Читать книгу The Felonry of New South Wales - James Mudie - Страница 8

Table of Contents

MAJOR General Sir Thomas Brisbane, K. C. B., entered upon the government of New South Wales in December, 1821.

The first really great and remarkable impulse to the prosperity of the colony was given by the tide of free emigration which had now steadily set in, and which continued to increase throughout the whole period of his excellency's administration.

The emigrants, too, were of a much higher grade, as to their circumstances and former respectability in life, than those of their countrymen seeking new homes in the United States, or in any other of the British colonies. The superiority of the emigrants to New South Wales, in this respect, was partly owing to the great expense of the passage out, and still more to the peculiar colonial regulations as to grants of land. Under those regulations, lands were only granted in proportion to the means of the emigrant applicant to give employment and maintenance to specified numbers of convicts. If he could satisfy the government that he was able, and entered into a bond obliging himself, to give subsistence to five convicts for a certain number of years, he received a grant of five hundred acres of land, and also rations for his family and his convict servants for six months, together with a breeding cow for each convict—the cows to be repaid by an equal number of cows after a specified term of years. If he could maintain ten convict servants, he had a grant of one thousand acres of land, with rations, and the loan of ten cows. If he could provide for twenty convicts, his grant was two thousand acres, with twenty cows and rations for a certain portion of his convict servants, and so on. So respectable were the emigrants generally as to their circumstances, that the grants of land were for the most part of two thousand acres,—implying that the grantees possessed the means, severally, of employing and maintaining twenty convict servants; and, so numerous was the influx of settlers of this description, that the convicts eventually became scarce; and though great multitudes were annually transported from England, numbers of free emigrants were obliged to wait, with great inconvenience, for convict servants with whose labour to cultivate their lands.

The influx of emigrants enabled Governor Brisbane, with the active and indefatigable exertions of his colonial secretary, Major Goulburn, a gentleman the first to hold that appointment, who had acquired much useful experience during twelve months in which he was under General Macquarie, to introduce several reforms into the treatment and management of the felon population. In as far as was possible or practicable, convicts ceased to be employed in government offices, or as clerks and overseers in the carrying on of public works. Even in Governor Brisbane's time, however, the free and untainted population did not furnish a sufficient number of persons for all those purposes, because the great majority of the emigrants of course went out with the view of becoming agricultural landowners, or of settling in the towns, and carrying on business in them, on their own accounts.

The system introduced by Sir Thomas Brisbane and his talented colonial secretary, however, not only as regarded the treatment of the convicts, but in all the public departments, worked well for several years.

But, at the latter end of Sir Thomas's government, certain intriguing characters contrived to sow dissensions between the governor and Major Goulburn,—or, "the impenetrable Major," as he was called in some of the journals,—an epithet which, in such a colony as New South Wales, was perhaps the highest compliment that could have been paid to any public functionary, or to any individual directly or indirectly concerned in the administration of the government.

Major Goulburn, indeed, was a man of such high honour and integrity, that, when he had established his measures (as far as such measures were practicable,) for rendering the colony really a penal settlement,—that is, really a place of punishment and reclamation for all classes of criminals, which it ought always to have been, no species of favouritism, no exertions of private influence or interest, no applications or recommendations from any individuals, however respectable, could ever induce him to swerve in any degree or in any way whatever, from what was the real design, or what he conceived to be the real design, of the British government in originally giving birth to the colony. It may be mentioned, also, to the great honour of Major Goulburn, that though, at the time now referred to, there was no land board for the settlement of applications for grants of land or the assignment of convict servants,—no collector of internal revenue, at least not until very near the termination of the major's official duties, when he found it necessary that one should be appointed,—and no custom house,—yet the very onerous duties of all these departments were performed, under his unwearied superintendance, in the colonial office; and that with so much order, regularity, and dispatch, that instead of settlers, merchants, or other applicants waiting, as they have since been obliged to do, for days, nay even weeks and months, for replies to their applications, every thing was prompt, and all applications were immediately attended to, under the vigilant and indefatigible, as well as the "impenetrable" Major, who literally made business vanish under his hands, to the full satisfaction of all parties with whom he had business to transact.

On the unhappy dissension, however, arising between the governor and Major Goulburn, Sir Thomas, unfortunately for the colony and for his own government, issued an order directing certain official communications to be addressed to Major Ovens. Major Ovens was a highly honourable man as a military officer, but was perfectly unacquainted with the routine of a public office; and Major Goulburn, as the natural consequence of the slight which the governor had thus put upon him, ceased to act at all, unless under special official orders from his excellency, to the very great detriment of the best interests of the colony. Delay and confusion of course pervaded every department of the government,—a state of things which was only terminated by the recall of both Sir Thomas Brisbane and Major Goulburn from New South Wales. Justice requires it to be added, that Sir Thomas Brisbane was a man of mild and gentlemanly feelings and conduct; and that no one who ever held the reins of government in the colony was more esteemed and beloved for his personal qualities, and particularly for the equal courtesy of his demeanour to all parties who had access to his presence.