularly with the governor. Had the whole colony gone completely mad?! This was a world too topsy-turvy for good sense.