Читать книгу Early Australian History. Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land - Charles White - Страница 13

Table of Contents

RED TAPE ADMINISTRATION—A STORY OF BRUTAL CRUELTY—SUITES OF SPIKED IRON—UNLIMITED LASHING—AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURAL COMPANY—LAND GRANTS—EMIGRANTS' DIFFICULTIES—LOCAL LEGISLATION—THE GOVERNOR AND THE PRESS—THE "GAGGING ACTS"—ACTIONS FOR LIBEL—THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL—FURTHER SUCCESSFUL EXPLORATIONS—POPULATION.

Governor Darling entered upon his duties on 19th December, 1825, and continued in office until October 1831. It has been truly said of him that he was 'a man of forms and precedents, of the true red-tape school—neat, exact, punctual, industrious, spiteful, arbitrary, commonplace.' The manner in which he endeavoured to reduce into order the confusion he found in the public departments furnished proof of his neatness and exactness. His punctuality and industry were displayed in the fact that he personally considered every case and perused every letter which reached head quarters. His venom and arbitrariness found exercise in treating the convicts with great severity, and in efforts to crush the newly-born press which dared to raise its voice against gubernatorial cruelty. One act of tyranny committed by him was alone sufficient to render him infamous, and although the narration properly belongs to a separate division of this quasi-historical work, the story may fittingly be told here, as it stands out in the history of the colony as a sort of land mark of the termination of the Algerine system of Government, showing how gross an outrage on law, justice and constitutional right could be perpetrated by an Englishman reigning over Englishmen. Here is the story:—

Sudds and Thompson were two soldiers of the 57th Regiment doing duty in the colony in 1825. Thinking the lot of convicts preferable to their own, by reason of the indulgence granted and the opportunities for amassing wealth offered to that class, they committed a felony, by stealing a piece of cloth from a shop in George-street, Sydney, for the express purpose of getting themselves convicted, believing that after a short sentence they should emerge into a condition that would enable them to enjoy the privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the many favored emancipists. Arrest, trial, conviction, and sentence followed, as they desired, the sentence being transportation to one of the auxiliary penal settlements for seven years. In the course of the trial, however, the motive leading to the commission of the crime was fully revealed, as was also the fact that there was wide-spread discontent among the military on account of the inferior position they were compelled to occupy. Fearing that the discipline of the troops would be seriously endangered if a check was not put upon these low-bred aspirations, Sir Ralph Darling, himself a military-man, determined to take the men out of the custody of the civil power, and teach them and their fellow soldiers a lesson they would never forget. He issued a General Order in pursuance of which the two men were taken from the custody of the gaoler and brought to the Barrack-square in Sydney, where, in presence of the military, it was announced that their sentence had been changed to seven years hard labour in irons on the roads, and that on the expiration of their sentence they were to be returned to their regiment. But this was not all. The Governor invented a special form of 'ironing' to suit the regimentals. The two men were stripped of their uniform and clothed in the convict dress; iron collars with long projecting spikes were then rivetted round their necks and fetters and chains rivetted on their legs. They were then drummed out of the Regiment and marched back to gaol while the band played 'The Rogue's March.' What followed is best told in the words of the only one of the two who survived to tell the tale. Sudds, who was in bad health at the time, overcome with grief, shame, and disappointment, which was not at all relieved by the heat of the sun on the day of the exposure in the Barrack-square, re-entered the prison only to die, and this is the manner in which his fellow-prisoner, Thompson, described the new experience of prison-life, when examined on board the Phoenix hulk:—

"We were taken to the parade ground and the regimentals taken off us, and a suit of yellow cloth put on each of us, and a General Order read to us by Brigade Mayor Gillham, by the order of his Excellency General Darling. After the Order was read to us a set of irons was put on each of us. The irons consisted of a collar which went round each of our necks, and chains were fastened to the collar on each side of the shoulder, and reached from thence to the basil, which was placed about three inches from each ankle. There was a piece of iron which projected from the collar before and behind, about eight inches at each place. The projecting iron would not allow me to stretch myself at full length on my back. I could sleep on my back by contracting my legs. I could not lie at full length on either side without contracting my legs. I could not stand upright with the irons on. The basil of the irons would not slip up my legs, and the chains were too short to allow me to stand upright. I was never measured for the irons, and Sudd's collar was too small for his neck, and the basils for his legs, which were swollen. I never heard him say he had the dropsy in the West Indies. Sudds was turned out of the hospital the morning of his punishment, and taken to the barracks about an hour afterwards. Sudds was taken from the hospital to the Session on the 6th November. [The inquiry was held on 23rd April following]; he appeared to be very ill, insomuch that the man who was handcuffed with him was obliged to sit down on the grass in the court yard in order to enable him to lie down. He continued in that way until after the trial.

"After the yellow clothes and the irons were put on us in manner before mentioned, we were drummed out of the Regiment, the 'Rogue's March' being played after us by two or three drummers or fifers. We were not drummed out in the usual way, which is, to put a rope about the neck, cut off the facings and place a piece of paper on the back, with a description of the offence which the party may have committed. Instead of this we had the insbacon and the yellow clothing. On our return to the same ward in the gaol, Sudds sat down with his back to the wall saying that he was very ill, and wished to go to the hospital again, but he did not go to the hospital till next morning. The basils of his irons cut his legs during the time we were coming from the barracks to the gaol; it was owing to the sharpness of the basil and the weight of it that we were cut. The night of the day of punishment Sudds was so ill that we were obliged to get a candle about eight o'clock from Wilson, the under-jailer, in order to keep up a light during the night. I gave him some tea which I had purchased. About ten o'clock he was very ill. I requested a fellow prisoner to get up and look at him, thinking he was dying. The fellow prisoner, whose name I do not know, did look at him, and said he was not dying, but he did not think he would live long. I then asked Sudds if he had any friends to whom he would wish to write. He said he had a wife and child in Gloucestershire, and begged that if he did not get better by the next night, I would read some pious book to him, adding 'that they had put him in them irons till they had killed him.'"

The Governor and his friends endeavoured to account for Sudds' death by stating that he had previously suffered from dropsy, and that he had been neglected by the medical officer; but they were unable to produce evidence in support of their allegations, and the report of the medical officer of the gaol fully disproved the theory they had set up to ease their consciences under the self-accusations of murder, which must have been ever repeating themselves. Dr. McInty redeclared:—"I found him in a state of delirium on the 26th instant, and he was removed to the General Hospital, where he gradually became worse, and expired the following morning. After a minute dissection of the body, no apparent disease was found to exist to account for his immediate death." The iron had entered this poor man's soul.

When reporting the case in a despatch to Earl Bathurst, Darling said:—"However much the event is to be regretted, it cannot be imputed to severity; none was practised or intended. The only deviation from the usual course of proceeding was, that instead of the chains being put on in jail, the act was performed in a more ceremonious manner, in presence of the garrison, as a necessary example to the troops. With respect to the chains, which have been designated instruments of torture, it will be sufficient to state that they weigh only 13lbs. 12oz.; and though made with a view of producing an effect upon those who were to witness the ceremony, the extreme lightness of their construction prevented their being injurious in any respect to the individual." In writing thus Darling published his own infamy. The irons used on the road gangs did not weigh more than from six to nine pounds, while those brought out from England for convicts on board prison ships weighed only four lbs. It was proved that the chains rivetted about Sudds weighed no less than 14lbs. 6oz.; yet the Governor speaks of their 'extreme lightness!' It was proved that the rivetting on of those chains was an act nothing short of judicial murder, yet the Governor, who was alone responsible for the act, with characteristic cold-bloodedness describes it as a 'ceremony!'

Darling's rule of the convicts throughout was most rigorous. His rod was iron, and it was always waving. The times of the 'first fleeters,' of irresponsible floggers and short allowances of coarse food, were revived. A penal settlement was formed at Moreton Bay, and the story was fully credited that there the prisoners were so badly treated that they committed murder in order to be sent for trial to Sydney. At the same time the country magistrates were empowered to award any number of lashes for insolence, idleness, or other indefinite offences, and considering the school in which many of those magistrates had been educated, it may easily be conceived that brutality little short of that which did poor Sudds to death was practised with a liberal hand.

The Australian Agricultural Company was fully established during Darling's reign, the agents selecting, taking possession and commencing operations on their grant of a million acres in the North. The company had been formed in England for improving and cultivating the waste lands of Australia, of importing sheep and cattle for squatting purposes, and of opening the mineral resources of the territory. The proceedings of the Company, in the then financial state of the colony, created an entire revolution. They sent out from England a numerous staff, cargoes of implements and stock on a most costly scale, and purchased breeding cattle so largely that the price was raised from 100 to 200 per cent. in the colony. To such a market sellers were not slow in taking their stock. But a reaction soon followed, and the panic that resulted corresponded in intensity with the excitement of extravagant expectations. For years more harm than good resulted to the colony from the Company's operations. Their grand ideas of extensive cultivation of the olive, opium, silkworm and orange groves all ended in smoke, and the little advantage won to the colony in the improved breed of sheep and cattle was very poor compensation for the sacrifice of so large a slice of territory; and even this benefit was neutralised by the monopoly, which not only handed over to the company the richest beds of coal in the colony, but actually precluded the colonists from working, on any terms, coal which might happen to be found under their estates.

It was thought by the Home Government that the company would relieve them from the cost of maintaining a large number of convicts, for whom at one period it had been found difficult to obtain employment, and it was agreed that the company should be relieved of quit rent on condition of their employing a certain number of prisoners and maintaining them. But, from the period of this gigantic grant, the value of convict labour rose so rapidly that the Company were never able to obtain the stipulated number of servants; and in 1830 the editor of the Sydney Monitor seriously proposed that convicts should be sold on arrival to the highest bidder, anticipating that they would realize, in lots of two hundred, as much as £100 each per year for five or ten years! The evils of this wholesale sacrifice of the public estate to a few capitalists 'at home' have extended right down to the present day.

The system of granting land was somewhat modified under Darling's rule. The Governor instituted a Board of Inquiry and established regulations under which land was only to be granted in proportion to the property or means of the applicant, and not to such applicant, unless there was reason to believe that he was able and willing to improve it. And the Governor had men at his elbow who turned these regulations for making the rich richer to good account.

Dr. Lang gives an instance of the favoritism shown during those days. He says:—"As I was travelling on one occasion in the discharge of clerical duties in the district of Bathurst, during Sir Ralph Darling's administration, I happened to call at the cottage of a respectable settler, a magistrate of the territory, who I found was building a remarkably substantial two-story house on his estate at the time. He asked me to look at the house, which was beautifully situated on rising ground, commanding a wide extent of campaign country; and I accordingly did so before resuming my journey. In pointing out its various advantages, the settler informed me that the brick-making and bricklaying operations, the carpentry and joinery work, the plastering and shingling, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, the cabinet-maker's and upholstery work also, had all been done by his own assigned convict servants. I happened to mention the circumstance in the course of conversation with the next settler I called on a few miles off, without suspecting, however, that there was any peculiarity in the case; when the settler observed to me, not without a slight display of indignant feeling, that he had been applying for a convict mechanic himself for years, but had been unable to obtain one, although he had confessedly done much more for the district than his more fortunate neighbour. The first settler was the friend of a colonial functionary of some influence at the time; and I could not fail to observe that he was particularly active in his district whenever addresses were to be moved to Governor Darling. The second settler, who was also a magistrate of the territory, was merely a man of independent principles and feelings, who was accustomed to think and act for himself."

Although adverse to immigration. Darling could not check the tide which was steadily setting in, and large numbers of persons of moderate means continued to arrive in the colony; but the difficulties they had to encounter in the search for land upon which to settle may be inferred when it is stated that a letter of advice to emigrants sent home about this time recommended 'every settler to bring out an order from the Secretary of State to be allowed to inspect charts and maps in the Surveyor's office,' as from being denied such inspection 'emigrants wander about the interior of the colony at great expense, and to little purpose.' The secret was that the surveys of waste lands were kept out of the 'ken' of the uninitiated, for the benefit of the favoured or feeing few.

In 1829 the Consultative Council established in 1824 gave place to a Legislative Council of fifteen members, with authority to make local laws. The proceedings of this body were secret, under an oath administered to that intent, and the Governor had an absolute veto. The only act of service to the colony passed by this Council was that which abolished arbitrary procedure by Government officials and substituted the English system of trial by jury.

Governor Darling was unfortunate in falling foul of the Press, which was fast making its voice heard in the colony in the direction of freedom and impartial dealing. The Gazette was the Government organ, and every sound of its voice had to be heard through the jingling of Government coin. Its flattery of everything smacking of Darling was sickening in its fulsomeness, and helped to make the untrammelled portion of the fourth estate more vigorous and outspoken than it would otherwise have been. It was the case of Sudds and Thompson that brought affairs to a climax, and when the Gazette commenced a defence of the Governor's action in that case, the two other papers, the Australian and the Monitor, launched out into condemnation of the severest kind. The extreme on either side was reached, and the Governor was kept in a state of feverish annoyance, which sought relief in the passing of certain Acts affecting the press, which were designated by the opposition editors 'The Gagging Acts.' But this only served to give point to the personalities of the newspapers not in receipt of Government pay, and the cross-firing led to actions for libel, resulting in fine and imprisonment for the whole of the scribblers. But, although the opposition papers carried their charges against the Governor to extremes, they had justice on their side, and the agitation they kept up led eventually to Darling's recall.

After his return to England a half-hearted attempt was made to have the charges preferred against him, in the Sudds-Thompson case, investigated, but the attempt ended in smoke, and Darling was knighted as a token of the King's favour.

During the six years of Darling's rule further successful explorations of the interior were made, both by private individuals and public officials, among the former being those men who were looking out for 'fresh fields and pastures new' for their increasing flocks and herds, and among the latter being Messrs. Mitchell, Oxley, Cunningham, and Captain Sturt. It was the latter who followed the Murrumbidgee to its junction with the Murray, and pushed on through difficulties and dangers until he reached the Lake Alexandrina, and discovered the future province of South Australia.

The population at the close of Darling's administration was 51,155; the export of wool 1,401,284 lbs.; of oil, £95,969 in value; the total exports were £324,168; and the imports £49,152. The ordinary revenue of the year was £103,228. Of the expenditure there are no reliable records.