Читать книгу The Felonry of New South Wales - James Mudie - Страница 9

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LIEUTENANT General Sir Ralph Darling succeeded Sir Thomas Brisbane in the government of the colony, in December, 1825; and Mr. McLeay was appointed colonial secretary, in the room of Major Goulburn.

Perhaps no governor ever arrived in any colony, more anxious and determined to exercise his authority with strict impariality, or with greater regard for the well-being of the interests committed to his charge, than General Darling.

Unfortunately for his excellency, however, confusion prevailed in every department, through the unhappy dissensions which, as has been stated, arose between his predecessor and the late colonial secretary.

The new governor's first task, therefore, in which he was ably seconded by his colonial secretary, Mr McLeay, (a gentleman of long and great experience in official business,) was to reform and reorganize all the departments and public offices, which he also still further purged of convict employes than his predecessor had done, or had been able to do.

The colony, however, was then so circumstanced, that the reorganizing of the departments gave great offence to many individuals; and this laid the foundation for a rancorous opposition to the measures of Sir Ralph Darling's government.

He was assailed with severe animadversions and scurrilous slanders in the opposition newspapers,—so virulent and so vile, indeed, that his excellency, a highly honourable man, and keenly sensitive to unjust aspersions, was provoked by them into a warfare with the press. A series of libel cases were accordingly got up and prosecuted; which only aggravated and embittered the hostility they were intended to crush.

Together with the reformation of the public offices, Governor Darling also introduced a strict administration of public affairs. He altered and strengthened the laws for the management of the felon population, discountenancing all men, however rich, who had rendered themselves infamous by their past crimes, or by the nefarious means employed by them in the acquisition of their wealth.

What was called the anti-convict system was introduced, and a commencement of real penal discipline made, amidst great outcry. The labour of the convicts was applied to the formation of roads and other public works; and, to complete this branch of the administration, the bushrangers were vigilantly sought out, and were soon put down by the vigour of the governor.

But while the colony, under his excellency's administration, was reaping the benefit of his improved measures, and was rapidly progressing in prosperity, it was afflicted for three years with the calamitous visitation of "the dry seasons," and during the distress which accompanied that visitation, and the scarcity of food, it became indispensably necessary to reduce the rations of the convicts,—a circumstance of which an opposition newspaper took advantage to excite very violent discontents.

The colonial government, however, relaxed not in the performance of its duty. Discipline was maintained with a firm hand; and, when the distress had passed away, and plenty was restored to the colony, the governor issued a regulation with regard to the food and clothing of the convicts, which gave general satisfaction, and obtained the praises even of the opposition.

That his excellency, so conducting himself and the public affairs, should have ever had a single enemy out of the class of persons whom it was his special duty to coerce, and who were naturally exasperated at being ruled by a hand capable of making them feel its power, is matter of equal surprise and regret. There were, however, some persons in hostility with this public benefactor; because, the very fact of his faithfully and energetically discharging his duty created him enemies.

Through the exertions of the convict faction, headed by Mr. Wentworth and Sir John Jamison, and through the disaffection of some of his own functionaries, whose convict propensities are fully established in the succeeding pages of this work, he was loudly accused (though most unjustly) of exercising tyranny and oppression in his government.

Of his excellency's enemies the most dangerous, both from his position and from his secresy and insidiousness, was the chief justice, to whom his excellency gave mortal offence, by restricting him to his proper sphere, and not allowing him to have any share in the government.

In spite, however, of the habitual sobriety as well as caution of the chief justice, he sometimes allowed the mask to drop. At a dinner at Dr. Wardell's, under the excitement of wine, he fully betrayed both his republican principles and his hostility to the government, and went so far as to stigmatize Sir George Murray, then his Majesty's principal secretary of state for the colonies, as "the rascally secretary of state." His honour next day apologised, it is true, and attributed his intemperance to the doctor's champagne: in vino Veritas.

On another occasion, at an official dinner at government house, news of the passing of the reform bill having arrived, Mr. Chief Justice Forbes accompanied the expression of his satisfaction with the exulting exclamation, "This is another great blow to the monarchical system!"—"a pretty speech (as was said by Colonel Mackenzie, who heard it), to be uttered by a chief justice of one of his Majesty's colonies, while seated between the governor of the colony, representing the King's person, and the colonel of the King's Own!"

A Bermudian by birth, and educated in an American college, Mr. Chief Justice Forbes is a known republican, of which, indeed, he makes no secret, but rather expresses himself proud.

The chief justice, therefore, from the first, assumed and performed the part of patron or protector of the felonry. During the government of General Brisbane, his excellency's measures, and the reforms introduced by Major Goulburn, were constantly thwarted in the supreme court, in which the chief justice presides: and General Darling was peculiarly counteracted in the same way, on account of his still more determined anti-convict system, and because he had given personal umbrage to the chief justice; while the then attorney-general for the colony, like all his predecessors, was incompetent to counterbalance a man of the craftiness, subtlety, and tact, for which the chief justice is remarkable; and who in fact exercised the power claimed by the Stuarts, of dispensing with acts of parliament,—a power which, even if wielded by English judges, would be bad enough, and which, wielded by fiery politicians like the colonial judges, is altogether intolerable.

As a member of the legislative council, the chief justice was, or it was in his power to be, the very tyrant of the colony, inasmuch as he exercised the power of deciding, that, unless he certified that a proposition for a law was not contrary to the law of England, the proposition could not be entertained by the legislative council, and as the supreme court also assumed the power of declaring what laws of England are in force within the colony, and what are not. The fatal effects of such power, wielded by such hands, were soon perceptible. It has generated evils frightful in their extent, and utterly destructive in their tendency.

A single instance will suffice at once to show the arrogance of Chief Justice Forbes, his leaning to the felonry, the unsoundness of his law, and his hostility to Governor Darling, and to the unpaid magistrates who endeavoured to support the governor in his judicious measures.

General Darling had reclaimed a convict servant who had been lent, not assigned, to a free emigrant in Sydney. The emigrant refused to give up the convict, on the ground that his having been lent was equivalent to his having been assigned, and that the governor had no power to withdraw or recal from any emigrant or settler a convict servant who had once been assigned to him. The magistrates, being of a different opinion, gave the necessary authority to the constables; and the convict was apprehended in the contumacious emigrant's premises, and delivered over to the government. The emigrant was also brought before the bench; and, the fact of his having retained in his service a convict who had been reclaimed by the government, being a harbouring of a convict unlawfully at large, he was consequently fined. The emigrant, persisting in his own view of the case, carried it, in order to try the question, before the supreme court, when the chief justice not only gave it as his law, that the governor had no legal power to recal the convict in question, but, with the plausibility peculiar to his honour, and for which, when an if or a but is required, he is so celebrated, rebuked the magistrates under whose authority the recapture of the convict had been made. The matter was now referred by the colonial government to the government at home, and being by it submitted to the law officers of the crown in England, they decided that the colonial governors have the power of reclaiming even assigned convicts, and consequently that the law of the chief justice was wrong.

The supreme court, in short, under the presidency of Mr. Forbes, has always leaned to the convicts, while its tendency has been invariably and strongly against any magistrate who has been so unlucky as to get into it. That the Chief Justice Forbes, in addition to the traits of his character which have been touched upon, is also tainted with that spirit of duplicity and treachery so characteristic of his political co-partisans in New South Wales, appears from his final conduct to General Darling; for, although he had not only thwarted his measures, but had secretly joined in making misrepresentations and charges, calling his excellency's government "the reign of terror," and in other respects betraying hostility, in an underhand way, against his government; yet on the occasion of General Darling quitting the colony, when it became evident that he would not only depart with eclat from all the respectable inhabitants, but would most likely stand well at home, then the honourable and consistent Mr. Chief Justice Forbes, thinking it possible that his own past misdoings might be forgotten, was the very first, as a member of the legislative council, to sign the following address to his Excellency, eulogizing his government to the skies. But the address speaks for itself. It will be found, with other documents, at the end of this chapter.

It is really matter both of surprise and regret, that the British government should send out to any of the colonies, and particularly to New South Wales, men holding republican principles. With respect to this colony in particular, it is not the question whether republicanism be good or bad. England is a monarchy; and the duty of her statesmen is to mould the colonies as nearly as possible upon the model of the mother country. A republican, consequently, granting him to be an honest and conscientious man, is a most unfit person to be chief justice of a British colony, which, besides being a penal settlement, is progressing in wealth, population, and importance, and is apparently destined to become a mighty nation, which, for the interests as well as the glory of Britain, it is most desirable should be distinguished by a British spirit and character; as well as by the British language.

That the author of this work is not singular in the view he has taken of the danger of mixing the judicial and legislative functions, appears by the following extract from the Sydney Herald of 10th December, 1835:—

"We do not like to see a judge placed in a situation where he must of necessity become a politician. We object to a political chief justice. We would have the judicial and legislative functions perfectly distinct."

"The foregoing passage is taken from an article in a recent number of the Morning Herald, and refers to the appointment of the Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Denman) to the Speakership of the House of Lords. In reference to this alone, however, it would be of little interest to the colonists; but our readers must all remember that the principle which has been thus advanced by the English Journalist, is one which we have frequently endeavoured to enforce when we have had occasion to advert to the constitution of our local legislature. "Every man of common sense must admit that the union of legislative and judicial functions in one individual is an unnatural union—even if it were not, as it is, repugnant to the spirit of the British constitution—but if such an union be thought worthy of denunciation in the mother country, by what terms of reprehension ought it to be designated here? There is no cause from which so much evil to society may accrue as from the ambitious prejudices of a political judge; and we fearlessly assert, that in no part of the British dominions have the consequences of such prejudices been more severely felt than in New South Wales."

And again, the same paper, which continues, with unabated zeal, and with great talent, to advocate the best interests of the colony, says:—

"From general principles and particular instances, let us look at the present divided state of the colony, and ask whether it is not mainly, if not altogether, attributable to the acts of a political judge? Who originated—who forced the ever infamous Summary Punishment Bill on the colonists? A political judge! Who instituted and caused to be passed into a law, the abominable Jury Act, which is reprobated by all save the rabble of the colony? A political judge!! Who has been the main instrument whereby Sir Richard Bourke has lost the confidence of every really respectable and independent man in the colony? A political judge!!! Are we not fully justified, therefore, in expressing our cordial concurrence in the opinion of our English contemporary, that a judge ought not to be "placed in a situation where he must of necessity become a politician?" The effects of the Summary Punishment Bill become so alarming, that the government has been at length compelled to institute an enquiry into the state of the police of the colony, and other matters arising out of that obnoxious measure; and it is now said, that the parent of the still more obnoxious Jury Act begins to feel alarmed at the frightful enormities which his bantling has engendered and fostered. He, we understand, begins to be aware, that the measure he has adopted is not legal, because it is not necessary; and that of the power which only necessity justifies, no more ought to be admitted than necessity obtrudes. We are glad to hear that our "learned friend" is at length coming to his senses; but we "freely confess" that some considerable time must elapse before we can altogether forget that, at one period, he appeared doubtful of the fate of posterity, if New South Wales did not take its jurymen from a jail! Still, though we are credibly informed that a locus penitentice exists "in the proper quarter," we are not quite certain of escaping unscathed for thus publicly proclaiming the fact. We, however, are prepared, "come what come may." We do not favour the government party, for we think it vile; neither do we fear it, for we think it weak."

The governor's laudable strictness with his own subordinate officers made him no favourite with them; and his convict discipline, besides inspiring awe into the convicts, and exciting the dislike of nearly the whole of the felonry, furnished the demagogues who courted the felon population for the sake of a really guilty as well as most despicable popularity, with constant opportunities and pretexts for fabricating charges of tyranny and oppression. The opposition press was incessant and most rancorous in its attacks; and, while the malignity was at its height, an unfortunate event occurred, which furnished the enemies of the governor with subject for vituperation and annoyance during all the rest of his administration.

As the facts of the case are related by the Rev. Dr. Lang with great candour and impartiality, although, to quote his own words (vol. i., p. 181, of his work on New South Wales), he "can scarcely be suspected of partiality" for a governor, from whom, he says, "I cannot charge my recollection with having received any personal favours;" but who, on the contrary, by "his ungracious refusal to attend to certain suggestions which I had done myself the honour to submit to him, with a view to promote the interest of education and religion in the colony, occasioned me the inconvenience and the hardship of a voyage to England, besides exposing me incidentally to much personal suffering,"—as the unfortunate event referred to is narrated by Dr. Lang with much candour, notwithstanding the reasons for presuming him to be rather unfriendly to Sir Ralph Darling than otherwise, which he himself has stated, it has been deemed advisable here to insert the reverend gentleman's narrative at large. It is as follows:—

"About a year after his excellency (General Darling) arrived in the colony, a worthless soldier of the 57th regiment, of the name of Thompson, wishing, it seems, to get quit of the service, and conceiving that the situation of a convict in New South Wales was in some respects superior to his own, persuaded another soldier of the same regiment, of the name of Sudds,—a peaceable well-behaved man, but unfortunately not of sufficient firmness to resist the insidious influence of his comrade's bad advice, to join with him in the commission of a felony, for the express purpose of being put out of the regiment. They accordingly went in company to the shop of a dealer in Sydney, on pretence of intending to purchase some article, and contrived to steal a piece of cloth, which they immediately cut in two, each secreting a part of it about his person. But the theft was designedly so very awkwardly managed, that its perpetrators were instantly detected and delivered over to the civil power. They were accordingly tried, convicted, and sentenced to transportation to a penal settlement,—Moreton Bay or Norfolk Island,—for seven years.

"In the course of the trial the object and design of the theft were ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt, and the case accordingly assumed in the eye of the governor a very different character from that of a common case of theft. The thieves were soldiers in his Majesty's service, and they had taken up the intolerable and highly dangerous idea that the situation of a soldier is worse than that of a convict or transported felon. Nay, acting on this idea, they had not only deserted his Majesty's service, which they were paid, and maintained, and sworn to uphold; but had actually made common cause and even identified themselves with those very disturbers of the public peace from whose vicious propensities or actual violence they were bound to protect his Majesty's subjects. In short, their example, in so far as it was likely to be contagious, was evidently highly dangerous to the peace and good government of the colony; and the governor, therefore, who, in common with all other governors of British colonies, is authorized to provide for all such extreme cases as involve the very existence of the government to the best of his judgment, conceived this was just such a case. Whether his excellency may not have attached too much importance to the case, or whether he may not have magnified the danger that was likely to accrue from it, if treated in the ordinary way, it is unnecessary to inquire.

"With a view, therefore, to obviate the evils apprehended, his excellency, in his capacity of lieutenant-general and commander of the forces, issued a general order, in virtue of which the two soldiers were taken out of the hands of the civil power, and brought on a day appointed to the barrack-square in Sydney, where their crime was publicly announced to all the other soldiers in garrison; their sentence of transportation to a penal settlement for seven years was declared to be commuted into that of hard labour in irons on the roads of the colony for the same period,—doubtless that they might be occasionally seen by other soldiers in going to and from their places of detachment in the interior,—and it was formally announced to the culprits, that at the expiration of their period of sentence they should return to the regiment and serve in the ranks as before. Immediately, therefore, they were publicly stripped of their uniform and arrayed in the dress of convicts; iron collars of considerable weight, prepared expressly for the purpose, with projecting iron spikes, and chains of the same metal attached to the legs,—such, it seems, as are used in the Isle of France or the West Indies for the punishment or confinement of runaway negroes,—were affixed to their necks; and they were drummed out of the regiment with the 'rogues' march' to the common gaol.

"All this procedure, in so far as it was evidently an interference with the due course of law, was, according to all the approved maxims of British jurisprudence, undoubtedly illegal and indefensible. Whether there was a case of urgent necessity to justify it on any ground,—whether the peace and good government of the colony would have been endangered by adopting the ordinary course of procedure,—that is the question; and it is one on which there was room for a difference of opinion. For my own part, even although there had actually been such a case as I have shown the governor supposed there was, I should have been disposed to say, "Let the law have its due course." At the same time, as punishment is intended not merely for the correction of the offender, but as a means of deterring others from imitating his pernicious example, it was the part of a good governor to consider how he could render the punishment of the two culprits in the case in question effectual, in the most extensive manner, in preventing the recurrence of their crime. And if, in doing so, he made the punishment extremely degrading on the one hand, and cruelly severe on the other, such a result could only have arisen from an error of judgment; for it was absolutely incredible that in such a case a personal feeling could exist, or that the governor could have had any other object in view than the public good. This was indeed so generally acknowledged throughout the colony when the circumstance occurred, that if no extraordinary and unexpected result had ensued, the anomalous character of the punishment would neither have been discovered nor complained of; for even the able opposition paper of the day admitted that the offence of the soldiers was a serious and dangerous offence, and 'one that required extraordinary treatment.'

"The man Sudds, however, was labouring at the time under chronic affection of the liver, which had been unfortunately overlooked, through inattention, I believe, on the part of the medical officer of the gaol, and which, if reported to the governor beforehand, would in all probability have prevented the man's exposure to the scenes of the barrack-square. But the public disgrace to which he had been subjected in the presence of all his former comrades, and his exposure in a state of bodily illness to the heat of a burning sun,—the utter disappointment of the hopes which his wicked associate had led him to entertain,—and the miserable prospect which lay before him,—all these circumstances, operating in conjunction with his hepatic affection, and doubtless considerably aggravated by the action of his iron collar,—immediately plunged the wretched man into a state of hopeless despondency, in which he was at length removed from the gaol to the general hospital, where he died in a few days.

"This was a most unfortunate and a most unlooked-for termination of the case of the two soldiers. Still, however, as it was evident to all parties that there was no ground whatever for the imputation of improper motives, if a fair statement of the case, such as I have attempted to give, had been indirectly given on the part of the government,—admitting the error of judgment, which evil-disposed persons were now beginning to discover, and lamenting the unfortunate and unforeseen issue of the affair,—the matter would very soon have been forgotten, and disaffection itself would have been entirely disarmed.

"General Darling, however, was peculiarly unfortunate in having a supporter, forsooth, in the person of the late Mr. Robert Howe, editor of the Sydney Gazette. This redoubtable champion of the colonial government, in a spirit of infatuation which I have never seen equalled in the whole course of my life, listened with the utmost eagerness to the first murmurs of disapprobation, and not only commenced a regular defence of the measures adopted by the colonial government in the case of the two soldiers, and held them forth to the colony as highly proper and praiseworthy, but ever and anon launched forth whole paragraphs of the most provoking and unprovoked personal vituperation at the heads of all and sundry who presumed to think or write or speak otherwise."

So far Dr. Lang. With every feeling of respect for the reverend gentleman's talents and character, it is deferentially submitted that Governor Darling acted perfectly right in disdaining to make any explanation of his conduct upon the occasion in question, or to apologize for "an error of judgment," which he had not committed. Mr. Robert Howe was fully justifiable, and did no more than his duty as a public writer, in "listening to the first murmurs of disapprobation," and repelling with the utmost scorn the imputations attempted to be cast upon the governor for having faithfully and judiciously performed his duty to the sovereign whose representative he was, and to the people of England, as well as to the inhabitants and the best interests of the colony committed to his charge. Dr. Lang, in the latter part of his narrative of the affair, seems to have forgotten his own statements and admissions in its preceding part; for he himself has frankly admitted that "it was evident to all parties that there was no ground whatever for the imputation of improper motives,"—that the "issue of the affair" was altogether "unfortunate and unforeseen,"—that the two soldiers "had taken up the intolerable and highly dangerous idea that the situation of a soldier was worse than that of a convict or transported felon"—that for these and other reasons, "the governor, who, in common with all other governors of British colonies, is authorized to provide for all such extreme cases as involve the very existence of the government, to the best of his own judgment, conceived this was just such a case;" that "as a punishment is intended not merely for the correction of the offender, but as a means of deterring others from imitating his pernicious example, it was the part of a good governor to consider how he could render the punishment of the two culprits in the case in question, effectual, in the most extensive manner, for preventing the recurrence of their crime;"—that "it was generally acknowledged, throughout the colony," that "it was absolutely incredible that in such a case a personal feeling could exist, or that the governor could have had any other object in view than the public good;"—and that even "the able opposition paper of the day admitted that the offence of the soldiers was a serious and dangerous one, and one that required extraordinary treatment!"

Where, then, was there any "error in judgment?"

If there was any error at all, it was the error of the surgeon of the gaol, who, according to Dr. Lang, either knew not that Sudds was labouring under a chronic hepatic affection, or neglected to inform Governor Darling of that fact, which, according to Dr. Lang, would have preserved Sudds from the scenes at the barrack-square!

Where was the cruelty?

The governor merely commuted the sentence of transportation for seven years to a penal settlement, to a sentence of working on the roads for seven years, with no other additional severity to the ordinary sentence to an iron-gang, than that of bearing irons alleged to be somewhat heavier than usual, and which never could have injured the man (if the irons really did injure him, which is by no means proved) had he been in a good state of health, as was supposed at the time by the governor and all other persons concerned in his punishment.

Had the governor, indeed, ordered the men guilty of so very serious a crime to be first flogged, and then put in irons and marched to gaol, there might have been some shadow of pretence for a charge of cruelty,—although even then the punishment might have been justified as being only proportionate in severity to the enormity of the crime and the urgency of the reasons requiring that its punishment should be exemplary.

But, instead of cruelty, the punishment inflicted by his excellency was in reality not more severe than that of the sentence which had been passed upon the culprits by the civil power, and was not so severe, as, under the authority of the original sentence, the commandant of a subsidiary penal settlement, to which the offenders were to have been transported, might, if he thought proper, and if he properly discharged his duty in such a case, have rendered it.

The commutation of the original sentence was made, not for the sake of adding to its severity, but only for the sake of changing its form into one more impressive in a military sense,—and more likely to influence the soldiery upon whom it was intended to operate as an example.

It was therefore done with great military parade, and with as much of imposing ceremonial and form as circumstances would admit; and the better to impress upon the military spectators the hopelessness of their ever escaping from their military obligation by the perpetration of crime, it was judiciously announced that the prisoners, after the expiry of their seven years' sentence, should be compelled again to serve in the ranks, which it was their object to desert.

Nothing, in short, could have been more judicious or better calculated to effect its purposes, than the change of sentence made by the governor,—a change ordered by "judgment with mercy" towards culprits, who, by the articles of war, had forfeited their very lives, if the case had been thought to require that sacrifice.

It must be borne in mind, too, that the military part of the offence, that is, the commission of a crime for the purpose of escaping from their military obligation, was only discovered "during the trial" of the criminals before the civil power. Had that intention been known sooner, it is probable that the offenders would have been tried in the first instance by court-martial,—when, considering the peculiar nature of their offence, in a country so peculiarly circumstanced as New South Wales is, and in which their crime was so peculiarly flagrant and dangerous, no infliction of military punishment would have been deemed too severe, or too great for the enormity of the offence, and for the necessity of making an example calculated to prevent its repetition.

As for the twaddle about Governor Darling having improperly interfered with the due course of law, it is very properly stated by Dr. Lang that his excellency was empowered to treat any extraordinary case according to his own judgment and discretion; and that, as he did consider the case both extraordinary and dangerous, and even the "able opposition paper of the day admitted that the offence of the soldiers was a serious and dangerous offence, and one that required extraordinary treatment," it follows that there was no interference with the due course of law; for his duty required, and the law authorized, his excellency to act as he did; and it was therefore "the part of a good governor to consider how he could render the punishment effectual!"

In short, the case altogether admits not of one moment of doubt in any impartial and unprejudiced mind. The fatal result as to the prisoner Sudds was "unfortunate and unforeseen," and was caused, not by his punishment, but by the long-standing disease of his liver, chronic affections of which, though they are aggravated by mental depression, are often unknown to the patients themselves, and appear, in Sudds's case, to have escaped the notice even of the surgeon of the gaol.

But, although General Darling's conduct in this affair was not only blameless, but highly praiseworthy,—although it was sanctioned by the law officers of the crown,—although he was honourably acquitted by the home government and by a rigorous parliamentary inquest, and was honoured with the dignity of knighthood by the King,—yet was the death of Sudds basely employed by the unprincipled demagogues of the colony as a means of inflicting incessant annoyance and mental torture upon his excellency throughout the ensuing years of his administration.

Independently of the virulence of the editors of the opposition papers, and of the systematic hostility of Mr. Wentworth and his confederate leaders of the convict and emancipist faction, two individuals made themselves particularly obnoxious by the injustice and the virulence of their attacks upon his excellency.

These were Mr. John Stephens (of whom further mention is made in a subsequent portion of this work), and Captain Robertson, of the veteran corps, the husband of Stephens's sister. Robertson wholly devoted himself to Stephens's views, and appeared to make it his entire study to find means of annoying the governor.

As to Sudds's case, though the irons,—which he wore only for a very few days, and that, too, not at labour, but in the gaol, and from which he was freed as soon as it was reported he was ill,—though the irons were in reality very little heavier than those usually put upon convicts sentenced to iron-gangs, and only so much heavier as their peculiar construction required,—Robertson, for the sake of giving stage effect to his workings upon the popular feeling, actually had the irons put upon himself; and then made the most exaggerated declarations as to their weight, and their effect upon the constitution and health of any man who should be doomed to wear them.

Robertson continued his very reprehensible misconduct so violently and so long, that at last he actually drove the governor to bring him before a court-martial, by which he was cashiered.

Sir Ralph Darling, in short, was assailed in every possible way; and, to crown the whole, the chief leader of the colonial liberals, Mr. Wentworth, being a lawyer, drew up what he called a formal "impeachment" of his excellency! This he caused to be delivered by an attorney, with mock legal formality and ludicrous solemnity, at government-house—boasting that he would never lose sight of the governor,—that he would follow him to England,—would there drag him to the bar of the House of Commons,—and would finally bring upon him an ignominious death! It is not enough to say that these ungentlemanly expressions and threats, uttered against a man of General Darling's high character and upright public conduct, were disgusting:—they were absolutely atrocious, and were more befitting an assassin than a political adversary.

The result of the investigation into the governor's conduct, which ensued, was, however, so completely exculpatory, that Lord Howick, the then under secretary of state for the colonies, and himself, as the reader is aware, a whig and an advocate of reform, declared in the House of Commons, that the accusations against General Darling had not been supported by the slightest shadow of evidence. A committee of the House, after a long and searching investigation and examination of witnesses, pronounced a similar judgment of acquittal. And, His Majesty, to confirm the whole, and as a mark of the royal approbation of his services, was pleased to confer upon his excellency the honour of knighthood.

General Darling was thus most honourably exculpated by the home government and the legislature, and was rewarded with distinction by the King, although Mr. Wentworth and others had strained every nerve to attempt making out a case against him.

The utter failure of the endeavours of his enemies, either to sully his reputation, or to substantiate a single charge against his excellency, after all the virulence of invective and the atrociousness of the calumnies with which they had assailed and sought to overwhelm him, forms one amongst many other convincing proofs of the systematic course of misrepresentation and falsehood constantly resorted to by the worthless faction in New South Wales, for the furtherance of their detestable and dangerous views.

In England it would be difficult to conceive the brutal ferocity of some of the soi-disant liberal faction of New South Wales.

On the embarkation of the lady of General Darling and her family, at Sydney, for England, the day before his excellency himself made his public departure, a portion of Mr. Wentworth's gang attended her with savage yells and other violent manifestations of malignity, and, with a bullock's head mounted on a pole, a boat filled with these miscreants even followed her to the ship, and hoisting the revolting spectacle of the bullock's head at the cabin windows of the vessel, there renewed their hideous and unmanly vociferations.

The lady, who was the object of the shocking ferocity of these wretches, was only known for her amiable and mild virtues, her private benevolence, and her zealous patronage and active promotion of all works of public charity and melioration.

The ruffians who bore or accompanied the bullock's head had come direct from the house of Mr. Wentworth, distant two or three miles from Sydney, where, in celebration of General Darling being superseded as governor, Mr. Wentworth had caused a bullock to be roasted entire, with which, and an approprite deluge of rum, he regaled a multitude of his gang. They became so uproarious and turbulent, that even Mr. Wentworth was under the necessity of barricading himself within a portion of his own house, which some of his patriotic friends and supporters took the opportunity of robbing of a quantity of plate and other property, while another division of his adherents, seizing upon the ghastly head of the roasted ox, reeled to Sydney, and perpetrated the disgraceful outrage upon manly feeling and public decorum which has been narrated.

And how did Mr. Wentworth, the great colonial patriot and patron of the felonry, follow up his empty boastings and his insolent threats? His abortive "impeachment" was submitted to the law officers of the crown, and fell, still-born, to the ground. General Darling was applauded, and rewarded with honours from the hand of his sovereign, instead of being condemned; while Mr. Wentworth, after all his noise and vaunting, contented himself with remaining snug in Sydney, where he is now a justice of the peace, and the bosom friend of the real darling of his convict faction and of the felonry, his present excellency the governor, Major-General Sir Richard Bourke!

The author resided in the colony not only during the whole of Sir Ralph Darling's government, but also during the whole of that of his predecessor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, and also during that of his successor, Sir Richard Bourke, down to the month of April in 1836. It is therefore as an eye-witness, and, as he conscientiously believes, as impartial and unprejudiced a witness as he is now a non-interested one, that he feels no hesitation in stating his belief, that no individual ever held the reins of government in the colony, who was so well qualified in every respect for his important office, as General Sir Ralph Darling. It is only to be regretted that he himself sensitively felt the calumnies of his degraded enemies, and that he did not treat them with the utter contempt they deserved.

Of his having well performed his duty, as governor of New South Wales, there cannot be a stronger or more gratifying proof than the feeling he has left behind him in the breasts of all the reputable inhabitants of the colony. After his honourable acquittal from the charges preferred against him, all the free emigrants of respectability, with scarcely an exception, and including the legislative and executive councils, the clergy, and the magistracy, sent him an address of congratulation. A subscription was also entered into for his portrait, for which he was requested to sit, in order that it may be placed in a public building in Sydney, as a memorial of his meritorious government, and of the place he holds in the affection and esteem of the grateful colonists who had the happiness to live under his vigorous and enlightened sway.

Indeed the results of his excellency's measures at length extorted admiration and applause even from many of his former enemies,—as a striking instance of which it may be mentioned that the very newspaper which had been the most virulent in its opposition, was at length, and some time previously to his excellency's departure from the colony, constrained to award him the meed of great honour and praise for the measures of his government, and particularly as regarded their application to the felonry, the whole of which he reduced, in military phrase, to a complete state of discipline; and now General Darling's government is the watch-word used in censuring the measures of Governor Bourke.

What has been stated in the present chapter being the opinion and feeling of every person of high standing and honourable principles in the colony, the few credulous members of parliament who have from time to time taken up the gross misrepresentations,—the deceitful and fraudulent pretences and pretensions of the demagogues and their felon partizans,—must at length become sensible of the little attention that should ever have been given to the statements of the enemies of convict subordination and good government, and of the true interests of New South Wales, whether regarded as a British colony, or as a penal settlement for the reception, punishment, employment, and reclamation of transported felons.

The author ventures respectfully to add, that were the home government to re-appoint Sir Ralph Darling to the government of the colony, and were that distinguished and gallant person to resume a post the duties of which he so ably discharged, it would be one of the greatest boons that could be conferred upon New South Wales, and would be therein hailed as a happy omen and secure pledge of its future peace, prosperity, and happiness.