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GOVERNORS Hunter, King and Bligh, who followed Phillip in the dynasty of ships' captains, were successively the focus of conflict between their masters at the Home and Colonial offices * and their servants in the New South Wales Corps. The period 1789-1810 also saw the stubborn maturing of the McArthurs' plans to grow fine wool for export, but the events in which the colonists were interested revolved in squalid turmoil about two bad businesses—public agriculture and the trade in rum.

[* As to the various offices and secretaries at Whitehall responsible at different dates for the Australian colonies see the article "Colonial Office" in the Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. I, p. 282.]

General John Hunter's first impression of the colony he had last seen in the gloomy days of 1792 was one of admiration for a "state of agriculture and the breeding of livestock" far above his expectation. Under the spell of the "extremely well-qualified Inspector of Public works", Captain John McArthur, he concluded that this was the result of "the raising of grain and the breeding of live stock in the hands of private individuals. They are self-interested in what is their own property and it certainly succeeds better with them than in the hands of government". He assumed that the repetition in his instructions of the old direction to raise a "public fund" by the labour of convicts had been antiquated by colonial experience since its first issue. "If Government were to continue to cultivate land sufficient for the maintenance of whatever number of convicts may be hereafter sent out, there would be an effectual stop to the exertions of industrious farmers, for want of a market for their crops. That we shall soon have abundance there is scarcely any reason to doubt." Rations, too, would provide an inelastic basis for a community bound to grow in numbers and wants and to escape out of the Governor's hand. Children of convicts were not born prisoners nor did expirees always sink again into bondage. The success of independent producers would incite and educate enterprise in others, and exchange would enable such folk to share their successes.

Hunter's superiors at home, however, refused to see that any conflict need arise between communism and freedom to produce and exchange. "Nothing", according to the Duke of Portland, "ought, to be more reconcileable than the public interest of every State and that of the individuals who compose it, and as that union must be the consequence of proper management, I am persuaded it cannot be more likely to be effected than in a country the government of which is placed in your hands." This, from a Duke and a Cavendish-Bentinck to an old sailor.** whose public duty had always been his conscience, was irresistible. Yet Whitehall's injunctions to keep down expenses and maintain prison agriculture made an uneasy and divided duty. Refusing McArthur a salary as inspector of public works, Hunter lost his services. To withdraw assigned servants and resume public agriculture on exhausted fields would, he clearly saw, jeopardize existing production and force him to draw more bills on the Treasury in payment for imported flour.

[** Hunter was 58 when he returned to New South Wales as Governor.]

Even the herding of public stock by convicts was wasteful in the extreme. "The hog not being a grazing animal and there being nothing in the country yet discovered for their sustenance but grass, they cannot be allowed to run at large; they must be confined and fed upon corn; and very considerable is the quantity they require. Every little farmer can afford to feed a few upon the refuse or damaged corn, and sell to the government at less than half of what it would cost the public if rearing large numbers. Numerous herds of such animals allowed to run loose would also be dangerous to the farmer whose grounds are yet all open." The only effective convict herdsman had been the one who in 1788 lost in the bush a Cape bull and some cows belonging to Governor Phillip and "Government". Just after Hunter's arrival they and their progeny, numbering over forty, were found on the far side of the Nepean, south-west of Sydney, in a fertile valley thenceforth known as the Cowpastures. It was decided to leave the herd unmolested, as a valuable reserve of beasts for future emergencies.

The officers' estates continued to prosper despite Portland's insistence and Hunter's orders that the rations and clothing issued to any assigned servants, other than two batmen per officer, should be paid for in produce or cash.*** McArthur introduced a labour-saving device in 1796—the first plough seen in New South Wales—and so kept up the profits of agriculture even under the new rule.

[*** General Order, May 1798, H.R. of A. series I, vol. II, p. 215. Cf. vol. I, p. 647.]

For the convicts remaining in or returned to government employ Hunter found work on public buildings rather than in public agriculture. His efforts to enforce attendance at divine service had been ill-received in that cantankerous colony. Someone burnt down the church. "Double-logged "gaols at Sydney and Parramatta were equally or more unpopular and were "burnt by design". Stone windmill towers, barns and storehouses and a few roads and bridges lasted better. But McArthur undermined Hunter's credit with the Duke of Portland, already endangered by his preference for private to public farming. He reported the Governor's partiality in allowing some cultivators the use of more than two assigned servants victualled "on the stores".****

[**** H.R. of A. series I, vol. II, pp. 89 to 93]

Philip Gidley King, a man of smaller mind but greater energy than Hunter, bought the favour of Whitehall by undertaking to renew prison agriculture, and despite such crudities as hand tillage, harvesting with sickles and transport to the barns on convicts' backs, he did draw better returns from land at Toongabbie and a farm he rented on the Hawkesbury. But he, too, was soon lamenting the inferiority of public to private farming. In 1801, his first season of office, the "full rations victualled" numbered 2365 and required 29,640 bushels of wheat. The produce of government lands made up 8000 bushels, leaving a "deficiency to be supplied by individuals" of 21,640 bushels. "Individuals" that year won 60,000 bushels from some 4000 acres. "As the labour of prisoners working on public ground is exacted from them by the hand of authority, they are not actuated by the same motives as those who labour for their own profit. This, with their very bad characters and former pursuits, . . . requires a constant and unremitted attention to make their labour the least beneficial. . . . The overseers are not much better. . . . Notwithstanding the assistance given by the superintendents, every exertion necessarily falls on the Governor who alone is responsible and consequently interested in the advancement and prosperity of the colony." This is not a flattering picture. It exposes all too plainly the Achilles' heel of communism—its incapacity to organize production adequate to support its liberal consumption. Denying scope to ambition, it relies on the intermittent motive of fear.

The continued progress on officers' farms made it easy for King to enforce strictly the home authorities' ruling as to assigned servants. General Orders defined clearly the conditions on which such labour was lent, and required all who received assigned servants to sign these terms and to make regular returns of those they employed.* The Order of 31 October 1800 enacted quite a code of wages and conditions of employment. From this it appears that assigned servants and convicts working in their own time expected, over and above their rations, about ten shillings a week. By the end of King's term of office the assignment of convicts' labour had become, in Coghlan's phrase, "a legal covenant between the Government and the employer, that the latter should maintain a convict for a certain period, receiving his labour in return". The Government retained, as it had not done in the American colonies, responsibility for the reasonable treatment of convicts. Their labour was leased on terms which defined the convict's living and relieved government of expense but not of a certain care for the "servants of the crown". In health their misdeeds could legally be punished by the Governor alone. In sickness they were returned to official keeping. By good conduct they might earn a conditional, even an absolute, pardon. In any event the assigned servant who satisfied his master escaped the degradation of the government gangs.** He remained a protected subject and escaped on sufferance from the heavy hand of justice.

[* See H.R. of A. series I, vol. II, pp. 622-4, for General Orders of 1 and 2 October 1800; vol. III, pp. 35-7 and 43 for later Orders.]

[** Cf. Hunter to Portland, to June 1797, H.R. of A. series I, vol. II, p. 20. "We frequently substitute for corporal punishment a certain time to labour for the public . . . and this is more felt by the criminal than any other punishment."]

Prior to Governor Macquarie's time, little was done to better the lot of the women convicts. The method of selecting for transportation to New South Wales, as described by the Committee on Transportation in 1812, had in view rather the riddance of Britain and Ireland of their worst scum than the reform of those transported. "With respect to female convicts it has been customary to send without any exception all whose state of health will admit of it, and whose age does not exceed 45 years. . . . Your committee are aware that the women sent out are of the most abandoned description, but yet with all their vices such women as these were the mothers of a great part of the inhabitants now existing in the Colony, and from this stock only can a reasonable hope be held out of rapid increase to the population".*** Their early treatment had been a mixture of negligence and brutality. Some were taken as wives or servants by settlers, soldiers or convicts. Those left on the Government's hands were set to work at making up slop clothing, and, when a factory had been built for them at Parramatta, were employed in the weaving of a coarse cloth out of which blankets and rough jackets were made. Prior to the reforms instituted at Castlereagh's bidding after 1812, when the wretchedness of their lot had become known, the one gleam of humanity in this chapter of evil was Governor King's strong support of orphanages, primarily for girls, at both Sydney and Parramatta. "To save the youth of the colony from the destructive examples of their abandoned parents" he showed a continued zeal in appropriating minor sources of colonial revenue to the maintenance of the orphanages.

[*** Report of Committee on Transportation, 1812, pp. 9-12. The Committee was opposing Macquarie's representations against the sending of women convicts, e.g. 30 April 1810: "Female convicts are as great a drawback as the others are beneficial."]

Governors Hunter, King and Bligh, each in his own manner, opposed the rum-traders' readiness to give such a public what it wanted, "a fiery poison" fatal to the consumer's sense of his own welfare. Here was free enterprize at its worst. The presumption on which the general case for free enterprize rests, of a harmony between individual wealth and general welfare, was in this instance obviously at fault. In three ways the naval governors restricted the supply of spirits; by licensing houses for its retail sale, by limiting imports and by suppressing illicit distillation from grain. More effective in the end were an alternative system of exchanging grain for stores, and the provision of a sound money with which anyone might safely trade for cash.

Hunter's attack on the officers' trading monopoly was easily bluffed off. As with the rationing of assigned servants, he hesitated and was lost. Though explicitly instructed to allow no spirits to be landed without his consent, he wondered whether such orders would be obeyed, and put it to Portland that there was much to be said for rum as a reward. By November 1796, however, he was alive to "the astonishing state of indolence and indifference about the affairs of the public which the private traffic of individuals have (sic) brought about". The general licentiousness arose, he thought, from the unseemly activity of the officers "in a most pernicious traffic with spirituous liquors". Considering the advantages given them, he felt the strongest astonishment "that they should have ever thought of condescending to enter into trade of any kind, except that of disposing to Government the produce of their agricultural labours".

Hunter's opposition proved, however, a mere wringing of hands. He forbade licensed dealers to pay for settlers' grain with spirits, but he could not bring himself to employ, against his social equals, a police recruited entirely from the convict class. Almost every official was in the ring, and the Governor was isolated and powerless. Field of Mars settlers asked him to give them an official credit on their grain, so that they might themselves buy part of a ship's cargo and escape the snares of "dealers, pedlars and extortioners". Hunter's only response was a fatuous General Order, 25 June 1799, desiring all settlers "to keep possession of their own money until they are apprised by public notice that a cargo has been brought, the officers having undertaken the trouble of officiating as agents for the general benefit of the whole colony".

This order led to his recall. It confirmed the impression of incompetence he had given by fumbling the project of selling imports at retail from the government store.* This he twice recommended, the second recommendation drawing the curt answer that he had already been told to do it. His General Order of June 1798 about the self-sacrificing officers meant, he was informed, "a sanction to the officers to engage in traffic" and therefore an apology for the disgraceful doings he had so hotly denounced. In. January 1800, still unmindful of his fall, he frankly confessed his impotence to control McArthur's importation of spirits. "I am sufficiently experienced here to know that whilst the article sought after is in this harbour, or indeed any other on this coast, it is impossible to counteract the designs of those who wish to have it. . . . To oppose its being landed, my lord, will be vain for want of proper officers to execute such orders as I might see occasion to give."

[* H.R. of A. series I, vol. II, p. 19, 10 June 1797, and p. 114, 10 Jan. 1798.]

Philip Gidley King meant to be a Governor of tougher will. General Orders flowed from his pen like thunderbolts from high Olympus. Spirits might not be sold "from the beating of the taptoo ** until the following noon, nor during Divine Service". Persistent unlicensed sellers should serve three months on the hulk 'Supply'. The clash was not long in coming. A creature of McArthur's was convicted of trading spirits with convicts for their rations of salt meat—a powerful incentive to theft by the hungry. He lost his licence and had his liquor staved.*** Shortly after this declaration of war, McArthur found himself in temporary command of the New South Wales Corps, and, a disagreement having arisen over the court-martial of an officer accused of petty thieving, he contrived to isolate Governor King by a social boycott. He so far succeeded with the Junior Officers, that Colonel Paterson on his return could find no other means of answering the extension of the boycott to himself, for refusing to participate in it, than a challenge to McArthur. They met. Paterson was seriously wounded. King put McArthur under arrest. Then he ordered him to proceed to Norfolk Island in charge of a detachment. McArthur refused to go until his arrest was cleared by a court-martial. King, holding the only officers who could compose such a court to be "no impartial judges", sent him off to England.****

[** This old form of the word "tattoo" is a reminder of its origin in the Dutch phrase "de taptoe slaan", to close the taps.]

[*** H.R. of A. series I, vol. III, p. 323, P.G. King to John King. Also vol. III, pp. 45-6. The distinctive stripe on the convicts' dress was first used to prevent the sale of new clothing as soon as it was issued. Cf. vol. I, p. 308, Philip to Nepean, 18 November 1791.]

[**** He made the voyage via India, and the ship, dismasted by a "willy-willy" off the N.W. of Australia, took refuge at Amboyna. For an incident which happened there, delightfully characteristic of the pugnacious McArthur, see Macarthur Records, p. 62.]

By a ship other than that bearing the official account of this turmoil, the Governor pictured to his namesake, the Under-Secretary, McArthur's ascendancy in the colony and his own predicament in "belling the cat". "He came here in 1790 more than £500 in debt, and is now worth at least £20,000 . . . His employment during the eleven years he has been here has been that of making a large fortune, helping his brother-officers to make small ones, and sowing discord and strife." King counted on McArthur's resignation from the New South Wales Corps. "But come out here again he certainly must, as a very large part of his immense fortune is vested here in numerous herds, flocks and vast domains." Greater than these resources, however, King rated the "art, cunning, impudence and basilisk eyes" by which McArthur was able to achieve any object he pursued. "It is to these odds and the independence of his fortune I have to oppose my exertion for the tranquillity of this colony, the welfare of the public service, and my own reputation."

But Governor King's exertions against the rum traffic grew very spasmodic while McArthur was away. The Governor-General of India, at his request, checked the sending of Bengal rum. Warnings sent by the American minister in London to British consuls in the United States had less effect. The Yankees were old hands at smuggling, especially with rum. Much still came from Britain. King sent away several cargoes, mostly of American or Indian origin, but his enforcement of the limit of 300 gallons which might be landed from any one vessel was never strict. "So great was the fame of the propensity of the inhabitants of this colony to the immoderate use of spirits and the certainty of getting any amount of payment in government bills", he complained to Portland, "that I believe all the nations of the earth agreed to inundate the colony with spirits."

Between September 1800 and October 1802, 37,891 gallons of spirits and 22,932 gallons of wine were sent away, but by his own account 69,980 gallons of spirits and 33,246 gallons of wine were landed, an annual consumption of five gallons three quarts of "rum" and two gallons three quarts of wine to every man, woman and child in the colony's average population of 5807 during that period. Though not an abstemious person, the average Australian of 1925-6 consumed less than two quarts of spirits (.44 of a gallon) and just two quarts of wine, including both imported and local liquors. He drank, it is true, 11.34 gallons of beer—quite another matter. By that alternative King was anxious to slake his subjects' thirst. Hop-plants were sent out in 1802 at Sir Joseph Banks' instance and brewing utensils followed. A brewery was duly started at Parramatta in May 1804. Simultaneously King laid a duty of £5 a hundred gallons on imported rum. Neither beer nor duty made any difference. The Governor himself still used rum as an official reward for the apprehension of criminals who had "gone bush".

Some odds and ends of metallic money scraped together during the period of the Napoleonic Wars were quite inadequate to displace rum from its general acceptance as a medium of trade. A thousand pounds of English silver had been sent to Philip to pay marine artificers at work on ship-repairing. In 1801 this silver was supplemented by £2500 in "cart-wheel" pennies, clumsy ounce-weight things that went for twopence in the colony. They were good payment for debts up to £5, but the weight of them in such mass, and the Governor's refusal to take them at colonial value in payment for bills on London, marred their favour. Ships refitting in the harbour brought in all manner of strange coins—Johannas, ducats, gold mohurs, pagodas, Spanish dollars, rupees and guelders—but often both these and the British shillings were absorbed in paying vessels for imported stores when bills on London happened to be short. Rum, however, was always to be had. A little cozening would induce a settler to take it for his produce or as change when he "cashed" the commissary's receipt. Such receipts were then convertible into bills on London, the external currency that paid for imports, and more rum.

King continued Hunter's plan of retailing stores to the settlers, over and above the issue of free rations to convicts. This kept some out of the clutches of the rum-dealers and restrained the rate of profit at which private traders could sell imported goods. But the dishonesty of his underlings and the propensity of settlers to set up shop with the cheap government wares forced him to hedge with precautions the right to buy. First both Governor and Commissary scrutinized the list of the settler's wants. Then each customer was admitted singly to the warehouse in a loft, up a ladder at which a sentry mounted guard. For all that, the trade involved in retailing King's Sydney purchases of ships' cargoes and the consignments made by the Victualling Board encouraged independent merchants to take a hand in breaking the ring. First of these was one Robert Campbell. After acting as Sydney agent to a Calcutta firm that sold cattle, sugar and spirits, he started business on his own account in King's term of office.

The increase of goods due to the reduction of settlers' costs meant the production of more grain, and this augmented the settler's power to buy. Grain was thus occasionally in excess supply, but more often floods created dearth and the Governor found a great vacillation in the readiness of settlers to deliver their grain at the fixed price.* At first he ascribed this new trouble to McArthur's usual "art, cunning and impudence", and argued stiffly "that neither scarcity or plenty should influence the price" (8 November 1801).

[* For an account of the floods prior to 1806, see H.R. of A. series I, vol. V, p. 697, King to Camden, 7 April 1806.]

Towards the end of his term King grew weary of the isolation in which every attempt at active rule involved him. Every move to regulate trade offended some interest and drew the fire of anonymous critics. Their "pipes" founded a species of lampooning journalism that still grows rank in Australia.** One represented King as anxious, on hearing that "Pitt and Portland were out", to feather his nest by every means while still in power.

[** See Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. II, p. 301, article on "Pipes". Cf. The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh, pp. 86-7.]

The convicts I'll starve and sell all their rations

As well as their slops for my private occasions.

From the orphan collection I take what I dare,

Of whalers' investments I own I've a share.

He met such attacks sensibly by starting in 1803 the Sydney Gazette, but he was by then heartily sick of the too vast orb of his fate. In May he applied for leave to vacate the office he had once eagerly sought. Three years, he waited impatiently for relief. The successor who arrived in August 1806 was a protégé of Banks, Captain William Bligh, who had seen service under both Cook and Nelson, and had won fame as "Breadfruit Bligh" of the 'Bounty'. To Banks he seemed a man of "integrity unimpeached, a mind capable of providing its own resources in difficulties, civil in deportment, and not subject to whimper and whine when severity of discipline is wanted to meet emergencies".

Bligh found at his coming a community sunk deep in depravity, whose most hopeful element, the farmers along the Hawkesbury, had just been impoverished by a recurrence of the floods. His task, as he saw it, was to revive agriculture, to build churches and schools and to amend by instruction the moral and spiritual shortcomings of his people. Most of the rising generation were entirely neglected, having no parents, "the mothers being dead, and their fathers having left the country as either sailors, soldiers or prisoners who became free".*** Neither by word nor deed, however, did he exhibit a leader's power to transform his charges into a self-reliant society of families shaping their lives by a free exchange of services. His main instructions, repeating once more those given twenty years earlier to Phillip, still ordered him to create by prisoners' labour a public fund of foodstuffs, to be issued by authority. As a means of recovering from the recent disaster such communal subsistence-farming was hopeless. As a check on the speculative and fluctuating prices asked outside the stores by private cultivators it was no better. Since the institution of assigned service, public farming was perforce conducted at a high cost with convicts whom no private employer would take.

[*** Bligh to Windham, 7 February 1807, H.R. of A. ser. I, vol. VI; p. 123. The weakness in early New South Wales family life may be judged from this short paragraph in the same despatch. "The inhabitants are healthy and Marriages increase; in my late Surveys I ascertained the Married Women were 395; Legitimate children 807; Natural children 1025."]

In his additional instructions to Bligh, however, Castlereagh had recommended the activity of free producers selling for an open market as the most hopeful chance of reducing dependence on England. Wheat and maize, except when floods swept away the harvest, were coming forward in ample supply. Castlereagh looked for live stock from the same source. In good set terms he propounded the new doctrine of freedom of enterprize. "Nothing, I conceive, will more essentially contribute to bring forward the supplies which the country is becoming able to furnish in most of the Articles of first necessity such as Corn, Poultry, Vegetables etc., than the abolition of all restrictions in the disposal of those supplies. In like manner it is not judged necessary for you to interfere in future in respect to the demands of Adventurers bringing articles for trade to the Colony, further than to prevent improper communications between the ships and the convicts, excepting with regard to the Article of Spirits."

Bligh awaited the opportunity of an abundant harvest before abolishing the fixed official price of wheat.* He had hopes that the scarcity he found at his arrival would more effectively than any admonition "teach the settlers to be more provident and industrious". "Considerable importation", he reasoned, "would lead to great indifference, as it would reduce the price of grain and make it not worth their while to grow it." In this he was more considerate than his successor, whose importations were to produce precisely that depressing effect.** "When they begin to find a regular market for their grain", concluded Bligh, "agriculture will be the chief pursuit both here and at the out-settlements." But in taking the role of patron of agriculture, Bligh was moved by other motives than those of economic reason.

[* This was 5s. per bushel in 1790, 10s. from 1791 to 1800, 8s. until 1804, 7s. at the Hawkesbury, 7s. 6d. at Sydney from 1804 to 1806, 15s. in 1806 and 10s. a bushel until 1822. See Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia, vol. I, pp. 142 and 277.]

[** See Marion Phillips, A Colonial Autocracy, p. 121, for the fluctuations of prices and their reactions on production in 1813 and 1814.]

The exception to the rule of laissez faire which Castlereagh had noted Bligh's duty to interfere "with regard to the Article of Spirits"—loomed larger to the new Governor than the rule itself. Here was a trade in which his charges wretchedly sacrificed their produce to the enrichment of an already wealthy few. He had been sent to repress it. His arch-antagonist in this duty had earned the displeasure of Sir Joseph Banks. Bligh's view of all John McArthur's energies in the colony was distorted by his determination to overthrow one who had baulked both Hunter and King. McArthur, we can now see, stood head and shoulders above his fellow-colonists in economic foresight as well as in money-making. When Governor Phillip was hoping to find out how soon an expiree could be induced by the hope of independence to grow enough food for himself and his family, McArthur had proposed to use those "basilisk" eyes of his to keep a whole gang of convicts "hard at it", producing by their combined labour a surplus that would feed the colony and make him rich. When under Grose this plan was being tried, he foresaw that the home authorities would soon complain of the expense of feeding the assigned servants. He was therefore the first to offer to feed a hundred himself, and to press on Hunter a plan to render the colony self-supporting in animal food by distributing pigs among the better convicts. As soon as success in raising grain and animal food by private activity came in sight, his mind ranged in search of a way by which the colonists might pay for their needs from abroad. What could they export which, unlike the whale-oil and seal-skins already being won on the coast, would be permanent and expansive in supply, and secure against unthrifty exploitation by intruders? This forward-moving quality of his mind was of invaluable service to Australia in the end, but in his haste to reach each fresh objective, McArthur was ready to clutch every resource of his fellow-colonists which was legally within his reach, and with such weapons to fight relentlessly for more.

Neither opponent, indeed, was restrained by a conscience sensitive, to the social consequences of his actions. Whatever Bligh's character may have been when in command of the ill-fated 'Bounty', his use of authority in New South Wales was often capricious and at times precipitate.*** His main duty, as he saw it, was to restrain McArthur's traffic in spirits. Yet his first acts in the colony were hopelessly at variance with the role of stern rebuker of greed in high places. Before assuming office, he accepted from Governor King three grants of valuable land at Sydney, at Parramatta and at Rouse Hill, amounting in all to 1345 acres; and the first grant he made was to his predecessor's wife, a grant of 790 acres in the district of Evan, to be known by the curious name of "Thanks". Local manners and customs, he wrote in November 1806, called for much correction. "The settlers in general, and particularly those from prisoners, are not honest, have no prudence and little industry; great chicanery is used in all their dealings, and much litigation. All this will require a great deal of attention on my part to remove."

[*** See Macquarie to Castlereagh, 10 May 1810, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, p. 331.]

He proceeded to question the validity of certain leases for fourteen years within the boundaries of Sydney. Phillip had set a limit of five years to such leases and King had confirmed this. At the end of his term, however, King had granted fourteen-year leases to McArthur, Johnston, Blaxcell and others. Farther afield, Bligh boggled at McArthur's grant in the Cowpastures beyond the Nepean, made by Lord Camden despite opposition from Sir Joseph Banks. Though McArthur's cult of fine wool had won many friends at home, Bligh threw cold water on it at every opportunity. On the farm he bought at Pitt Town on the Hawkesbury, he set an example of dairying and agriculture. His despatches made light of an export of wool. "In general, animal food is a greater object to the proprietors of sheep than the fleece, as there is an immediate demand for it." And again "Some wrong impressions were made in England by reports of the exportation (of wool) expected from this country. Some of the ships which arrived about the time I did had orders to purchase what was ready, but they found none for sale." When McArthur urged the superiority of his "peaceful productive sheep" over the herds of wild cattle—"fine animals" Bligh had called them—with whose title and possession of the Cowpastures the Governor was most sympathetic, Bligh, burst into rage. "What have I to do with your sheep, Sir? Are you to have such flocks of sheep as no man ever heard of before? No, Sir!"

Yet the agriculture which Bligh favoured could at best only relieve the British Treasury of the cost of transporting provisions to New South Wales. The foodstuffs grown there must still be purchased before their issue as government rations. That demand, moreover, was limited and inelastic. In days of war, corn laws and slow transport, a big export trade in wheat, livestock or maize was inconceivable. The limit of Bligh's view in public economy was thus to save the cost and necessity of transporting salt-meat and flour from overseas. His express instructions and his naval training alike led him to rate higher than economic aims the disciplinary task—restraint on the use of spirits as barter. Was it not as a fearless disciplinarian that Banks had recommended him, at a doubled salary?

No evil, he thought, had resulted from the consumption of spirits. The trouble arose from the pull in hiring labour which their monopoly in importation had given to officers and big settlers, to the disadvantage of the small farmers. "To prohibit the barter being carried on in any way is absolutely necessary to bring labour to a due value and to support the farming interest." As examples of the effects of payment in rum, he cited: "A sawyer will cut one hundred feet of timber for a Bottle of Spirits—value two shillings and sixpence—which he drinks in a few hours. For the same labour he would charge two Bushels of Wheat, which would furnish Bread for him for two months. Hence those who have got no liquor to pay their Labourers with are ruined by paying more than they can possibly afford for any kind of labour which they are compelled to hire men to execute, while those who have liquor gain an immense advantage."

Bligh's conception of reform was a direct prohibition of the use of spirits as a means of purchase, coupled with police measures against private distillation.* Such measures, he knew, would provoke opposition from those who had "so materially enriched themselves by" the trade. In social and official influence they were strongly entrenched, and he had the poorest opinion of the judge-advocate on whose legal decisions he must rely. "Mr Atkins the Judge-Advocate", he reported in October 1807, "has been accustomed to inebriety; has been the ridicule of the community; sentences of death have been pronounced in moments of intoxication; his determination is weak; his opinion floating and infirm; his knowledge of the Law insignificant and subservient to private inclination. Confidential cases of the Crown where due secrecy is required he is not to be trusted with." He advocated his removal in the strongest terms.

[* Regarding the character and remuneration of these convict and ex-convict police, see M. Phillips, op. cit. pp. 77-8.]

The stage was thus set and the chief characters cast for what the Sydney populace dubbed "The Rum Puncheon Rebellion"—Bligh's deposition by the New South Wales Corps on the twentieth anniversary of the colony's foundation, 26 January 1808. On one side a Governor blinded by prejudice to the ability of the little community's only first-class brain; on the other a group of officer-traders whom McArthur himself despised. "A more improper set of men", he told his wife, "could not be collected together".** As traders they drew their wealth mainly from a traffic which sapped the efforts of convict-settlers to make a new start by honest toil. Over their doings watched a court of law in which justice spoke by the whims of one despised as a drunkard even in that company.

[** 3 May 1810, H.R. of N.S. Wales, vol. VII, p.370.]

On New Years' Day 1808 the small settlers and "emancipists", to the number of 833, petitioned Governor Bligh in the name of "the extensive rising greatness and enterprising spirit of the colonists" for "such privilege of trade to their Country vessels and themselves as other colonists have, and that the Law might be administered by Trial by Jury of the People as in England". Castlereagh's additional instructions clearly empowered Bligh to lend a favourable hearing to the former request. But the older instructions which had been repeated to Bligh bade him prevent by all possible means every sort of intercourse between New South Wales and European settlements in India, China and the Pacific. Only by licence from the East India Company could English vessels trade in longitudes east of the Cape of Good Hope. The officer-capitalists of Sydney, long accustomed to pull the strings and to exploit these special licences to their private advantage, sniffed the tainted breeze when emancipist petitioners asked for a general freedom of trade. Bligh, they knew full well, meant to upset their system. It was high time they captured, in defence of their privileges, the whole machinery of government. The episodes of McArthur's stills and of the seizure of the "Parramatta" were therefore welcome opportunities to men already strongly tempted to grasp for their own ends the Governor's powers to bind and loose.***

[*** As to the operation of the restrictions arising out of the East India Company's charter see M. Phillips, op. cit. pp. 16, 153; T. A. Coghlan, op. cit. pp. 124, 138; and H.R. of A. series I, vol. X, p. 809 et passim.]

The liberty for which they struck consisted in the privileges of a dominant few, but when they had grasped power and imprisoned "the Tyrant" the usurpers fell out among themselves.**** McArthur, taking the official style of Secretary to the Colony, was soon involved in a furious contest with the Blaxlands and Simeon Lord, a wealthy emancipist, about the control of a sealing vessel, 'The Brothers'. This culminated in further interference by the military in the course of justice in the courts. So formidable was the danger of chaos through these feuds, that in April, Major Johnston, the rebel Lieutenant-Governor, addressed to his fellow-conspirators a stern letter of rebuke, reminding them of their pledged words to support him in assuming the Government. He challenged any to aver that McArthur had not fulfilled his share of that solemn engagement. Such an appeal, backed by a challenge from two men who meant what they said, went home. A revived sense of common responsibility curbed the feuds.

[**** For, an account of the mutiny, see Ernest Scott's Short History of Australia, pp. 69-74.]

As time brought reflection on their position, however, financial apprehension made the rebel leaders cautious. How were the expenses of government to be met? If they drew bills on the Treasury and these were rejected, their signatures would put their private fortunes in jeopardy; and they had private fortunes. So they proceeded to meet current expenditure by selling the government herds and stores.* They did more. As under Grose and Paterson in 1793-5, so again under Johnston, Foveaux and Paterson the main activity of the military government was the granting of land and stock, the customary first capital for development.** Their proceedings, reported by Bligh's adherents, with no loss of unfavourable colour, did more to enlighten His Majesty's Ministers as to the folly of maintaining a standing garrison in such an environment than all the despatches of Governors fearful to confess their own impotence.

[* Hence Major Abbott's laconic report to ex-Governor King, 4 September 1808: "The Colony is quiet. There is no money." Bills on London were then the only external currency for large amounts. H.R. of N.S.W. vol. VI, p. 835.]

[** Palmer to Bligh, 4 November 1808, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VI, p. 686: "Macarthur and Fitz has the chief management of Stock returns, as well as the Grain, and two such adepts in Villainy, they could not be in better hands." Also vol. VII, p. 108.]

The "Rebellion", if the metaphor may be allowed, was a boil in an unhealthy body in which certain useless elements came into a conflict of mutual destruction which could be ended only by the surgeon's knife. It rid the colony of the New South Wales Corps and, for a time, of its ex-member but continued leader, John McArthur. It rid it, too, of naval governors and their habit of trying to order social and economic relations by the methods of the quarter-deck.