Читать книгу Early Australian History. Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land - Charles White - Страница 14

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A VIGOROUS RULE—STOPPAGE OF FREE GRANTS—ASSISTED EMIGRATION—LAND SALES—FORMING CENTRES OF CIVILIZATION AND GOVERNMENT—AN "INTELLIGENT, RESPECTABLE AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY"—IMMIGRANT PROSTITUTES—EDUCATION AND RELIGION—RELIGIOUS EQUALITY—FREEDOM OF THE PRESS—MOVEMENT TO ABOLISH TRANSPORTATION—A TRIP TO VICTORIA—THE BRONZE STATUE—DEPARTURE FOR ENGLAND—DEATH.

Major-General Sir Richard Bourke, perhaps the most able and popular of the early Governors of the colony, succeeded Darling, and his administration lasted from December 1831 to November 1837. His rule was marked by vigor and firmness, zeal, liberality and humanity. He entered office under most favourable circumstances, and it is not at all wonderful, therefore, that progress ran freely. He found the system of granting land to free immigrants working badly, the rule being to limit those grants to men who had friends among the officials in Sydney; and he therefore changed the arrangement, put a stop to free grants, and ordered that all lands in the settled district should be offered at auction, fixing the upset price at 5/- per acre. This proved a most prolific source of revenue, and the money thus raised was used to assist free emigration from Europe. The scramble for land in the unsettled districts of the colony had led to quarrels between the scramblers concerning boundaries, they having no legal tenure to their holdings, and the term 'squatter' being first applied to them. The Governor regulated this matter by requiring the 'squatters' to make formal application for the land they required and pay a small rent, undertaking to define the boundaries, and granting in return peaceable possession until the land was needed for settlement.

The regulations issued by Bourke caused an important and fundamental change in the whole colonial system in regard to the disposal of waste land, and in 1836 the returns from land sales amounted to no less a sum than £132,396. The broad and statesmanlike views he entertained on the subject of land alienation may be gathered from a single sentence in the despatch which he forwarded to the Colonial Office in 1838. He had received from head quarters a caution that 'it was not desirable to allow the population to become more scattered than it then was'—the remark having reference to the attempts that were being made to colonize Port Phillip; and in reply to that despatch he wrote as follows:—"The question, I beg leave to submit, is simply this: How may Government turn to the best advantage a state of things which it cannot wholly interdict? It may, I would suggest, be found practicable by means of the sale of lands in situations peculiarly advantageous, however distant from other locations, and by establishing townships and ports, and facilitating the intercourse between remote and more settled districts of this vast territory, to provide centres of civilization and government, and thus gradually extend the power of social order to the most distant parts of the wilderness." The fund thus created by the sale of land was, as Dr. Lang tersely puts it, "the means of infusing, to almost an inconceivable extent, the salutary ingredient of a virtuous and industrious population into the mass of a convict colony, and of thereby elevating that colony, in a period of time comparatively short, to the rank of an intelligent, respectable and religious community."

Unfortunately, however, the choice of emigrants for some time was not wise. During the years 1832-3-4 the system was carried out exclusively under the auspices of the Female Emigration Board, in London; "but in so exceptional a manner," says the writer already quoted, "that in the year 1835 the streets of Sydney and the public houses of the colony were actually swarming with free immigrant prostitutes from the cities of London, Dublin and Cork, the expense of whose passage out had been defrayed from the land revenue of the colony!" It was in arranging for the introduction of numbers of his own country-men from the 'land o' cakes' that Dr. Lang at this juncture found full exercise for his restless energy and national clannishness. The tide of immigration set in with steady force, and to some of the men and women who came to the colony during the rule of Bourke, and the years presently succeeding, the colony owes a great deal, for they did more to build up the industrial power since attained and at the present time enjoyed than any Governor's Order or Legislative enactment could have done. The bad amongst them—and there were many very bad—found congenial fellows with whom to drink and curse and die; and the good ones—and there were many good—found a soil quite ready for the profitable exercise of their energy, thrift, and virtue.

The six years of Governor Bourke's reign were pregnant with measures and events of the utmost importance in shaping the destinies of the growing and expanding colony. In addition to the regulations concerning land, laws were passed in the interests of education and religion. The Church and School Corporation (which had developed into a gross job) was abolished, and religious equality was established; Government patronage was removed from the press; the constitution of the Courts of Justice was improved; steps were adopted which, in 1840, finally abolished transportation to the colony; rules for regulating the number of convict servants each settler should have, and the number of lashes which should be inflicted upon a convict by a single magistrate, were framed and promulgated; the colony of Victoria was discovered, and in 1836 a regular Government was established; further explorations were carried out, and the settlement of the land began to be conducted on a system more advantageous to the people.

It was reasonable and right, therefore, that when His Excellency determined to leave the colony, the people should endeavour to show their appreciation of his sterling good qualities in some pronounced form. In testimony of their feeling they raised some £4000, and had cast, from a model by an eminent artist in London, the bronze statue which still stands on an elevated and commanding situation at the entrance of the Government domain in Sydney, overlooking the harbour of Port Jackson.

Just previous to his departure for England, Bourke visited Port Phillip, and during the month of his stay laid out the sites of Melbourne, Williamstown, and Geelong, the first being named after the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, the second after the reigning monarch, His Majesty King William IV., and the last bearing its native name. Bourke died in 1855.