Читать книгу The Felonry of New South Wales - James Mudie - Страница 7

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LIEUTENANT Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, afterwards Major General, arrived in New South Wales as governor, in December, 1809.

The home government annulled all the acts of Colonel Johnston's usurpation, but considerately empowered Governor Macquarie to re-enact such of them as he should approve,—a discretion which he in almost every instance exercised affirmatively.

Governor Macquarie conducted the affairs of the colony during the long period of twelve years.

His government has been much eulogized by the felonry, to whom he was supposed to be favourable and indulgent.

Like his predecessors in the very arduous and difficult post of conducting the government of such a settlement, the early errors and faults of which are in a great measure fairly attributable to the singular apathy of the government at home, Governor Macquarie had scarcely any other choice than that of making the best he could of the convict population under his sway.

He was, moreover, a man of mild and humane disposition and feelings, of exemplary morality in his own conduct, and imbued with religious principles.

Impressed with the idea, which had all along influenced the government at home, that the colony should be regarded only as a penal settlement,—the theatre of a great experiment upon the criminal outcasts of the mother country,—it was natural for Governor Macquarie, in conformity with his own humane feelings and religious principles, as well as with what he conceived to be the intention of the British cabinet, to endeavour to reclaim the emancipated and convict population by favour and indulgence. He was, consequently, a great favourite with that class of the inhabitants, who still speak of the good old times of Governor Macquarie. Unhappily the very features of his own character which were the most amiable,—his good nature and his piety,—rendered him liable to be imposed upon by the crafty and the hypocritical; and his favour, consequently, was sometimes conferred upon unworthy objects.

Certain it is, that though the colony progressed in wealth under his administration, it was far from being improved in its morale. The bane of the colony, the employment of convicts and emancipists in government offices, continued; and the felonry as a body, from the great wealth acquired by many of them, and the consequence attendant upon the mere possession of wealth in such a country, became more and more audacious in their pretensions and unreasonable in their demands.

It is not intended to attribute these vices in the constitution of the colony to the personal character of Governor Macquarie. They were the natural growth of the whole system of the policy that had been observed towards the settlement from its first formation. The effectual counterpoise to the felon population, or rather the only basis on which any governor could found an effective anti-convict policy,—that is, the influx of free emigrants of good character, and of enterprise and capital, had not yet sufficiently taken place. The colony, however, was indebted to Governor Macquarie for the formation of valuable and extensive lines of road, and for other public works of utility and spirit, which have been found of great value to its internal prosperity.

It is to be lamented that so worthy a man as Governor Macquarie, who had devoted his whole faculties to the improvement of the colony,—and that, too, not only with all the energy and zeal of a military man engaged in a great, difficult, and glorious enterprise, but with a solicitude equal to that of a father labouring for the advancement of his own children,—it is deeply to be deplored that this great and good man did not escape the shafts of private malice, nor the poison of political hostility.

Towards the close of his government, Mr Bigg [Bigge] was sent out as a commissioner to enquire into the general condition of the colony, and to report upon its state to the government at home. In so far as this proceeding was an indication that the growing importance of New South Wales had begun to attract some portion of the attention of the home government, it boded well for the colony.

Governor Macquarie, however, felt mortified at the appointment of the commission; and Mr. Commissioner Bigg, as is well known, busied himself infinitely more in pointing out and sanctioning trumped-up charges against the governor, than in ascertaining the actual condition of the colony, which was the proper object of his mission. Governor Macquarie being a mild and unassuming man, Mr. Bigg presumed so far upon this feature in his character, as to take every uncandid and unfair advantage; while the vipers and unprincipled men who had fattened under the governor's administration, in the wane of his excellency's power, and in proof of their readiness to court the rising sun, filled the ear of the commissioner with every thing that slander could invent or misrepresentation fashion into imputation upon the venerable representative of their sovereign.

The commission, therefore, instead of being an enquiry into the state of the colony, was engaged in getting hold of every thing that could in any way degrade or affect the good name of the governor.

To accomplish this unworthy purpose, every stratagem was resorted to. A Mr. Scott, who had been a wine merchant, but who went out as clerk to the commission, was employed and encouraged to collect the materials with which the governor was to be assailed. The clerk could condescend to practices from which the dignity of the commissioner must have shrunk; and with so much alacrity did he perform the work assigned to him, that there was no lack of either pretences from which to fabricate something like charges against the governor, or of ready volunteers to support them.

Shortly after the return of General Macquarie to England, his health rapidly declined; and his death soon afterwards was in great measure attributed, by those who best knew him, to the impression made upon his spirits by the calumnies of his enemies.

His eulogium was pronounced in the House of Commons by his friend Sir Charles Forbes, Bart., whose own eminent virtues and princely benevolence form a guarantee of the worth of every man honoured with his friendship, and whose intimate knowledge of Indian and colonial affairs gave the weight of authoritative decision to his opinion of Governor Macquarie's official conduct.

So many disgraceful things have occurred with regard to New South Wales, that it is absolutely painful to record them. Earl Bathurst, deceived by the report of the Bigg commission, and thinking Scott, the commissioner's clerk, entitled to reward for his drudgery, created an ecclesiastical dignity in the colony for the lucky ex-wine merchant, and transformed him into Archdeacon of New South Wales, with a living of two thousand pounds per annum! This was certainly one of the most scandalous of the scandalous jobs by which the colony has under all changes of the home government been oppressed and plundered.

Scott might with equal propriety have been made a lord chancellor or an astronomer-royal, as an ecclesiastic and the supreme dignitary of the colonial church. His conduct soon showed his total unfitness for the post improperly created for him, and to which he was most improperly raised.

By one of the manifestations of unchristian and uncharitable feelings,—one capricious exercise of ecclesiastical tyranny, he did so much injury to the character of the church in the opinion of a portion of the colonial public, and more especially as showing the sort of men to whose malice General Macquarie may be said to have fallen a victim, that it merits record.

From a personal dislike to a pew renter in the church of St. James's, in Sydney, a gentleman punctual in his attendance with his six motherless daughters upon the services of the church, and of strict religious principles, Mr. Archdeacon Scott unjustly resolved on depriving him of his well situated pew, and accordingly caused it to be intimated to him, on a frivolous pretext of projected alterations, that he must relinquish his pew, and on the ensuing Sunday take possession of another pew, situated as remotely as possible from the pulpit, and in a cold and comfortless part of the church.

The pew renter, who held his pew from year to year at a rent of four pounds, and who had been thirteen months in possession of it, refused to acquiesce in this arbitrary deprivation of his property. He signified this refusal, and his resolution to resume his sitting with his family in his own pew, on the next and all ensuing Sundays.

In reply he was peremptorily told that any attempt on his part to enter the pew would be resisted, and that police constables would be in attendance to keep the peace,—that is, to carry a peaceable parishioner off to the watchhouse, in the event of any noise occurring through his endeavours to exercise his civil right of entering his own pew.

Unfortunately for the archdeacon, the gentleman with whom he entered into this rash and unseemly squabble, is one of the most resolute men in the colony. He was infinitely better versed both in ecclesiastical and civil law, and even in divinity, than the arrogant archdeacon himself. He held, moreover, in his hands, the powerful engine of the press, being the proprietor and editor of one of the colonial newspapers,—an engine which he naturally employed, and with equal tact and power, in giving public interest to his defensive warfare against the tyranny of the archdeacon. He took his measures, too, with imperturbable coolness, but with resolute and inflexible determination. For many successive Sundays, the sanctity of the church was violated, and the congregation scandalized, by the spectacle of police constables with their staves opposing the progress of a respectable and religious father, with his numerous family of young females, to their accustomed place of worship. The door of his own pew was locked against him,—his name torn from it,—and the inscription "for civil officers" put in its place. A police constable stood by with the key, admitting into the pew young fellows, such as clerks and mates of ships, and locking them in one after the other, while the Pere de Famille stood in the aisle, and the delicate females his daughters sat on the cold stone steps of the altar-piece.

On more than one occasion, the man thus persecuted succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the archdeacon's watchmen, and, "leaping with the agility of a kangaroo," to use his own expression, into his pew, lifted in his daughters after him.

The church, on every day of public worship, was successively filled with indignant crowds, to witness the disgraceful conflict waged by the archdeacon against an unoffending member of his church. The latter cautiously abstained from doing any thing that could be made a pretext for charging him with a breach of the peace; and the archdeacon, finding that the adversary he had created for himself would stand out the contest for an indefinite length of time in the aisle, at length caused the disputed pew to be covered in, or decked over, with boards, secured in their places by strong iron bars and screws!

The archdeacon himself, however, eventually had the worst of it. The appeals to the public, by the injured party, were made with equal force of argument, equanimity of temper, and spirit. As a specimen of the ridicule employed: the parishioner, speaking of the dreary pew, the nursery of rheumatism, to which the archdeacon wished to condemn him and his daughters, called it a "swampy corner," and in cutting irony he recommended the archdeacon to turn principal grave-digger, so that he might consign the remains of those of his parishioners towards whom he entertained personal dislike, to the "swampy corners" of the burying ground.

But the defender in the conflict was not content with kindling the public indignation against his persecutor. He appealed to the bishop of Calcutta, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the home government. He appealed also to the law, and eventually obtained damages for having been illegally dispossessed of his pew.

The archdeacon, on the contrary, became so obnoxious, through his intemperance on this occasion, and for other petty and vexatious acts of oppression, founded in personal spite or political motives, that he felt it necessary at last to renounce his rich appointment, quit the colony, and return to England.