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BEING of a generation whose fathers had seen General Wade transform the Highlands after Mar's Rebellion and which was still learning from Thomas Telford the arts of civil engineering, Macquarie naturally set high store by the civilizing power of externals. And posterity has agreed in honouring him most for public buildings of a dignity which still charms the eye, and roads which first made land travel practicable. We are mainly perceptual beings. It is easy also to ascribe to these changes the growth of a pride in the colony as a permanent home. A generation was growing up in New South Wales which had known no other.

His General Order issued after a first tour of the settlements upbraided his subjects for their unsuitable houses, the absence of barns and their miserable clothing—a lack of standards bespeaking the despair of exiles. An early despatch asked for a well-qualified architect and warned the Secretary of State of heavy expenditure on the renovation of roads and bridges. But his free drawing upon the Treasury soon roused concern at home. In July 1811, Liverpool, in charge of the War and Colonial Office, trusted "that no public buildings whatsoever have been commenced, the construction of which was not indispensably required for the Public Service". Yet a Secretary of State at Westminster, beset by Treasury officials, and a Governor disposing in a virgin land of the labour of many bondmen could scarcely agree as to what was indispensable. "It is impossible", complained Liverpool, "to point out what expenses have been unnecessarily incurred or in the execution of what services retrenchments might have been made." The bills drawn mounted up. In 1808 they totalled £25,000, in 1809 £16,738—these were the years of interregnum—£59,378 in 1810, £71,085 in 1811, and £30,869 in less than four months of 1812. All this in time of war!

Long range fire from Downing Street was of course trained on the outstanding public buildings. No public architect was sent; that would have aided and abetted extravagance. By every mail there came instead prohibitions of unnecessary spending, comparisons, "not in your favour", with past governors.

Lachlan Macquarie was not the man to sing small. No governor "here or in any other of His Majesty's Colonies", he claimed, had been "more rigidly vigilant and watchful in the public expenditure of money, provisions and stores belonging to, the Crown". "Conscious, therefore, of my own Integrity and Rectitude and of the Honourable Purity of my Motives" * he bade his superiors remember the pass Sydney was in when he assumed office. Less than a hundred bushels of grain were in store; two regiments were on his hands for four months; the settlers' crops were swept away by another Hawkesbury flood; new settlers on safer forest land had to be victualled while clearing their farms; Phillip's original barracks and quarters were collapsing because of green and unsuitable timber. "Without vanity and with great truth", he had already done in less than three years "more for the general amelioration of the colony, the improvement of the manners, morals, industry and religion of its inhabitants" than Hunter, King and Bligh all together. By October 1814 he thought his annual expenditure, then £75,000, likely to fall by a third within two years, "if my plans of Reform and Economy shall be Approved and Meet my own expectations". Surely this man was the father of all Australian Treasurers!

[* Macquarie to Liverpool, 9 November 1812, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, p. 526.]

Many forces beyond his control combined to defeat his expectations. At his side was Mrs Macquarie, a lady of refined taste in buildings. As Whitehall sent no official architect, the Governor found one amongst those sent as prisoners. Francis Howard Greenway of London training had practised as an architect in Bristol and Bath. But times of war are hard for architects, and in 1812 he was "sent out" for fourteen years for concealing effects in bankruptcy. Reaching Sydney in February 1814, he submitted ambitious plans for a town hall and market house before the year was out. Though not accepted, they evidently won admiration, for in 1815 a more grandiose scheme included a bridge over the harbour at Dawes Point. His services in detecting faulty work in the foundations of the Rum Hospital led Macquarie to accept Greenway's offer to "erect more and better buildings in four years" than had been built since the colony's foundation. He was made civil architect in 1816 and assistant to the Inspector of Public Works, Captain John Gill, 46th Regiment. This partnership, employing convicts on day labour, set a new standard in colonial architecture which influenced private as well as public building throughout Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales.

Greenway's late Georgian work may still be admired in Hyde Park Barracks and St James's Church, Sydney, in St Matthew's at Windsor, perhaps in Burdekin House in Macquarie Street, in "Subiaco" at Rydalmere and "Newington" on the Parramatta.** He worked in a style "simple and stately, although of humble execution". The secrets of his strength are scale and proportion. He brought into the convict colonies a quality which dignified the pleasant homesteads of the "Old Colonial" days, in their shady gardens of great trees, both native and exotic, and preserved for a time the tradition of an earlier elegance.

[** See Hardy Wilson's incomparable treasury of drawings, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania.]

But the flame of his genius flickered and was gone, his days of public employment were sadly few. Macquarie emancipated him in December 1817, and induced the Secretary of State to confirm, temporarily at least, his appointment as civil architect. But expenditure was rising again, to the scandal of Whitehall. Scapegoats were being sought, especially among the emancipists Macquarie had befriended. Plans and work for a new church of cathedral proportions, where Sydney Town Hall now stands, were vetoed in 1819 by Commissioner Bigge. He thought Greenway slack and "indulgent", given to a love of ornamentation. So his plans for a water supply to town and port, and for the City which was to be, passed into limbo. In 1821 the most talented and far-sighted of Macquarie's servants went back to private practice and obscurity.***

[*** See article on F. H. Greenway in Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. I, p. 581.]

The renewed activity in public works rose, however, out of more than personal influences. A way had been found over the Blue Mountains. Great fertile plains and teeming rivers were there. And a big influx of convicts came out after the peace with France and the onset of postwar depression at home.

Before 1813 explorers looked for a way inland up the river-valleys such as the Grose and the Warragamba. With possibly one exception they had been baffled by gorges "of the most barren and forbidding aspect", where even the crows seemed to have lost their way. Perhaps the taciturn George Caley had caught a glimpse "of better country farther out"—the lure ever since to squatters gambling with drought. But Caley was stopped in 1804 by mutiny when within "cooee" of success.* It was left to Gregory Blaxland to hit upon the plan of working along the crests of the confused ridges. He was a substantial grazier whose pastures drought had scorched. In May 1813, with Lawson, a surveyor, and D'Arcy Wentworth's son, William Charles, aged 22,** he hacked and tore a way through undergrowth and over rises to Mount Blaxland, 531 miles west of the Nepean. They turned there, battered and sick, but triumphant. They had looked West over open grass lands boundless in extent. Winter broke; when it was over, Macquarie sent G. W. Evans, his assistant-surveyor, with four convict servants and a guide from Blaxland's party, to test the hopes aroused. Early in the new year (1814) they returned, having traversed a hundred miles of rolling grassy plains, abounding in game, with rivers full of strange but excellent fish, "vast areas of grazing country not divided by barren spaces as on the east side of the mountains", "soil exceeding rich" growing the finest grass and herbs, "hills green to the tops and country like a park and grounds laid out".*** A cart-road thither, said Evans, could be made in three months by fifty labourers.

[* See article on George Caley in Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. I, p. 228.]

[** See A. W. Jose, Builders and Pioneers of Australia, p. 38.]

[*** These phrases are from Evans' Journal, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VIII, pp. 165-77.]

Could a Governor hesitate at such a prospect? In July Captain Cox began making the road. "The Expence of constructing it", Macquarie explained to Bathurst, "will be very trifling to Government, the Men Employed in it being Convicts who Volunteered their Services on Condition of receiving Emancipation for their Extra labour. This is the only Remuneration they receive except their Rations".* In sanctioning a road even to these attractive Bathurst Plains there was need of explanatory caution. He had already found the Colonial Office very stiff in its criticisms of roads and bridges. "Making Permanent Roads and Bridges is one of the first steps towards Improving a New Country", wrote the sententious Governor in justifying a turnpike road to the Hawkesbury. Liverpool agreed, but questioned whether the British taxpayer should be the paymaster. "Permanent roads and bridges", it seemed to him, "will be the off-spring rather than the cause of internal prosperity"—a doctrine logical enough in an old country. But Macquarie was facing the needs of a country still to be occupied and notably lacking natural means of access such as navigable rivers. "Permanent roads through this Wide Extended Colony", he persisted even in 1812, "cannot be Constructed at the entire Expence of the Inhabitants for many Years to Come, and they imagine they have a right to expect that at least a part of the Colonial Revenue, particularly that part of it Collected on the Very Spirits of which they drink such Quantities, ought to be laid out and Appropriated to the Construction of Permanent Roads and Bridges, Streets and Wharves, Wherever these are essentially necessary." **

[* Macquarie to Bathurst, 7 October 1814, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VIII, p. 315. This emancipation as reward for extra labour would take the place of the wages they could earn about Sydney "in their own time". Cf. Macquarie to Bathurst, 28 June 1813, op. cit. vol. VII, p. 781.]

[** Macquarie to Liverpool, 17 November 1812, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, pp. 604-5.]

He had already constructed turnpike roads over the coastal plain to the Nepean River and to Liverpool. The tactful name of the latter destination did not, indeed, persuade its eponym that there was a difference between colonial and other revenues of the Crown. If the spirit-duties were spent on roads, they could not be used to lessen the burden of sending and, maintaining the convicts. He begged the question by arguing that if the free settlers could not pay for the roads, this proved that the colony was not advanced enough to need them.***

[*** Liverpool to Macquarie, 3 May 1812, H.R. of A. series I, vol, VII, p. 480. The same despatch calls for a quarterly or at least an annual statement of colonial revenues under nine heads.]

When, however, news of Bathurst Plains confirmed Macquarie's every hope for the colony's future, he put aside the plea that Britain could not afford roads into this wonderland. A new Secretary of State had sanctioned the other turnpike roads on the ground that tolls would recoup the expense, but had boggled at transmontane roads "while His Majesty's Treasury at home is subjected to an Expence of from Seventy Thousand to One Hundred Thousand Pounds per Annum for the Support of the Colony".* The demurrer came too late; it crossed a despatch in which Macquarie announced his new programme of buildings and roads, asked leave to build a new church, large-scale convict barracks and a better court-house. After that he would reduce the gangs of artificers and labourers.

[* Bathurst to Macquarie, 3 February 1814, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VIII, p. 132. This despatch must have been written before the news reached England of Evans' exploration of the interior.]

The works already begun Bathurst allowed, "as they are to be defrayed from the Colonial Funds". The court-house he vetoed; the church and barracks were to be built if the colonial revenue would stand the charge. But this, with a general promise to second improvements that took the form of schools and glebe-houses, threw the leash from the straining ambitions of Greenway and his vice-regal patrons. "Availing myself of the discretionary power Your Lordship has been kindly pleased to grant Me of erecting such Public Buildings as Can Conveniently be paid for from the Colonial Revenue",** Macquarie let contracts for churches at Sydney, Windsor and Liverpool, set about building by convict gangs a new Factory for female convicts at Parramatta, glebe houses at Liverpool, Parramatta and Castlereagh, and planned a new Civil Court House.

[** Macquarie to Bathurst, 4 April 1817, H.R. of A. series I, vol. IX, p. 353.]

How could ministers at Whitehall control such a man? Could such ambitious plans possibly be sound? The colony was certainly growing: 16,493 male convicts were sent out between 1810 and 1820, 11,250 of whom embarked in the last four years. Colonial revenues from import and port duties had increased from £10,000 in 1811 to £25,884 in 1820. But this obstinate builder's calls on them, amounting to £3,005 in 1811, £6,920 in 1815, £16,486 in 1819, had increased also. More floods along the Hawkesbury in 1816, 1817 and 1819 had thrown back many assigned servants upon government rations. Macquarie's bills drawn on the Treasury for rations and stores and its own expenses in fitting out convict transports had mounted to a total of £227,000 in 1814, and almost £240,000 in 1817. Rebukes had been met by protestations of future amendment, regularly falsified by the event. A grudging approval had been twisted into a programme of extravagance.

Most disquieting was another aspect of Macquarie's rule, his preference for emancipists, and the bad relations with the respectable settlers and officials to which that preference had given rise. Was the man a despot basing his power on mob-favour? His lineage and career bespoke an aristocrat of high and dependable character. Yet every vessel out of Port Jackson brought rumours and, after 1815, official word of discord in high places. Could public order in New South Wales survive recrimination between the Governor and the judges? By what idea of the colony's future could Colonel Macquarie be inspired or possessed?

In January 1819, to set such doubts at rest, the Secretary of State commissioned John Thomas Bigge, chief justice of Trinidad, to ascertain "how far in its present improved and increasing State" the colony was "susceptible of being made adequate to the Objects of its original institution". In Whitehall's view New South Wales was still a prison, and transportation thither a punishment to deter men and women in Britain from crime. "The Settlements in New Holland must clearly be considered as Receptacles for Offenders. . . . So long as they continue destined to these purposes by the Legislature of the Country" (i.e. of Great Britain and Ireland), "their growth as Colonies must be a Secondary Consideration, and the leading Duty of those to whom their Administration is entrusted will be to keep up in them such a system of just discipline as may render transportation an Object of serious Apprehension".* It seems to have been all this in the days of the naval governors. As evidence that transportation to New South Wales under that iron discipline had answered "every end of punishment", Bathurst quoted "instances on record in which convicts have expressed their desire that the sentence of transportation might be commuted even for the utmost Rigour of the Law". Such action was intelligible in any who had heard of the horrors of the Second and Third Fleets, the voyage out being thought the worse half of the punishment. But speculation by contractors in the lives of the convicts in transit had been checked by the appointment to each transport of at least one naval surgeon, with powers which even the captain overrode at his peril.** In New Holland also the scene was changed, and transportation had lost its terrors. "Numerous applications are made by those who are sentenced to imprisonment for minor transgressions that they may be allowed to participate in the Punishment to which the greatest offenders are condemned." This was outrageous, thought Whitehall.

[* Bathurst to J. T. Bigge, 6 January 1819, H.R. of A. series I, vol. X, p. 4.]

[** An account of the conditions aboard convict transports under these more humane conditions may be read in The Frew Papers (Mitchell Library), the vessel on which the Frews reached South Australia having encountered an outward-bound transport near the Cape.]

"The great End of Punishment is the Prevention of Crime", wrote Bathurst. "If, by ill-considered Compassion for Convicts, or from what might under other circumstances be considered a laudable desire to lessen their sufferings, their Situation in New South Wales be divested of all Salutary Terror, Transportation cannot operate as an effectual example on the Community at large, as a proper punishment for those Crimes against the commission of which His Majesty's Subjects have a right to claim protection". Thus Bigge's commission virtually dictated the condemnation of Macquarie's active employment of convicts on public works for an emancipists' Utopia where, when they had expiated their crimes, they should enjoy a new Britain under blue skies.

Macquarie's emancipist leanings, it may be argued, were a result of the party leadership which came to him from Bligh. When on his twelfth day of office he raised to the magistracy one Andrew Thompson, leading settler on the Hawkesbury, he was rewarding the man and the district for loyalty to Bligh and rebuking the usurpers the more pointedly by disregarding Thompson's ex-convict status. Colonel Foveaux had warned Macquarie against the Revd. Samuel Marsden, and when the chaplain attacked Thompson's appointment his criticisms served only to arouse the despot in Macquarie. He adopted as a deliberate policy the very elevation of emancipists at which Marsden cavilled. Possibly the Scots laird enjoyed out-Christianing the Anglican parson.* In August 1810, Simeon Lord, a wealthy Sydney trader, but an ignorant and low-lived ex-convict, was also raised to the bench, and Macquarie tried to associate both Thompson and Lord with Marsden, the senior colonial chaplain, as trustees of the public roads. Marsden would not act with them, giving as his reason their notoriously bad characters.

[* Cf. H.R. of A. series I, vol. IX, p. 499, where Macquarie in submitting a list of secret opponents places Marsden at the head of "this List of Malcontents".]

Fate was not kind to Macquarie, and his friends. Thompson died within nine months of his elevation, leaving to his patron a large share of a fortune based on trade in spirits. The legacy was accepted by Macquarie as proof of the giver's good will, but it became a target for gibes. Lord, subjected to insults in open court,** was persuaded by Bigge and Macquarie, at Governor Brisbane's coming, to retire from a position he had neither strengthened nor adorned. Redfern, a naval surgeon transported for being an accessory to the mutiny at the Nore, was promoted by Macquarie in the teeth of Bigge's advice and Bathurst's disapproval. At the accession of George IV Macquarie was flatly ordered to omit his name from the new commission of the peace.

[** "You are a great man now, Mr Lord", cried a woman expiree, "but you came into the colony in the same situation as myself."]

Frowns from high places and social boycotts of his "pets" in Sydney * merely provoked in the Governor a fierce antagonism to colonists who had not been prisoners. From thinking ex-convicts the most useful members of the community, he passed in November 1812 to asking that "the Free Settlers sent out from England may be limited to as small a number as possible. . . . These Free Settlers are the most discontented Persons in the Colony".** This may have been true, and may also have been to the discredit of a majority of them, sent out as ne'er-do-wells on family sentences of "conditional remittance" and always clamouring for government grants and donations. But discontent may have been justified in those who were pioneer stock-raisers despite Macquarie's disfavour.*** They acquired no merit in his eyes by success. Blind like his predecessor to the importance of any rural pursuit but tilling the soil, he sneered at graziers who gained "a very large Fortune without any trouble to themselves, the laborious parts of Husbandry being entirely left to the poor Emancipated Convicts or free persons of Inferior Origin". He repeatedly accused of laziness John and Gregory Blaxland, pioneers of the cattle industry.**** In the colony the Governor acknowledged Gregory Blaxland's merit as the conqueror of the mountain barrier. In his reports to England he suppressed that merit.

[* See Ernest Scott, Short History of Australia, pp. 101-4.]

[** Macquarie to Liverpool, 17 November 1812, in H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, p. 597.]

[*** As to the method of distributing convict servants between government and private employers, see M. Phillips, op. cit. p. 130, and note to p. 13. "From 1814 to 1820 2418 mechanics arrived, and of these 1587 were assigned to government".]

[**** See for examples, Macquarie to Liverpool, 17 November 1812, and Macquarie to Bathurst, March 1815, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VIII, pp. 427-8. More than a year after Gregory Blaxland had, with Macquarie's full knowledge, planned and carried to the point of success the crossing of the mountains, Macquarie wrote of them as "having never benefitted the Colony since their arrival in it now nearly nine years ago".]

In advocating the concession of trial by jury of the people, another plank from the pro-Bligh party's platform, Macquarie gave his emancipist principles free rein. Bathurst had doubts whether the rule of trying men by their peers could be applied to a society of such "peculiar constitution". "Would that principle be fairly acted upon, if free settlers were to sit in judgment on convicts?. . . Would it be prudent to allow convicts to act as jurymen? . . . Would not their exclusion be considered an invidious mark . . . at variance with the Great Principle upon which the institution is founded?" The Governor. agreed that only the free should be eligible but laboured to put aside all distinction between free and freed. "Once a Convict had become a Free Man, either by Servitude, Free Pardon or Emancipation, he should in All Respects be Considered on a footing with every other Man in the Colony, according to his Rank in Life and Character." The rub was in this last clause. The emancipists by whose advancement Macquarie chose to prove the vigour of his faith only demonstrated that punishment as then practised had certainly not exalted the characters of the most eminent ex-convicts. This was fatal to the success of his generous policy. As Bigge complained, Macquarie was trying not to restore to such emancipists their rank in life but greatly to raise it. Like many despots he thought to press folk into the designs he premeditated. Public buildings are things on which, as on the Perth Town Hall (W.A.), the broad arrow may be a pleasant historical decoration. But human beings are otherwise constituted.

Macquarie, his biographer thinks, "had neither the education nor the natural good taste to distinguish one man from another in the ranks below him". Too impatient to await the slow process by which each free generation appraises its leaders and culls its recruits for this and that calling, he thought he could build a community, like a barracks or a church with convicts and emancipists only. But it was a destructive party spleen which inspired such notions and they took a fatal hold on the inferior mentality of many around him. Should his policy be dictated, Macquarie asked ministers at home, by the wishes of those who came free to the colony, or should he "so construct it as to hold out the greatest possible rewards to the Convicts for Reformation of Manners by Considering Them, when this is the Case, in every way entitled to the Rights and Privileges of a Citizen who has never come under the Sentence of Transportation"? * He did not stay for an answer, but took it as a foregone conclusion and, though the fame of the wool pastures was already growing, his measures reduced free immigration to a mere trickle during the later years of his term of office. "In Coming to New South Wales (Free Settlers) should consider that they are coming to a Convict Country, and if they are too proud or too delicate in their feelings to associate with the Population of the Country, they should consider it in time and bend their Course to some other Country in which their Prejudices in this Respect would meet with no Opposition".** Seven-eighths of the men-convicts available were employed on public works, leaving few to be assigned to the settlers. When in 1817 "a low Rabble", in the vice-regal phrase, signed a memorial to the Commons against his arbitrary acts, they found themselves shut out from land grants and the customary indulgences of stock and labour, for daring "to asperse my personal honour and Government".***

[* Macquarie to Bathurst, 28 June 1813. For anticipations of restrictions on immigration see Macquarie to Liverpool, 17 November 1812, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, p. 594, and Bathurst's reply, 8 February 1814, vol. VIII, p. 128. Macquarie again, vol. VIII, p. 303.]

[** Macquarie to Bathurst, 28 June 1813, in H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, p. 775.]

[*** See H.R. of A. series I, vol. IX, note 77, on p. 866. Cf. p. 736. The acts of which the memorial complained included influencing the decision of a jury of inquest, ordering corporal punishment without inquiry, and seizing lands and houses. On the disputes between Macquarie and the judges, see Marion Phillips, op. cit. ch. VII.]

Ministers sought by light hints to turn this hard-mouthed steed, but their touches were taken by him for a shaking of the reins in encouragement. Macquarie read Bathurst's warnings against the effects of a forcing policy in favour of emancipists as a full endorsement of his doings. "Some illiberal Men in this Country Would destine a fellow Creature who has once deflected from the Path of Virtue, to an Eternal Badge of Infamy. . . . I am happy in feeling a Spirit of Charity in Me which shall ever Me despise Such Unjust and illiberal Sentiments".*

[* M. to Bathurst, 7 October 1814, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VIII, p. 316.]

Doubts grew. What would be the effect of such Charity on the convicts? It indited bitter despatches against judges, clergy and free-settlers. It built "good and comfortable accommodation" to house 1200 male prisoners. It made the saying proverbial that the surest way to vice-regal favour was having worn the badge of conviction for felony. Was it practicable to "hold out the greatest possible rewards for Reformation of Manners" without inviting clever rogues to seek them?

Jeffery Hart Bent, when Judge-Advocate, had cut Macquarie to the quick by contending that the Governor's doings were against the wishes of His Majesty's Government; but Downing Street managed its puppet despot on very slack strings. A mild reproof of extravagance drew from him in December 1817 a letter of resignation. Bathurst's reassurances, inviting its withdrawal, although the despatch containing them reached Sydney, were somehow kept from the Governor. He fretted under what he thought the unacknowledged suspension of his resignation.** Bigge's arrival in September 1819 limited his policies by a sort of consular veto. Chafing under the Commissioner's constant criticisms, he asked again to be relieved. Yet at the end he quitted his realm with reluctance. After his successor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, had come in November 1821, Macquarie went on progress through the scattered settlements.

[** For the resignation see Macquarie to Bathurst, 1 December 1817, H.R. of A. series I, vol. IX, pp. 495 et seq. Bathurst's reply is in vol. IX, p. 838.]

Like James I he had "felt himself as an immense brood-fowl set over this land, and would so fain gather it all under his wings". "Under the Divine protection", he told the Hawkesbury farmers, "we have been advancing towards a degree of civilization and comfort which can only render life one of enjoyment to those who have been accustomed from early habits to the manifold blessings extending to the whole population in the Mother Country". The oft-quoted passage in the apologia for his work which he wrote after his return to Britain still stirs Australians to sympathy with a great-hearted lover of the infant colony.*** "I found the Colony barely emerging from infantile imbecility, and suffering from various privations and disabilities; the Country impenetrable beyond 40 miles from Sydney; Agriculture in a yet languishing state; commerce in its early dawn; Revenue unknown;**** threatened by famine; distracted by faction; the public buildings in a state of dilapidation and mouldering to decay; the few Roads and Bridges, formerly constructed, rendered almost impassable; the population in general depressed by poverty; no public credit nor private confidence; the morals of the great mass of the population in the lowest state of debasement, and religious worship almost totally neglected. . . . I left it, in February last, reaping incalculable advantages from my extensive and important discoveries in all directions, including the supposed insurmountable barrier called the Blue Mountains, to the westward of which are situated the fertile plains of Bathurst, and in all respects enjoying a state of private comfort and public prosperity, which I trust will at least equal the expectation of His Majesty's Government. This change may indeed be ascribed in part to the natural operation of time and events on individual enterprize. How far it may be attributed to measures originating with myself and my zeal and judgment in giving effect to my instructions, I humbly submit to His Majesty and his Ministers."

[*** Macquarie to Bathurst, London, 27 July 1822, H.R. of A. series I, vol. X, pp. 671-3.]

[**** On p. 675, in the same letter, he mentions Port duties of £8000 per annum which by 1821 had reached £28,000 to £30,000.]

These claims reveal more than the egotism of the despot, swallowing up all credit for the activities of his subjects. By their emphasis on the comforts of civilization and by the slightness of the references to colonial flocks and herds, they suggest that Macquarie's mind stuck in the bark of externals, and missed the inner meaning of efforts to make New South Wales a colony of self-providing and permanent homes.

The social and economic weaknesses of the convicts were not to be exorcised by a spirit of charity which gave them comfortable employment on public works. These measures concentrated more than half the population of the colony in Sydney and subsidised unemployment there as early as 1817.* Convicts and emancipists were necessarily a wasting as well as a weak foundation. In October 1821 they numbered 19,126 adults out of a total of 29,783 inhabitants, but the disproportion of the sexes meant that most could know no family life. There were 15,939 convict men and only 3187 women. Of their children, who numbered 7224, many turned away from Macquarie's design of copying the comforts of Britain.** They with the free settlers—1489 adults and 1884 children—were the active elements in the advance over the inland plains which followed the collapse of his building boom. When Brisbane discontinued public works, the "old hands" passed into the service of the squatters, as hut-keepers and shepherds.*** The white-trash of Virginia and the Carolinas perished as Lee's incomparable infantry. In a nobler cause the ex-convicts died as sentries beside the peaceful productive sheep who won Australia for the white men.

[* See Marion Phillips, op. cit. pp. 134, 149.]

[** "Nationalism", thinks Dr Phillips, "the strongest characteristic of the Australian of today, is a legacy from these sons of exiles, for whom Australia was a land of hope and promise." op. cit. pp. 260-1. It certainly has at times a psychologically suspicious stridency.]

[*** As to the overwhelming of the convict blood by the free immigration of the gold-discovery decade, see T. A. Coghlan, Labour and Industry, pp. 562 et seq.]

Macquarie had shown good sense and resolution in his reform of the currency, but his vacillation about public agriculture suggests that a laird's paternalism prevented his seeing the economic futility of convict labour in public employ.**** His public buildings, for all their innocent charm to-day, were laxly supervised and so continued the enervating precedent of reliance on government. He was, maybe, the second founder of Sydney, but not of Australia. By his vendetta against free settlers he roused the first whisperings of a hostility towards immigrants which still comes ill in a spacious land from the beneficiaries of John McArthur, Caroline Chisholm and William Farrer. And how could his or any other Bank discharge to the best advantage its function of entrusting the material resources of the community to those most capable of directing their increase if the Governor set his face against the free activity of the free? The days of paternalism were over.

[**** In his first despatch, still mindful of Castlereagh's instructions, he condemned the government farming which was shortly afterwards discontinued. See 30 April 1810, H.R. of A. series I, vol. VII, pp. 250-1. When, however, Bigge suggested that convicts could be productively employed thus, he tried again at Emu Plains in 1820. See vol. X, p. 680, and Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh, chapters VIII and IX.]