PART II. General History

GENERAL HISTORY

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. I, pp. 9-32, 373

In 1783 England recognized the Independence of her American Colonies, and thus lost the settlements to which she usually transported her criminals. By 1786 her gaols had become woefully overcrowded, and consequently it was decided to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay. Captain Phillip was selected as commanding officer of the expedition.

GOVERNOR PHILLIP'S FIRST COMMISSION

GEORGE R.

George the Third, etc., to our trusty and well-beloved Captain Arthur Phillip, greeting:

We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage and experience in military affairs, do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales, extending from the northern cape or extremity of the coast called Cape York, in the latitude of 10° 37' south, to the southern extremity of the said territory of New South Wales or South Cape, in the latitude of 43° 39' south, and of all the country inland to the westward as far as the one hundred and thirty-fifth degree of longitude reckoning from the meridian of Greenwich, including all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean, within the latitude aforesaid of 10° 37' south and 43° 39' south, and of all towns, garrisons, castles, forts, and all other fortifications or other military works which now are or may be hereafter erected upon this said territory. You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge the duties of Governor in and over our said territory by doing and performing all and all manner of things thereunto belonging, and we do hereby strictly charge and command all our officers and soldiers who shall be employed within our said territory, and all others whom it may concern, to obey you as Governor thereof; and you are to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as you shall receive from us, or any other your superior officer according to the rules and discipline of war, and likewise such orders and directions as we shall send you under our signet or sign manual, or by our High Treasurer or Commissioners of our Treasury for the time being, or one of our principal Secretaries of State, in pursuance of the trust we hereby repose in you.

Given at our Court at St. James's the twelfth day of October, 1786, in the twenty-sixth year of our reign.

By His Majesty's command. SYDNEY.

GOVERNOR PHILLIP'S INSTRUCTIONS

G.R.

Instructions for our trusty and well-beloved Arthur Phillip, Esq., our Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over our territory of New South Wales and its dependencies or to the Lieutenant Governor or Commander-in-Chief of the said territory for the time being. Given at our Court at St. James's the 25th day of April 1787 in the twenty-seventh year of our reign.

You are to fit yourself with all convenient speed, and to hold yourself in readiness to repair to your said command, and being arrived, to take upon you the execution of the trust we have reposed in you, as soon as conveniently may be, with all due solemnity to cause our said Commission under our Great Seal of Great Britain constituting you our Governor and Commander-in-Chief as aforesaid to be read and published.

And whereas we have ordered that about 600 male and 180 female convicts now under sentence or order of transportation whose names are contained in the list hereunto annexed should be removed out of the gaols and other places of confinement in this our kingdom, and be put on board of the several transport ships which have been taken up for their reception, it is our Royal will and pleasure that as soon as the said convicts, the several persons composing the civil establishments, and the stores, provisions, etc., provided for their use, shall be put on board the Supply, tender, and the transport ships named in the margin, and be in readiness to depart, that you do take them under your protection and proceed in the Sirius with the said tender and transports to the Port on the coast of New South Wales, situated in the latitude of 33° 41' called by the name of Botany Bay, agreeably to the instructions with which you will be furnished by the Commissioners of our Admiralty, in pursuance of our Royal commands already signified to them.

According to the best information which we have obtained, Botany Bay appears to be the most eligible situation upon the said coast for the first establishment, possessing a commodious harbour and other advantages which no part of the coast hitherto discovered affords. It is therefore our will and pleasure that you do immediately upon your landing, after taking measures for securing yourself and the people who accompany you as much as possible from any attacks or interruptions of the natives of that country, as well as for the preservation and safety of the public stores, proceed to the cultivation of the land, distributing the convicts for that purpose in such manner, and under such Inspectors and Overseers, and under such regulations as may appear to you to be necessary and best calculated for procuring supplies of grain and ground provisions.

The assortment of tools and utensils which have been provided for the use of the convicts and other persons who are to compose the intended settlement are to be distributed according to your discretion, and according to the employment assigned to the several persons. In the distribution, however, you will use every proper degree of economy, and be careful that the Commissary so transmit an account of the issues from time to time to the Commissioners of our Treasury to enable them to judge of the propriety or expediency of granting further supplies. The clothing of the convicts and the provisions issued to them, and the several civil and military establishments, must be accounted for in the same manner.

The increase of the stock of animals must depend entirely upon the measures you may adopt on the outset for their preservation; and as the Settlement will be amply supplied with vegetable productions, and most likely with fish, fresh provisions, excepting for the sick and convalescents, may in a great degree be dispensed with. For these reasons it will become you to be extremely cautious in permitting any cattle, sheep, hogs, etc., intended for propagating the breed of such animals to be slaughtered until a competent stock maybe acquired, to admit of your supplying the settlement from it with animal food without having further recourse to the places from whence such stock may have originally been obtained.

It is our will and pleasure that the productions of all descriptions acquired by the labour of the convicts should be considered as a public stock, which we so far leave to your disposal that such parts thereof as may be requisite for the subsistence of the said convicts and their families, or the subsistence of the civil and military establishments of the settlement may be applied by you to that use. The remainder of such productions you will reserve as a provision for a further number of convicts, which you may expect will shortly follow you from hence, to be employed under your direction in the manner pointed out in these our instructions to you.

From the natural increase of corn and other vegetable food from a common industry, after the ground has once been cultivated, as well as of animals, it cannot be expedient that all the convicts which accompany you should be employed in attending only to the object of provisions. And as it has been humbly represented to us that advantages may be derived from the flax-plant which is found in the islands not far distant from the intended settlement, not only as a means of acquiring clothing for the convicts and other persons who may become settlers, but from its superior excellence for a variety of maritime purposes, and as it may ultimately become an article of export, it is, therefore, our will and pleasure that you do particularly attend to its cultivation, and that you do send home by every opportunity which may offer, samples of this article, in order that a judgment may be formed whether it may not be necessary to instruct you further upon this subject.

And whereas we are desirous that some further information should be obtained of the several ports or harbours upon the coast, and the islands contiguous thereto, within the limits of your government, you are, whenever the Sirius or the Supply tender, can conveniently be spared, to send one, or both of them, upon that service.

Norfolk Island, situated in the lat.----, and long.----[blanks in manuscript] east from Greenwich about----, being represented as a spot which may hereafter become useful, you are, as soon as circumstances will admit of it, to send a small establishment thither to secure the same to us, and prevent it being occupied by the subjects of any other European power; and you will cause any remarks or observations which you may obtain in consequence of this instruction to be transmitted to our Principal Secretary of State for Plantation Affairs for our information.

You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence. You will endeavour to procure an account of the numbers inhabiting the neighbourhood of the intended settlement, and report your opinion to one of our Secretaries of State in what manner our intercourse with these people may be turned to the advantage of this colony.

And it is further our royal will and pleasure that you do by all proper methods enforce a due observance of religion and good order among the inhabitants of the new settlement, and that you do take such steps for the due celebration of public worship as circumstances will permit.

And whereas many of our subjects employed upon military service at the said settlement and others who may resort thither upon their private occupations, may hereafter be desirous of proceeding to the cultivation and improvement of the land, and as we are disposed to afford them every reasonable encouragement in such an undertaking: It is our will and pleasure that you do, with all convenient speed, transmit a report of the actual state and quality of the soil at and near the said intended settlement, the probable and most effectual means of improving and cultivating the same, and of the mode, and upon what terms and conditions, according to the best of your judgment, the said lands should be granted, that proper instructions and authorities may be given to you for that purpose.

GOVERNOR PHILLIP TO LORD SYDNEY

Sydney Cove, New South Wales, May 15th, 1788.

My Lord,

I had the honour of informing your Lordship, by Captain Cox, who was returning to Europe from Madras that I was ready to sail from the Cape of Good Hope, and which I did, with the ships under my command, the 12th of November. The 25th, being eighty leagues to the eastward of the Cape, I left the Sirius, and went on board the Supply tender, in hopes, by leaving the convoy, to gain sufficient time to examine the country round Botany Bay and fix on the most eligible situation for the colony before the transports arrived.

The Supply, sailing very badly, had not permitted my gaining the advantage hoped for, but I began to examine the bay as soon as we anchored, and found that tho' extensive, it did not afford shelter to ships from the easterly winds; the greater part of the Bay being so shoal that ships of even a moderate draught of water are obliged to anchor with the entrance of the bay open, and are exposed to a heavy sea that rolls in when it blows hard from the eastward.

Several small runs of fresh water were found in different parts of the bay, but I did not see any situation to which there was not some very strong objection. The small creek that is in the northern part of the bay runs a considerable way into the country, but it had only water for a boat. The sides of this creek are frequently overflowed, and the lowlands a swamp. The western branch runs up for a considerable distance, but the officers I sent to examine it could not find any water, except in very small drains.

The best situation that offered was near Point Sutherland, where there was a small run of good water; but the ground near it, as well as a considerable part of the higher ground, was spongy, and the ships could not approach this part of the bay.

Several good situations offered for a small number of people, but none that appeared calculated for our numbers, and where the stores and provisions could be landed without a great loss of time. When I considered the bay's being so very open, and the probability of the swamps rendering the most eligible situation unhealthy, I judged it advisable to examine Port Jackson; but that no time might be lost if I did not succeed in finding a better harbour, and a proper situation for the settlement, the ground near Point Sutherland was in the meantime to be cleared and preparations made for landing under the direction of the Lieutenant-Governor.

As the time in which I might be absent, if I went in the Supply, must have been very uncertain, I went round with three boats, taking with me Captain Hunter, and several officers, that by examining different parts of the port at the same time less time might be lost.

We got into Port Jackson early in the afternoon, and had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security, and of which a rough survey, made by Captain Hunter and the officers of the Sirius after the ships came round, may give your Lordship some idea.

The different coves were examined with all possible expedition. I fixed on the one that had the best spring of water, and in which the ships can anchor so close to the shore that at a very small expense quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload.

This cove, which I honoured with the name of Sydney, is about a quarter of a mile across at the entrance and half-a-mile in length.

We returned to Botany Bay the third day, where I received a very unfavourable account of the ground that was clearing.

The ships immediately prepared to go round, and the 25th--seven days after I arrived in the Supply--I sailed in her for Port Jackson, leaving Captain Hunter to follow with the transports, it then blowing too strong for them to work out of the bay. They joined me the next evening, and all the transports were moored in the cove.

Two sail had appeared off Botany Bay the 24th, under French colours, and anchored there before the Sirius left it--the Boussole and the Astrolabe. These ships were commanded by Monsieur La Perouse, who having expressed a desire of sending letters to Europe, I sent an officer over, it being only eight miles, to tell him in what time it was probable the ships might sail.

The clearing the ground for the people and for erecting storehouses was begun as soon as the ships got round, a labour of which it will be hardly possible to give your Lordship a just idea.

The necks of land that form the different coves, and near the water for some distance, are in general so rocky that it is surprising that such large trees should find sufficient nourishment, but the soil between the rocks is good, and the summits of the rocks, as well as the whole country round us, with few exceptions, are covered with trees, most of which are so large that the removing them off the ground after they are cut down is the greatest part of the labour; and the convicts, naturally indolent, having none to attend them but overseers drawn from amongst themselves, and who fear to exert any authority, makes this work go on very slowly.

As there are only twelve convicts who are carpenters, as many as could be procured from the ships have been hired to work on the hospital and storehouses. The people were healthy when landed, but the scurvy has for some time appeared amongst them, and now rages in a most extraordinary manner. Only sixteen carpenters could be hired from the ships, and several of the convict carpenters were sick. It was now the middle of February; the rains began to fall very heavy, and pointed the necessity of hutting the people; convicts were therefore appointed to assist the detachment in this work.

The great labour in clearing the ground will not permit more than eight acres to be sown this year with wheat and barley. At the same time the immense number of ants and field mice will render our crops very uncertain.

Part of the live stock brought from the Cape, small as it was, has been lost, and our resource in fish is also uncertain. Some days great quantities are caught, but never sufficient to save any part of the provisions; and at times fish are scarce.

Your Lordship will, I presume, see the necessity of a regular supply of provisions for four or five years, and of clothing, shoes and frocks in the greatest proportion. The necessary implements for husbandry and for clearing the ground brought out will, with difficulty, be made to serve the time that is necessary for sending out a fresh supply.

The labour of the convicts shall be as is directed, for the public stock, but it is necessary to permit a part of the convicts to work for the officers, who, in our present situation, would otherwise find it impossible to clear a sufficient quantity of ground to raise what is absolutely necessary to support the little stock they have; and I am to request that your Lordship will be pleased to direct me to what extent that indulgence may be granted the officers of the garrison.

The Sirius shall be sent to the northward to barter for stock, and which shall be employed solely for the purposes of increasing the breed of such cattle as she may procure. The Supply is in no ways calculated for this service, as in the least sea her decks are full of water.

The beginning of May the rainy season was once more supposed to be set in, but after a week we had fine weather.

The three transports for China sailed the 5th, 6th, and 8th of May; and the Supply having been caulked sailed the 6th to Lord Howe Island, to endeavour to procure turtle, in hopes of checking the scurvy with which most of the people are affected, and near two hundred rendered incapable of doing any work. It is not possible to send the Sirius to the northward, for she must then have her carpenters, and only three of those hired from the transports now remain; and tho' the detachment began to build barracks for the use of the men and huts for the officers the 14th of February, and near a hundred convicts were given to assist in this work, they are not yet finished, nor is the hospital or the storehouse that is to receive the provisions still remaining on board three transports, and on these works the carpenters of the Sirius are employed. I have before pointed out the great labour in clearing the ground as one cause of our slow progress.

Your Lordship will, I hope, excuse the confused manner in which I have in this letter given an account of what has passed since I left the Cape of Good Hope. It has been written at different times, and my situation at present does not permit me to begin so long a letter again, the canvas house I am under being neither wind nor waterproof.

I have, etc., A. PHILLIP.

EARLY DIFFICULTIES

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. I, pp. 45-51

The young colony was threatened by many dangers, but Governor Phillip with untiring energy and skill averted them, and with unusual foresight prophesied the future greatness of the country.

GOVERNOR PHILLIP TO UNDER-SECRETARY NEPEAN

Sydney Cove, July 9th, 1788.

My Dear Sir,

You will see by my letters to Lord Sydney that this colony must for some years depend on supplies from England.

The Sirius will be sent to the northward for live stock as soon as we can spare her carpenters; and from what Monsieur la Perouse said to Captain Hunter, one of the Isles des Navigateurs is the most likely to furnish us with what we want. But though these Islands supply two or three ships very abundantly, they will afford but very little towards the support of this colony, the situation of which I have particularly pointed out in my letter to Lord Sydney, and which I shall recapitulate in this, as the ship by which I now write may arrive before either of those that have my despatches on board.

The Lieutenant-Governor has about four acres of land in cultivation. I have from eight to ten in wheat and barley. The officers will be able to raise sufficient to support the little live stock they have, and which is all that can be expected from them. All the corn raised this year and the next will be saved for seed, and if necessity should oblige us to use it, it would be only a few days' support for the colony; and from the rats and other vermin the crops are very uncertain.

This country is subject to very heavy storms of thunder and lightning, several trees having been set on fire, and some sheep and dogs killed in the camp since we landed.

All the provisions we have to depend on until supplies arrive from England are in two wooden buildings which are thatched. I am sensible of the risk but have no remedy.

The greatest part of the stock brought from the Cape is dead, and from the inattention of the men who had the care of the cattle, those belonging to Government and two cows belonging to myself are lost. As they have been missing three weeks, it is probable they are killed by the natives. All my sheep are dead and a few only remain of those purchased for Government. The loss of two cows and four bulls falls very heavy. The horses do very well.

With respect to any resources that the Cape of Good Hope might afford, I have only to observe that the strong westerly winds that prevailed all the year between the Cape and the southern extremity of this country would render a passage to the Cape very tedious if attempted to the southward, and little less so if ships go to the northward. Batavia and our own settlements are at a great distance; and when the transports are sailed I shall have only the Sirius to employ on a service of this kind; and as I should not think myself at liberty to send either to the Cape or the East Indies unless in a case of the greatest necessity, it would in all probability then be too late. I mention these circumstances just to show the real situation of the colony, and I make no doubt but that supplies will arrive in time, and on which alone I depend. The provisions sent to support this colony for two years being put on board three ships, was running a very great risk, for had they separated and afterwards been lost the consequence is obvious, for this country at present does not furnish the smallest resource except in fish, and which has lately been so scarce that the natives find great difficulty in supporting themselves. Any accident of this kind will be guarded against, of course; and soldiers or convicts when sent out will be put on board the ships with provisions to serve them for two years after they land; and in our present situation I hope few convicts will be sent out for one year at least, except carpenters, masons, and bricklayers, or farmers, who can support themselves and assist in supporting others. Numbers of those now here are a burthen and incapable of any kind of hard labour, and, unfortunately, we have not proper people to keep those to their labour who are capable of being made useful.

Officers decline the least interference with the convicts, unless when they are immediately employed for their (the officers) own conveniency or when they are called out at the head of their men; the saying of a few words to encourage the diligent when they saw them at work, and the pointing out the idle when they could do it without going out of their way, was all that was desired. The convicts were then employed in clearing the ground on which the officers were encamped, and this they refused; they did not suppose they were sent out to do more than garrison duty, and these gentlemen (that is, the majority of the officers) think the being obliged to sit as members of the Criminal Court an hardship, and for which they are not paid, and likely think themselves hardly dealt by, in that Government had not determined what lands were to be given to them. But I presume an additional force will be sent out when the necessity of making detachments in order to cultivate lands in the more open country is known, and from four to six hundred men, will, I think, be absolutely necessary.

If fifty farmers were sent out with their families they would do more in one year in rendering this colony independent of the mother country as to provisions than a thousand convicts. There is some clear land which is intended to be cultivated, at some distance from the camp, and I intended to send out convicts for that purpose, under the direction of a person that was going to India in the Charlotte, transport, but who remained to settle in this country, and has been brought up a farmer, but several of the convicts (three) have been lately killed by the natives, and I have been obliged to defer it until a detachment can be made.

The natives are far more numerous than they were supposed to be. I think they cannot be less than fifteen hundred in Botany Bay, Port Jackson, and Broken Bay, including the intermediate coast. I have traced thirty miles inland, and the having lately seen smoke on Lansdown Hills, which are fifty miles inland, I think leaves no doubt but there are inhabitants in the interior parts of the country.

Lists of what articles are most wanted will be sent by the Commissary, and I am very sorry to say that not only a great part of the clothing, particularly the women's, is very bad, but most of the axes, spades, and shovels the worst that ever were seen. The provision is as good. Of the seeds and corn sent from England part has been destroyed by the weevil; the rest is in very good order.

The person I have appointed Provost-Marshal is likewise very useful in superintending the carpentry; the person sent out by the contractor, who assists the Commissary in the delivery of provisions, one that was clerk of the Sirius, a master smith, and two farmers, are very useful people, and I beg leave to recommend them to Government. The granting them lands would draw their attention from their present occupations.

A convict who fled to the woods after committing a robbery returned after being absent eighteen days, forced in by hunger; he had got some small support from the people, and the few fish left by accident on the beach after hauling the seine, and had endeavoured to live amongst the natives, but they could but give him but little assistance; he says they are now greatly distressed for food, and that he saw several dying with hunger. It is possible that some of the natives at this time of year might find it easier to support themselves on birds and such animals as shelter themselves in the hollow trees, than on fish; but then, I think, they would not go to the top of the mountains, where at present it must be very cold. I intend going to Lansdown or Carmarthen Hills as soon as the weather permits, if it is possible, and which will explain what is at present a mystery to me--how people who have not the least idea of cultivation can maintain themselves in the interior part of this country. When I went to the westward, in hopes of being able to reach the mountains, we carried six days' provisions, and proceeded five days to the westward; returning we were very short of provisions, and our guns only procured us two scanty meals.

I shall conclude with saying that I have no doubt but that the country will hereafter prove a most valuable acquisition to Great Britain, though at present no country can afford less support to the first settlers, or be more disadvantageously placed for receiving support from the mother country, on which it must for a time depend. It will require patience and perseverance, neither of which will, I hope, be wanting on the part of

Dear Sir, Yours, etc. A. PHILLIP.

PHILLIP'S RESIGNATION

After four years of strenuous labour Phillip was forced to leave the work he had so well begun.

GOVERNOR PHILLIP TO LORD GRENVILLE

Sydney, 21st November, 1791. My Lord,

I am honoured with your Lordship's letter of the 19th of February in answer to mine to Lord Sydney, and beg leave to assure your Lordship that I should not hesitate a moment in giving up my private affairs to the public service; but from a complaint which so very frequently puts it out of my power to use that exercise which my situation requires and the present state of this colony, in which I believe every doubt respecting its future independency as to the necessaries of life is fully done away, I am induced to request permission to resign the Government, that I may return to England in hopes of finding that relief which this country does not afford.

I have, etc. A. PHILLIP.

NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. I, p. 122; Vol. II, pp. 573-576

The New South Wales Corps was a body of soldiers forcibly recruited to guard the convicts at Port Jackson. The soldiers quickly passed from bullying the convicts to bullying the free population, and assumed a high-handed attitude towards the Governor himself.

THE RIGHT HON. W.W. GRENVILLE TO GOVERNOR PHILLIP Whitehall, 19th June 1789. Sir,

The discontents which have prevailed in the marine detachment, and the desire expressed by most of the officers and men to return home as soon as they shall have performed the tour of duty they had undertaken, have led to the making arrangements for relieving them. With that view His Majesty has ordered a corps to be raised for that particular service, consisting of three hundred rank and file and a suitable number of officers under a Major-Commandant. This corps is ordered to be in readiness for embarkation on the 1st of October next, and will, it is expected, soon after that time proceed upon the voyage.

GRENVILLE TO PHILLIP

Dec. 24th, 1789.

The corps which I before informed you was to be raised to serve within your Government, instead of the marines now doing duty there, has been complete for some time past. A detachment from it, consisting of about 100 officers and men, has been put on board the convict ships for their greater security against attempts which the convicts might meditate, and the remainder, under the command of Major Grose, amounting as you will see by the enclosed establishment to upwards of 200 more, will, I expect, embark at Portsmouth on board His Majesty's ship the Gorgon, in the course of a few days.

GOVERNOR HUNTER TO THE DUKE OF PORTLAND

Sydney, New South Wales, 10th Aug., 1796.

My Lord,

Having occasion in my letter, No. 9. by the ship Marquis Cornwallis, to notice very particularly a paragraph in your Grace's letter of the 10th of June, 1795, which related to the conduct of the military serving upon Norfolk Island in 1794, and which gave me occasion to mention similar outrage having been committed by the soldiers here since my arrival, I signified in that letter that I thought it might be improper in me to suppress or keep from your Grace's knowledge that outrage, and that it should be communicated at a future opportunity. I therefore enclose for your Grace's information a paper, No. 1, containing the particulars, stated in as brief a manner as possible. I forbear, my Lord, to make any observations upon this violent and extraordinary conduct on the part of the soldiers. I transmit only a statement of the facts, leaving your Grace wholly uninfluenced by anything I might have occasion to remark upon so daring a violation of the peace and order of the settlement, as well as in defiance of those laws by which that peace is to be preserved.

But as an alteration in the ration had at that time been ordered, I think it necessary to observe that their temper at the moment was so violent that they positively refused to take it unless they were served all flour, instead of part flour and part corn, a desire which could not be complied with without manifest injustice to others, and also insisted upon being paid short-allowance money for the time they were on short ration, which they say Governor Phillip had promised them. This last demand I must request your Grace's instructions upon.

The paper No. 2 is the Public Order which I gave out immediately after the outrage; No. 3 is a copy of my letter to the commanding officer of the corps upon that occasion; and No. 4 is a paper which was intended to quiet the minds of the inhabitants of the settlement, who might naturally (if no steps were taken to punish the offenders in this case, nor any particular notice be taken of the offence committed by them) conceive themselves subject to such violence and oppression from the military whenever any soldier might think fit to take offence at them. These papers are all which I think it necessary to trouble your Grace with upon this occasion, as the facts will best speak for themselves, and prevent the possibility of a conjecture that any unfair representation could have been intended.

I should feel myself deficient in that duty which I owe to His Majesty's service in this part of the world were I not to take a liberty which I have no reason to believe your Grace will be offended at--I mean, in remarking that the manner in which this corps has, since employed upon this service, been recruited, does in a great measure weaken the effect or service which we would expect to derive from the assistance of the military. Soldiers from the Savoy, and other characters who have been considered as disgraceful to every other regiment in His Majesty's service, have been thought fit and proper recruits for the New South Wales Corps, which, in my humble opinion, my Lord, should have been composed of the very best and most orderly dispositions. They are sent here to guard and keep in obedience to the laws when force may be requisite, a set of the worst, the most atrocious characters that ever disgraced human nature; and yet we find amongst those safeguards men capable of corrupting the heart of the best disposed, and often superior in every species of infamy to the most expert in wickedness amongst the convicts. Our stores, provisions, and granaries must be intrusted to the care of these men; what security can we have in the hands of such people? None, my Lord. Your Grace will see the impropriety of such recruits being sent to this country, and mixed with a corps who have the care of our most valuable concerns. Not to detain your Grace, I will beg permission to observe that a corps of military to be permanently established for the service of this colony, to which the dregs and refuse of our native country are directed by its laws to be sent as a punishment, cannot be attended with that advantage which may have been expected from it.

This, I confess, my Lord, to be my opinion, and for this reason, that they will make connections with infamous characters here, whatever attention may be paid by their officers to prevent it; by this means they will in time be corrupted and rendered unfit people for the trust which we must repose in them. It might probably be thought expensive to relieve them as other garrisons, once in three, four, or five years; but I cannot help believing, my Lord, that the service would be much benefited by such a measure; and two forty-four-gun ships armed en flute sailing at a proper season would complete the relief, and return in from twelve to fourteen months, frequently less. The expense attending this measure will probably be an objection; but, my Lord, although the saving to be made by it may appear too remote to merit immediate notice, yet I am convinced it would ultimately prove a saving, and no inconsiderable one.

I have, etc., JNO. HUNTER.

(Enclosure No. 1)

STATEMENT OF THE CASE OF JOHN BAUGHAN

John Baughan who officiates as foreman of the carpenters working at Sydney, and a private soldier of the New South Wales Corps, of the same profession, had some dispute when formerly working together on an occasion when Baughan had the direction. This dispute, it appeared, had not subsided in the mind of the soldier, and probably was not wholly forgot by the other. It, however, was more conspicuous in the soldier, from the following circumstance:--One day when sentinel over a storehouse, knowing that Baughan was at work in a house some distance from his post, he set his arms down against the wall of the store, and seeing a man whom he knew, standing on the outside of the building in which Baughan was at work, entered into a conversation with him, of which Baughan was the subject, and in which much abuse was bestowed which it was meant that he, Baughan, should hear. Baughan went out at the back door unperceived, and seeing the soldier without his arms, went to his post, where he found the musquet, which he took up and carried to the guardhouse and delivered to the sergeant of the guard. The soldier was, of course, taken notice of and relieved, being without his arms. The next day, 5th February, at half-past nine o'clock in the forenoon the whole of the corps off duty at this place assembled, and in the most public and tumultuous manner proceeded to the dwelling of John Baughan, broke open his gates, doors and windows, entered his house, chopped the corner-posts of it, broke his bedsteads and bedding, chairs, window-frames, drawers, chests, and, in short, completely demolished everything within his possession to a considerable amount, for the man had by great labour and industry built himself a neat house and had it well furnished.

Upon their first approach, having had a few minutes' notice, he armed himself with a loaded gun and defended himself by threats for some time, but their numbers were so many that they surrounded his paling which enclosed the house, which some tore down, and entered on the opposite side to that which he endeavoured to defend, came behind him, secured and threw him down with his face to the ground, whilst one held an axe over his neck, and swore if he offered to stir, he would chop the head from his body. During the time he remained in this situation they completed the ruin of his whole property, to the very great terror of the man's wife, after which they went off cheering, as if something meritorious had been effected, and marched in a body across the parade before their commanding officer's house.

After so daring an attack in the open day, upon the dwelling-house of an inhabitant, and in direct defiance of all law, civil or military, they could only be considered as in a state of mutiny. I immediately issued in Public Orders the papers No. 2.

(Enclosure No. 2)

GOVERNMENT AND GENERAL ORDER

5th Feb., 1796. Parole--Milbrook. Countersign--Cawsand.

The very riotous manner in which the soldiers have conducted themselves this morning, and the very unwarrantable liberty they have thought proper to take in destroying the dwelling-house of John Baughan, is so flagrant a crime against the laws established in this colony that nothing but the want of proof to substantiate who the principal actors in this disgraceful business were, could possibly prevent their being immediately tried for so glaring an offence against the peace of the colony.

The Governor thinks it necessary to assure the soldiers that he considers their conduct upon this occasion to have been disgraceful to the character of a British soldier, and that he did hope to have found men amongst them who would have had pride enough to have stood forward and have pointed out the ringleaders of so mutinous a conduct, for in no other light can it be considered than that of mutiny when the military assemble in such numbers unknown to their officers, who are at all times ready to listen to any complaints they may have to make, and to see that agreeable to common justice they are redressed. If the soldiers expect that the Governor or any of the officers in this settlement can hereafter consider them as hereafter meriting the honourable appellation of British troops, it must be by their bringing forward the ringleaders or advisers of this disgraceful conduct, in order that the stigma may be wiped away by such worthless characters being brought to trial for this shameful conduct.

(Enclosure No. 3)

GOVERNOR HUNTER TO CAPTAIN PATERSON

Sydney, 7th Feb. 1796.

Sir,

Since I saw you this morning I have turned in my mind the subject of our conversation, and I have in consequence changed my intention of speaking to the soldiers myself. I see that it would be a condescension on my part which their violent and unsoldierlike conduct does not entitle them to from me. I stand in this colony as the Chief Magistrate, and the representative of our Sovereign; anything, therefore, that could lessen me in the eye of the public would be degrading the King's authority, which shall never suffer in my person whilst I am capable of giving it its full power and consequence. I never can or will listen to the complaints of any set of men who feel themselves above preferring them with moderation, and a decent submission to the laws and regulations of the colony; they must not--they shall not--dictate laws and rules for the government of this settlement; they were sent here by His Majesty to support the civil power in the execution of its functions, but they seem disposed to take all law into their own hands, and to direct it in whatever way best may suit their own views.

Their violence upon the late occasion shall be laid before the King, and the principal actors in it shall be pointedly marked, in order that justice the most perfect be done to everyone concerned in it. I must declare to you, sir, that the conduct of this part of the New South Wales Corps has been, in my opinion the most violent and outrageous that was ever heard of by any British regiment whatever, and I shall consider every step they may go farther in aggravation as rebellion against His Majesty's Government and authority, of which the most early notice shall be taken, and those concerned be in due time obliged to answer for it most probably with their lives. This is all I think it necessary to trouble you with. Their conduct will be pointedly marked thro' all its stages, and I will be firm and resolved in such steps as it may be necessary for me to pursue, and of this you, as their commanding Officer, will be pleas'd to inform them.

I am, etc., JNO. HUNTER.

THE IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. II, p. 128

In 1795, while Great Britain was at war with France, a great rebellion broke out in Ireland. During its suppression many of the Irish were transported to Port Jackson, and caused much trouble and disaffection among the convicts there.

GOVERNOR HUNTER TO THE DUKE OF PORTLAND

Sydney, New South Wales, 15 Feb. 1798.

My Lord Duke,

I have for some time been in doubt whether the representation I am about to make to your Grace should be private or public, but on considering that it might occasion the adoption of some measure interesting to the concerns of this colony, I have preferred the latter mode.

In order that your Grace should have the earliest opportunity of taking into consideration the subject I am about to introduce, I could have wished to have been enabled to communicate it immediately.

To come without further preface to the point in question, I have to inform your Grace that the Irish convicts are become so turbulent, so dissatisfied with their situation here, so extremely insolent, refractory, and troublesome, that, without the most rigid and severe treatment it is impossible for us to receive any labour whatever from them. Your Grace will see the inconvenience which so large a proportion of that ignorant, obstinate, and depraved set of transports occasion in this country by what I now state, and which has taken place since I wrote my letter No. 30, herewith forwarded.

In addition to their natural vicious propensities they have conceived an opinion that there is a colony of white people in some part of this country in which they will receive all the comforts of life without the necessity of labour. They have lately taken away two of our breeding mares to carry them towards that part of the country and have made several attempts to possess themselves of others. This, my Lord, is a serious inconvenience to the colony. The loss of any part of our small stock of these useful animals is a matter of peculiar concern.

A correspondence, it seems, has been carried on by these people from one district to another, and plans have been projected for their escaping from the colony, and a few have attempted by land, as well as by water, and for the want of our having earlier information they have succeeded. I have found it necessary to divide them as much as possible, to prevent such schemes being formed; but by this separation they have a better opportunity of irritating and inflaming the minds of those convicts who before such acquaintance have been found of better disposition.

Having already mentioned in my letter, No. 30, the escape of those who had taken away two of our boats, and the disappointment of another gang, and similar attempt, I have now to inform your Grace of a far more numerous gang, who had provided what they thought necessary for their expedition, had fixed upon the place of general rendezvous, and were furnished with a paper of written instructions how they were to travel in point of direction from hence to this fancied paradise, or to China. This paper of directions will warrant my suspicion that some wicked and disaffected person or persons lurk somewhere in this colony, and I have done all in my power to discover them, but hitherto without success. Having received early information of the intention of this party, who were said to have increased to about sixty, I planted a party of armed constables, on whose vigilance I could depend, and they secured a gang of these Defenders of about twenty and brought them to prison. The next day I spoke to them, but observing a considerable degree of obstinacy and ignorance about them, I conceived there could be no better argument used to convince them of their misconduct than a severe corporal punishment, which was inflicted, and they have since been strictly looked after at their work. Some of those fellows had been provided with a figure of a compass drawn upon paper which, with written instructions, was to have assisted them as their guide. The ignorance of these deluded people, my Lord, would scarcely be credited if such positive proof of it were not before us, and yet (which seems to imply a kind of contradiction) it is extraordinary with what art and cunning they form their horrible plans of wickedness and villainy.

In their schemes of desertion from the colony, their own death, if they succeed in getting away, is inevitable; but their minds have been worked up to such a pitch of folly, rashness, and absurdity, that nothing but experience will convince them; if we suffer them to escape into the country they are lost, not only to us but to the world, for perish they must.

For the sake, therefore, of humanity, and a strong desire to save these men, worthless as they are, from impending death, I ordered four of the strongest and hardiest of their numbers to be selected by the people themselves, and to prepare for a journey of discovery for the satisfaction of their associates, in order that they might have an opportunity of relating upon their return whatever they saw and met with. I had, farther, for the safety and preservation of those four, directed three people, long accustomed to the woods, and acquainted with some of the mountain savages, to accompany them; these men had also a little knowledge of the language of the savages, from having lived some months amongst them, and they were instructed to lead them back when, fatigued and exhausted with their journey over steep and rocky mountains, through thick and extensive woods, and fording deep and rapid rivers, they should feel disposed to abandon their journey. This plan was no sooner settled than I received information that a party of these miscreants had agreed with the four above-mentioned to meet them at a certain place absolutely to murder the very persons intended to be their guides, and to possess themselves of their arms and munitions and provisions, in addition to what each was supplied with, and to take their own route. These circumstances will, no doubt, appear to your Grace wild and extravagant; but after having mentioned their ignorance in the manner I have it may serve to convince your Grace that there are improper persons in this colony who work upon that ignorance to a dangerous degree. In consequence of the information of this design against their guides, I ordered four soldiers to attend them to the foot of the first mountain with orders how to act if any others attempted to join them; none appeared, and the whole of them returned with the soldiers, most completely sick of their journey.

Our flocks and our crops, my Lord, are all I feel any concern about; strict, rigid, and just punishment shall constantly hang over these delinquents, and this, I trust, they are already convinced of. I hope the return of the above three, and the story they can tell, will serve to make them more contented with their present lot, and open their eyes to the comforts which in this country they may derive and enjoy, and which are certainly superior to any they ever possessed in their own.

Strange as such instances of human ignorance and depravity are, I have to inform your Grace that a small party of those very people, some short time after, actually contrived to make their escape, and after travelling for many weeks through the country, made shift to reach the sea-coast, near Botany Bay, but in a part where no boat has ever been seen. Providentially, however, a boat had lost her way in going to George's River and found those unhappy deluded wretches, on a place where they had been nine days, and where they must soon have perished but for this miraculous event. They were brought back almost exhausted from want of food, and from sad and powerful conviction have promised to warn their countrymen against such wild excursions in future.

I will here take an opportunity of mentioning that those men who had left a part of their crew upon an island to the southward, and had returned and taken a larger boat at Broken Bay, and had been wrecked upon the coast to the northward, built out of the ruins of their vessel a small boat in which they reached the above Bay; but not being able to possess themselves of another, fit for their purpose, were, for want of food, driven to the necessity of travelling across the country; they wrote to me, but it was impossible to listen to their feigned story; they were armed and carried some appearance of an intention to defend themselves; they, however, surrendered themselves up, and were tried and severally pleaded guilty of the robberies wherewith they were charged, and two out of the six suffered death--an awful example, which, I hope, will have a proper effect and prevent such attempts in future. Several of them assured me that they had seen the wreck of the first boat--which I mentioned in my letter No. 30--and it is very probable the crew have perished.

I have, etc.,

JNO. HUNTER.

THE BLIGH MUTINY

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. VI, pp. 208-213, 240-242

As the free settlers became numerous and prosperous they became self-assertive, and the most energetic naturally fell foul of a tactless autocrat like Governor Bligh, who governed New South Wales as if all were of the same status.

MAJOR JOHNSTON TO VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH

Headquarters, Sydney, N.S.W.

11th April, 1808.

My Lord,

A series of almost incredible circumstances have imposed upon me the distressing task and responsibility of superseding the authority vested in Governor Bligh by His Majesty's Commission, and of assuming the Government of this colony until His Majesty's pleasure shall be signified, or until the arrival of an officer authorized to relieve me in the Command.

Whenever the facts that have influenced me throughout so solemn a transaction shall be laid before my Gracious Sovereign, I humbly trust His Majesty will approve of my conduct, and that it will be apparent I had no alternative but to put Governor Bligh in arrest to prevent an insurrection of the inhabitants, and to secure him and the persons he confided in from being massacred by the incensed multitude, or, if the Governor had escaped so dreadful an end, and retained his authority, to see His Majesty's benevolent and paternal Government dishonour'd by cruelties and merciless execution.

The event that I have the honour to report to your Lordship took place on the 26th of last January, and although such a space of time has since elapsed, I have found it impossible to prepare that arranged detail, and that connected chain of evidence which so uncommon a subject has made it my indispensable duty to transmit to your Lordship.

Why I have been unable to perform this task, I shall, as I proceed, endeavour to explain, and I respectfully hope that the information and the evidence which I now propose to forward will prove to your Lordship that Governor Bligh has betrayed the high trust and Confidence reposed in him by his Sovereign, and acted upon a predetermined plan to subvert the Laws of his country, to terrify and influence the Courts of Justice, and to bereave those persons who had the misfortune to be obnoxious to him, of their fortunes, their liberty, and their lives.

In the accomplishment of this plan, one act of oppression was succeeded in a progressive course by a greater, until a general sensation of alarm and terror prevailed throughout the settlement. Several inhabitants were dispossessed of their houses, and many others of respectable characters, or who had become opulent by trade, were threatened with the Governor's resentment if they presumed to build upon or alienate their own lands.

These measures and various other acts of violence were projected and supported by the Governor and a junto of unprincipled men, amongst whom it was well known and has since been proved, the notorious George Crossley, sent to this colony for perjury, was the principal person, and the one most confided in by the Governor.

Your Lordship will not be surprised that a Government conducted by the aid of such a Minister should be hated and detested as well as feared.

All the inhabitants who were a little advanced in their circumstances beyond the common mass dreaded the approach of the moment when their turn would come to be sacrificed to the avarice, the resentment, or the fury of the Governor and his friends.

But whilst they were trembling with apprehension for their own safety, the eyes of the whole were suddenly turned from the contemplation of the general danger to that of Mr. Macarthur, a gentleman who was many years an officer in the New South Wales Corps, and who now possesses a large property in this Country.

The extent of Mr. Macarthur's estate, the number of his flocks and herds, it had been long seen, had made him extremely obnoxious to Gov'r Bligh. Mr. Macarthur, sensible how much he had to dread from the ill-will of an officer of the Gov'r's well-known character, endeavoured to provide for his security by the most scrupulous circumspection and prudence of conduct. Secluded in a profound retirement on his estate, and unceasingly engaged in its management and the care and education of his children, his name was never heard of in any public business; but neither caution nor prudence could long shield him from the hostile spirit of the Governor. The attack was first commenced upon his reputation, and terminated in the imprisonment of his person in the Common Gaol.

After a variety of introductory measures, which your Lordship will find detailed in the copy of the proceedings of a Court of Criminal Judicature, to which I shall hereafter refer, Mr. Macarthur surrendered as a prisoner at its bar on the 25th of last January, charged with two separate misdemeanours. When the members of the Court had been sworn in, and they were proceeding to swear in Richard Atkins, Esq., the Judge-Advocate, Mr. Macarthur presented a protest, in which he urged a variety of objections against that officer's presiding at his trial. Mr. Atkins endeavoured to prevail upon the Court not to receive or hear the protest read; but the members being of opinion it ought to be heard, directed Mr. Macarthur to proceed. The Judge-Advocate then retired from his chair and waited until Mr. Macarthur had read the protest. When that was done he advanced again, and declared Mr. Macarthur should be immediately committed to Gaol.

The Court then interfered on behalf of Mr. Macarthur, and after a long altercation the Judge-Advocate retired from the Court-House, leaving behind him his papers.

These were immediately taken possession of and examined by the Members, and those papers led to a discovery that the whole plan of the trial had been arranged, and every question prepared that was to be asked the evidence of the prosecution by the infamous Crossley.

A very awful impression was made upon the minds of the inhabitants, as I have been informed, when they saw Mr. Macarthur taken to the gaol; many respectable persons hastened to him; and when the Court assembled at 10 o'clock his two bonds men presented a copy of the Warrant for his apprehension and a deposition from themselves.

The Court directly wrote to the Governor a letter expressive of their concern and praying Mr. Macarthur might be restored to his bail. To this letter no answer was given, and the Court having waited till 3 o'clock adjourned.

When it was known that the Court had broken up without having procured Mr. Macarthur's enlargement, the agitation of the town became greatly increased, and information was brought to me at four o'clock by Mr. Harris, Surgeon of the New South Wales Corps, that an insurrection of the Inhabitants was to be feared. In a few minutes after I had received this intelligence a Dragoon arrived with a letter from the Governor, in which I was informed that six of the officers of the New South Wales Corps had been charged with treasonable practices, and were summoned to appear before the Governor and the Magistrates at nine o'clock the next morning. I immediately set off in a carriage to the Town.

On my arrival at the Barracks I saw all the Civil and Military Officers collected, and the most respectable inhabitants in conversation with them. The common people were also to be seen in various groups in every street murmuring and loudly complaining, whilst others were watching the movements of Crossley and the Magistrates who frequently passed from the Judge Advocate's to the Government House. At this moment it was also known that the Governor was shut up in Council with the depraved and desperate Crossley, Mr. Palmer, the Commissary, Mr. Campbell, a Merchant, and Mr. Arndell (the latter three, Magistrates) and that Mr. Gore (the Provost-Marshal) and Mr. Fulton (the Chaplain) were also at Government House, all ready to sanction whatever Crossley proposed or the Governor ordered.

The gentlemen who had assembled on my arrival earnestly entreated me to adopt decisive measures for the safety of the inhabitants and to dispel the great alarm, as it was understood throughout the town that the Members of the Court of Criminal Judicature would be thrown into Gaol; and it was expected after such a measure nothing could limit the excess of the Governor's cruelties; the gentlemen also warmly urged me to bail Mr. Macarthur, so that he might consult with them on the measures most proper to recommend at so extraordinary a crisis.

As I had no doubt of the illegality of Mr. Macarthur's confinement, I felt no difficulty in acceding to the request, and Mr. Macarthur being released from the Gaol directly joined the Assembly of Officers and inhabitants who were then at the Barracks.

In a short time after, a letter was presented to me imploring me instantly to put Governor Bligh in arrest, and to assume the Command of the Colony. This letter was also approved of by all the Officers of the Corps present at Head-Quarters; and as the events I had myself witnessed left me no cause to doubt the propriety and necessity of complying with this requisition, I immediately ordered the Corps under Arms, and directed four Officers to proceed to Government House and summon Governor Bligh to resign his authority. The Corps quickly followed, attended by the Civil Officers and a considerable number of respectable inhabitants.

The four officers who had carried the summons met me at the Governor's door and reported that he was nowhere to be found, nor any information to be obtained of him, although the strongest assurances had been given that his person should be strictly guarded from insult or violence.

After a rigid search the Governor, however, was at last discovered, in a situation too disgraceful to be mentioned, and which I solemnly declare to your Lordship would have been most gratifying to my feelings had it been possible to have concealed from the public. As soon as Governor Bligh made his appearance, I assured him of his personal safety and of every attention in my power to offer him.

Whilst the search was making for Governor Bligh I was entreated by the Civil Officers and the Inhabitants to proclaim Martial Law, and this request meeting my approbation, Martial Law was instantly proclaimed and continued in force until the next day. As not a single act of disorder or irregularity was committed during the interesting scene that I have had the honour to describe to your Lordship, and as the most perfect peace and tranquillity were restored throughout the whole settlement I published a Proclamation the next morning, revoking the order of the preceding evening and restoring the Civil Government.

I ordered the Court of Criminal Judicature to assemble that Mr. Macarthur might be arraigned on the Indictment that was found amongst the Judge-Advocate's papers, and that the trial might proceed on the plan Crossley had suggested to secure his conviction. The evidences were examined in the order Crossley had prescribed, and every question asked that he had previously dictated. Your Lordship will discover from the copy of the Trial that Mr. Macarthur was acquitted without being put on his defence, and that a complete disclosure was made of the plans which had been deliberately formed for the ruin and destruction of that gentleman.

I respectfully trust this trial and the confessions of the Magistrates and other confidential persons will convince your Lordship of the guilty intentions of Governor Bligh, and how little he regarded the sacred personage whom he represented by suffering himself to be guided by a wretch like that man Crossley to persecute and oppress His Majesty's subjects.

I am now, my Lord, arrived at the most painful part of my task--an explanation of the causes that have prevented me from preparing a better arranged Statement of the transactions in which I have been engaged; and it is with deep concern I find myself obliged to report to your Lordship that the opposition from those persons from whom I had most reason to expect support has been one of the principal obstacles I have had to encounter.

When the officers and inhabitants found themselves relieved from the oppressions of Governor Bligh, the general joy that was felt displayed itself in rejoicings, bonfires, illuminations, and in a manifestation of the most perfect unanimity. Even the lowest class of the prisoners were influenced by the same sentiments, and for a short time abandoned their habits of plundering. The contemplation of this happy scene more than repaid me for the increase of care, fatigue, and responsibility to which I had submitted for the public benefit; but the unanimity in which I felt so much pleasure I quickly discovered was not to be preserved without a sacrifice of His Majesty's interests, and a departure from the regulations that have been made to check the importation of Spirituous Liquors into the Colony.

I shall no longer obtrude upon your Lordship on this occasion than to solicit that whenever the representation of what has taken place here shall be communicated to my Gracious Sovereign, your Lordship will have the goodness to offer my humble assurances that I have sacrificed comparative ease, and have taken upon myself so great a responsibility rather than submit to be a witness of His Majesty's sacred name being profaned and dishonoured by deeds of injustice and violence.

I have, etc.,

GEO. JOHNSTON.

PROCLAMATION

GEORGE JOHNSTON

The Public Peace being happily and, I trust in Almighty God, permanently established I hereby proclaim the Cessation of Martial Law. I have this day appointed Magistrates and other Public Functionaries from amongst the most respectable officers and inhabitants, which will, I hope, secure the impartial Administration of Justice, according to the laws of England, as secured to us by the Patent of Our Most Gracious Sovereign.

Words cannot too strongly convey my approbation of the behaviour of the whole body of the People on the late memorable Event. By their manly, firm and orderly conduct they have shown themselves deserving of that Protection which I have felt it was my duty to give them, And which I doubt not they will continue to merit.

In future no man shall have just cause to complain of Violence, Injustice or Oppression; No free Man shall be taken, imprisoned, or deprived of his Home, Land or Liberty, but by the Law; Justice shall be impartially administered without regard to or respect of persons; and every man shall enjoy the fruits of his industry in Security.

SOLDIERS!

Your conduct has endeared you to every well-disposed inhabitant in this Settlement, Persevere in the same honourable path And you will establish the credit of the New South Wales Corps on a basis not to be shaken.

God Save the King.

By Command of His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor.

(Signed) NICHOLAS BAYLY,

Secretary.

Head-Quarters, Sydney, 27th January, 1808.

MR. NICHOLAS BAYLY TO GOVERNOR BLIGH

Sydney, 28th January, 1808.

I am directed by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor to acquaint you that the late Magistrates and other persons (who it is proved you were in the habit of consulting) have been examined on Oath before Committees constituted under the Lieutenant-Governor's authority; that from the confessions of those Persons it appears that you have been acting upon a settled plan to subvert the Laws, to terrify and influence the Courts of Justice, and to deprive every person who had the misfortune to be obnoxious to you of their Property, Liberty, and Lives. The Lieutenant-Governor feeling that an offence of such magnitude must be productive of the most serious consequences, is impelled by sentiments of Humanity to give you this early notice that you may consider and seriously reflect on the measures which may be necessary for your Justification.

His Honour has further directed me to assure you that as soon as the examinations are complete, you shall be furnished with a Copy, and that, if you think proper, all the Evidences shall be re-examined in your presence, and be directed to answer any questions you like to propose to them. His Honour has also desired me to assure you that it will give him the greatest satisfaction to contribute by every means in his power to the Alleviation of the distress of your present situation, and to the comfort and accommodation of you and your family.

NICHOLAS BAYLY,

Secretary.

The British Government called the chief actors in the mutiny before a commission of inquiry. Johnston was dismissed from the army; MacArthur was forbidden to return to New South Wales for eight years; and Bligh was made a vice-admiral.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WOOL INDUSTRY

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. V, pp. 510 and 566

The wool industry in Australia was founded by John MacArthur. Once established, the flocks increased rapidly in numbers and quality, and as it became possible to export wool, its manufacture was stimulated in the older countries. The annual value of Australia's wool export is now over £26,000,000.

GOVERNOR KING TO EARL CAMDEN

Sydney, N.S.W., 20th July, 1805.

My Lord,

By Mr. MacArthur, who arrived the 9th Ult'o, I had the honour of receiving your Lordship's Letters dated as per margin.

It will be my Duty and Interest to pay the strictest attention to His Majesty's Commands and your Lordship's wishes in every point that can advance the increase and improvement of the breed of sheep for which a better foundation could not be laid, or the Success more ensured, than the progressive increase of the Stock throughout the Colony. Mr. MacArthur possesses at least a third of the Numbers, a considerable part of which were reported at the last muster to bear Wool of the finest kind, and the rest, as well as the other flocks, are continually improving from the hairy Coverings of the original breed to wool of different qualities, principally owing to the introduction of a few Spanish Rams some years ago.

Soon after Mr. MacArthur's arrival we conversed together respecting the Objects of his laudable and, I hope, successful pursuits for the general benefit of the Colony, as well as for that of his Family, which he now regards as attached to the soil. His having bought a Ship to be employed in the Whale Fishery, I consider an object equally laudable and beneficial, exclusive of his being able to export the Wool of his increasing breed to England once in Eighteen Months or Two Years, and returning with Articles of use and Comfort to sell the Inhabitants. Nor ought I to doubt from his assurances, that every expected benefit may be derived from his exertions, as he is certainly very equal to conduct and promote the Object he has so earnestly and, I hope, successfully embarked in. To attain which he does and will possess every local advantage that a good Stock to begin with, a good Climate, and fine natural pastorage can offer.

Taking your Lordship's Letter No. 18 as a data, respecting the Land to be located to Mr. MacArthur, wherein you do me the honour to signify His Majesty's Commands that "I will have a proper grant of Lands, fit for the pasture of sheep, conveyed to the said John MacArthur Esquire, in perpetuity, with the usual reserve of Quit-Rents to the Crown, containing not less than Five Thousand Acres," and Your Lordship having noticed that "It will be impossible for Mr. MacArthur to pursue this plan unless he shall be indulged with a reasonable number of Convicts (which he states to be not less than thirty) for the purpose of attending his sheep, and that as Mr. MacArthur will take upon himself the Charges of maintaining these Convicts, a saving will accrue to Government; and that you doubt not I will provide him with such as shall appear as most suitable to his Objects."

In order to expedite Mr. MacArthur's Object of exporting fine Wool to England, I have directed One hundred of the finest woolled Ewes from Government Stock to be chosen for this gentleman to add to his own, for which he is to pay Grain into the Stores at the rate of Two Pounds sterling for each Ewe. As I do not consider it an Object for Government to interfere in this pursuit, Seeing that the greatest exertions will be made by Mr. MacArthur, And notwithstanding every attention has been paid to improve the Fleeces of Government Sheep, Yet that Stock will always be a reserve for supplying present and future Settlers with proportions thereof, which will at once save the Necessity of purchasing to Supply New Settlers who have Claims, and preserve a residue for those deserving characters who may be allowed the advantage of exchanging Grain for Ewes, agreeable to my Lord Hobart's Acquiescence with my proposal on that Subject.

The number of Male Convicts assigned to Mr. MacArthur for the Care of his Stock, etc., previous to his return, was Sixteen; Since then they have been increased to Thirty, exclusive of those hired and retained in his service who have served their terms. Should Mr. MacArthur wish for an increase, they shall be assigned him when more arrive from England; but your Lordship will observe by the number and employment Return that the Public Labour absolutely necessary to be carried on, and in which Agriculture on the part of the Crown is nearly given up, will not allow of more Men being assigned at present until more arrive.

I have, etc.,

PHILLIP GIDLEY KING.

MACARTHUR'S OBSERVATIONS ON SHEEP-FARMING

A Report of the State of Mr. MacArthur's Flocks of Sheep, with some observations on the Advantages which may be expected from the Growth of fine Wool in New South Wales.

Paramatta, N.S.W., 2nd Oct., 1805.

The fine Woolled Sheep imported here from the Cape of Good Hope in the Year 1797 were said to be of the Spanish Breed. The excellence of the fleece of these Sheep combined with the consideration of their peculiar form, bears strong evidence in favour of the Correctness of this Report, tho' it is impossible to say whether they originally sprung from the best kind of Sheep that is bred in Spain. Be this as it may nothing is better established than that the Wool of this Breed of Sheep has considerably improved in this Climate, and as Mr. MacArthur has had the good fortune to bring out from England Four Rams and one Ewe, purchased from His Majesty's Flock of Spanish Sheep, It is to be hoped that these valuable animals will be the cause of a still further Melioration in the Quality of our Wool. Indeed there appears no reason to fear but that the Wool of this Country may by care and judicious Management be placed on an equality with the very best that is grown in Spain. It has been Mr. MacArthur's invariable practice to keep the Spanish Breed apart from all others, and as fast as Spanish Rams have been reared they have been put among the coarse-woolled Ewes. The result of this system has proved extremely satisfactory, his Flocks now consist of more than Five Thousand, of these Sixty are of the pure Spanish kind, and the whole are much improved in the quality of the Wool; he is of Opinion the best judge will be unable to discover any material difference between the perfect and the mixed Breed in Seven years.

With respect to Constitution, Size, and Aptitude to fatten, he has tried all the Breeds he could obtain in the Colony, and he has found the Spanish surpass them all in every one of these qualities. In the representations that Mr. MacArthur had the honour to make in England to His Majesty's Ministers, he stated that he thought a Flock of Sheep would double itself in Two Years and a half, longer experience induces him to think it may be done in rather less time; but in the Estimate he now proposes to make, he will govern himself by the same data on which his original Calculations were made, for he is desirous rather to repress too sanguine Expectations than to encourage such as may prove fallacious.

Estimating the Sheep in New South Wales at Twenty Thousand, a plain Arithmetical progression will prove that the present Stock may increase in Twenty Years to Five Millions, and calculating two pounds and a half of clear washed Wool to each Sheep, they would produce almost twice as much Wool as England now purchases from Spain at an Annual expense of One Million Eight Hundred Thousand pounds.

Should Great Britain still require a much larger supply, Sheep can be easily multiplied to any Extent in the immeasurable Forest which Surrounds us.

It is difficult for the Mind to embrace all the Advantages which must flow from the Successful Progression of this great National Object; for if we contemplate the progress of the Cotton Manufactory we shall see that at the commencement of the Eighteenth Century the quantities of raw cotton imported into England did not exceed Two Millions of Pounds weight. At this period it amounts to more than Twenty Millions; and altho' its price has considerably advanced, yet Manufactured Cotton Goods have fallen full Two Hundred per cent. This prodigious diminution in price is attributable to no other cause than the introduction of Machinery, by which the expense of Manual Labour is comparatively reduced to nothing.

Now, repeated experiments have demonstrated that the same Machinery is equally applicable to every Branch of the Woollen Manufactory, and in truth it would long since have been adopted, but for the popular Clamour that thousands of Labourers would be thrown out of employment. "It cannot be denied," say its Opponents, "that Machinery would reduce the price of Woollen, as it has done that of Cotton Cloths, but the two Cases bear no Analogy, for when Machinery was applied in the Manufacture of Cotton the increased Quantity of the raw material furnished abundance of Employment in some other branch to those whose Labour the Machine superseded. Make but the same experiment in the Woollen Manufactory, and its fatal effects upon the poor will soon be felt; for as you cannot increase the quantity of Animal Wool now being brought into the Market, any Invention that has a tendency to diminish Manual Labour is, and must be, pernicious."

This reasoning has had great weight on the Minds of best informed Men; but if we can by our united Efforts (as assuredly we can) raise in this Colony any Quantity of fine Wool, all its force would be at once demolished. Whatever the demands of Great Britain may be for that Commodity, we certainly may supply it. The universal use of Machinery might then be safely sanctioned, and the British Manufacturers would be enabled so to reduce the price of Woollen Cloths, as would assure throughout the world the most Monopoly that any people ever possessed. We also should largely participate in the profits of this gainful Trade and should enjoy the pleasing Consolation that our Labours were contributing to the Support and Prosperity of that parent Country to whom our debt of Gratitude can never be paid.

JOHN MACARTHUR.

EMANCIPIST CONTROVERSY

+Source.+--Historical Records of Australia. Vol. VII, pp. 245, 580-617

A storm of protest was aroused among the free settlers by the action of Governor Macquarie in recognizing convicts as ordinary members of society directly their terms of imprisonment had expired. The free community became sharply divided into emancipists and anti-emancipists.

GOVERNOR MACQUARIE TO VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH

Sydney, N.S.W., 30 April, 1810.

My Lord,

I had the honour to address Your Lordship by Lieutenant-Colonel Foveaux in a brief Despatch, under dates the eighth and twelfth of last Month; but lest that Despatch may not get safe to Hand I shall in my present one recapitulate the substance of my last, and furnish your Lordship with a more detailed Account of my Proceedings.

I was very much surprised and concerned on my arrival here, at the extraordinary and illiberal Policy I found had been adopted by all the Persons who had preceded me in Office respecting those men who had been originally sent out to this Country as Convicts, but who, by long habits of Industry and total Reformation of Manners, had not only become respectable, but by many degrees the most Useful Members of the Community. Those persons have never been countenanced or received into society. I have, nevertheless, taken upon Myself to adopt a new line of conduct, Conceiving that Emancipation, when united with Rectitude and long-tried good Conduct, should land a man back to that Rank in Society which he had forfeited, and do away, in as far as the Case will admit, all Retrospect of former bad Conduct. This appears to me to be the greatest Inducement that can be held out towards the Reformation of the Manners of the Inhabitants, and I think it is consistent with the gracious and Humane Intentions of His Majesty and His Ministers in favour of this class of people. I am aware it is a measure which must be resorted to with great Caution and Delicacy; but I am hopeful that in time it may be extended beyond the line within which I must restrict myself for the present. The Number of Persons of this Description whom I have yet admitted to my Table consist of only four. Namely: Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth, Principal Surgeon; Mr. William Redfern, Assistant Surgeon; Mr. Andrew Thompson, an opulent Farmer and Proprietor of Land; and Mr. Simeon Lord, an opulent Merchant. Three of these Persons have acquired Property to a large amount; they have long conducted themselves with the greatest Propriety, and I find them at all times ready to come forward in the most liberal manner to the assistance of the Government. In order to mark my sense of the merits of Mr. Andrew Thompson, I have already appointed him a Justice of the Peace and Magistrate of the Hawkesbury, where he has a large property, and I intend to confer the same Marks of Distinction on Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Simeon Lord when Vacancies in the Magistracy at Sydney, where they both reside, may occur.

Before I conclude this Despatch, permit me to express my grateful acknowledgements to your Lordship for the Appointment I have now the Honour to Hold, and to assure your Lordship that, as far as my judgement and Abilities extend, I shall exert them in the faithful discharge of the Trust reposed in me, with the Hope that in the wide field for improvement here, my Services may not be unimportant, and that they will ultimately meet with the Approbation of my Sovereign and His Majesty's Ministers, and thereby Confirm the Opinion you did me the Honour to form in my Favour.

I have, etc.,

L. MACQUARIE.

GOVERNOR MACQUARIE TO EARL OF LIVERPOOL

Sydney, N.S.W., 17th Nov., 1812.

My Lord,

Since my last Public Despatch under Date 28th Oct. 1811, Transmitted per ship Friends, via Rio-de-Janeiro, I have been honoured with Your Lordship's Several Despatches, under Dates 26th July 1811, and 4th, 5th and 19th May, 1812; and also the several other Letters with their respective Enclosures and Accompanying Documents from Your Lordship or the Under-Secretary of State, as noted in the margin.

In the first Despatch I had the Honour of addressing to Lord Castlereagh (Your Lordship's immediate Predecessor in Office) under date the 30th of April, 1810, I stated my Reasons for restoring those Persons who had been Convicts, to that Rank in Society, which they had lost, but which, by long habits of Rectitude and Meritorious Conduct in this Colony they were fully entitled to be restored to. I have found the greatest benefit to result from the adoption of this System of Policy. Some Men who had been Convicts have been appointed Magistrates by me; Some of the same Description of Men have been honoured with His Majesty's Commission, which in my Mind is alone a sufficient proof of the eligibility of these persons for any Society. On all occasions I have found and experienced very great assistance from those Persons in the Habitual and Zealous discharge of the Several Duties attached to their respective Situations; and they act at all times as if they conceived it to be their indispensable and first Duty to assist the Government of the Country. Altho' the principal Leaders, who headed the Faction which occasioned so much mischief and Anarchy in this Country (previous to my arrival), have left it, Yet the Seeds of it were so deeply sown that a considerable part of that factious spirit still exists among some discontented and disaffected Persons in this Colony, whose restless and Vicious Minds cannot endure any Control or legitimate form of Government. The only measure of mine which to my knowledge they have dared to attempt to counteract, is this extension of just and humane Indulgence to those Persons (who had formerly been Convicts), whom I have brought forward and patronised by admitting them to my Society, but whom the factious Persons herein alluded to found it advantageous to their Interests and illiberal Prejudices to consider as Outcasts, beneath their notice and for ever doomed to oblivion and Neglect.

It would therefore be highly gratifying and Satisfactory to Me, if Your Lordship would have the goodness to honour me with a Communication of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent's Sentiments on this Subject which I consider as one of the greatest possible Interest and Importance to the Welfare, Prosperity and Happiness of this rising Colony; which, as it was originally settled for the Reception, Punishment, and eventual Improvement of Convicts, appears to Me to require that their Improvement, Welfare and Happiness should form the first and chief Object of Attention in the important Duties entrusted to the Governor of it.

This Despatch will be delivered to your Lordship by Lieutenant Richard Lundin of the 73rd Regiment, to whom I take the liberty of referring Your Lordship for any particulars relative to the Colony that may have escaped my recollection in my Public Despatches; and I further beg leave to recommend him to your Lordship's Favour and Protection.

I have, etc.,

L. MACQUARIE.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

+Source.+--The State and Position of Western Australia, by Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin of H.M. 63rd Regiment; late Commandant of the Troops, and Acting Governor of the Colony, 1835, pp. 32-37, 42-46.

The settlement of Western Australia was undertaken in 1825, with the purely philanthropic idea of relieving the overcrowded population of Great Britain. The early difficulties were due to the ignorance of conditions in the country, and the unsuitability of the emigrants. Mr. Peel was chief promoter of the scheme.

The reader's attention will now be drawn to some of the mis-statements with respect to the colony, which have appeared in recent publications. Under this head he would especially notice a work entitled "England and America." At page 33, Vol. 2 of the work in question, there is said to be, in Western Australia "abundance of good land and of land, too, cleared and drained by nature." After adverting to the amount of capital and live stock, and the number of labourers introduced by the first settlers, it is asked, what has become of all that capital, and all those labourers? Then comes the following passage: "Why this failure with all the elements of success--plenty of good land, plenty of capital, and enough labour? The explanation is easy: In this colony there never has been a class of labourers. Those who went out as labourers no sooner reached the colony than they were tempted by the superabundance of good land to become landowners."

The writer proceeds to state, that Mr. Peel (who, as he had been informed, had brought out a capital of £50,000 and 300 persons of the labouring class) had been thus left without a servant to make his bed, or to fetch him water from the river; and that, in the absence of his people, his capital had perished. "The same thing," he adds, "happened in many cases." Further on, it is stated that some of the labourers, who had become independent landowners, died of hunger, at a period when a large supply of food had reached the colony, and that they were starved because where they had settled was not known to the Governor, nor even to themselves--"such," says this writer, "was the dispersion of these colonists, in consequence of superabundance of good land." It is added, that the settlers who remained had petitioned for convicts, though one of the chief inducements to settling in the colony was an undertaking, on the part of the English Government, that none should be sent thither.

If this writer's statement be correct, that labourers on their arrival, tempted by the superabundance of good land, did with impunity desert their masters, leaving their property to perish, and did themselves become landowners, it will be apparent, either that there were then no laws in the colony, or that they were not in force. The reverse, however, is the fact--there were laws, and they were enforced.

The following is No. 8 of the land regulations: "No grant of land will be made to servants under indenture; nor shall persons receive grants who shall appear to have come to the settlement at the expense of other individuals without sufficient assurance of their having fulfilled the condition of any agreement under which they may have come." The author does not remember an instance of this regulation being relaxed; and it is manifest that destruction of property and the ruin of the capitalist must have been inevitable, had the Government not enforced it.

Equally without foundation is the statement that the indentured servant could desert his master with impunity. The indenture was binding equally on master and servant, and was strictly enforced by the colonial law. If the master failed to give the wages, food, or whatever else might have been stipulated for in the indenture, the servant, on establishing his complaint before a magistrate, obtained his discharge. On the other hand, if the master proved a breach of the indenture by the servant unduly absenting himself, refusing to work, etc., the magistrate was under obligation to imprison the servant. Also any person employing an indentured servant, without permission of the master, was subject to a very heavy fine.

Mr. Peel and his people were in this manner circumstanced. The author has read many of their indentures; in all of these Mr. Peel was bound to pay them daily wages (generally three shillings) out of which their food and clothing were to be deducted. The capital imported by Mr. Peel, though very considerable, was understood to consist chiefly of stores and live-stock. However this may have been, he found it convenient after a time, to grant most of his people permission to work for other settlers, reserving a right to recall them when he chose; but allowing them the alternative of their discharge, on their reimbursing him the expense of their passage out. As his people could get higher wages when working for others, they gladly accepted the permission. Occasional misunderstandings took place between him and some of them, and it was not till after the Governor, accompanied by the Law-Adviser of Government, had more than once repaired in person to Mr. Peel's location, that an adjustment of those differences was effected. The author has known several servants of Mr. Peel to be imprisoned for breaches of indenture. A number of them, however, were excellent men, who would have conscientiously adhered to him, had he not given them the option of working for others.

It is but justice here to acknowledge the great benefit conferred on the settlement by Mr. Peel, in the introduction of men who were not only of good conduct, but well acquainted with farming pursuits or with trades. For himself, the author feels happy in having this opportunity to express his sense of it, having had upwards of four years in his service, a family brought out by Mr. Peel. The father of this family is a man of intelligence and observation. Besides his own trade of brick and tile-making, he has a complete knowledge of farming, gardening, bricklaying, lime-burning, and brewing, in which various occupations he employs himself. Such is his industry that he has been seen working for hours in the garden by moonlight, after spending a long day at labour in the field. His wife is a regular dairywoman. One of the sons is a carpenter, and another a ploughman, besides having each a knowledge of their father's trade; and the rest of the family, down to the youngest, are training up habits of industry and labour.

Although, as has been shown, the conditions of the indentures were by the colonial laws enforced, it will nevertheless be manifest, that no law, in any country, can prevent an artful and unprincipled servant (anxious to be rid of his engagement) from acting in so vexatious a manner, that some masters, in preference to keeping such a one, would forgo any benefit the indenture might offer. Such a course has been adopted in the colony by some masters thus circumstanced. Those, however, who had been careful to bring out men of good character, and to whom they allowed an equitable compensation for their services, have rarely had cause for complaint; and, on the contrary, have generally been rewarded by the cheerful obedience of their servants.

The author is the more desirous of disproving the alleged lawless state of society in the colony, as the implied reproach is totally unmerited by the Governor, Sir James Stirling, who has been most indefatigable and self-denying in his exertions for the public welfare; and it is equally so by the magistracy, who have, from the outset, administered the laws with vigour and impartiality.

With reference to the assertion that some individuals had perished with hunger from not having been able to inform the Governor as to where they had settled, the author can only say, that he did not hear of any such circumstance while in the colony, and that he considers it very improbable; as, with the exception of the people connected with Mr. Peel, the settlers at the period alluded to were located on the Swan and the Canning, by following down which rivers they could have reached in the course of a single day the towns of Perth or Freemantle.

He has also to confess his ignorance of the colonists having, as stated, petitioned for convicts--he knows that such a wish was not expressed in their memorial drawn up in 1832, and laid before His Majesty's Government by Sir James Stirling in person. The colonists having had before their eyes, in the neighbouring penal settlements, the serious evils inflicted on society by the employment of convicts (especially as indoor servants) have firmly resisted the temptation to seek such a remedy for their wants. The extreme difficulty, which it is notorious respectable families there experience, to sufficiently guard the morals of their offspring, and to secure their being brought up in the necessary principles of virtue and integrity, is alone a consideration which, it is believed, will keep the colonists in Western Australia stedfast on that point. No mere worldly prosperity whatsoever can compensate for the tremendous risk to which children in a penal settlement are exposed, as many a heart-broken parent can testify.

It now remains for the author to offer a few observations

1. On the failures that occurred among the early settlers.

2. On the origin of the reports so widely circulated to the prejudice of the country.

3. On the tardy progress of the colony, compared with what had been expected.

The following extract from one of the earliest despatches of the Governor (written in January 1830, and addressed to the Secretary of State) will serve to preface these remarks, as it bears immediately on the first point. Adverting to the circumstances under which the first settlers came out, he thus proceeds: "There could not be a great number with minds and bodies suited to encounter the struggle and distresses of a new settlement. Many, if not all, have accordingly been more or less disappointed on arrival, with either the state of things here, or their own want of power to surmount the difficulties pressing round them. This has been experienced, in the beginning, by every new colony; and might have been expected to occur here, as well as elsewhere. The greater part, incapable of succeeding in England, are not likely to prosper here to the extent of their groundless and inconsiderate expectations. Many of the settlers who have come should never have left in England a safe and tranquil state of life; and, if it be possible to discourage one set of people, and to encourage another, I would earnestly request that for a few years, the helpless and inefficient may be kept from the settlement; whilst, as to the active, industrious, and intelligent they may be assured with confidence of a fair reward for their labours."

If, after what has been said, it be granted that Western Australia, as far as natural advantages go, is well suited for the purpose of colonization, still it will be apparent, from the principle on which the colony was founded, that its success must be greatly dependent on the capital and exertions of the settlers. The charge of maintaining a military and a civil establishment being all His Majesty's Government was pledged to, every other expense was to be borne by the emigrant; such as his outfit, voyage, and settlement in the colony.

No arrangement prior to leaving England having been made by the emigrants to ensure the advantages of co-operation on the part of their friends at home, and among themselves in the colony, each depended on his own energy and resources for his success; and the foregoing description of many of the original settlers will account for the disappointments that ensued in various instances.

Few who abandoned the settlement under such circumstances, were willing to admit their failure was the result of their own want of exertion, or their unfitness for the enterprise in which they had embarked; accordingly, wherever they went, and in their letters home, the blame was laid on the country. Thus many of the evil reports respecting it, which were current at home and in the neighbouring colonies, may be traced to this source.

A prevalent cause of distress among the early settlers arose from their having generally brought out with them little ready money, compared with their other property. This was chiefly owing to the Government regulations admitting of land being assigned to those only who introduced labourers, and various kinds of property required by farmers. Many of the settlers, therefore, to the extent of their means, were in this way amply provided; but having understood in England that money would be of little use in a new country, numbers, without questioning what they wished to be true, incautiously expended most of their means in the property that would entitle them to obtain land in the colony. However, when they had been some time in the settlement, they discovered that there, as in other places, money was needful; and on wishing to procure some by the sale of part of their property, they found it difficult to do so without loss, in consequence of most other settlers having brought out similar investments.

Another cause of depression, which has borne seriously on the settlers, has been the occasional high price of the necessaries of life. With a view of remedying this evil, cargoes of provisions have been repeatedly imported by the Local Government--the actual cost alone being charged to the settler. Even a shipload of bullocks and pigs was introduced from Java. But, numbers of the bullocks and pigs getting loose, soon became as wild and difficult to recapture as if they had been natives of the woods, whither they had betaken themselves.

Experience has shown that the system of free grants, which was the first adopted in Western Australia, is decidedly injurious to the prosperity of a settlement, from the facility it affords to persons possessed of comparatively little capital to acquire extensive tracts of land, the greater part of which, for want of means, they cannot use for agricultural or pastoral purposes. It also occasions the too wide dispersion of the settlers; thus necessarily increasing the expense of Government, and, at the same time, producing serious inconvenience to the farmer.

WAKEFIELD'S SCHEME OF COLONIZATION

+Source.+--A Letter from Sydney. E.G. Wakefield (Gouger, 1829), Appendix

The failure of the first attempt to settle Western Australia gave rise to much thought upon the theory of colonization. The ideas most generally accepted were those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who summarized his theory as follows:

OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM OF COLONIZATION

It is suggested:

Article I.

THAT a payment in money of---- per acre, be required for all future grants of land without exception.

Article II.

THAT all land now granted, and to be granted, throughout the colony, be declared liable to a tax of---- per cent. upon the actual rent.

Article III.

THAT the proceeds of the tax upon rent, and of sales, form an EMIGRATION FUND, to be employed in the conveyance of British labourers to the colony free of cost.

Article IV.

THAT those to whom the administration of the Fund shall be entrusted, be empowered to raise money on that security, as money is raised on the security of parish and county rates in England.

Article V.

THAT the supply of labourers be as nearly as possible proportioned to the demand for Labour at each Settlement; so that Capitalists shall never suffer from an urgent want of Labourers, and that Labourers shall never want well-paid employment.

Article VI.

THAT in the selection of Emigrants, an absolute preference be given to young persons, but that no excess of males be conveyed to the colony free of cost.

Article VII.

THAT Colonists providing a passage for emigrant Labourers, being young persons, and equal numbers of both sexes, be entitled to a payment in money from the Emigration Fund, equal to the actual contract price of a passage for so many labouring persons.

Article VIII.

THAT Grants be absolute in fee, without any condition whatever, and obtainable by deputy.

Article IX.

THAT any surplus of the proceeds of the tax upon rent and of sales, over what is required for Emigration, be employed in relief of other taxes, and for the general purposes of Colonial Government.

FOUNDATION OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

+Source.+--Six Months in the new Colony of South Australia (J. Horton James, 1839), pp. 1, 28-37

The settlement of South Australia was undertaken to test Wakefield's theory; but instead of turning their land to good account the colonists left it idle, hoping to sell at a high price. The result was disastrous.

SITUATION AND EXTENT

The New Province, called South Australia, which, by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, was erected into a free British colony on 15th August, 1834, is situate on the South Coast of the Great Island Continent of New Holland, in the Southern or Indian Ocean, extending from 132° to 141° E. longitude, and from 38° to 26° S. latitude, and contains nearly two hundred millions of acres. It is twelve thousand miles distant from Great Britain.

This distance of twelve thousand miles ought to be performed by a fast sailing ship in twelve weeks, at the rate of a thousand miles per week, which is the fair average running of a good ship on distant voyages; but it is better to allow something for light winds and calms near the Equator, and to say in round numbers one hundred days in all, which is rather more than fourteen weeks.

This is Port Adelaide! Port Misery would be a better name; for nothing in any other part of the world can surpass it in everything that is wretched and inconvenient, packages of goods and heaps of merchandise are lying about in every direction as if they had cost nothing. Stacks of what were once beautiful London bricks crumbling away like gingerbread, and evidently at each returning tide half covered with the flood; trusses of hay, now rotten, and Norway deals, scattered about as if they had no owner--iron ploughs and rusty harrows--cases of door-frames and windows that had once been glazed--heaps of the best slates half tumbling down--winnowing-machines broken to pieces--blocks of Roman cement, now hard as stone, wanting nothing but the staves and hoops--Sydney cedar, and laths and shingles from Van Diemen's Land in every direction; whilst on the high ground are to be seen pigs eating through the flour-sacks, and kegs of raisins with not only the head out, but half the contents; onions and potatoes apparently to be had for picking up. The sight is disheartening. What with the sun and the rain--the sand and the floods--the thieves with four legs and the thieves with two--the passengers hug themselves at the recollection that they have brought no merchandise for sale, glad enough to be able to take care of themselves. The sooner they get out of this horrid hole the better, so they enquire if there is any coach to the town--they are answered by a careless shake of the head, and so, like good settlers, they determine to set off and walk, carrying their light parcels with them, and leaving the heavy things with a friend who refuses to go any further. They ask for a drink of water before starting--there is not such a thing to be had; but the bullock carts are expected down every minute with the usual supply! "What, no water?" exclaims our passenger. "No, sir, but the Commissioners are sinking a well, though they have not yet found any but salt water; but they are going to dig in another place, shortly, we understand."

Away they start for the City of Adelaide, and after ten minutes of rough walking through the loose sand, which is fatiguing enough, they gain the firm and beaten road, with the cheerful hills before them, glad enough to have overcome their morning troubles. Though very warm the walk is agreeable, and out of a cloud of dust before them, they soon descry a dray or two, each drawn by a long line of bullocks. They perceive by the splashing of the water from the open bungs that the casks contain the daily supply for the port, and the drivers very cheerfully give them all a drink; this enables them to walk on with renewed spirits, over the naked plain, and, tired and dusty, in about seven miles more they reach another iron store, the property of the Commissioners, where they now begin to see a few marquees and huts, and people walking about. They step across the "Torrens," without knowing it, and enquire for the inn. They are directed to the Southern Cross Hotel, then kept by a German Jew of the name of Levy, considered the best house in this settlement, and here we will leave them for the present, hungry, thirsty, and fatigued--covered with dust and perspiration--and with feelings of shame and disappointment at being so taken in!

CITY OF ADELAIDE.

"When things are at the worst, they mend," is a common saying, and a true one; and so it was with our passengers. Though rough, dirty and uncomfortable, they enjoyed the Jew's dinner or table d'hôte, though it consisted merely of a baked leg of mutton at the top, with a baked shoulder at bottom and a dish of small potatoes in the middle--nothing else whatever--neither pie, pudding, or cheese; but they had given themselves a good wash, and a change of linen, and a bottle of Barclay and Perkins at dinner had now restored them to good humour.

They found that the company at the table was much better than the dishes, and that they had all gone through the same miserable landing at the Fort, and some of them had even suffered considerably by falling down in the mud; so, as we draw comfort out of other men's misfortunes, and it is better to laugh than weep, our newly-arrived emigrants began to think the place was not so bad after all. They were, at any rate, great travellers, and were determined to make light of troubles and inconveniences, as all travellers do. They saw that the gentlemen at table were a very nice set of fellows, and as they had evidently had to rough it, much more formerly, than was necessary at the present day, they should make up their minds to think well of everything--to look only at the advantages of the Colony--and in their letters to any London friends, they were resolved decidedly to recommend the place--but not a word about the mud.

The Town of Adelaide, as depicted on the maps, is the very beau ideal of all possible cities--there is an elegance and vastness of design about it, that almost makes one blush for the comparative insignificance of London and Stromboul; of Paris and Canton;--but on going to the spot, like many other works of art and imagination, it resembles the picture very slightly--it is altogether on too large a scale; and of all the follies committed by the inexperience of the surveyor-general, who is, nevertheless, in every other respect a most gentlemanlike, entertaining, and intelligent person, next to its inland situation, this monstrous extent of Adelaide will turn out to be the most fruitful of complaints. You may lean against any tree in the City and exclaim, "This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns."

And yet there are sprinkled up and down the place a few substantial buildings; one belonging to the Company, on an enormous scale--another good brick house to Mr. Hack--another to the enterprising Mr. Gilles--one to Mr. Thomas, and a couple of new taverns. The rest of the dwellings are made of very slight materials, and the number of canvas tents and marquees give some parts of the settlement the appearance of a camp. Most of the new-comers settle down on what is called the Park Lands, where they are handy to the little rivulet, and they run up a Robinson Crusoe sort of hut, with twigs and branches from the adjoining forest, and the climate being fine and dry, they answer well enough as temporary residences. The principal streets have been laid out in the survey of the town 132 feet wide, which is nearly twice as wide as Portland Place, and the squares are all on such a scale of magnitude, that if there were any inhabitants in them, a cab would almost be required to get across them.

Before any person has been ashore at Adelaide twenty-four hours, even the greenest and most inexperienced put these two very natural questions; First--Why did you make the plan of the future town so large? Answer--Because the land was of no value, and it was a pity to be crowded when there was so much room! And the Second question is--Why did you select the town eight miles from the landing-place? Answer--Because we preferred being away from the nasty sailors, and thought it better not to be annoyed with the demoralizing influence of a Sea Port!

Unless this is promptly remedied, the "Wisdom of our ancestors" will not become such a favourite saying in South Australia, as it is in the Old Country, for the town, including the park lands, is already eight miles round, with 3,000 inhabitants only. This, from persons who are all for concentration, seems strange; and the consequence is as might have been expected, that in the daytime persons are constantly losing themselves in the midst of the city. Whilst at night it is impossible to move out of the house without company, unless you have any desire to sleep under a tree. This has happened to the oldest inhabitants, about whom many droll stories have been told. Some of the highest officers in the colony, after wandering about for hours in the dark, either running against trees, or falling over logs, or into holes, have chosen rather to give it up in despair, content to take a night's lodging beneath a tree, than run the risk any longer of breaking their necks although in the midst of the township, and when day-light appeared, not perhaps more than a pistol-shot from their own hut. It is hardly possible that such a blunder as this is, this Adelaide and Port Adelaide, can much longer be tolerated by the respectable parties about proceeding to the Colony, and there is not the remotest chance that the unnatural abortion can ever come to good. Another town of more modest and moderate pretensions will rise up in the land-locked basin of Port Lincoln, along the margin of the deep water, consisting of 640 acres, divided into building lots of one rood each, which will be enough for a population of 50,000 persons, which is as many as the most sanguine friend of the Colony can anticipate for a century to come. There, under the shelter of Boston Island, or in Spalding Cove, the merchant may leave his office and walk across a plank into the last ship that arrived from England, and all the hundreds of bullocks now employed dragging up waggon loads of rubbish and merchandise from Adelaide Swamp to Adelaide Township, may then be dispensed with and go a-ploughing, as they ought to have done long since, which will save £20,000 a year to the settlers in the item of land carriage alone, and by being employed on the farms instead of on the road the Colony will not require such frequent importations of farm produce from Van Diemen's Land, to the great impoverishment of the community. What, abandon Adelaide! I think I hear the carriers exclaim. Oh no, let Adelaide remain as before, it will always answer well enough for a country village, and stand a monument to the folly of the projectors, but let the Governor and Civil Establishment move their head-quarters without loss of time, to Port Lincoln, before more money is thrown away. Every month that this measure is delayed it is made more difficult and therefore should not be postponed at all. The buyers of the 1,200 town acres would feel much disappointment at the measure, as the market would be spoiled for the sale of their building lots, but they would be rightly served for asking a monopoly price to respectable new-comers, who ought to be enabled to obtain a town allotment for a trifle of the Government.

In New South Wales they are sold by auction as applied for, and put up at 20s. each, at which price they are generally knocked down; but with a view to prevent any monopolizer buying them up, to the injury of the bona fide settler, every purchaser must sign a bond to the Government in a penalty of £20, that he will build a house on the allotment, of a certain value, within three years, or otherwise the land reverts absolutely to the Crown, and the penalty is enforced too. This is as it should be, and the evil working of the old system ought to have been forseen, but at South Australia the Commissioners and Survey Department disdained to copy anything from such a colony as Sydney and made the old saying good about advice, that those who want it most like it least. Now the late Governor, Captain Hindmarsh, was quite the opposite of this, and was most diligent in seeking out the best way of doing everything, and was not above learning even from those ignorant neighbours, New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Here is a proof.

(Copy)

"Government House, 25th April, 1838.

"The Council being about to meet this morning to discuss a subject with which Mr. Horton James is particularly well acquainted; the Governor will thank Mr. James, if he would do him the favour to attend the Council this morning about half-past nine o'clock, to give the Council his opinion on the subject.

"T.H. JAMES, ESQ., Adelaide."

The character of the late Governor, Capt. Hindmarsh, pleased me exceedingly, not only for the frankness of his manner towards strangers, and the easy terms on which he admitted every respectable resident to his table, but by his constant, steady, and unremitting attention to business. Many difficulties of a new and serious nature would sometimes suddenly involve him, during my residence in the colony, especially in reference to the native blacks, who had been committing some violences in the camp. The settlers were very violent and rash, calling loudly for immediate and strong measures of retaliation, and going up in mobs to Government House, thirsting for revenge against the natives. But the Governor on all occasions acted with a praiseworthy and becoming firmness, and would listen to nothing like reprisals on an unarmed and naked population; and while he took the most upright, they turned out to be the wisest and most successful measures he could have adopted for the pacification of the place, which in a day or two became as quiet as ever, and the danger so much talked of was disregarded and forgotten, entirely owing to His Excellency's pacific treatment. Notwithstanding his severe and inflexible adherence to these measures, in accordance to his instructions, and in opposition to the murderous wishes of some of the settlers, Captain Hindmarsh, after the hours of business, surrounded by his amiable and accomplished family, was just the same as ever, zealous, enthusiastic and humane, when speaking of the colony and its black population; and gentle and sincere in his intercourse with his friends; never exhibiting the slightest degree of reserve, parade or affectation, but winning all hearts by his attention to his guests. It is hard to say why such a suitable person was recalled. He seems to have been sacrificed to clamour; but to accuse, and prove, are very different, and in any enquiry that may be hereafter instituted, Captain Hindmarsh will, I am sure, come off without reproach.

FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA

+Source.+--Batman's Journal, Victorian Pamphlets, Vol. cxxvii, pp. 10-13, 16-22

Convictism in Tasmania caused great dissatisfaction among the free settlers; in 1835 John Batman crossed the Strait in search of fresh pastures. Melbourne stands on the site he selected for "the future village."

May 29th. Daylight had no sooner broke this morning--and never had its cheerful return been so ardently longed for--than we were again greeted by the sight of Port Phillip Heads, at a distance not apparently exceeding eight miles. By 9 a.m. we were between the Heads, with the tide running out, and nearly at low water; a heavy surf and the wind light and baffling. We effected an entrance with difficulty at a part of the bay where the width was about a mile and a quarter. We succeeded, however, in entering one of the finest bays, or basins of water, well sheltered, that we remember to have seen. Within the Bay the water was, compared to our late tossing in the boiling and foaming waters outside, as smooth as a mill-pond, and our little bark floated gently along like a sleeping gull. I shall, however, take this opportunity to remark that it will be desirable to enter its mouth only at the times of the tide running in. We continued our course down the bay, and found the country everywhere of the same richly-grassed character.

May 30th. Robinson Crusoe was never better pleased with the appearance of the first ship which arrived, and rescued him from his desolate island, than I was with the vessel which proved the means of thus opening to view a country capable of supporting a future nation, and which, we trust, will be the means of relieving the Hobart Town country of its over-stocked cattle, and the Mother Country of her surplus and half-starved peasantry. Futurity must develop this prophecy! Further travelling and examination only added to my pre-conceived estimate of this extremely interesting and extensive territory; consisting of plains or downs at least twenty miles long by a width of 10 miles, and the distance may have been greater, but for the interruption of hills more than ordinarily high, which broke the horizon in different directions. One of these vistas, which I have at present in view, cannot form a less area than 100,000 acres. Its general character presents that of cultivated pasture for centuries past; the few trees appear as though they owed their plantation to the hand of man. All the high hills are covered with grass to their summits.

I discovered the fires of the natives or aboriginal inhabitants of this marvellously fertile country, and felt delighted beyond expression that the task of its discovery should have devolved upon myself.

June 2nd. My Sydney natives came on board this morning for the purpose of assisting in packing up, and otherwise making preparations for our contemplated expedition into the interior. As it continued to rain heavily and a heavy bank of fog prevailed, and prevented our seeing any distance, I proposed, rather than lose time to go with the vessel to the river (Saltwater), and from thence take my departure for the bush. We made the river by 3 p.m., and observed that the whole of the coast at the head of the bay was clear of timber, and a constant plain covered with grass.

Near the head of the river, on the point, was a plantation of she-oak. We endeavoured to sail up the river, but found the water not more than a fathom deep.... To-morrow, weather permitting, I intend taking my departure up the river.

June 3rd. Everything being in readiness, we left the vessel about 9 a.m., and proceeded in a boat up the river for about five miles.... In travelling further up we passed over several rich flats, about a mile wide, by two or three miles long, destitute of trees, and covered knee-deep with grass, from which hundreds of tons of good hay might be made. The land was of the best description, equal to anything in the world, nor does it appear subject to being flooded. For twenty-six miles we continued following the course of this river, and found on both sides of it, as far as the eye could stretch, fine open plains, with a few trees of the oak species; one striking object was the absence of fresh water all throughout this distance. Just before sundown as we were preparing to camp on the bank of the river, I caught sight of a damp place, and, on sending one of my men, Gumm, to make a hole with a stick to the depth of two feet, we had in the course of an hour a plentiful supply of good water.... I have named this place Gumm's Well.

June 4th. Recommenced our journey up the river at 8 a.m.; after travelling four or five miles, I turned off to obtain a view of Mounts Collicott, Cottrill, and Solomon.... We continued travelling over the plains, and in eight miles again made the river. Having crossed the river, we travelled over the richest land I had ever seen in my life; marsh mallows with leaves as large as those of the cabbage tribe, and as high as my head. We recrossed at a native ford, and we observed on a wattle tree, which they had been stripping of the bark, scratches or marks of figures, representing blacks in the act of fighting. These figures I copied as near as I was able.

June 6th. We made an early breakfast and resumed our journey in order to reach the camp of the blacks, the smoke of whose fires we had seen yesterday. We travelled over land equal to any that we had seen, a deep black diluvium with grass three or four feet high, and thinly-timbered. After travelling eight miles we struck the trail of the natives which in a short time led us to a branch of the tribe, consisting of one chief, his wife, and three children--fine, plump, chubby, healthy-looking urchins they were. To this distinguished royal chieftain of the prairies I gave one pair of blankets, handkerchiefs, beads, and three pocket-knives; upon the receipt of these presents, he undertook the part of guide. We crossed a fresh water creek with good land on either bank. Our new guide informed us that he would take us to his tribe, at the same time naming many of their chiefs. After travelling about eight miles, we were surprised to hear a number of voices calling after us, and on looking round encountered six men, armed with spears fixed in their wommeras. We stopped; and they at once threw aside their spears, and came up to us in a most friendly manner possible. We all shook hands and I gave them knives, tomahawks, etc., whereupon they took the lead, and brought us back about a mile, to where we found huts, or gunyahs, and a number of women and children. We sat down in the midst of these sooty and sable aboriginal children of Australia; amongst whom we ascertained were eight chiefs belonging to the country near Port Phillip, over which we had travelled, and with which we had so much reason to be pleased. The three principal chiefs were brothers. Two of them were fully six feet high and tolerably good-looking; the third was not so tall but much stouter than the others. The other five chiefs were equally fine men. And a question, to myself, here arises, and the answer as speedily follows, viz., now is the time for entering into and effecting a purchase of their land. A full explanation, that my object in visiting their shores was to purchase their land, they appeared to understand; and the following negotiation or agreement was immediately entered into. I purchased two large blocks or tracts of land, about 600,000 acres, more or less, and, in consideration therefor, I gave them blankets, knives, looking-glasses, tomahawks, beads, scissors, flour, etc. I also further agreed to pay them a tribute or rent yearly. The parchment, or deed was signed this afternoon by the eight chiefs, each of them, at the same time, handing me a portion of the soil; thus giving me full possession of the tracts of land I had purchased.

This most extraordinary sale and purchase took place by the side of a lovely stream of water, from whence my land commenced. A tree was here marked in four different ways, to define the corner boundaries. Good land, to any extent, either for stock or tillage, with good water was here in abundance, ready for sheep, cattle, or the plough. Our negotiation was terminated by my Sydney natives giving our newly-acquired friends a grand corroborree at night, much to their delight. The group consisted, altogether, of forty-five men, women, and children.

Sunday, June 7th. I awoke this morning with the agreeable consciousness of my being able, like Alexander Selkirk, of school-boy memory, to say: "I am monarch of all I survey; my right there is none to dispute." With a view, however, of securing this right more permanently, I busied myself with drawing up triplicates of the deeds of the land I had purchased, and in delivering over to the natives more property. This was done on the banks of the lovely little creek which I have named Batman's Creek, as a memento of the novel and interesting transaction occurring on its banks. After the purchase and payment at the conclusion of the preliminaries, I had made preparation for departing, when two of the principal chiefs approached, and laid their royal mantles at my feet, begging my acceptance of them. Upon my acquiescing, the gifts were placed around my neck and over my shoulders by the noble donors, who seemed much pleased at their share in the transaction, and begged of me to walk a pace or two in their (now my) princely vestments. I asked them to accompany me to the vessel, to which request I received a rather feeling reply, by their pointing, first to their children, and next to their own naked feet, importing that they could not walk so fast as ourselves, but would come down in a few day. In the course of the late transaction, I had no difficulty in discovering their sacred and private mark, so important in all their transactions, and universally respected. I obtained a knowledge of this mark by means of one of my Sydney natives, Bungit, who, going behind a tree, out of sight of the females made the Sydney aboriginal mark. I afterwards took two others of my natives, and the principal chief of Port Phillip to whom I showed the mark on the tree, which he instantly recognized, and pointed, also, to the knocking out of the front tooth. This mark is always made simultaneously with the loss or extraction of the tooth. I requested the chief through the interpretation of my Sydney natives, to give the imprint of his mark. After a few minutes hesitation, he took a tomahawk and did as he was desired, on the bark of a tree. A copy of this mark is attached to the deed, as the signature and seal of their country.

About 10 a.m. I took my departure from these interesting people. The principal chief could not be less than six feet four inches high, and his proportions gigantic; his brother six feet two inches, also a fine man. I recrossed Batman's Creek, and travelled over thinly-timbered country of box, gum, wattle, and she-oak, with grass three of four feet high. Travelling twelve miles down we came, subsequently, upon a thinly-timbered forest of gum, wattle and oak. Here, for the first time, the land became sandy, with a little gravel. The grass was ten inches high, and resembled a field of wheat. We have not seen the slightest appearance of frost. After leaving this forest, we came upon the river I had gone up a few days before. Intending to come down on the opposite side and hail the vessel, I crossed on the banks of the river, a large marsh, one mile and a half broad by three or four long, of the richest diluvium; not a tree was to be seen. Having crossed this marsh we passed through a dense tea-tree scrub, very high, expecting to make the vessel in the course of an hour or two, but, to our great surprise, when we got through, we found ourselves on the banks of a much larger river than the one we had originally gone up.

As it was now near sundown, and at least two days would be required to head the river, I decided upon allowing two of my Sydney natives to swim across it, and go to the vessel, distant about seven miles, to fetch the boat. Bullet and Bungit started on this enterprise, and returned in about three hours from the time of their departure. Their return with the boat was most opportune as we had got on the point of junction of the two rivers, where the tide had set in, and was already up to my ankles. I first despatched the party with the dogs in the boat to the opposite bank, and, on the return of the boat, myself and old Bull, who had cut his foot, went in first-rate style, to the vessel. I hope my travelling on foot will terminate, at least for some time. I had now accomplished a most arduous undertaking, and, in order to secure the fruits of my exertions I intend leaving Gumm, Dodds, Thomson, and three of my Sydney natives--Bungit, Bullet, and old Bull--as overseers and bailiffs of my newly acquired territory, and of the possession of which nothing short of a premature disclosure of my discovery on the part of my companions, can possibly deprive me. These people I intend leaving at Indented Heads, as my head depot, with a supply of necessaries for at least three months. The chiefs of the Port Phillip tribe made me a present of three stone tomahawks, some spears, wommeras, boomerangs, and other weapons of warfare.

June 8th. This morning the winds set in foul for Indented Heads, and, having made several attempts to get out of the river, we gave it up as hopeless. We went in the boat, up the large river coming from the east, and after examination six miles up, I was pleased to find the water quite fresh and very deep. This will be the place for the future village.

TRANSPORTATION

+Source.+--Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation (Molesworth, 1838), pp. 8-10, 31-33, 43

As Australia was shown to offer greater and greater attractions to free settlers the agitation against transportation increased. In 1838 the British Government appointed a Select Committee to inquire into and report upon the whole system. Their verdict is given below.

To plant a colony, and to form a new society, has ever been an arduous task. In addition to the natural difficulties arising from ignorance of the nature of the soil, and of the climate of a new country, the first settlers have generally had to contend with innumerable obstacles, which only undaunted patience, firmness of mind, and constancy of purpose, could overcome. But, whatever the amount of difficulties attendant on the foundations of colonies, those difficulties were greatly augmented, in New South Wales, by the character of the first settlers. The offenders who were transported in the past century to America, were sent to communities the bulk of whose population were men of thrift and probity; the children of improvidence were dropped in by driblets amongst the mass of a population already formed, and were absorbed and assimilated as they were dropped in. They were scattered and separated from each other; some acquired habits of honest industry, and all, if not reformed by their punishment, were not certain to be demoralized by it. In New South Wales, on the contrary, the community was composed of the very dregs of society; of men, proved by experience to be unfit to be at large in any society, and who were sent from the British gaols, and turned loose to mix with one another in the desert, together with a few task-masters, who were to set them to work in the open wilderness; and with the military, who were to keep them from revolt. The consequences of this strange assemblage were vice, immorality, frightful disease, hunger, dreadful mortality among the settlers; the convicts were decimated by pestilence on the voyage, and again decimated by famine on their arrival; and the most hideous cruelty was practised towards the unfortunate natives. Such is the early history of New South Wales.

After sentence of transportation has been passed, convicts are sent to the hulks or gaols, where they remain till the period of their departure arrives. On board convict vessels the convicts are under the sole control of the surgeon-superintendent, who is furnished with instructions, as to his conduct, from the Admiralty. The precautions which have been taken against disease, and the better discipline now preserved in these ships, have applied an effectual remedy to the physical evils of the long voyage to Australia, and prevented the mortality amongst the prisoners which prevailed to a fearful extent during the earlier periods of transportation. Little diminution, however, has taken place in those moral evils, which seem to be the necessary consequences of the close contact and communication between so many criminals, both during the period of confinement previous to embarkation, and during the weariness of a long voyage.

As soon as a convict vessel reaches its place of destination, a report is made by the surgeon-superintendent to the governor. A day is then appointed for the colonial secretary or for his deputy to go on board to muster the convicts, and to hear their complaints, if they have any to make. The male convicts are subsequently removed to the convict barracks; the females to the penitentiaries. In New South Wales, however, regulations have lately been established, by which, in most cases, female convicts are enabled to proceed at once from the ship to private service. It is the duty of an officer, called the principal superintendent of convicts, to classify the newly-arrived convicts, the greater portion of whom are distributed amongst the settlers as assigned servants; the remainder are either retained in the employment of the government, or some few of them are sent to the penal settlements.

On the whole, your Committee may assert that, in the families of well-conducted and respectable settlers, the condition of assigned convicts is much the same as the condition of similar descriptions of servants in this country; but this is by no means the case in the establishment of all settlers. As the lot of a slave depends upon the character of his master, so the condition of a convict depends upon the temper and disposition of the settler to whom he is assigned. On this account Sir George Arthur, late Governor of Van Diemen's Land, likened the convict to a slave, and described him "as deprived of liberty, exposed to all the caprice of the family to whose service he may happen to be assigned, and subject to the most summary laws; his condition" (said Sir George) "in no respect differs from that of the slave, except that his master cannot apply corporal punishment by his own hands or those of his overseer, and has a property in him for a limited period. Idleness and insolence of expression, or of looks, anything betraying the insurgent spirit, subject him to the chain-gang or the triangle, or hard labour on the roads."

On the other hand, a convict, if ill-treated, may complain of his master; and if he substantiate his charge the master is deprived of his services; but for this purpose the convict must go before a bench, sometimes a hundred miles distant, composed of magistrates, most of whom are owners of convict labour. Legal redress is therefore rarely sought for, and still more rarely obtained by the injured convict.

With regard to the general conduct of assigned agricultural labourers, there was a considerable diversity of opinion. The evidence, however, of Sir G. Arthur, appears to your Committee to be conclusive on this point, with regard to which he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the following terms:

"You cannot, my Lord, have an idea of the vexations which accompany the employment of convicts or of the vicissitudes attendant upon their assignment. Their crimes and misconduct involve the settlers in daily trouble, expense, and disappointment. The discipline and control of the convicts in Van Diemen's Land is carried, perhaps, to a higher degree than could have ever been contemplated. Many of the convicts have been greatly reformed when in the service of considerate and judicious masters; but, with all this abatement, there is so much peculation, so much insubordination, insolence, disobedience of lawful orders, and so much drunkenness, that reference to the magisterial authority is constant, and always attended with loss of time and expense to the settlers. There can be no doubt things appear better in the colony than they really are; for, in numberless instances, masters are known to submit to peculation rather than incur the additional expense of prosecuting their servants. Two hundred felons, after having been for a longtime under confinement in the gaols or hulks of England, and subsequently pent up on board a transport, are placed in charge of the masters or their agents to whom they have been assigned. The master has then to take the convict to his home (either to the other extremity of the island, a distance of 140 miles, or nearer, as the case may be), and well would it be if he could get him quietly there, but the contrary is of too frequent occurrence. Either with some money the convict has secreted, or from the bounty of some old acquaintance, the assigned servant, now relieved for the first time for some months from personal restraint, eludes the vigilance of his new master, finds his way into a public-house, and the first notice the settler has of his servant, for whom he has travelled to Hobart Town, for whose clothing he has paid the Government, for whose comfort he has, perhaps, made other little advances, is, that he is lodged in the watch-house with loss of half his clothing, or committed to gaol for felony."

The members of the anti-emancipist party in New South Wales attribute the increase of crime in that colony partly to alleged relaxation of convict discipline under Sir Richard Bourke; partly to the action of the Jury Laws, which permit persons who have been convicts to become jurors; and lastly, to the increasing number of emancipists.

The first-mentioned cause of the increase of crime in New South Wales refers to the Quarter Session Act, passed in 1833; by that Act, the summary jurisdiction of single magistrates over convicts, was somewhat diminished, and a magistrate was prevented from inflicting more than 50 lashes for a single offence, instead of 150 which he might have given before at three separate inflictions. These complaints do not seem to your Committee to have the slightest foundation in fact, and Sir Richard Bourke appears to have acted with wisdom, justice, and humanity in his treatment of the convict population.

With regard to the second alleged cause of the increase of crime, namely, the jury laws, your Committee need hardly repeat, that the well-proven effect of transportation is to demoralize, not to reform an offender; therefore, in a community like New South Wales, wherein so large a proportion of the population are persons who have been convicts, to permit such persons generally to sit upon juries must evidently have an injurious effect. Your Committee, however, must observe, that under a good system of punishment, an offender should, at the expiration of his sentence, be considered to have atoned for his crimes, and he should be permitted to commence a new career without any reference to his past one.

With regard to the last alleged cause of the increase of crime, namely, the increasing number of emancipists; little doubt, your Committee think, can be entertained of the pernicious consequences of annually turning loose a number of unreclaimed offenders on so small a community as that of New South Wales.

One of the supposed advantages of transportation is, that it prevents this country from being burthened with criminal offenders, after the expiration of their sentences. It is now, however, evident that transportation does not tend to diminish the sum total of offences committed in the British Dominions; it may, perhaps, relieve Great Britain and Ireland from a portion of their burthen of crime; though, from the little apprehension which transportation produces, that fact may be reasonably doubted. On the other hand, it only transfers and aggravates the burthen upon portions of the British Dominions, which, like New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, are least able to bear it.

In 1836, the free population of New South Wales amounted to 49,255, of whom about 17,000 had been convicts. In 1834, the free population of Van Diemen's Land did not exceed 23,315, of whom about 3,000 were expirees.

Of the state of society in the towns of these colonies, a general idea may be formed from a description of Sydney, according to the accounts given of it, by the Chief Police Magistrate and by Mr. Justice Burton. In 1836 Sydney covered an area of about 2,000 acres and contained about 20,000 inhabitants; of this number 3,500 were convicts, most of them in assigned service, and about 7,000 had probably been prisoners of the Crown. These, together with their associates amongst the free population, were persons of violent and uncontrollable passions, which most of them possessed no lawful means of gratifying; incorrigibly bad characters, preferring a life of idleness and debauchery by means of plunder to one of honest industry. Burglaries and robberies were frequently perpetrated by convict servants in the town and its vicinity, sometimes even in the middle of the day. No town offered so many facilities for eluding the vigilance of the police as Sydney did. The unoccupied bush near and within it afforded shelter to the offender and hid him from pursuit. He might steal or hire a boat and in a few minutes place an arm of the sea between himself and his pursuers. The want of continuity in the buildings afforded great facilities for lying in wait for opportunities of committing crime, for instant concealment on the approach of the police, and for obtaining access to the backs of houses and shops; and the drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great proportion of the inhabitants afforded innumerable opportunities and temptations, both by day and night, for those who chose to live by plunder. The greater portion of the shopkeepers and the middling class had been convicts, for the tradesmen connected with the criminal population have an advantage over free emigrants.

Those of the emancipists who were possessed of property had generally acquired it by dishonest means, by keeping grog-shops, gambling-houses, by receiving stolen goods, and by other nefarious practices; they led a life of gross licentiousness; but their wealth and influence were such that one-fourth of the jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, belonged to their number. More immorality prevailed in Sydney than in any other town of the same size in the British Dominions; there, the vice of drunkenness had attained its highest pitch; the quantity of spirits consumed in Sydney was enormous; even throughout the whole of New South Wales the annual average, for every human being in the colony had reached four gallons a head. Such, according to the authorities already quoted, are the towns to which transportation has given birth; and such are the inmates furnished to them by the criminal tribunals of this country.

Your Committee having, in the preceding pages of their Report, discussed the nature and effects of transportation, and what alterations can be made in the existing system, now consider that they have submitted the most unquestionable proofs that the two main characteristics of transportation, as a punishment, are inefficiency in deterring from crimes, and remarkable efficiency, not in reforming, but in still further corrupting those who undergo the punishment; that these qualities of inefficiency for good, and efficiency for evil, are inherent in the system, which, therefore, is not susceptible of any satisfactory improvement; and lastly, that there belongs to the system, extrinsically from its strange character as a punishment, the yet more curious and monstrous evil of calling into existence, and continually extending, societies, or the germs of nations most thoroughly depraved, as respects both the character and degree of their vicious propensities. Your Committee, therefore, are of the opinion that the present system of transportation should be abolished, and will now proceed to offer a few observations as to the description of punishment which, in their opinion, ought to be substituted in the stead of transportation.

INDEPENDENCE OF VICTORIA

+Source.+--Port Phillip Gazette

In 1844 New South Wales (including the Port Phillip and Moreton Bay districts) was granted representative government, but the distance between Sydney and Melbourne and the disproportion of representatives made it a farce as far as Port Phillip was concerned. Melbourne proceeded to demonstrate to the British Government the necessity for Separation. Victoria was established as a separate colony in 1851.

Jan. 3rd, 1848. The Separation Despatch.--To such writers as cannot comprehend the policy of the Russell administration, it is common to decry everything which they have attempted, as stupid and impracticable; but we, who deem ourselves wiser in our generation, view their conduct in a very different light, and give them credit for no ordinary talent; great energy, and more perseverance in our affairs, than can be, under existing circumstances, ascribed to any Ministry in our day. They took office at a period of great political excitement, and still they have devoted much attention to Colonial interests; and they have extraordinary claims upon our beloved Victoria, having granted us that boon we long demanded in vain from former Ministers.

The Despatch officially announces that Earl Grey is to bring in a Bill for the Separation of this, from the Middle District at last, and that we will form a Colony of our own, under the new name of Victoria. The Constitution of this Colony will to some extent be identified with those of the other Australian Colonies.

At present, Earl Grey has put forth simply the general principles; the details, he says, will form matter for serious consideration and anxious deliberation.

We anticipate some of the Sydney papers will be coming out with a cart-load of nonsense; running down Earl Grey's plan, but we will defend it from their senseless and ignorant declamation.

Monday, July 10th, 1848. Political Gazette. The Elections.

Our readers must be aware that the writs for the election of members to serve in the new Legislative Council of the Colony of New South Wales, have been issued, and that his Worship the Mayor of Melbourne will hold a meeting of the electors of the City of Melbourne, in front of the Supreme Court House, La Trobe St. on Tuesday, 25th day of July, for the nomination of a member to serve in said Council for the Electoral District of Melbourne.

Wednesday, July 19th, 1848. The Elections.

The outrageous attempt to thrust Mr. Adam Bogue upon the District, as one of our members for the Legislative Council, has displayed that we are looked upon as a refuge for the destitute; and that the opinion of Port Phillip in Sydney is, that any beardless boy without name, character, or property may be raised upon our shoulders into an office of great influence, and almost supreme importance.

We have the welfare of the district sincerely at heart, and we advise the electors to return no members from Sydney. Let them nominate Port Phillip men and Port Phillip residents whether they can go to Sydney or not. We entreat the electors not to be made the instrument of destruction to themselves; let them not elect Sydney members to plunder Port Phillip.

Electors, place five Port Phillip men in nomination, and one half of them may go up to Sydney, who would be worth a thousand Sydney Adam Bogues.

Remember that the nomination will take place to-morrow, opposite the Court House at noon. We have no wish to treat the pretensions of any person who comes forward as a candidate for a public office with disrespect; but we cannot regard the attempt of a young man of neither standing nor capital to thrust himself into the Legislative Council on Port Phillip influence, other than a piece of impertinence. We should, however, have passed it unnoticed, had not this very same person insulted every man in this Province so recently, by endeavouring to throw Port Phillip out of the line of steam communication with England--when Port Phillip wanted a friend he gave her a kick, and this should have been the last district for Mr. Bogue to make an offer of his services to.

Wednesday, July 26th, 1848. To-day's Election.

We approved of the principle of returning no members for the Legislative Council (so far as the District was concerned) and we regret that an attempt is about to be made to overthrow these proceedings, by returning a Member for Melbourne in the person of J.F.L. Foster, Esq.

This is a question upon which, we are aware, some difference of opinion exists; but, having commenced the principle, so far as the District is concerned, we ought to carry it out; if we act otherwise it will be thrown in the teeth of the citizens of Melbourne that they disfranchised the District and then returned a Member on their own account to represent their city.

There required, however, to be unanimity to accomplish this, and some of the electors having proposed Mr. Foster as a fit and proper person to represent the City; those who were in favour of carrying out the principle already adopted at the District Meeting, had nothing left but to bring forward an opponent to Mr. Foster, and in the person of the Right Hon. Earl Grey has this opponent been found.

True, did the City wish to send a practical man, we are willing to accede that Earl Grey is not in a position to sit and work for us in the Council, but we wish, by electing a man who cannot act, at any rate for eighteen months, to carry out the principle which the Electors of the District have already agreed to be correct; we deem it then the duty of every honest man in this community to give his vote to Earl Grey, not so much out of respect for His Lordship, as to carry out a principle; a principle to which we consider the honour of Melbourne to be pledged.

Mr. Foster is, no doubt, a very excellent kind of man, but having been withdrawn by his friends, on the morning of the District Election, we must look upon him as shelved for the present. Let us then return Earl Grey as one member, and it may do us more good than we can well conceive at present, as it will give His Lordship a practical illustration of our helplessness, and thus hasten on Separation.

Hasten then, electors to the poll! and record your vote in favour of Earl Grey and SEPARATION!!

The Poll commences at Nine o'clock this morning.

Saturday, July 29th. Domestic Gazette. Election of a Representative for the City of Melbourne.--On Wednesday last, no little commotion was created by the election of a member (nominally) to represent the interests of the Citizens of Melbourne in the Legislative Council, but the thinking portion of the community having arrived at the conclusion that representation in the Legislative Council at Sydney, under existing circumstances, was a farce, had determined, virtually, upon adopting a similar course to that pursued at the nomination of Candidates for the District, and the Right Hon. Earl Grey was consequently proposed as a fit and proper person to represent our interests in the Legislative Council, and this proposition, with two or three exceptions, met with unanimous approval at the meeting. After the first hour's polling, it was clear that Mr. Foster had no chance, and as this became more and more apparent as the day advanced, some hundreds of voters who had intended to support the favourite were deterred from doing so under a conviction that their votes would not be required, and the unfavourable state of the weather counteracted the desire to be present at the scene of action. It was understood that the Mayor would, on the following day, declare on whom the election had fallen, and at noon, many hundred persons and, notwithstanding the still unfavourable state of the weather, assembled outside the supreme Court House, and a few minutes afterwards the excellent Band of the Total Abstinence Society, might be seen wending their way to the spot, headed by Mr. J.P. Fawkner.

The Mayor addressed the Meeting as follows:--"Gentlemen, I have called you together again for the purpose of declaring on whom the late election has fallen, but previously to doing so I will read two protests, one of which has been sent to a deputy returning officer, and the other to myself." His worship then read the protests, which are as follows:--"I, the undersigned burgher of Bourke Ward, do hereby protest against the Returning Officer receiving any votes for the Right Hon. Earl Grey, on the following grounds:--

"First, that Earl Grey as a Peer of the British Parliament cannot hold a seat in a Colonial House of Legislative Representation.

"Second, That he cannot move Her Majesty in two distinct Legislatures.

"Third, That he is not qualified according to the Act.

"Fourth, That he is an absentee, and there is no one present to represent him--to state that he will sit if elected.

(Signed) "Sidney Stephen, Barrister-at-law."

The Mayor remarked that these protests were very respectably signed, and were deserving of attention, but although they were signed by numerous lawyers he believed he was relieved of all difficulty on the subject by being guided by the 96th clause of the Constitutional Act which rendered it imperative that all complaints of this nature must be addressed in the form of a petition to the Governor and must be addressed by one of the candidates, or one-tenth of the whole of the electors. Several other authorities were then referred to by His Worship, who expressed himself thoroughly satisfied as to the course he ought to pursue, and announced the following as the final state of the Poll in the Respective Wards.

WARDS GREY FOSTER Gipps Ward . . 50 . . 17 La Trobe Ward . . 102 . . 15 Bourke Ward . . 43 . . 32 Lonsdale Ward . . 100 . . 28 __ __ 295 92

leaving a majority for Earl Grey of 203, who was declared amidst enthusiastic cheering, to be duly elected as a member of the Legislative Council for the Electoral District of the City of Melbourne.

GOLD

+Source.+--A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53 (Mrs. Charles Clacy), pp. 19-29, 82-85

Gold was discovered in Australia at a time when the people of every nation in Europe were demanding a greater share in their respective governments. Many who immigrated in search of gold took a leading part in making the Australian Governments democratic.

Melbourne, 1852.--The non-arrival of the Mail-steamer left us now no other care save the all-important one of procuring food and shelter. Scouts were accordingly despatched to the best hotels; they returned with long faces--"full." The second-rate, and in fact every respectable inn and boarding or lodging-house were tried, but with no better success. Here and there, a solitary bed could be obtained, but for our digging-party entire, which consisted of my brother, four shipmates, and myself, no accommodation could be procured, and we wished, if possible, to keep together. "It's a case," ejaculated one. At this moment the two last searchers approached, their countenances not quite so woebegone as before. "Well?" exclaimed we all in chorus, as we surrounded them, too impatient to interrogate at greater length. Thank Heavens! they had been successful! The housekeeper of a surgeon, who with his wife had just gone up to Forest Creek, would receive us to board and lodge for thirty shillings a week each: but as the accommodation was of the indifferent order, it was not yet as une affaire arrangée. On farther inquiry, we found the indifferent accommodation consisted in there being but one small sleeping-room for the gentlemen, and myself to share the bed and apartment of the temporary mistress. This was vastly superior to gipsying in the dirty streets, so we lost no time in securing our new berths; and ere very long, with appetites undiminished by these petty anxieties, we did ample justice to the dinner which our really kindly hostess quickly placed before us.

The first night on shore after so long a voyage could scarcely seem otherwise than strange, one missed the eternal rocking at which so many grumble on board ship. Dogs (Melbourne is full of them) kept up an incessant barking; revolvers were cracking in all directions till daybreak, giving one a pleasant idea of the state of society. The next few days were busy ones for all, though rather dismal to me, as I was confined almost entirely indoors, owing to the awful state of the streets; for in the colonies, at this season of the year, one may go out prepared for fine weather, with blue sky above, and dry underfoot, and in less than an hour, should a colonial shower come on, be unable to cross some of the streets without a plank being placed from the middle of the road to the pathway, or the alternative of walking in water up to the knees.

Our party, on returning to the ship the day after our arrival, witnessed the French-leave-taking of all her crew, who, during the absence of the Captain, jumped overboard, and were quickly picked up and landed by the various boats about. This desertion of the ships by the sailors is an every-day occurrence; the diggings themselves, or the large amount they could obtain for the run home from another master, offer too many temptations. Consequently, our passengers had the amusement of hauling up from the hold their different goods and chattels; and so great was the confusion, that fully a week elapsed before they were all got to shore. Meanwhile, we were getting initiated into colonial prices--money did, indeed, take to itself wings and fly away. Fire-arms were at a premium; one instance will suffice--my brother sold a six-barrelled revolver for which he had given sixty shillings at Baker's, in Fleet Street, for sixteen pounds, and the parting with it at that price was looked upon as a great favour. Imagine boots, and they were very second-rate ones, at four pounds a pair. One of our between-deck passengers who had speculated with a small capital of forty pounds in boots and cutlery, told me afterwards that he had disposed of them the same evening he landed at a net profit of ninety pounds--no trifling addition to a poor man's purse. Labour was at a very high price, carpenters, boot and shoe makers, tailors, wheelwrights, joiners, smiths, glaziers, and, in fact, all useful trades, were earning from twenty to thirty shillings a day--the very men working on the roads could get eleven shillings per diem, and many a gentleman in this disarranged state of affairs, was glad to fling old habits aside and turn his hand to whatever came readiest. I knew one in particular, whose brother is at this moment serving as a Colonel in the army in India, a man more fitted for a gay London life than a residence in the Colonies. The diggings were too dirty and uncivilized for his taste, his capital was quickly dwindling away beneath the expenses of the comfortable life he led at one of the best hotels in town, so he turned to what as a boy he had learnt as an amusement, and obtained an addition to his income, of more than four hundred pounds a year as house carpenter. In the morning you might see him trudging off to his work, and before night might meet him at some ball or soirée among the elite of Melbourne.

I shall not attempt an elaborate description of the town of Melbourne, or its neighbouring villages. The town is very well laid out; the streets (which are all straight, running parallel with and across one another) are very wide, but are incomplete, not lighted, and many are unpaved. Owing to the want of lamps, few, except when full moon, dare stir out after dark. Some of the shops are very fair; but the goods all partake too largely of the flash order, for the purpose of suiting the tastes of successful diggers, their wives, and families; it is ludicrous to see them in the shops--men who before the gold-mines were discovered toiled hard for their daily bread taking off half-a-dozen thick gold rings from their fingers, and trying to pull on to their rough, well-hardened hands the best white kids, to be worn at some wedding party, whilst the wife, proud of the novel ornament, descants on the folly of hiding them beneath such useless articles as gloves.

The walking inhabitants are of themselves a study; glance into the streets--all nations, classes, and costumes are represented there. Chinamen, with pigtails and loose trousers; aborigines, with a solitary blanket flung over them; Vandemonian pick-pockets, with cunning eyes and light fingers--all, in fact, from the successful digger in his blue serge shirt, and with green veil still hanging round his wideawake, to the fashionably attired, newly-arrived "gent" from London, who stares round him in amazement and disgust. You may see, and hear too, some thoroughly colonial scenes in the streets. Once, in the middle of the day, when passing up Elizabeth Street, I heard the unmistakable sound of a mob behind, and as it was gaining upon me, I turned into the enclosed ground in front of the Roman Catholic Cathedral to keep out of the way of the crowd. A man had been taken up for horse-stealing, and a rare ruffianly set of both sexes were following the prisoner and the two policemen who had him in charge. "If but six of ye were of my mind," shouted one, "it's this moment you'd release him." The crowd took the hint, and to it they set with right good will, yelling, swearing, and pushing with awful violence. The owner of the stolen horse got up a counter demonstration, and every few yards the procession was delayed by a trial of strength between the two parties. Ultimately, the police conquered; but this is not always the case, and often lives are lost and limbs broken in the struggle, so weak is the force maintained by the colonial government for the preservation of order.

THE DIGGINGS

Of the history of the discovery of gold in Australia I believe few are ignorant. The first supposed discovery took place some sixty years ago at Port Jackson. A convict made known to Governor Phillip the existence of an auriferous region near Sydney, and on the locality being examined particles of real gold-dust were found. Every one was astonished, and several other spots were tried without success. Suspicion was now excited, and the affair underwent a thorough examination, which elicited the following facts: The convict, in the hope of obtaining his pardon as a reward, had filed a guinea and some brass buttons, which, judicially mixed, made a tolerable pile of gold-dust, and this he carefully distributed over a small tract of sandy land. In lieu of the expected freedom, his ingenuity was rewarded with close confinement and other punishments. Thus ended the first idea of a gold-field in these colonies.

Suddenly, in 1851, at the time that the approaching opening of the Crystal Palace was the principal subject of attention in England, the colonies of Australia were in a state of far greater excitement; as the news spread like wildfire, far and wide, that gold was really there. To Edward Hammon Hargreaves be given the honour of this discovery. This gentleman was an old Australian settler, just returned from a trip to California, where he had been struck by the similarity of the geological formation of the mountain ranges in his adopted country to that of the Sacramento district. On his return he immediately searched for the precious metal; Ophir, the Turon, and Bathurst well repaid his labour. Thus commenced the gold-diggings of New South Wales.

The good people of Victoria were rather jealous of the importance given by these events to the other colony. Committees were formed and rewards were offered for the discovery of a gold-field in Victoria. The announcement of the Clunes diggings in July 1851 was the result; they were situated on a tributary of the Lodden. On 8 September those of Ballarat, and on the 10th those of Mount Alexander completely satisfied the most sceptical as to the vast mineral wealth of the colony. Bendigo soon was heard of, and gully after gully successfully attracted the attention of the public by the display of their golden treasures.

EFFECTS OF THE GOLD DISCOVERY

+Source.+--The Gold Digger (Rev. David Mackenzie, M.A.), pp. 28-31

The excitement produced throughout the colonies, but especially in Sydney and Melbourne, by the publication of the gold discovery, may be inferred from the following facts: In one week upwards of 2,000 persons were counted on the road to the Bathurst diggings, and only eleven coming down. Hundreds of men, of all classes and conditions, threw up their situations, and leaving their wives and families behind them, started for the diggings. Whole crews ran away from their ships, which were left to rot in our harbours, the men having willingly forfeited all their wages, clothes, etc. Within one week the prices of the following goods rose twenty-five per cent. in Sydney: flour, tea, sugar, rice, tobacco, warm clothing, and boots. Throughout all the towns nothing was saleable but provisions and diggers' tools and clothing. Every man who could handle a pick or spade was off, or preparing to be off, for the gold-fields. The roads were crowded with travellers, carriages, gigs, drays, carts, and wheelbarrows; mixed up in one confused assemblage might be seen magistrates, lawyers, physicians, clerks, tradesmen, and labourers.

The building of houses, bridges, etc., was suspended for want of tradesmen, nearly all of them having gone to the diggings. Many houses might be seen half-finished for want of men to proceed with the work, though the owners or contractors were offering enormously high wages to any that would complete the work. The fields were left unsown, flocks of sheep were deserted by their shepherds. With one stockholder who has twenty thousand sheep, there remained only two men. Masters were seen driving their own drays; and ladies of respectability and ample means were obliged to cook the family dinner. Servants and apprentices were off in a body; and even the very "devils" bolted from the newspaper offices; in short, the yellow fever seized on all classes of society. In twenty-four hours prices of provisions doubled at Bathurst and the neighbouring places. In all our steamers and trading vessels the rate of passage was raised, in consequence of the necessary increase in the wages of seamen. All the trades held their meetings, at which a new tariff of charges was agreed upon; and even the publicans raised at least twenty-five per cent. the prices of their wines, beer, and spirits.

Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand poured upon our shores shiploads of adventurers, attracted by the golden news; and South Australia is now almost drained of its labouring population, one of the consequences of which is that the shares in the famous Burra Burra copper mines there have fallen from £230 to £45, a fall which has entailed ruin on hundreds.

In walking along the streets of Sydney or Melbourne you hear nothing talked about but gold; you see nothing exhibited in shop windows but specimens of gold, or some article of equipment for the gold-digger. In every society gold is the interminable topic of conversation; and throughout the colonies the only newspapers now read are those which contain intelligence from our golden fields.

Soon after the discovery the Government of New South Wales, seeing that it could not prevent the community from digging for gold on Crown lands, quietly made virtue of necessity, and merely sought to legalize and regulate the diggings by the following announcement, published in the "Official Gazette":

THE GOLD MINES

Colonial Secretary's Office, Sydney, 23rd May, 1851.

Licenses to Dig and Search for Gold.

With reference to the Proclamation issued on the 22nd May instant, declaring the rights of the Crown in respect to Gold found in its natural place of deposit within the territory of New South Wales, His Excellency the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, has been pleased to establish the following Provisional Regulations, under which Licenses may be obtained, to search for, and remove the same:

1. From and after the first day of June next, no person will be permitted to dig, search for, or remove gold on or from any land, whether public or private, without first taking out and paying for a License in the form annexed.

2. For the present, and pending further proof of the extent of the Gold-field, the License fee has been fixed at £1 10s. per month, to be paid in advance; but it is to be understood that the rate is subject to future adjustment, as circumstances may render expedient.

3. The Licenses can be obtained on the spot, from the Commissioner who has been appointed by His Excellency the Governor, to carry these regulations into effect, and who is authorized to receive the fee payable thereon.

4. No person will be eligible to obtain a License, or the renewal of a License, unless he shall produce a certificate of discharge from his last service, or prove to the satisfaction of the Commissioner that he is not a person improperly absent from hired service.

5. Rules, adjusting the extent and position of land to be covered by each License and for the prevention of confusion, and the interference of one License with another will be the subject of early regulation.

6. With reference to lands alienated by the Crown, in fee simple, the Commissioner will not be authorized for the present to issue Licenses under the regulations to any persons but the proprietors, or persons authorized by them in writing to apply for the same.

By his Excellency's command,

E. FEAS THOMSON.

VICTORIA IN 1854

+Source.+--The Golden Colony (G.H. Wathen, 1855), pp. 49-53, 78-81

Even on the spot it is often very difficult to learn when, by whom, and in what manner, a new gold district is first discovered. When the yield of an old working begins to fail, the diggers throw out small "prospecting" parties of twos and threes, to explore promising localities. These "prospectors" may occasionally make important discoveries; but far more frequently they are the result of chance, or of the desultory efforts of shepherds and other servants of the settlers resident in the particular locality. It sometimes happens that a digging party, travelling from one district to another, camp for a night in a valley which they may think looks very promising. Being delayed here, perhaps, by the loss of their horse, or some other accident, they sink a pit or "hole" in a "likely spot." At length some one strikes a rich deposit. If so, it cannot long remain a secret. A few dozens or scores are shortly at work on the adjacent ground; and if these too are successful the news spreads like wild-fire, and within a week all the roads and tracks leading to the spot are covered with diggers and their carts, on the way to the new Dorado--the newest being always by report the best and richest. In a few days the hills around the new working are dotted over with white tents, the forest around them quickly disappears, being felled for firewood. Government, on hearing of the discovery, sends down a Commissioner with a body of horse and foot police. These establish a camp on some central elevated position, and an irregular wide street of tents springs up like magic in the valley below. There are stores, large and small; butchers' shops; doctors' little tents; and innumerable refreshment booths, where, under the guise of selling lemonade and home-made beer, an extensive illicit trade is carried on in vile, adulterated, and often poisonous spirits. The blacksmith is always one of the first on the ground, and presently extemporises a forge out of a few loose stones or turf-sods. Flags are flying from the stores and shops, and give gaiety to the scene. The Union Jack floats proudly above the Government camp on the hill, and military sentinels are on duty before the gold-tent.

As the diggers reach the spot they pitch their tents on the lower slopes of the hills or in the green flats. At night their watch-fires gleam far and wide, and from a neighbouring height the place has the appearance of a large town illuminated. A new goldfield is the favourite resort of horse stealers, thieves, and miscreants of all kinds, who, lost in the crowd and confusion, here find ample opportunities for carrying on their nefarious practices. Their common haunts are the "sly grog-shops" which spring up like weeds on all sides. Here they rendezvous, and concoct those deeds of darkness which have given the colony such an unenviable fame.

Horses are stolen and ridden off to Melbourne, Geelong, or to the nearest goldfield and sold by auction. The roads leading to the new diggings become infested with bushrangers; stories of being "stuck up" (or robbed) are more and more frequent; till at length a cartload of ruffians, heavily handcuffed, is seen moving towards the Government Camp well guarded by mounted troopers. These are the bushrangers who have been hunted down and just captured by the troopers. And now for a time the roads are safe.

No life can be more independent and free than that of the Australian digger; no travelling more agreeable than summer travelling in the Bush; carrying about with you in your cart your tent, your larder, and all your domestic appointments. In choosing a halting place for the night you have the whole country open to you--no walls or hedges to shut you in to a dusty turnpike road. You drink from the clear running creek; the soft green turf is your carpet; your tent your bedroom. Your horse duly hobbled, enjoys the fresh pasturage around. The nearest fallen tree supplies you with fuel for your evening fire.

One of the most fruitful sources of discontent was the method of collecting the gold revenue. When the first discoveries were made at Ballarat, the Melbourne Government, following the example of that at Sydney, issued regulations by which all miners were required to procure a monthly license to dig for gold, and to pay 30s. for the same. But how was this tax to be enforced among a migratory population, living in tents scattered through a forest? The mode adopted was, to send out armed bands of police, who, coming down suddenly on a gully or flat, spread themselves over it demanding of everyone his license. A few mounted troopers formed part of the force to cut off defaulters who might attempt to fly. All who could not produce their license were captured and marched off, probably some miles, to the nearest magistrates, and, after some detention, were either fined £5, or imprisoned for a month. Such a system naturally led to great discontent and irritation. At some of the goldfields a curious plan was hit upon for evading these inquisitorial visits. No sooner was a party of police seen approaching than the diggers raised the cry of "Joe! Joe!" The cry was taken up, and presently the whole length of the gully rang with the shouts "Joe! Joe! Joe!" and of course all defaulters instantly made off for the depths of the forest.

The dissatisfaction was exasperated by the method of collecting the license fee. The collector did not call on the tax payer, but the latter had to seek the collector. The digger was compelled to walk from his own gully to the Commissioner's Camp--distant, perhaps, several miles--and then often wait for hours under a fierce sun while a crowd of others, who had arrived before him, were paying their 30s., or weighing their half ounce of gold. Greater facilities were indeed subsequently offered for the payment of the fee, but the mode of enforcing it continued the same. The diggers complained loudly and unceasingly of these harsh and un-English measures. "First you tax our labour," said they, "and then you collect your tax at the point of the bayonet." The dislike of the system was universal; disputes were frequent, and collisions between the police and diggers sometimes occurred.

Another of the diggers' grievances was the extreme insecurity of life and property on the mines. While the police force were snugly housed at headquarters, in a peaceable and orderly neighbourhood, the populous and remote gullies were the nightly scenes of deeds of robbery and violence. Every evening men were knocked down and brutally treated or "stuck up" and robbed. Every night horses were stolen, tents broken into, and "holes" plundered of gold by the "night fossickers"--miscreants who watched for the richest "holes" during the day, marked them, and plundered them at night. In October 1852 at a place called Moonlight Flat (near Forest Creek), these desperadoes had become so numerous and shameless, and their outrages so frequent, that the miners rose en masse against them. A public meeting was convened; blue-shirted diggers made stirring appeals to their auditory; a deputation was appointed to proceed instantly to Melbourne to remonstrate with the Government, and to implore it to adopt energetic measures for extirpating the "hordes of ruffians" that infested their neighbourhood, and the persons of many of whom were well known there.

THE BUSHRANGERS

+Source.+--The Golden Colony (G.H. Wathen, 1855), pp. 138, 143-150

The combination of convictism in Tasmania and gold in Victoria and New South Wales produced bushranging on a large scale. Convicts now had a chance of living well if they escaped, and many took advantage of the opportunity.

If the Australian roads in winter may be well likened to those English roads of 200 years ago, out of which the King's Coach had to be dug by the rustics, so may the Australian Bushranger be regarded as the legitimate representative of the traditionary highwayman who levied toll at Highgate, or stopped the post-boy and captured the mailbags in Epping Forest. The real, living bushranger is, however, more of a ruffian and less of a hero than our ideal highwayman; for time, like distance, softens down the harsh and the coarse, and gives dignity to the ignoble.

Never, perhaps, did a country offer so tempting a field to the public robber as Victoria did during the first year or two after the gold discovery. The interior was wild and uninhabited, abounding with lonely forests. Travellers were numerous, and mostly carried money or gold; for none were poor. The roadside public-houses were daily the scenes of drunken revelry. The police were few and untrained; and the mixed and scattered population at the several diggings offered a ready asylum in case of pursuit. Add to all this that, separated from Victoria by a mere strait, was the depot for the most accomplished villains of Great Britain, and it needed no prophet to foresee that the roads of the new gold country would very soon be swarming with thieves and desperadoes.

It is no uncommon occurrence in the Australian Colonies for a large number of shearers or others collected in the hut in the country to be "stuck up," that is, subdued and bound, by two or three determined bushrangers. Fifteen or sixteen strong active men may be thus treated, and have been, frequently. At first, one is ready to conclude either that they must have a private understanding with the robbers or else be the veriest poltroons. I thought so myself till I had an account of one of these affairs from a man who had been one of a large party thus "stuck up" by two very notorious bushrangers, the life and death of whom, would furnish materials for a romance. Their names were Dalton and Kelly, and they will long be famous in the annals of daring and outrage in Van Diemen's Land.

Dalton was a stout, powerful man, and about thirty years of age at the time of the rencontre I am about to describe. His accomplice Kelly, was about twenty-three years old. They were both prisoners of the Crown in Van Diemen's Land. Dalton was transported at an early age, and had for a time been confined in the "Ocean Hell" of Norfolk Island, the gaol of the double-damned convict; but was afterwards taken back to Van Diemen's Land. From the same informant I learned some particulars of their escape. They were confined in a penal establishment on a strait or an arm of the sea, wide enough, it was thought, to preclude the possibility of flight. Dalton, Kelly, and five or six other prisoners, however, weary of a wretched life, determined to risk that life for liberty; and having one day eluded the vigilance of their guards, attempted, though their legs were weighed down with fetters, to swim to the opposite shore. One after another their strength failed them; they sank and disappeared till at length only Kelly and Dalton survived. Kelly's strength was rapidly waning, when Dalton called out to him "Catch hold of me, Kelly! I can swim another hour yet."

When at last they both got safe to land, Dalton exclaimed, "Well, thank God, I shall have one comrade at any rate."

They now quickly freed themselves from their irons, procured arms, and, knowing that they would certainly be hotly pursued they at once started on a marauding expedition, visiting the neighbouring stations in succession, and pillaging each; intending eventually, to make their way across Bass's Straits to Victoria. Dalton was a very formidable fellow; strong, active, and resolute, reckless of human life, and now rendered desperate by despair. He was, too, a first-rate marksman, and could "stick up a glass bottle."

What follows is an account given me by my informant. Kelly came up to the hut, which was full of men. I was standing at the door at the time, but did not know who the man was. When he came close he asked me if I had heard that the bushrangers were out. I answered "Yes, I had." Then he pointed his gun at me, and said "I'm one of them. Go into the hut." I went in, but on turning round I saw one of my mates standing against the hut in a corner, with another man standing over him, covering him with his gun. The other was Dalton, Kelly's mate. After I had gone into the hut, Kelly stood at the open doorway, with his gun pointed at those inside, swearing he would murder the first man who moved an inch. There were about fourteen men in the hut. Then he asked if there were any prisoners among them. One man said that he was. Kelly then ordered him to tie their arms together, one by one.

While doing so, one man complained that he was being tied too tight; but this only drew forth another volley of oaths and threats from Kelly. When all were secured, Kelly went out to assist Dalton who still stood over the man whom he had pinned to the wall of the hut, threatening to shoot him if he stirred. Kelly then tied up his hands while Dalton continued covering him with the gun. He was then marched into the hut to join the others. And now Dalton began walking up and down the hut haranguing his prisoners. "He'd no doubt" he said "that some of them might be good and honest men, and some scoundrels. That for his part, he wouldn't hurt a hair of any good man's head, if he could help it. But he had been forced to take to this sort of life. It wasn't his fault. He had been lagged (transported) when only twelve years of age; had since then over and over again tried to obtain his freedom by good conduct; but they wouldn't give it him, and it was useless to try any more by fair means. And he had now sworn to gain his freedom, or lose his life in the attempt. He didn't want to hurt anyone. What he wanted was money; and money he would have, come what, come might. He'd show them presently whether he was game or not. He'd go into the master's house and bring out, single-handed the man he wanted, no matter how many he might find there. But let them beware. If any man dared to move or tried to escape he swore he'd scatter his brains about the yard, and blow the roof off his head."

Dalton now left the hut, and went to the house of the settler, their master, which was close at hand. All this time the household knew nothing of what had been passing in the hut. He entered, and went straight up to the sitting-room, where several gentlemen and ladies happened to be collected. He opened the door, and deliberately advanced with his gun pointed at those within. But a lady, who chanced to be behind the door, on seeing the levelled gun, slammed the door in the robber's face. This was a timely diversion, and the signal for a general scattering of those present.

The men in the hut were subsequently tried for collusion with the bushrangers; but when asked how they could suffer two men to "stick up" so many, one replied to the magistrate, that, with their permission, he would himself "stick up" the whole Bench.

The free servants were acquitted; those of the party who were prisoners of the Crown were sentenced to imprisonment; but on Government being petitioned by their free mates, who protested the innocence of all, they were liberated.

After this the two bushrangers boldly carried on their depredations, roaming about from station to station, "sticking up" the men, and robbing the masters; while a large party of the police were following on their track. One day they came to a hut full of men, and, opening the door, tried the old plan of intimidation by standing with loaded double-barrelled pieces in the doorway, and threatening with deep oaths to "drop" the first man of them, who moved hand or foot. But it happened that several of the pursuing constables were within the hut. One of them, named Buckmaster, rushed towards Dalton. The robber fired and the constable fell dead. Dalton still stood unmoved in the doorway, with his levelled gun, and calmly said "Ah, how d'ye like that? Now, then, I'm ready for another!" This coolness saved them both and for a time they escaped capture. But such an outrage on one of their officers roused the Government. A large reward was offered for the capture of the two bushrangers, and they were hunted through the island more hotly than ever.

Driven to desperation, they seized upon a whaleboat; by threats pressed four boatmen into their service, and actually compelled them to work the boat across Bass's Straits to the opposite shores of Victoria. Here they safely landed on the solitary coast of Western Port and made their way up to Melbourne. News of the escape of these formidable and blood-stained freebooters had been immediately transmitted to the authorities of Victoria. As they had left Van Diemen's Land in an open whaleboat, there was no doubt but that they would make for the Western Port shores; and the Victoria police, stimulated by the hope of a large reward, were keenly looking out for two persons answering to the published description of the robbers. The boatmen who had conveyed them across the Strait were seen and arrested at Dandenong, between Western Port and the Capital; but no further trace of the bushrangers could be obtained. The Melbourne newspapers furnish us with the conclusion of the tragedy.

The following account of the capture of the chief of these desperadoes, from the Melbourne "Argus" is more like a page from a romance than a passage in real life. It is one more instance of what appears like a special Providence laying its resistless hand on a murderer at the very moment when he seemed to have secured his escape, and dragging him forth to public justice. Within four hours after his capture, Dalton would have been on board a ship bound for England.

"Between eleven and twelve o'clock on Friday night, Dalton entered a coffee-shop in Bourke Street, in company with a man who had engaged to put him on board the Northumberland at daylight the next morning from Sandridge, and for which he was to pay £4. This man, we understand, was quite ignorant of the person he was bargaining with. Dalton asked the proprietors of the shop, if they could change him some Van Diemen's Land Notes for gold, as he was about to embark for England. They could not do it, but a gentleman named Brice, formerly a cadet in the police force, suspecting all was not right, said that he could, as he was a gold-broker, if Dalton would only accompany him to his office. To this Dalton consented, and placed three £20 and one £10 notes of the Launcestoun Bank in his hands. They then left the shop together; the night was extremely dark; the stranger, however, led the way, Dalton and the boatman following close behind. After proceeding some little way, they turned into Little Collins St. and by the back entrance, into the yard of the Police Court. Here it was so dark that the outline of the building could not be distinguished. The guide then showed them the door of his alleged office which was no other then the clerk's room of the Swanston St. watch-house. The man at the door was in plain clothes, and within were several of the detective officers, and two watch-housekeepers at the books, all, however, in private costume. Once in, Mr. Brice stated that he had brought these men to the station on suspicion of having come by the notes wrongfully.

"Dalton at this time must have known where he was, but made no observation beyond affirming that they were his, and making some remarks relative to his being brought there on so paltry an accusation. During this he was smoking a cigar, and behaving himself in a careless nonchalant manner. Meanwhile, the detectives were making use of their eyes, and seeing if the descriptions they possessed corresponded with the figures before them. The watch-house keeper finding that Mr. Brice had no charge to prefer against him, returned Dalton his notes, who was about to leave the office, when Detectives Williams, Murray, and Eason pounced upon him, and fixed him in a corner. Dalton endeavoured to draw a pistol from his belt, but was prevented and overpowered. Finding himself mastered, he said, 'You have got the reward of £500. My name is Dalton!' He then said if he had only seen the bars of the station-house window, as he was entering, he would have sent a ball through his conductor. He further said that he had been in the Police Court that morning, and had recollected going up a flight of steps which he did not see that night, as he had been led in the back way, and had he but seen these steps, his guide would have been a dead man. He was then handcuffed and searched, and two large horse-pistols heavily loaded and capped, besides a small one, were taken from his belt; he was then locked up."

Kelly, the other accomplice, was arrested the next day, and both were sent back to Van Diemen's Land, tried, and executed.

ANTI-TRANSPORTATION MOVEMENT

+Source.+--Port Phillip Gazette, 21st January 1851

The uselessness of protests against Transportation from the various states, proved the necessity for the whole of Australia to act together in external affairs. Thus the inauguration of the Anti-Transportation League was the first step towards Federation.

BREAKFAST TO THE TASMANIAN DELEGATES

On Monday, the members and promotors of the Launceston Association for securing the cessation of transportation, entertained at Public breakfast the gentlemen delegated to represent the interests of the Colony at the Australian Conference, which is about to be held in Melbourne. A cold collation was prepared at the Cornwall, and about 100 gentlemen sat down, amongst whom were many magistrates and gentlemen representing the most influential and respectable portions of the northern and midland districts. Breakfast being concluded, the Chairman rose, and said, it was a matter of pleasure to him to meet so large and respectable a body of gentlemen, some of whom he had known for a quarter of a century. They had not assembled to petition; it was a truth deplorable and sad that petitions had hitherto been unavailing and they were now met to force from Her Majesty's Government, relief from an evil of which history presented no parallel. (Hear, hear.) Petition after petition had been transmitted home, but the prayers of the Community had been constantly rejected. It now remained to try other means.

The Rev. J. West rose and said he felt some embarrassment in addressing that meeting. He, however, felt grateful for their recognition of his appointment, and should rely on their indulgence during the few moments he might address them. The colonists had been led up to a position from which it was impossible to recede. Van Diemen's Land must obtain a share in the general freedom, or for ever sink. They had petitioned for a cessation of transportation; whilst there was a possibility of the other colonies receiving a portion of the convicts annually sent from Britain, they expected by the more general distribution to experience some relief. But the resistance of the other colonies had removed the faint anticipation, and shut up to us this last hope--to our union with them. When it was proposed to solicit the co-operation of the adjacent colonies, some persons prophesied a failure; it was thought by some, improbable that the colonies would feel any interest in our fate. But the heart of an Englishman is ever susceptible of pity; and when we spoke of our wrongs they listened; and when we exposed the enormous danger, they consulted their own safety, and came forward to our help. Let us look well to our position. We have to change the policy and contend against the power of a mighty Empire. In the effervescence and excitement of public speaking it was not at all surprising that a threat should sometimes be uttered; but many years must elapse before an appeal to physical force would bear even the semblance of reason. We have, then a mighty Empire to contend against--one which can laugh our threatening to scorn. And what are the weapons we must employ? What, but the weapons of truth? We must diffuse right information; we must expose our wrongs--and we must appeal to the justice of the British Nation. Let the evils and injuries under which this fair domain of the Crown now suffers, be laid before the English people, and a cry will be heard from Land's End to the opposite shore, "transportation shall cease because it degrades the British name." (Cheers.) The injuries resulting from transportation to the colony are various. A gentleman, however eminent his station and virtues, going to a distant part of the world must cautiously suppress the fact, that he came from Van Diemen's Land, or even this quarter of the globe. (Hear, hear.) Yes, Sir, our sons, who have quitted this colony in search of a home denied them in the land of their birth, have been compelled to conceal the place from which they came, and to drop into the box, by stealth, those letters which were to relieve parental anxiety, and express their filial affection. And is this to be for ever endured? Shall our own children never know the pleasure and pride of patriotism? Shall we not ask all the colonies of the Australian empire to aid us in our struggle? Shall we not confide in the justice of Australasia?

When it is said that England cannot support 4,000 or 5,000 offenders the question naturally occurs: What has she not done? Did not England for her Continental wars incur a debt of £800,000,000: did she not give £20,000,000 to free her West India slaves; did she not expend £7,000,000 to combat the famine of Ireland? Is not the proposed expenditure for the National Executive of the present year an evidence of her boundless opulence? And yet to save a trifling outlay compared with the injustice now done, the representative of Her Majesty is compelled to carry about under his skirts a parcel of convictism; to deposit these tokens of imperial interest he is driven to have recourse to artifice, trickery and falsehood. (Hear, hear.) As England glories in her past history, and has found means to keep afloat that flag which has never been lowered; so she must find means to carry on a nobler struggle with her own poverty and crime. Hitherto, Van Diemen's Land has not been heard at home; but if by the united voices of the other colonies, a sort of telegraphic communication can be opened with Britain, if a speaking trumpet be formed, we shall be heard. When he (Mr. West) heard that Ministers had departed from their promise that transportation should cease, he was astonished and desponding--he thought that if a promise so solemnly given could be so recklessly broken, hope was delusion. But as in the moral, so it is in the political world. The Divine Being frequently ordains that good shall arise out of apparent evils; that a tedious delay shall make the remedy more perfect. Had we been relieved when Ministers promised; then, transportation to the other colonies would have been continued, and its evils accumulate there. (Hear, hear.) When it was proposed that all the colonies should receive a share of convicts, all things considered, he, (the speaker) for one could not have then objected to Van Diemen's Land being joined in the co-partnery. Had such been the case a century might have elapsed before the reproach of convictism had been removed from this hemisphere. But the refusal of the other colonies occasioned by the injuries inflicted on this, has roused us all into action, and now all declare that not a man, no, not one--in fetters shall be landed in Australia. (Tremendous cheering.)

If an unfortunate offender becomes as a penitent desirous of amending his life, and disposed to conform to the usages, and claims of honest society, he will find no man here spitefully to remind him of his former errors. But if he is brought wearing the badge of disgrace we will not have him. We will say to the British Government "Until you can with safety discharge him into your community, he shall not enter ours." (Loud Cheers.) This is the righteous principle upon which we have taken our stand. Whilst we were disputing among ourselves who should bear the load, we were likely to be sacrificed by our ungenerous divisions. But we have now a new principle; and a principle is a wedge--if sufficient force is applied, every obstacle will be riven into shivers. We now say that no man should be an involuntary gaoler, much less shall the inhabitants of these colonies be the penal slaves and gaolers of the British Empire. (Cheers.) We assert that a community should deal with its own crime, at least so deal with it that in its disposal it shall not injure those who never offended--so at least that the honest and industrious labourer should not be brought into unfavourable comparison and competition with the hardened criminal, so that, at all events our sons shall not be driven from their homes to seek employment in distant lands--to meet there suspicion and contempt. These are the wrongs of which we complain--wrongs which could never have been perpetrated but in oblivion of that first great Law, alike the basis of private and public virtue: "do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." The Rev. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud and prolonged cheering.

W.P. WESTON, ESQ.--It was with mingled feelings that he rose to address that meeting; but when he ascertained that Mr. West was to accompany him, he lost all fear, and at once accepted the invitation.

It had not been considered necessary to furnish them with written instructions how to act; it was left entirely to their own judgement; they had, as it were, a carte blanche; but he thought it advisable to mention one or two points towards which he and his colleague would direct public attention on the other side of the Straits. The first was, that transportation as hitherto conducted, was altogether and entirely rotten. He anticipated no very great difficulty in establishing that point. The next was, that no country had a right to force its crime upon a distant and unoffending one; it was a moral wrong. He was much struck at a remark which appeared in the Public journals in Melbourne. It seems to have been the custom of some persons to collect all the filth and rubbish from their persons and during the night to force it upon the premises of their neighbours. Now, these persons were designed miscreants, the paragraph commenced "the miscreants have been at work again." But he considered that the Government who would force a mass of moral filth upon a small and helpless colony were miscreants in the very worst sense of the term. (Hear, hear.) However severely the evils of convictism may have been felt in this community, they will be felt at Melbourne in a greater degree. Any evil may be counter-balanced and perhaps removed, if it can only be seen. The convicts come to this land under restraint and are completely at the disposal of the Government, but after completing their education in a chain-gang, and filling up, as it were, the measure of their iniquity they go over there where they are unknown to the police and consequently their crimes escape detection. The very worst characters amongst us proceed to the neighbouring colonies as soon as an opportunity offers. This fact accounts for the insecurity of property at Melbourne. A short time ago he was there and not more than two or three days after his arrival the linen which had been put out for washing, was stolen. Shortly after whilst the family were sitting at tea, information was given that the bedroom window was open and upon proceeding to ascertain the cause it was discovered that a thief had effected an entrance and carried off whatever he could lay his hands upon.

A letter lately received mentions that six gentlemen's horses in one locality had been robbed and that Melbourne was full of thieves. (A laugh.) No opportunity had previously offered of talking to the Melbourne people upon the subject, they were so occupied in endeavours to obtain separation from Sydney that every question was lost sight of; but now the matter was settled he did not apprehend any difficultly in establishing this point also.

We are a loyal people, and have given abundant proof of our loyalty; but it is not an unalterable principle. There is an old Spanish proverb--"The sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar," and so it will be with us.

But the British Government must, and will yield, for they will find it will be to their interest, as well as their duty to grant the reasonable request of the Australian Colonies. (Cheers.)

Three cheers were then given for the Chairman, and three more for the Queen, and the meeting terminated.

THE LAND QUESTION

The adjustment of the English land laws to Australian requirements was a difficult task. The question was discussed in New South Wales in 1855, but South Australia, under the leadership of Torrens, was the first to effect reform (1859).

LAND QUESTION IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

+Source.+--Speeches on the Reform of the Law of Real Property (Torrens, 1858), pp. 5-6, 8-11

Extract from an address to the Electors of the City of Adelaide delivered in the Theatre on 31st January, 1857. (From the South Australian Register of February 2nd, 1857).

The next topic which I have put down to address you upon, is one with respect to which I should have wished to have had time to arrange my thoughts--it is the cheapening of the law of Conveyancing of real property. (Applause.) Next to affording fair facilities for obtaining possession of the waste lands of the Crown, and converting them into cornfields and homesteads of independent yeomanry, it is the duty of the State to afford a cheap and at the same time a secure mode of conveying that property from man to man. (Hear, hear.) I have for years felt that the law of England in that respect, which we brought with us, required amendment. In looking also to the laws of other countries with respect to the transfer, mortgage, or encumbrance of real property, I have come to the conclusion that the law of England is inferior to most of them with regard to cost and security of title. The old Conservative feeling of England adheres with a sort of veneration to laws and usages respecting title which originated under the feudal system, and is loath to abandon them for a system adapted to the requirements of modern civilization. I would illustrate my views by observing that, in ancient times, before the Wars of the Roses, a baron, or even a yeoman, would surround his residence with a moat to be crossed only by a drawbridge, and instead of the convenient door of modern times, he would have a portcullis, which he would raise or let fall to admit a friend, or exclude a foe. A visitor, too, would have instead of gaining immediate access, to sound a horn at an outer gate, and hold parley with a warder upon a lofty tower, before he could gain admission. There could be no doubt that all these ceremonies and parleyings were necessary in those days, but it does not follow that we should carry them out in our times. Were any person now, to surround his residence with a deep and broad ditch, and observe those ceremonies when a visitor called upon him, we would call him insane; yet, that is precisely what we do with regard to the transfer of real estate, observing still the tortuous roundabout methods of conveying, resorted to in those days for the purpose of evading the oppressions of feudalism. Nay, the analogy is so strong, that in our Law Courts, and Deeds we still use the same barbarous Norman French jargon in which the parley was in those ancient days held at the gate of the baronial residence. (Hear, and applause.) It is perhaps presumptuous of a person who has not received a legal education, to address his mind to this question; seeing, however, that the persons who, by ability, and education, are best fit to cope with the subject, are not willing, or, at least have not done so, I have taken the task upon myself. (Hear, hear). With your permission, I will give you an outline of the plan. The purchaser of land from the Crown shall receive a title deed, a land grant, as at present to be executed in duplicate, and one copy filed in the Registrar-General's office. When an original purchaser sells the land to another, he shall transfer it by a simple memorandum, which being brought to the office of the Registrar-General the original land grant must be surrendered, and then the Registrar will issue a new title to the second purchaser direct from the Crown. (Hear, hear.) This will get over the difficulty of tracing title through all manner of intricate transactions between purchasers, and instead of a man having to carry about an immense bale of papers, he would have one simple document, which would, nevertheless, be a title valid and indisputable, because it would be an original land grant. (Great applause.)

Speech delivered on 4th June, 1857, in the Legislative Assembly by the Hon. the Treasurer, Mr. Torrens, on the introduction of his Bill for amending the law relating to the Transfer of Real Property.

Mr. Speaker, I do not attempt to remedy the evils complained of, by amendment of the existing law; that I believe to be impossible: I propose to abolish a system irremediably wrong in principle, and to substitute a method which I believe will, when explained, commend itself to the House as consistent with common sense, perfectly feasible, and effectual for all purposes required.

The first and leading principle of the measure which I introduce, is designed to cut off the very source of all costliness, insecurity, litigation, by abolishing altogether the system of retrospective titles and ordaining that as often as the fee simple is transferred, the existing title must be surrendered to the Crown, and a fresh grant from the Crown issued to the new proprietor.

The principle next in importance prescribes that registration per se and alone shall give validity to transactions affecting land. Deposit of duplicate of the instrument, together with the record of the transaction by memorandum entered in the book of registration and endorsed on the grant by the Registrar-General, to constitute registration. This method is designed to give confidence and security to purchasers and mortgagees, through the certainty that nothing affecting the title can have existence beyond the transactions of which they have notice in the memoranda endorsed on the grant.

My third principle aims at simplicity and economy by prescribing certain stereotyped forms of instruments available to each occasion to be supplied at the Registry Office, so that any man of ordinary sense and education may transact his own business, without the necessity of applying to a solicitor, except in complicated cases of settlements or entails, which are unusual in this colony.

Many will admit that the system which I recommend might have been introduced at the first founding of this colony, with facility and very great advantage, but doubt its practicability now that titles have become complicated. Admitting a difficulty, I deny that it is insurmountable, or such as should cause us to hesitate in securing the advantage of transfer by registration. I do not propose a scheme involving violent or arbitrary interference with existing titles, but would leave it optional with proprietors to avail themselves of it or not. It will thus be gradual in its operation, yet will put titles in such a train that the desired result will eventually be obtained.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot conclude without expressing my grateful sense of the compliment which the House has paid me, in listening with such marked attention to an address extended to an unusual length upon a subject admitted to be dry and unexciting.

I propose, it is true, a sweeping measure of reform, yet not more thorough than the nature of the case imperatively demands. In this view, I am again borne out by the high authority of Lord Brougham, who, in a speech which I have before quoted, thus expresses himself: "The present system has grown out of ingenious devices to evade the oppressions of feudal tyrants, but under it we are subject to the tyranny of the legal profession, and burdens little less grievous. The reform, to be effectual, must be thorough. Delenda est Carthaga must be our motto."

THE LAND QUESTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES

+Source.+--Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History (Sir Henry Parkes, 1892), pp. 70-71, 81-90, 148, 153

On July 3, 1855, I, (Sir Henry Parkes) moved for the "appointment of a Select Committee to enquire into the state of agriculture, with special reference to the raising of wheaten grain, and to the causes of hindrance or failure in that pursuit, whether arising from the habits of the people, the policy of the Government, or the physical character of the country." To understand the interest that fairly attached to my motion, we must review, or rather glance at, the state of the colony. The colony still included the whole of Queensland, and embraced an area of 978,315 square miles. Men of leading positions with seats in the Legislature, described it for the most part, as incapable of tillage, and only fit for grazing sheep and cattle, and for "nomadic tribes." A population not numbering more than 277,579 souls imported largely its breadstuffs from South America and other foreign countries. It is now well known that in all divisions of the colony--north, south, or west--there are as rich wheat lands as in any part of the world; but then the mass of the population were densely ignorant of the true character of the country, and those who knew better, were in too many instances personally interested in keeping them ignorant. The stories that were told of the fruitless endeavours of industrious men to obtain patches of land for a freehold home under the Order-in-Council seem, to the present generation, like cruel bits of romance.

APPENDIX TO EVIDENCE OF MR. J. ROBERTSON (before Select Committee.)

On entering upon the subject under enquiry by the Committee, it is my purpose to assume that the state of agriculture in general, and of wheat culture in particular in the colony, is exceedingly unsatisfactory, and, if not absolutely declining instead of progressing, is at least so with reference to population. The causes of hindrance or failure of agriculture generally, and of the raising of wheat, in particular, I take to be the first and greatest, that for many years the policy of the Government of the colony, whatever may have been its object, has unquestionably tended not only to check the formation of new agriculture establishments, but to depress existing ones.

While the agriculturist has been absolutely excluded from leasing any portion of the public land, and thwarted, harassed and dispirited at every turn in his efforts to obtain the submittal of such lands to sale, and subjected to public competition at auction before suffered even then to purchase, the grazier has been allowed to use them under a system of leases, affording him the greatest possible facility of possession, and at the lowest imaginable rental, namely, at the rate of 10s. per annum for 640 acres, with the right, in an overwhelming majority of cases, to purchase choice spots therefrom, without the slightest delay or trouble and at the lowest legal price, namely, 20s. per acre, and absolutely without competition.

Some of the difficulties above alluded to, as attending the purchase of a farm from the Crown, by any other than the favoured pastoral class, may be stated thus: The person seeking to do so must first make his selection--a matter not very easy of attainment, for persons holding land in a neighbourhood, instead of helping with information, almost invariably place every possible obstacle in the way of the newcomer. The selection made, the next step to be taken is to apply by letter to the Surveyor-General to have it measured. Shortly thereafter, that officer will reply and inform the writer that his application has been received and submitted to the District Surveyor for his report as to whether the land is fit for agriculture, etc., etc. and that when it is received the Surveyor-General will communicate the result, intimating at the same time that, should the District-Surveyor consider the land suitable for agriculture, and should there be no other difficulty, such as its being held under a squatting lease, or any of several others, it will be submitted to sale by auction.

The applicant may now expect to hear no more of the land for three or four months, when, if all goes on favourably, he will be informed that the District-Surveyor, having reported satisfactorily, has received from the Surveyor-General instructions to measure it. Now another wearying delay of several months' duration will in all probability occur, before the expiration of which, if the applicant is not a person possessed of considerable determination of character, he will abandon, in despair, all hope of ever becoming an Australian farmer, and help to swell one or other of our overgrown towns, by accepting employment there. If, however, he possess sufficient perseverance, he may visit the District-Surveyor, and probably learn from him that the land cannot then be measured, because the district under that officer is so very large, that it would be highly inconvenient for him to move from one portion of it to another to measure a single farm; that when several are applied for in the same vicinity, he will proceed there; in the meantime he has several months' work where he is, or the District-Surveyor may, after expressing sympathy with the applicant's loss from delay, candidly assure him that, in consequence of the great delay in receiving pay for his public work, he is absolutely necessitated to accept private employment in order to obtain sufficient cash to keep himself and party of four men on, until the Government make him his remittance, now three or four months due.

These and other preliminary difficulties the applicant must prepare to encounter; but even when all are surmounted and the land measured there will be two or three months' delay--in all probability eighteen months or two years from the date of his first application--before it is offered for sale. Then, at last, the applicant will obtain his land, if he be fortunate enough to escape the determined opposition of some wealthy person in the neighbourhood, or has money enough, and determination enough to purchase it, that opposition notwithstanding.

If it is a fact that the agricultural interests of the country are subjected to more climatic difficulties than are the pastoral interests, I take it that that circumstance cannot, properly, be brought forward as a reason why the agricultural interest should not, under our laws, have a fair field and no favour, as compared with the pastoral interest, in entering the market to borrow money in time of doubt and general want of confidence in monetary matters. If the agriculturist, in borrowing money to secure his crop, has to encounter a higher rate of interest than the grazier has to encounter, in consequence of the risk of damage to his crops from an unfavourable season being greater than the same in the case of the produce of the grazier, surely there is no reason why he should be compelled to submit to a still greater increase of interest, to compensate the capitalist for the additional risk of the borrower's insolvency before the crops are realised, especially when the grazier is, through the aid of "The lien on Wool Act" exempted from paying for such risk.

The effects of the policy of the Government, which I have described, may be found, on the one hand, in the fact that the number of persons who have been bred to agricultural pursuits, at present residing in the towns of the colony, is, beyond example, excessive, showing our social conditions in that regard to be in a most unsatisfactory state; and, on the other hand, in the other fact, that the wholesale price of flour in the colony is three times higher, per pound, than the wholesale price of animal food, of the very best description--a state of things not to be found in any other civilized country.

I am aware that the deficiency of agriculture, which is so remarkable in this country, is attributed to the aridity of the climate by many gentlemen whose experience entitles their opinions to respect; but, as I have during the eighteen years last past annually cultivated and sown with wheat a large quantity of land, in various parts of the Upper Hunter District--a district generally considered to be unfavourable for the purpose--and have, in that long period, only failed twice in obtaining crops, and have reaped two self-sown, which in a great measure compensated for even their loss. I can come to no other conclusion than that, whatever may be the disadvantages of the climate they are not sufficient to cause such neglect of agriculture as has occurred.

On the whole, I am confident that the difficulties placed in the way of agriculture by the climate are as nothing compared with the overwhelming obstacles furnished by the policy of the Legislature and Government of the Colony.

Before concluding this communication, I cannot resist the opportunity it affords to place on record my opinion, that even should all other means fail of providing the country with an ample supply of agricultural produce, a remedy may be found by allowing any person to enter upon and occupy 80 acres of waste land, without competition or delay, and pay for it at the upset price, four years thereafter; provided that he clears and cultivates 10 acres the first year, and 10 additional acres in each of the three succeeding years, and is at the end of the time residing on the spot.

JOHN ROBERTSON.

Yarrundi, Aug. 6th, 1855.

I also gave my general support to the Robertson Land Bill, which passed through a determined opposition, and became law eventually, after the violent expedient of "swamping the Upper House," which swamping, however, had no practical or immediate effect, as the old members, including the President, retired in a body when the new members attempted to take their seats. By the Constitution, the first Council was appointed for five years only, and the term was near its expiration when this historical incident occurred. So nothing could be done with the Bill, or anything else, until the next Council was appointed, whose term was for life.

Sir John Robertson's Act did immense good. Its broad scope was to enable men to select land for themselves in blocks from 40 to 320 acres, at £1 per acre, without waiting for any surveyor or other Government official, but subject to the conditions of a deposit of 5s. an acre, actual residence and improvements to the value of £1 per acre in value. The balance of the purchase-money was to remain for a time, not limited by date, at 5% interest. It is no figure of speech to say that this law unlocked the lands to the industrious settler, and notwithstanding the abuses which too widely grew up, it was the means of bringing into existence hundreds of comfortable homes in all parts of the colony where the name of its author is held in grateful remembrance. It will have been seen in a previous chapter what a network of difficulties surrounded the man of small means who tried to obtain a rural home in former years; and perhaps the highest tribute to the memory of Sir John Robertson is that, after all the amendments which have been carried, the chief principles of his Act are still imbedded in the law of the country.

QUEENSLAND

+Source.+--Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1861, Vol. XI

The Moreton Bay district was first colonised from Sydney as a penal settlement for doubly convicted criminals. But so soon as transportation to New South Wales ceased, remarkable progress was made in exploiting the vast natural resources of the colony of Queensland.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM GOVERNOR SIR W. DENISON, K.C.B., TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.

Government House, Sydney. Dec. 5, 1859. (Received Feb. 9, 1860.)

My Lord Duke,

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Grace's Despatch, No. 11, dated 18th August last, enclosing copies of the warrant establishing Queensland as a colony separate from New South Wales, and appointing Sir George Ferguson Bowen, K.C.M.G., Governor of the same; also of the instructions issued to Sir George Bowen, and of the Order-in-Council empowering him to make laws and to provide for the administration of justice in the said colony.

Sir George Bowen arrived here by the mail steamer on the 15th ult.; he remained with me at Sydney, making arrangements for the establishment of the various departments of his Government, in which I gave him every assistance in my power, and he sailed for Moreton Bay in Her Majesty's ship "Cordelia" on the 3rd instant.

I enclose copies of the proclamation issued by me notifying the separation of the two colonies. The Proclamation Sir George has taken with him to Brisbane, and by its publication there the fact of its separation will be made known to the inhabitants of Queensland, which will from the date of that Proclamation, that is, 1st December, be in every respect freed from the interference of the Government or Legislature of New South Wales....

I have, etc.,

(Signed) W. Denison.

His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, etc., etc., etc.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM GOVERNOR SIR G.F. BOWEN TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.

Government House, Brisbane, Queensland.

Jan. 6th, 1860.

(Received March 12, 1860.)

My Lord Duke,

In my Despatch, No. 3, of the 28th November ultimo, I mentioned that extensive districts within the colony of Queensland are well adapted for the growth of the sugar cane among a variety of other produce.

2. Since I wrote the above Despatch, I have seen three specimens of the sugar cane, which have been grown near the town of Maryborough. These specimens, which were finer than any that were shown me at Mauritius, were forwarded to Sir William Macarthur, a gentleman of large property, well-known ability, and great experience in scientific and agricultural pursuits; and who was Commissioner for New South Wales at the Paris Exhibition of 1855. I have received permission to transmit to your Grace the following extract from a letter containing Sir William Macarthur's opinion of the samples submitted to him:--"I yesterday made several trials of the juice of the sugar cane forwarded by Mr. Aldridge, of Maryborough.

"As I had to extract the juice by pounding the cane in a mortar, I only experimented upon the largest and the smallest of the three forwarded. As they appear to have excited some attention, I may mention that they were quite ripe, of a bright, yellowish-brown colour, with the joints from two to five inches apart, the largest being about ten feet long, not quite eight inches in circumference, and weighing just eighteen pounds. About three feet of the upper end, however, was too short-jointed to yield abundantly, and hardly ripe.

"The walls of this cane were exceedingly thick, giving it great stiffness, and solidity to resist storms of wind. It proved to be hardly so juicy as I expected.

"I understood you to say that these canes had been produced in eight or nine months from being planted, and without any particular care.

"Taking this for granted, there can be no question, I think, that with sufficient capital, and under efficient management, the cultivation of the cane for sugar ought to prove one of the most profitable arrangements which offer themselves in Australia, I mean at Maryborough, or other places equally well situated on the North-eastern coast. I have for many years thought that sugar plantations to the northward of Moreton Bay ought to be highly remunerative. The climate is favourable; there is no lack of good land, and unlike the Mauritius, we never hear of the ravages of hurricanes."

3. The opinion of so high an authority as Sir William Macarthur coupled with a number of facts within my knowledge, leave no doubt in my mind that, when Capital and Labour shall have been introduced, the cultivation of sugar may be carried on in this colony, with at least equal success as at Mauritius, and on a vastly more extensive scale than in that island.

4. I beg to subjoin a short description of the district of Wide Bay, or Maryborough (referred to above) condensed from a recent publication by a writer of local knowledge and competent authority.

The back country is extensive, its capabilities are so well known we need not dwell upon them. The soil on the branches of the River Mary and its tributary creeks, and within easy approach to the same is excellent and in large quantities. Its producing capabilities may be illustrated by the following facts: In one piece of ground may be seen growing in perfection the sugar cane, cotton plant, grasscloth plant, arrowroot, tascan wheat, yams, sweet potatoes, cassava, custard apples, pine apples, banana, guava, and many other tropical productions; alongside of which may be seen turnips, wheat, barley, mangel-wurzel, English potatoes, artichokes (Jerusalem), broad beans, maize, etc. At the same place a crop of maize (which was estimated to yield from 80 to 100 bushels to the acre) is in a forward state of ripening, and from the same piece of ground, three crops of maize have been gathered within the twelve months. Where is there another river in Australia with capabilities for the growth of such varied productions, each perfect of its kind, and such facilities for shipping, by vessels of the largest tonnage, the produce direct to any part of the world? Wheat has been only grown in small patches--each time, however, with success. Cotton was here produced in the same way from a few plants, and pronounced by competent judges to be of the finest quality both in staple and texture. Equally favourable results have been obtained with the other products named above. The particulars of climate I give from a resident of the township of Maryborough for a period of twelve years before the place was surveyed, who declares his own health and the health of his wife and children to have been excellent, and better than he or they ever had before, that he has never experienced a hot wind in the place and that the sudden changes of temperature as felt in Sydney are never felt in this favoured locality: that the rain showers are regular and abundant, more so than in any other place he has been in, in this colony; hence the extraordinary growth of vegetables, etc. Eight months in the year, not a finer climate can be found in the world, and the remaining four summer months are not so oppressive in their effects as in the other warm countries, from the temperature being more uniform, and the purity of the atmosphere so great. The same gentleman declares that he has, upon his occasional visits, experienced the heat in Sydney much more oppressive. Great natural capabilities exist in the township of Maryborough for the formation of dams at a trifling expense, which would collect large bodies of water. Minerals consisting of gold, copper, iron, and coal have been procured in several places in the district. Timber exists of cedar, cowrie, and hoop pine, a white hardwood known as fluidoza, gums, dye woods, and other most useful and valuable cabinet woods, are to be found in great abundance. The dugong is found in large numbers in Hervey's Bay, from which the famed oil is manufactured, also the pearl oyster.

All these are sources from which wealth will be derived, and which will afford employment to a large population. As to the aborigines of this district it may be placed to their credit, that they are willing at times to work, and even well. The steamer which trades to the place every fortnight always takes from Frazer's Island a number of them to discharge and load the vessel. They are also largely used in the town for cutting wood, drawing water, bullock driving, horse riding, and breaking up the ground in the gardens.

The population and trade of the town of Maryborough are rapidly increasing. The source from which the business is at present entirely derived is the pastoral or squatting interest, leaving all other valuable and important interests to be yet developed, such as agriculture, mining, fisheries, and the timber trade. A large agricultural population may be expected to settle themselves down on the river. Maryborough has been recently proclaimed as one of the great towns wherein District Courts are to be held. The exports are wool, tallow, etc., with great power of expansion.

6. I beg to suggest that a copy of this Despatch, together with a copy of my Despatch of even date herewith, respecting the cultivation of cotton in this colony, should be transmitted to the Royal Geographical Society.

I have, etc.,

(Signed) G.F. BOWEN. His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, etc., etc., etc.

No. 10.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM GOVERNOR SIR G.F. BOWEN TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE

Government House, Brisbane, Queensland, April 7, 1860.

(Received June 18, 1860.) (Answered, No. 22, July 19, 1860, p. 84.)

My Lord Duke,

In continuation of my former Despatches No. 5 of the 19th and No. 8 of the 23rd Dec., 1859, and No. 18 of the 4th February, ult., I have the honour to enclose copies of the Addresses presented to me at the three towns of Warwick, Drayton, and Toowoomba, which I visited during an official tour of inspection, from which I have lately returned.

2. It will be satisfactory to the Queen and to Her Majesty's Government, to receive these further proofs of the affectionate loyalty of the people of this colony towards Her Majesty's throne and person and (I may, perhaps, be permitted to add) of their confidence in the arrangement made, under Her Majesty's favour, for their Government.

3. My recent journey extended through those districts of Queensland, which have been longest settled and are mostly thickly inhabited. I was everywhere received with cordial hospitality by the principal settlers, and with loyal enthusiasm by all classes of the community. The numerous cavalcades of hundreds of well-mounted horsemen, which came forth to meet and escort the first representative of their Sovereign, presented spectacles such as can be exhibited in only two countries in the world--in England and in Australia.

4. As it was during your Grace's first administration of the Colonial Department that the wishes of the Australian Colonists were crowned by the concession of responsible Government, I will take leave to draw your attention to a paragraph in one of the enclosures, which explains a sentiment generally entertained by this people.

After stating that "the journey of his Excellency has been one continued ovation from beginning to end"; that "all classes have vied in doing honour to the representative of the Queen"; and that "all little sectarian differences, petty jealousies, and presumed rival interests have been merged in the laudable wish to give our first Governor a hearty welcome"; the "Darling Downs Gazette" proceeds as follows: "Not the least pleasing reflection that suggests itself when reviewing these demonstrations of general joy is the confirmation of the fact, now so long and in so many lands established, that those descended from the old stock at home, to whom self-government has been a timely concession, not a charter wrung from the Mother country by the force of arms, still recognize and revere the grand old institutions, which have made England the greatest power on earth."

14. I have described in a former Despatch, that rich pastoral District of the tableland which is known as the "Darling Downs." The droughts and the epidemic diseases which are frequently fatal to sheep and cattle in other parts of Australia seem alike unknown in this favoured region. Many large fortunes have been amassed there during the last 15 years.

15. While the impression created on my mind by the journey across the Darling Downs was still fresh, I stated in my reply to the Drayton address, that it had "filled me with surprise and admiration". Even before I left England I knew by report the rich natural resources and the picturesque beauty of this district, the scenery of which vividly recalls to my mind the classic plains of Thessaly. But I confess that I was not fully prepared for so wonderfully rapid an advance in all that can promote and adorn civilization, an advance which has taken place during the fourth part of an average lifetime. Not only have I seen vast herds of horses and cattle, and countless flocks of sheep overspreading the valleys and forests, which, within the memory of persons who have yet scarcely attained to the age of manhood, were tenanted only by wild animals, and by a few wandering tribes of savages; not only have I travelled over roads beyond all comparison superior to the means of communication which existed less than a century ago in many parts of the United Kingdom; not only have I beheld flourishing towns arising in spots where hardly 20 years back the foot of a white man had never yet trodden the primeval wilderness; not only have I admired these and other proofs of material progress, but I have also found in the houses of the long chain of settlers who have entertained me with such cordial hospitality, all the comforts, and most of the luxuries and refinements of the houses of country gentlemen in England. The wonderful advance of this portion of the colony during the last 10 years, is due to no sudden and fortuitous discovery of the precious metals; it is derived wholly from the blessing of Providence on the skill and energy of its inhabitants, in subduing and replenishing the earth. Assuredly, I have observed during the past week very remarkable illustrations of the proverbial genius of the Anglo-Saxon race for the noble and truly imperial art of colonization.

I have, etc.,

(Signed) G.F. BOWEN.

His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, etc., etc., etc.

PAYMENT OF MEMBERS CRISIS

+Source.+--Victorian Sessional Papers, 1877-8 Thirty Years of Colonial Government (Bowen), Vol. II, pp. 80-83, 114-119

Owing to the lack of the political traditions of the English Parliament friction was bound to rise between the Houses of the colonial Legislatures. A bill to provide temporarily for the payment of members had been passed several times by the Victorian Parliament, but the Council was opposed to making a permanent provision for the purpose. In 1877 Sir Graham Berry tacked the measure to the annual appropriation bill, which was consequently rejected by the Council.

Memorandum to His Excellency the Governor.

The Premier on behalf of himself and his colleagues, respectfully advises the Governor to sign the message required by the 25th Clause of the Constitution Act transmitting for the consideration of the Legislative Assembly the accompanying additional estimates for the service of the year 1877-8.

His Excellency will observe that it has been thought right by his Responsible Advisers to include in these Additional Estimates provision for reimbursing members of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly their expenses in relation to their attendance in Parliament at the rate of £300 per annum each, from and after the present session of Parliament.

(Signed) Graham Berry, Treasurer.

21st Nov. 1877.

The Governor acknowledges the receipt of the Memorandum submitted to him by the Hon. the Premier on this day.

The Governor has in conformity with the advice of his Responsible Ministers signed the message submitted to him by them, transmitting for the consideration of the Legislative Assembly additional or further estimates for the service of the year 1877-8.

(Signed) G.F. Bowen.

Government Offices, Melbourne.

21st November 1877.

January 12, 1878.

Address from the Legislative Council to His Excellency the Governor.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY SIR GEORGE FERGUSON BOWEN, KNIGHT GRAND CROSS OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED ORDER OF ST. MICHAEL AND ST. GEORGE, and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Colony of Victoria and its Dependencies and Vice-Admiral of the same, etc.

May it please your Excellency,

We her Most Gracious Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the members of the Legislative Council of Victoria, in Parliament assembled beg leave to approach Your Excellency with renewed assurances of unabated loyalty to Her Majesty's Throne and Person.

We desire to draw Your Excellency's attention to the answer given by the Hon. the Post-Master General during the sitting of the Council on the 1st instant to the question put by one of our members, viz.:--Whether it is the intention of the Ministry to afford this House the opportunity of considering the propriety of renewing or discontinuing the payment of members of Parliament by submitting the measure by Bill as heretofore.

The answer was as follows:--In reply to the Hon. Member the Cabinet desire me to state that it is unusual and inexpedient to state the intention of the Government otherwise than by the due presentation of business to Parliament; but in this instance there is an additional serious objection to the question of the hon. member. It deals with the appropriation of revenue which is the exclusive privilege of the Legislative Assembly, and it is highly undesirable that the Legislative Council should interfere even by a question with appropriation, the initiation of which is by message from the Crown, on the advice of the responsible Ministers and is further controlled by the exclusive privileges of the Assembly.

This being the opinion of Your Excellency's advisers, were we to continue silent it might with some show of reason be inferred that we were satisfied with the answer of the Government, and would accept their dictum as representing the true position of the matter as between the two Chambers.

We have thought it incumbent upon us to lay before Your Excellency the following circumstances connected with the question of payment of members:--In the session of 1860-1, a separate Bill for payment of members was introduced into the Assembly, but was lost in the Council. In the session 1861, Sir Henry Barkly, who was then Governor, was warned by the Legislative Council of the inevitable consequences of a sum being included in the annual Estimates of Expenditure for the compensation of members of Parliament, and the objectionable item was not included in the Estimates for the year when laid before the Assembly that session.

On five subsequent occasions separate Bills for the same object have been sent up from the Legislative Assembly, three of which were rejected, and the two last were passed by the Legislative Council, but on both these occasions the principal supporters of the Bills distinctly stated that their votes were given on the understanding that the measures were to be tentative only, and limited in their duration.

The question at the present time is in exactly the same position as it was when originated in 1861, and is still in the region of experimental legislation. It is not a mere question of the appropriation of the public revenue, but of public policy upon which an uniform usage has been adopted in the colony, with the concurrence of both Houses, with the marked co-operation of Her Majesty's Representative in 1861.

The usage, moreover, is in strict conformity with the Royal Instructions which direct that "in the passing of all laws each different matter must be provided for by a different law without intermixing such things as have no proper relation to each other, and that no clause or clauses be inserted in, or annexed to any Act which shall be foreign to what the title of that Act imports."

We desire to inform Your Excellency that we claim the right to exercise the same free and deliberate vote on any Bill which may be submitted to us for providing compensation to members of Parliament as we have exercised on all previous occasions and we submit that the inclusion of a sum for that purpose in the Annual Appropriation Bill might make such procedure the instrument of enabling one branch of the Legislature to coerce the other.

GOVERNOR SIR G.F. BOWEN, G.C.M.G., TO THE EARL OF CARNARVON, RECEIVED 23RD JAN. 1878. Telegraphic.

23rd Jan. 1878.

In consequence of the rejection of the annual Appropriation Bill by the Legislative Council, ministers have made large temporary reductions in the public expenditure to economise funds for Police Gaols, and protection of life and property to the latest possible moment, and that is about until next May. A number of civil servants and minor officers of the judicial department have necessarily been dispensed with temporarily, but sufficient provision has been made for the administration of Justice and maintenance of law and order. The Government will do nothing contrary to law or Imperial interests.

Full Reports by Mail.

TELEGRAMS FROM MELBOURNE

Melb. 14th Jan.

Appropriation Bill was rejected by Legislative Council consequent upon clause for payment of members being inserted. Government in Council dismissed at a moment's notice all County Court Judges, Police Magistrates, Wardens, Coroners, many Heads of Departments. Further sweeping changes announced. Great Alarm and Indignation. Trade disorganised.

25th Jan.

No political change. Many more dismissals.

30th Jan.

Eminent Counsel declare Acts of Sir George Bowen in closing Courts illegal. The country alarmed. Secretary of State urged to await letters by mail and not act on exparte statements.

To the Right Hon. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Bart, M.P.

Government House, Melb. April 12th, 1878.

Sir,

On the 29th ultimo I forwarded to you a telegram announcing the happy termination, through a fair compromise honourable to both sides, of the protracted crisis and "deadlock" between the two Houses of Parliament, which had caused so much excitement and agitation, and so much suffering and loss in this community, and which was straining the constitution of this Colony to a degree which it could not have endured for long.

Ever since December constant efforts have been made to induce the conflicting Houses to agree to an honourable compromise of their differences. Personally I omitted no proper opportunity of recommending mutual forbearance and mutual concessions. It was proposed on behalf of the Ministry and the Assembly that the Council should agree to pass the separate Bill sent up to them in December, and that the assembly should simultaneously, or as nearly so as might be, appoint a Committee to search for the Appropriation Bill which had been "laid aside" and should then reenact that Bill without the item objected to by the Upper House. The Ministers, a strong minority of the Councillors, the Assembly, and the general public--all united in pressing the Council to accept this arrangement, but there were many disappointing delays and failures in the negotiations.

Finally, however, all difficulties were overcome, and both the separate Bill continuing the reimbursement of the expense of members and the annual Appropriation Act have become law.

General satisfaction has been felt and everywhere expressed at this termination of the late dangerous and disastrous parliamentary "deadlock," and the political and social animosities caused by it are already fast subsiding. The country is tranquil and generally prosperous. Before the commencement of the political crisis there had been a partial depression in trade and depreciation in the value of certain kinds of property, in consequence of a long drought succeeded by very heavy floods, and from other temporary causes. These evils had been aggravated by the sense of uncertainty rather than of insecurity produced by the fierce and protracted political and social agitation and antagonism of the last four months. But a young and strong community like that of Victoria, full of life and energy, and of that general good humour which flows from the habitual prosperity of all classes, rapidly recovers from depression and discontent, however caused.

It has been very satisfactory to me to receive the assurances that throughout the late financial deadlock, no public money has been expended except in due form of law, and in strict accordance with parliamentary usage. Those public works which had been legally provided for by Railway and Loan Acts, or otherwise, have been carried on without interruption; while by dint of strict economy and of the large retrenchments in the civil service effected by the Ministry, the administration of justice and of the several departments of the Government has proceeded regularly and without intermission.

In a speech delivered in last October before the actual beginning of the recent crisis, but in anticipation of its near approach, I recommended the members of both Houses of Parliament and of both political parties to lay to heart the subjoined passage in one of Mr. J.S. Mill's works:

"One of the most indispensable requisites in the practical conduct of politics, especially in the management of free institutions, is conciliation, a readiness to compromise, a willingness to concede something to opponents, and to shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of opposite views, and of this salutary habit the mutual 'give and take' (as it has been called) between two Houses is a perpetual school; useful as such even now, and its utility would probably be more felt in a more democratic constitution of the Legislature." Nor have I ever ceased to urge the adoption of such principles as those laid down by Mr. Merivale when he wrote "Moderation in success, self-denial in the exercise of power, habitual consideration for the opinions and feelings of others, readiness to compromise differences, love of justice and fair play, reluctance to push principles to extremes, the moral courage which will dare to stand up against a majority, the habit of constantly, and, as it were instinctively postponing self to the public interest, and this whether arising from moral choice or from the constraint imposed by public opinion; these are the balancing qualities which prevent the misuse of political freedom."

With regard to the opinions which I have formed concerning the proper position and mutual relations of the two Houses of the Victorian Parliament, it will be remembered that my opinions are identical with those placed on record on that subject by the late Lord Canterbury, my able and experienced predecessor in my present office. It will also be recollected that I have steadily followed, during the crisis of 1877-8, the precedents made, and the constitutional course pursued by Lord Canterbury during the previous crisis of 1867-8. In acknowledging Lord Canterbury's despatch of 18th July, 1868, reporting the termination of the crisis of 1867-8, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies (the Duke of Buckingham) wrote as follows:

"I have to express my approval of your firm adherence to your constitutional position through these trying discussions; and I learn with satisfaction the cessation of a state of affairs which has been productive of so much inconvenience in the Colony."

Having pursued exactly the same course and acted on exactly the same principles with my predecessor, I am confident that I shall receive similar personal support. Moreover, I submit that it is of supreme importance, on public grounds, that the people of the Australasian Colonies should know that the actions and conduct of successive Governors are not prompted by the personal views or idiosyncrasies of individuals, but that they are guided by a consistent and uniform policy, sanctioned by the authority of the Imperial Government.

NEW GUINEA

+Source.+--New Guinea. By Charles Lyne (special representative of the "Sydney Morning Herald"), pp. 1-28

In 1882, the Queensland Government took alarm at certain rumours of the intention of Germany to annex New Guinea, but for a time the British Government refused to move. When the establishment of a protectorate was authorized, only the southeastern portion of the island was available, Germany having, in the meantime, annexed the northern part and the group of Islands known as New Britain.

Commodore Erskine in H.M.S. Nelson arrived at Port Moresby on Sunday, the 2nd of November, 1884, and the Union Jack now flies from the flagstaff at the mission station, the Proclamation of a British Protectorate having been made with much ceremony on Thursday Nov. 6.

On the Wednesday afternoon, the chiefs and a number of other natives were brought on board the H.M.S. Nelson, and a grand assembly took place, with a feast for the chiefs and an address from the Commodore, a presentation of gifts attractive to the native eye, and the firing of some of the ships' guns. The flags of various nations were hung over the quarter-deck in the form of an awning, and the officers wore frock-coats and swords. Most of the chiefs were destitute of clothing, the mop-like hair and foreheads of some of them being bound round with bands of small shells and the hair ornamented with tufts of feathers. Two or three wore old shirts, and one, Boe Vagi, the chief of the Port Moresby natives, who was appointed by the Commodore to be the head chief of the Motu tribe, was dressed in a shirt, with a handkerchief round his loins, a red felt hat on his head, and some green leaves through the lobe of his left ear. Evidently he had been attired specially for the occasion, as his usual dress is as scanty as that of his fellows. There were in all about fifty of the chiefs, most of them being representatives of the Motu tribe; and after having been permitted to look round the ship, they were directed by the missionaries, Messrs. Lawes and Chalmers, to seat themselves upon the deck. Then a great tub of boiled rice, sweetened with brown sugar, was brought on deck, and basins of this mixture were handed round to the chiefs who received them, and devoured the rice with evident satisfaction. Ships' biscuits were also served out, and the scene presented by the feasting savages, and by the grouping of the Nelson's officers and the parading of the bluejackets on the opposite side of the deck--so that a photograph might be taken of the whole assembly--was exceedingly interesting and picturesque.

When the feasting was over, Commodore Erskine came upon deck, and the chief, Boe Vagi, having been invited by Mr. Lawes to come forward, the Commodore addressed him, and his fellow chiefs, and said:

"I have asked you to come on board to-day in order that I may explain to you about the ceremony which will take place to-morrow on shore. I have been sent to this place to notify and proclaim that Her Majesty the Queen has established a Protectorate over the southern shores of New Guinea, and in token of that event I am directed to hoist the British flag at Port Moresby, and at other places along the coast and islands. To-morrow, then, I intend to hoist the English flag here, and to read a Proclamation which will be duly translated to you. I desire, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, to explain to you the meaning of the ceremonial which you are about to witness. It is a proclamation that from this time forth you are placed under the protection of Her Majesty's Government; that evil-disposed men will not be able to occupy your country, to seize your lands, or to take you away from your own homes. I have been instructed to say to you that what you have seen done here to-day on board Her Majesty's ship of war, and which will be done again to-morrow on shore, is to give you the strongest assurance of Her Majesty's gracious protection of you, and to warn bad and evil-disposed men that if they attempt to do you harm, they will be promptly punished by the officers of the Queen. Your lands will be secured to you; your wives and children will be protected. Should any injury be done to you, you will immediately inform Her Majesty's officers, who will reside amongst you, and they will hear your complaints, and do you justice. You will look upon all white persons whom the Queen permits to reside amongst you as your friends, and Her Majesty's subjects. The Queen will permit nobody to reside here who does you injury. You will under no circumstances inflict punishment upon any white person; but if such person has done you wrong you will tell Her Majesty's officers of that wrong in order that the case may be fairly inquired into. You must know that it is for your security, and to prevent bloodshed, that the Queen sends me here to you, and will send her officers to live amongst you. And now I hope that you clearly understand that we are here amongst you as your friends. You will all keep peace amongst yourselves, and if you have disputes with each other, you will bring them before the Queen's officers who will settle them for you without bloodshed. Should bad men come amongst you, bringing firearms and gunpowder, and intoxicating liquors, you are not to buy them, and are to give notice at once to the Queen's officers, so that such men may be punished. Always keep in your minds that the Queen guards and watches over you, looks upon you as her children, and will not allow anyone to harm you, and will soon send her trusted officers to carry out her gracious intentions in the establishment of this Protectorate."

At the Commodore's request Mr. Lawes read a translation of this address in the Motu language, the chiefs listening attentively: then calling the chief, Boe Vagi, forward, Commodore Erskine shook hands with him, and introduced him to Mr. Romilly; and the Commodore's intimation of the appointment of a High Commissioner for New Guinea and his explanation of Mr. Romilly's position, were interpreted to the chiefs by Mr. Lawes. This was followed by the appointment of Boe Vagi as head chief of the Motu tribe. To make his appointment more distinct, he was presented with an emblem of authority in the form of an ebony stick with a florin let in at the top, the Queen's head being uppermost, and encircled by a band of silver. Handing to Boe Vagi this stick, the Commodore said: "I present him with this stick, which is to be an emblem to him of his authority; and all the tribes who are represented by the chiefs here are to look to the holder of this stick, Boe Vagi. This stick represents the Queen's head, the Queen of England; and if at any time any of the people of these tribes have any grievance or anything to say, they are, through this man, the holder of this stick, Boe Vagi, to make it known to the Queen's officers, in order that it may be inquired into. This stick is to be the symbol of his authority, and all the tribes are to have communication through him with the Queen's officer."

Directed then to descend to the main deck the chiefs walked one after another into the Commodore's cabin, where each received a present consisting of a tomahawk, a butcher's knife, a coloured shirt, or a piece of coloured cloth, and some figs of twist tobacco. It was a curious sight to see these chiefs, some of them very old men, but others young, erect and muscular, filing in at one door, and after shaking hands with the Commodore and receiving a present, leaving by the other; and it was very amusing to notice how startled some of them were at suddenly discovering themselves in a large pier-glass, which they had to pass before leaving the cabin. The Commodore did not fail to point out through Mr. Lawes to the chief who had burnt the village of another, that for the future he would not be allowed to commit such an act, and must through the Queen's officers seek redress for any grievance he might have; and the man was evidently impressed by what was said to him.

At half-past six next morning the landing of officers and men of the squadron for the purpose of publicly proclaiming the establishment of the Protectorate, and hoisting the British flag, commenced. The general order issued by the Commodore directed that the dress for officers should be cocked hat, undress coat, and epaulettes; the dress for seamen white frocks and hats, and that for marines white tunics and helmets. There was, consequently, a very attractive display of uniforms, and altogether it was an exceedingly interesting spectacle. The early hour appointed for the landing permitted of the ceremony being performed at a time when the heat, which was intense while the Nelson was on the coast, was not likely to be very trying to the men. The water of the harbour lay placid as a lake, with the ships of war far out from the shore, and here and there native canoes moving slowly along or resting idly on the surface; and the hills and valleys were green and shaded from the sun, and wore that refreshing appearance which is notable when the trees and the grass have been bathed in dew, and when the sun's rays are strong enough only to make the dewdrops sparkle, and to deepen the shadows in the recesses where the sunlight has not yet penetrated.

The boats conveying the officers and men to the shore, each flying the white ensign, imparted life and colour to the scene upon the water, and nothing could be more picturesque and beautiful than the view on shore, where the houses of the native villages bordering the beach, with their brown occupants gazing in amazement on what was taking place before them, were shaded by a grove of cocoanut palms, the refreshing dark green fronds being rivalled only by the lighter green of the plantations of the banana trees on the sides of the hills, which, rising high above the village, were, notwithstanding the evidence of cultivation by the natives, and the existence of the little mission settlement, dressed in almost all their native loveliness, and robed in delicately-tinted morning mists.

Inside the enclosed ground stood the mission house, and on a spot commanding a view of almost the entire harbour was the flagstaff which was now to display the flag hoisted with the authority of the Queen by Commodore Erskine; and it was around this flagstaff that the troops were drawn up in a hollow square, the men facing inwards, with the officers to the front, and the Commodore and his suite standing with the missionaries and Mr. Chester on the verandah of the mission house. The native chiefs who had been on board the Nelson were seated in a picturesque group on the ground immediately in front of the Commodore; and other natives and a few white spectators stood in a crowd at the rear of the blue-jackets. The only representative of English women present was Mrs. Lawes, wife of the Rev. W.G. Lawes, who was accommodated with a chair, and sat near the Commodore and the officers on either side of him.

Immediately the blue-jackets had landed they were marched up the hill to the mission compound, but the marines remained upon the beach until the Commodore landed, when they presented arms, and afterwards, with bayonets fixed, marched with the band to join the bluejackets in front of the mission house.

On the Commodore appearing before the troops they presented arms, and he then read the following proclamation:

"PROCLAMATION.

"Proclamation on behalf of her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, establishing a Protectorate of Her Most Gracious Majesty over a portion of New Guinea, and the Islands adjacent thereto.

"To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting:

"Whereas it has become essential, for the protection of the lives and properties of the native inhabitants of New Guinea, and for the purpose of preventing the occupation of portions of that country by persons whose proceedings unsanctioned by any lawful authority might tend to injustice, strife and bloodshed, and who, under the pretence of legitimate trade and intercourse, might endanger the liberties, and possess themselves of the lands of such native inhabitants, that a British Protectorate should be established over a certain portion of such country and the islands adjacent thereto.

"And whereas Her Majesty, having taken into her gracious consideration the urgent necessity of her protection to such inhabitants has directed me to proclaim such protection in a formal manner at this place: Now, I, James Elphinstone Erskine, Captain in the Royal Navy, and Commodore of the Australian Station, one of Her Majesty's naval aides-de-camp, do hereby, in the name of Her Most Gracious Majesty, declare and proclaim the establishment of such Protectorate over such portions of the coast and the adjacent islands as is more particularly described in the schedule hereunto annexed.

"And I hereby proclaim and declare that no acquisition of land whensoever or howsoever acquired, within the limits of the Protectorate hereby established, will be recognized by Her Majesty; And I do hereby, on behalf of Her Majesty, command and enjoin all persons whom it may concern to take notice of this Proclamation."

"SCHEDULE.

"All that portion of the southern shores of New Guinea commencing from the boundary of that portion of the country claimed by the Government of the Netherlands on the 141st meridian of east longitude to East Cape, with all islands adjacent thereto south of East Cape to Kosman Island inclusive, together with the islands in the Goschen Straits.

"Given on board Her Majesty's ship Nelson, at the harbour of Port Moresby, on the 6th day of November 1884.

"(Signed) JAMES ELPHINSTONE ERSKINE.

"Commodore.

"God Save the Queen."

This was interpreted to the natives by the Rev. W.G. Lawes, who, at the request of Commodore Erskine, had translated it into the Motu language, and then, by direction of the Commodore, the Union Jack was slowly raised to the truck of the flagstaff.

All this not a little astonished the natives, though some of those whose homes were at Port Moresby had witnessed the firing of a feu-de-joie before; but though the firing startled some of them it had, with the general display, the effect of impressing them all with some sense of the solemn importance of the ceremony that was being performed. The firing party were then ordered to shoulder arms, and the Commodore, addressing all present at the ceremony but the natives, said:

"Officers and men, Mr. Romilly and Gentlemen, This interesting and important ceremony now formally concluded, it only remains for me, in Her Majesty's name to express the fervent hope that under the blessing of Almighty God the establishment of this Protectorate may conduce to the peace, happiness and welfare of the people of this vast territory. May the British flag which we have this day planted on these shores be to the people of this portion of New Guinea the symbol of their freedom and their liberty, and the Proclamation which I have just read, the charter of their rights and privileges. May it be to them a Protectorate in deed, as well as in name, protecting them alike from the encroachment of foreigners and the aggressive or unlawful actions of any other nationality; may the blessings of civilization and Christianity, the seeds of which have been already sown by English hands in the persons of the brave and good men present on this occasion, increase and multiply exceedingly amongst them; and lastly, as the Union Jack which has on several former occasions been hoisted on the shores of New Guinea and the adjacent islands is on this day for the first time displayed and hoisted on New Guinea under the authority and by the command of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, I most fervently pray that the establishment of a British Protectorate on these shores may tend to insure the integrity and inviolability of the great Australian Colonies, and promote the best interests of their people; and I trust that this important step may be attended with the happiest results, and redound to the honour of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, for whom I now invite you to give three hearty cheers."

The call was right loyally responded to, and with Captain Bridge leading, three British cheers rang out and echoed among the hills; and then, with a royal salute, the troops once more presenting arms, the ceremony was brought to a close.

THE NATIONAL AUSTRALASIAN CONVENTION 1891

+Source.+--National Australasian Convention Debates, pp. 3-5, 23-28, 322

After self-government had been granted to the Australian colonies, the need for united action in certain matters became apparent. Under the leadership of Sir Henry Parkes a strong movement for federation was organized. His labour bore fruit in the meeting of the National Australasian Convention in 1891. At this assembly were passed the resolutions which form the foundation of the Federation Act.

March 3rd. Mr. Munro rose to move:

That, the Honourable Sir Henry Parkes, G.C.M.G., Premier of New South Wales, do take the chair as President of this National Australasian Convention.

He said: I think this is a fitting honour to confer upon the author of the movement on the part of these Australian colonies, which resulted in the Conference held in Melbourne last year. The hon. gentleman has taken a deep interest in the subject of federation for a great number of years, and we, moreover, meet in the colony of which he has the honour to be Premier. I have no doubt that in the position of president he will aid us with his council and advice, and that his occupancy of the chair will reflect credit upon our proceedings.

Mr. Dibbs: We look to Sir Henry Parkes as, to some extent, the architect of the structure we are about to build, and we, like the other gentlemen present, look to our Premier for advice and explanation, and hope that he will in due time place before us such a programme as will enable us to proceed with the great work before us; I can assure the honourable gentleman that we appreciate the compliment paid to the Colony through our Premier, and personally I have great pleasure in supporting the proposition which has been made.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

The President elect, being conducted to the chair by the Hon. James Munro, and the Hon. Sir Samuel Griffith, said:

Mr. Munro, Sir Samuel Griffith, and honourable gentlemen, I could not, under any circumstances, do other than yield to your unanimous choice. I am very conscious indeed of my disqualifications for the office of President. It is hardly in my nature to observe that studied decorum which is so shining a quality in the Chair. I have not been fitted for that situation in life. I therefore feel how great the honour is to be placed in that position on this great occasion and by this great body. I shall trust to that generous unanimity which has prevailed in carrying this motion to support me in discharging duties in the Chair, duties which may become onerous; and I am quite sure I shall not trust in vain. It becomes my duty to give this assurance, that so far as I know myself, I will command myself to do the duties of this Chair so that there shall be no cause of complaint. I will try to conduct the business as to offend none, and, if possible, secure the good opinion which appears to have been formed to-day. I thank the honourable gentlemen for the great distinction you have conferred upon me, and I trust none of you will see cause to regret the vote you have given.

March 4th. Sir Henry Parkes: I have the honor to move,

That in order to establish and secure an enduring foundation for the structure of a federal government, the principles embodied in the following resolutions be agreed to:--

1. That the powers and privileges and territorial rights of the several existing colonies shall remain intact, except in respect to such surrenders as may be agreed upon as necessary, and incidental to the power and authority of the National Federal Government.

2. That the trade and intercourse between the federated colonies whether by means of land carriage or coastal navigation shall be absolutely free.

3. That the power and authority to impose customs duties shall be exclusively lodged in the Federal Government and Parliament, subject to such disposal of the revenues thence derived as shall be agreed upon.

4. That the military and naval defence of Australia shall be intrusted to Federal forces under one command.

I submit these resolutions as a groundwork on which a debate may be raised on the whole question with which we have to deal. They certainly give a fair expression of the outline of the constitution which we want, as it exists in my own mind, and to that extent I at once acknowledge the paternity of the motion I make. I venture to appeal to every colony, and to every delegate representing every colony, to meet the work on which we are about to begin, in a broad federal spirit. We cannot hope for any just conclusion--we cannot hope reasonably for any amount of valid success--unless we lose sight to a large extent of the local interests which we represent at the same time that we represent the great cause.

There can be no federation if we should happen, any of us, to insist upon conditions which stand in the way of federation; there can be no complete union of these governments, of these communities, of these separate colonies, unless we can so far clear the way as to approach the great question of creating a federal power as if the boundaries now existing had no existence whatever. I cannot too fervently impress upon my co-representatives from all parts of Australia the necessity of keeping in view the one object of the better government of Australia, the whole Australian people.

By my second condition I seek to define what seems to me an absolutely necessary condition of anything like perfect federation, that is, that Australia, as Australia, shall be free--free on the borders, free everywhere, in its trade and intercourse between its own people; and that there shall be no impediment of any kind--that there shall be no barrier of any kind between one section of the Australian people and another; but, that the trade and general communication of these people shall flow on from one end of the continent to the other, with no one to stay its progress or to call it to account; in other words, if this is carried, it must necessarily take with it the shifting of the power of legislation on all fiscal questions from the local or provincial parliaments, to the great National Parliament sought to be created. Now our country is fashioned by nature in a remarkable manner--in a manner which distinguishes it from all other countries in the world for unification for family life--if I may use that term in a national sense. We are separated from the rest of the world by many leagues of sea--from all the old countries of the world and from the greatest of the new countries; but we are separated from all countries by a wide expanse of sea, which leaves us with an immense territory, a fruitful territory, a territory capable of sustaining its countless millions--leaves us compact within ourselves; so that if a perfectly free people can arise anywhere, it surely may arise in this favoured land of Australia.

Whatever our views may be on other points, I think we shall all be agreed upon this; that for the defence of Australia to be economical, to be efficient, to be equal to any emergency that may arise at any time, it must be of a federal character, and must be under one command. I do not mean that the naval and land forces shall be under one commander-in-chief, but that they should be under one kindred command--that the naval officer in command equally with the military officer shall be a federal officer, and amenable to the national government of Australia.

As to the wisdom of the great step we have now taken, for so many eminent men from different parts of Australia meeting in this Chamber as delegates from their colonies is in itself a great step--as to the wisdom of that step we have the warning of every country in the world which has used government by a confederation.

Here we find a people I suppose about 4,000,000 strong. They have afforded in the great cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart abundant proof of their power of founding an empire. Go beyond the cities; they have accomplished under responsible government what appear to me, and what must appear to any stranger who knew the country thirty-five years ago, marvels in the way of internal improvements. Not only the railways, but the telegraphs, and everything that conduces to the best ends of a civilized community, has been achieved by this scattered people in a marvellous manner. But all through this great, this noble, this successful effort, we have had different sources of irritation, of bad neighbourhood, of turmoil, of aggression, which, if they were to go on, must make these co-terminous communities instead of being one people of one blood, one faith, one jurisprudence, one in the very principles of civilization themselves--instead of that must make us cavilling, disputatious, foreign countries. The only way to stop that is for the whole people--and remember that the whole people in the final result must be the arbiters--to join in creating one great union government which shall act for the whole. That government must, of course, be sufficiently strong to act with effect, to act successfully, and it must be sufficiently strong to carry the name and the fame of Australia with unspotted beauty, and with uncrippled power throughout the world. One great end, to my mind, of a federated Australia is, that it must of necessity secure for Australia a place in the family of nations, which it never can attain while it is split up into separate colonies with antagonistic laws and with hardly anything in common.

I regret to say, Mr. President, that my strength is not such as will enable me to keep on my feet many minutes longer. I have submitted these resolutions--perhaps it is all the better--without any great effort in their support. I trust I have indicated with a clearness sufficient what the great object we aim at must be, and the means by which alone we can hope to accomplish it. I do not doubt that the gentlemen present will each of them address themselves to the subject, which, I think, the resolutions have the merit of fairly launching, in a spirit of patriotism, always keeping in view the welfare, the prosperity, the united strength, and the ultimate glory of our common country.

March 13th. I am aware that outside these walls, at any rate, there is a feeling that we ought to wait; that the time has not yet come. I can only repeat what I have said in other places. If we miss this particular opportunity, every year that rolls over us will make the difficulties greater; these difficulties which our separate existence have imposed will go on increasing. They can only have one crop of fruit; they can only produce antipathy, disunion, aggression, reprisal, wide-spread discontent, and, if they are suffered to go on, civil war. That is a prospect which no man of just mind can contemplate--that these colonies, sprung from the same stock, possessing the same great inheritance of equal laws and all the riches of science which have been achieved and stored up for us in the mother country--that we, side by side, instead of living in brotherhood and amity, should live in constant irritation and hostility. Either we must join hands, or we must hold out our hands in defiance of each other. In the very nature of things we cannot be divided and be one. In the very nature of things we cannot submit to causes of irritation, causes of infliction, causes of dissatisfaction, causes of exasperation, and still live in brotherhood. It is only by joining hands in good faith as the people of one kindred; it is only by giving and taking--by entertaining compromise as far as compromise can be entertained without deadly injury to principle--it is only by doing that, we can hope to found this union. If we unfortunately miss this great occasion, and leave the work undone, it will be done in a few years hence, and it will be done by younger hands, who will gain the credit of having effected this bond of union, which will be in itself, if rightly effected, of more value than any other achievement in the history of this continent.

This is no time for glowing periods; it is no time for rhetorical flights; but it is a time for hard and steady work in trying to do what we are called here to do, and I would ask the honourable members to do their utmost by a calm self-suppression, by a close attention to the object which has brought us here, by mutual respect, mutual forbearance, and disposition to compromise where compromise is possible, to assist each other in bringing about this great work; and I would say that if we do seize the occasion and succeed in doing the work, we shall have, not now so vividly as hereafter, the blessing of this and succeeding generations in what we have accomplished.

THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

+Source.+--The Melbourne Argus, 10 May 1901

OPENING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT

Ten years after the great conference of 1891, the work of Sir Henry Parkes and his fellow federationists reached its culmination. The first truly Australian Parliament was opened by the Duke of Cornwall and York (King George V).

By the hand of royalty, in the presence of the greatest concourse of people that Australia has seen in one building, and with splendid pomp and ceremonial, the legislative machinery of the Commonwealth was yesterday set in motion. The day was full of smiles and tears, the smiles predominating. Rising gloomily, the dispersing clouds allowed the bright sun to peep through, and when the great ceremony was in progress in the Exhibition-building, the atmosphere was radiant, and illuminated the vast spaces of the building and the great sea of faces with a bright Australian glow.

A sight never to be forgotten was the assemblage which, in perfect order, but with exalted feeling, awaited the arrival of the Duke and Duchess in the great avenues which branch out from beneath the vast Dome of the Exhibition-building. We have not in Australia any sense of the historical prestige which attaches itself to a royal opening of the British Parliament. There the stately function is magnificent in its setting and pregnant in its associations, but it is in scarcely any sense of the word a people's function.

Here, by a happy inspiration, the function was made, to the fullest extent, a popular one. Twelve thousand seated in a vast amphitheatre--free people, hopeful people, courageous people--entrusted with the working out of their own destiny, and rejoicing in their liberty, must be impressive by reason of their numbers alone.

But there was not wanting splendour of accessories. The mighty arches of the dome, the spread of the great transepts, the grace of the decorations, were in themselves inspiring; nor was even the sombre shade of the mourning dressing, softened by splashes of purple here and there, out of keeping with the event, typifying, as it did, our reverential regard for the memory of a great Constitutional Ruler, the mightiest Sovereign of the people the world has known.

Broadly speaking, what was represented in the noble assemblage was worth. The worthiest of Australia were there--the men who hold their distinguished positions because they have won them, and because they deserve them. All that is best in politics, in commerce, in industry, in the arts, in the Church, in the school, in the public service of Australia was represented there, and every heart beat high with pride and with hope.

Faint and far off, just about noon there came the sound of the National Anthem, and there was a multitudinous murmur and stir, for here was the actual event coming at last. Then near at hand came the blare of a trumpet heralding the approach of the Imperial envoys, and a moment or two after, with royal punctuality, the Duke and Duchess were on the dais, and the strains of the National Anthem came pealing through the building.

The religious feelings of the occasion were stirred by the singing of the grand "Old Hundredth" to the words of the metrical psalm, commencing "All people that on earth do dwell." This was taken up by thousands of the audience, and its swelling harmonies rose grandly to the dome. Lord Hopetoun, setting aside all complicated questions of religious precedence, himself read several prayers, in his clear, penetrating voice, so pleasantly familiar in Victoria.

When the Duke stepped forward to deliver his speech to the two Houses, a "Hush" ran round the assembly, and everyone listened intently, but the sound of the ever-moving feet on the boarded floors went on. His Royal Highness spoke deliberately, in a clear, strong voice, and the speech he read was distinctly heard by thousands of those present. It was a dignified, a graceful, a kindly, and a congratulatory speech, and it expressed a confident belief that the new powers granted to Australia will only strengthen the affection of the people for the throne and empire.

At the final words, "I now declare the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia open," the Duchess touched an electric button which gave the signal outside for the hoisting of the Union Jack on all the State schools of the Colony, and for the sending of a message to England declaring the object of the journey of the Royal envoys accomplished. Trumpets rang out the signal, and outside was heard the booming of cannon in royal salute.

After a brief pause the Duke of Cornwall and York stepped forward once more and read a special cable message of congratulation from His Majesty the King. And now Australia asserted herself. She had been suppressing her feelings to show that she knew how to behave with old-world decorum in the presence of Royalty, but this message, direct from the King himself, was too much--they simply had to cheer. And cheer they did. It was done without order or without concert. It was taken up time after time by sections of the audience; it ran round the aisles, and surged through the galleries; a hearty, spontaneous, irrepressible Australian cheer. It was not down in the programme, but it formed a most effective part of it.

The final part of the ceremony, which altogether occupied about three-quarters of an hour, was the swearing-in of members by the Governor-General. He stood on the dais and read out the oath, whilst the members, Bible in hand, followed him in sections. Then Lord Hopetoun stepped to the front of the dais, and directing the audience by the waving of his hat, called for three cheers for His Royal Highness the Duke, which were given with splendid heartiness, and followed by another round for the Duchess, after which the Duke and Duchess retired and the great ceremony was over.

TELEGRAM FROM THE KING

His Royal Highness read the following telegram from His Majesty the King:

"My thoughts are with you on the day of the important ceremony. Most fervently do I wish Australia prosperity and great happiness."

REPLY TO THE KING

The following telegram was despatched by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cornwall and York to His Majesty the King immediately after the opening ceremony:

"I have just delivered your message, and, in your name, declared open the first Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. I also read your kind telegram of good wishes, which is deeply appreciated by your loving Australian subjects, and was received with great enthusiasm. Splendid and impressive ceremony, over 12,000 people in Exhibition-building."

MESSAGE FROM THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

When the newly-elected President of the Federal Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives were presented to His Excellency the Governor-General at the Old Treasury buildings yesterday afternoon, Lord Hopetoun intimated to them and to the members of the Commonwealth Legislature who were present that he had received the subjoined message from the Secretary of State for the Colonies:

"His Majesty's Government welcomes the new Parliament that to-day takes its place among the great legislative bodies of the British Empire and they feel confident that it will be a faithful interpreter of the aspirations of a free and loyal people, and they trust that its deliberations will promote the happiness, prosperity, and unity of the whole continent of Australia."

The message was subsequently read in both Houses of the Federal Parliament, and received with cheers.

THE BOER WAR

+Source.+--The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899-1902, Vol. III, pp. 30-31, 34-35; Vol. IV, p. 428

The clash of interests in South Africa between settlers of Dutch and of British origin gave rise to much ill-feeling, and in 1899 Great Britain decided to annex the South African Colonies in order to protect the interests of her subjects. In the ensuing struggle the Colonies freely offered support, both moral and physical.

Of all the colonies the Australian ones were the most directly interested in the South African controversy. In view of the vast and increasing trade between Australia and the mother-country, the safety of the Cape route must always be a question of the very highest importance in the eyes of Australian statesmen. And apart from such considerations of contingent self-interest, Australians had strong personal feelings over the issue between Kruger and the Uitlanders. Australian miners formed no small section of the population of the Rand. Australians were under no illusions as to the idyllic character of the peasant-owners of the Transvaal. As soon as the crisis became acute, public meetings were held all over the Australian colonies to express sympathy with the Uitlanders and to support the attitude of the Imperial Government. The question of sending Australian contingents to join the Imperial forces in the event of a war was discussed at an early stage. The idea of active participation in the wars of the Empire was not altogether a new one. As far back as 1867 Tasmania had sent a contingent to assist the Imperial forces in the Maori war. More recently a body of New South Wales troops took part in the Sudan campaign of 1885. A little active service and much tedious waiting at Suakim was all they saw, and one might have imagined that in Australia the result had been to damp any inclination to repeat the performance. But the partial disappointment of 1885 made the Australians all the more eager to try again.

Between October 28 and November 5 the first Australian contingents sailed amidst the most enthusiastic popular demonstrations. They were officered and manned almost entirely by members of the various colonial volunteer forces, and thus possessed the advantage of a certain amount of initial training which was destined to stand them in good stead in the field. It should never be forgotten that their success was mainly due to the persistent effort of those officers, whether Imperial or colonial, who during the past twenty years had given their services to the development and organization of the colonial forces. It was the existence of these forces that kept up the military spirit in the colonies.

Small as was the force contributed by the Empire (nearly 80,000 men) it was none the less a material assistance, whose value can hardly be overrated. It practically doubled the mounted force, and thus made possible those sweeping movements by which Lord Roberts reached Pretoria. Above all, it gave the Imperial Government a moral support which enabled it to face with equanimity the almost universal hostility of the European powers or the fanatical outcries of a few anti-Imperialist partisans at home. Never, probably, in modern times has there been a greater consensus of honest opinion in support of a great national movement than that which backed up Britain's effort to maintain her position in South Africa. It was simply that the free citizens of free countries asked to be allowed to venture their lives for the sake of a political ideal which was personally and intimately dear to each one of them, and that, in spite of the paralysing absence of either precedent or preparation, many thousands actually achieved their desire. The war has not shown what the Empire can do, but it has revealed to those who perhaps doubted before, what an Empire we can make if we but choose.

ELANDS RIVER

Amongst varying fortunes and many indecisive actions, the defence of the position at Elands River stands out as an achievement only made possible by courage and grim determination.

For several weeks Colonel Hore, with a small garrison at Brakfontein on the Elands River, had been keeping up the connection between Mafeking and Zeerust, policing the district and forwarding on convoys to Rustenburg. At the beginning of August the force which he had for this purpose, as well as to guard a large store of supplies, consisted of 500 men, nearly all Imperial bushmen or Rhodesians, an old muzzle-loading seven-pounder, and two maxims. By this time Lord Roberts had determined that several isolated posts in the Western Transvaal, such as this one, which were in constant danger of attack, must be evacuated, and on August 1 ordered General Carrington to march to Elands River to cover Hore's retirement. But De la Rey, with three detachments of his troops under himself, Lemmer, and Steenekemp, each numbering about 300 men, and each with a gun and a pom-pom, and a maxim, had arrived there before him, and on the morning of August 4 had aroused Hore's camp by shell and rifle fire from the north-west, east, and south-east. The camp was on a small boulder-strewn kopje, in the centre of an amphitheatre about five acres in extent, and half a mile east of the river. Most of the men were on this central kopje, but two small hills on the bank of the river were held by detachments under Captain Butters and Lieutenant Zouch. Luckily, an attack had been expected, and stone sangars and shelters of ox-wagons had been made and further protected by biscuit boxes and bags of flour and sugar from the stores the men were guarding. Nevertheless the Boer attack seemed to have every chance in its favour; their guns were in safe positions 2,400 yards from the camp, and along the river banks they could creep close up to the defenders. Hore's old seven-pounder, though it succeeded in silencing a Boer gun, and killed a German gunner, was very capricious in its working, and was obviously no match for the Boer guns. The thousands of horses and oxen which were in the camp under no sort of cover were nearly all killed on the first day by the Boer shells; and the stench arising from these dead animals in the narrow camp makes it almost marvellous that the men who escaped the Boer shells were not killed by pestilence. Moreover, the only chance of getting water was to take the water carts down to the river at night, and then the drivers and escort were not always safe. To make matters worse, on the second day of the siege Carrington's advance scouts, after appearing on the rise to the west, were soon seen retiring again, so that rescue from this side seemed now out of the question. When starting, Carrington did not know that Hore was invested, so he carried very few rations. He no doubt had a small force with him and was badly off for supplies; but he had gained a ridge from which he commanded the way to Elands River, and under the circumstances of Hore's pressing danger he was too quickly discouraged from a more determined effort to bring out the garrison. From the east another attempt was made to relieve Hore which proved equally abortive.

On August 5 firing had been heard in the direction of Elands River, so next day Baden-Powell marched with his own and Mahon's mounted troops about half-way to Brakfontein. Here he heard guns firing in a westerly direction, but as the sound seemed to grow fainter and fainter, he assumed, without, however, waiting for the reports of his scouts, that Carrington had succeeded in withdrawing Hore towards Mafeking.

After Carrington's retreat to Zeerust on August 5 and Baden-Powell's to Rustenburg on the 6th, Lord Roberts had given up all hope of saving this garrison. But on the 13th a runner from Colonel Hore had arrived at Crocodile Pools, announcing that he had not surrendered. On hearing this the Field Marshal ordered Kitchener to take part of his force to relieve him. Kitchener started on the 16th. from Quaggafontein with Little's, Broadwood's, and Smith-Dorrien's brigades. After Carrington had come up and gone away again on August 5, the garrison, though apparently left to their fate, would hear nothing of surrender, but made up their minds to fight as long as they had ammunition and strength to use it. Luckily they were well provided with food, and the Boers, as usual in their sieges, were content to sit round and fire at them without seriously attempting to rush the place as they should have done. The garrison also kept up their spirits by sudden raids at night on adventurous Boers or guns that came too near. Thus, as at Wepener, it became a game of patience for the garrison, dissimilar only in this, that at Elands River there was no promise of support to buoy up the garrison with hope.

However, on August 16, after eleven days' siege, De la Rey moved away on the news of the approaching relief columns, and Lord Kitchener rode in to set free the garrison.

This siege, like that of Wepener, was especially a Colonial triumph; there the garrison had been chiefly Cape Colonials, here the majority were Australians of Carrington's first Brigade, the rest being Rhodesians, and it would be difficult to praise overmuch the determination and fine spirit shown by these Colonials in their first opportunity of distinguishing themselves as a corps. Every soldier who saw the place afterwards expressed surprise that they could have held out so long, and it is therefore the more creditable to them to have done so when every hope of relief seemed entirely cut off; while, at a time when surrenders and retreats were not sufficiently rare, the example shown by these splendid men was even more important than the position they held.

THE GREAT WAR

+Source.+--The Times History of the War and Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, p. 161; Vol. II, p. 31; Vol. III, p. 126

The aggressive policy of Germany led to the outbreak in 1914 of the greatest war in history; for nearly every country in the world ultimately became involved in the struggle.

Germany advised Austria to demand most humiliating concessions from Servia, and the resistance of Servia supported by Russia resulted in war between Germany and Austria on one side, and Servia, Russia, and her ally France on the other.

For strategical reasons Germany determined to attack France through Belgium, declaring that the international treaty which bound her to respect Belgian neutrality was but a "Scrap of Paper." Great Britain, as one of the signatories to the treaty, protested against such a violation of good faith, but finding protestation vain declared war upon Germany on 4 August 1914.

The whole Empire solidly supported the Mother Country and shared valiantly in all her achievements.

THE RALLY OF THE EMPIRE

Important as were the offers of help, both of men and provisions, which the self-governing Dominions and the Indian Empire made to the Mother Country almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, the knowledge that these great daughter-nations were morally convinced of the justice of the British cause, was a factor of even more far-reaching importance. Great as was the necessity of organizing and expanding the Imperial forces, and thus creating an extra army or armies to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force in France, urgent as was the need of taking advantage of the prompt offers of help which came from all parts of the Empire, the necessity of convincing the self-governing Dominions and the Empire at large of the righteousness of the cause for which Great Britain was fighting was more imperative still. For in the long run the consciousness of the justice of the principles for which a people is fighting, alone can ensure the massing of material force sufficient to secure material victory.

Evidence that the case for Great Britain was fully understood and thoroughly approved, not only by our own peoples, but by the bulk of the neutral States of the world, was not long in presenting itself. The Dominions as a whole had satisfied themselves that the British cause was just, before Sir Edward Grey had made it plain by his speech of August 3rd that the British Government had done everything short of sacrificing the honour of the country to avoid war. In the words of Sir Richard McBride, the Premier of British Columbia, "Should it unfortunately develop that Great Britain is compelled to engage in hostilities, Canada will automatically be at war also"; while in Australia, Mr. Fisher, the ex-Prime Minister, declared, "Should honour demand the Mother Country to take part in hostilities, Australians will stand beside her to the last man and the last shilling." These sentiments found expression in the offers of help of men and material, which have been described in the preceding chapter. To those offers the King replied by a message to the Overseas Dominions:

"I desire to express to my people of the Overseas Dominions with what appreciation and pride I have received the messages from their respective Governments during the last few days.

"These spontaneous assurances of their fullest support recall to me the generous, self-sacrificing help given by them in the past to the Mother Country.

"I shall be strengthened in the discharge of the great responsibility which rests upon me by the confident belief that in this time of trial my Empire will stand united, calm, resolute, trusting in God.

"GEORGE R.I."

THE SINKING OF THE EMDEN (German cruiser)

Against us there were known to be some eight or nine German cruisers abroad, all efficient for commerce-destroying purposes, and several with very high speed, which it was recognized would require a great deal of catching....

The Emden was a small vessel of some 3,500 tons, with a speed of about 25 knots--quite fast enough to overhaul any British steamer she was likely to encounter, and fast enough also to run away, if necessary. The Emden was generally heard of where she was least expected, and after reaping her harvest of merchantmen, as unaccountably disappeared. In something under six weeks she had captured nearly twenty steamers, always contriving to pick up a collier among them, so that she was able to keep her bunkers replenished....

As a variety of adventure, the Emden steamed one evening into Madras Roads, and threw shell into the outskirts of the town for the space of half an hour or so--some oil tanks were set ablaze, and two or three natives killed; Fort George returned the fire--probably without effect--and the Emden retired.

It may be assumed that the German captain received information by wireless of the probable approach of colliers or other vessels, as he was so very much on the spot; in any case, he was a courageous and enterprising man, and a good sportsman; but we wanted very badly to catch him. There are so many holes and corners in that part of the world, where a vessel may lie for a time with little chance of detection, and the Emden's speed would have enabled her to reach some such refuge very quickly.

The last act in the drama of the Emden took place off the Cocos-Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean....

It was to this desolate spot in the Indian Ocean that Captain Von Muller brought his ship, in the early days of November; with him was one of his captures, the Buresk, which was full of coal. The object of this visit of the Emden was the destruction of the important wireless station that is established on the islands, and on the morning of November 9th, the officials were unpleasantly surprised by the landing of an armed boat's crew from a cruiser, which had come to an anchor, and which they first imagined to be H.M.S. Minotaur. They were quickly undeceived by the German officer in charge of the party, who informed them that their operations from the wireless station had greatly hampered the movements of the cruiser. One detachment of the Germans then rounded up all the officials and their servants, placing them under a strict guard, while a second party prepared to blow up the wireless installation and to smash the instrument rooms of the cable office. This they did most thoroughly, but the officials seem to have kept their heads in the most praiseworthy manner, as, just as soon as they discovered that the enemy was upon them, they sent out distress signals by wireless, and warned adjacent stations by cable that they were about to be smashed up.

The landing party now blew up the wireless mast and the store in which spare cable and cable gear was kept; a third explosion wrecked the wireless hut, and completed the destruction of the installation. The dynamo rooms and workshops were destroyed with flogging hammers and axes, everything breakable, including clocks, being smashed to atoms. Their next proceeding was to cut the shore ends of the submarine cables, and this was done in full view of the prisoners. There are three cables from the Cocos--to Perth, to Batavia, and to Rodriguez--and the pleasure of the prisoners can be imagined when they saw the Germans spend much hard labour in destroying a dummy cable. Eventually the Perth cable and the dummy were cut, the others being left, presumably because the Germans did not know that they existed.

The party from the Emden had landed at 7.30 a.m., and by 9.20 their mission of destruction was accomplished. At this time a signal was blown on the siren from the ship; the officer in command collected his men, marched them down to the beach, and re-embarked. The telegraphists report that they were fairly and courteously treated. On arrival the Emden was still using her now famous fourth funnel, a dummy, and this it was that caused the telegraphists to mistake her in the first instance for the Minotaur, which is a four-funnelled armoured cruiser. As she steamed away in the bright light of the tropic morning for what was so shortly to prove her last cruise, the Emden hauled down, and stowed away, her dummy.

The action that ensued between the Sydney and the Emden is here given in the official despatch of Captain Glossop, dated from Colombo on November 15th:

I have the honour to report that whilst on escort duty with the convoy under the charge of Captain Silver, H.M.A.S. Melbourne, at 6.30 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 9th, a wireless message from Cocos was heard reporting that a foreign warship was off the entrance. I was ordered to raise steam for full speed at 7.0 a.m. and proceeded thither. I worked up to twenty knots, and at 9.15 a.m. sighted land ahead and almost immediately the smoke of a ship, which proved to be the H.I.G.M.S. Emden coming out towards me at a great rate. At 9.40 a.m. fire was opened, she firing the first shot. I kept my distance as much as possible to obtain the advantage of my guns. Her fire was very accurate and rapid to begin with, but seemed to slacken very quickly, all casualties occurring in this ship almost immediately. First, the foremost funnel of her went, secondly the foremast, and she was badly on fire aft, then the second funnel went, and lastly the third funnel, and I saw she was making for the beach on North Keeling Island, where she grounded at 11.20 a.m. I gave her two more broadsides and left her, to pursue a merchant ship which had come up during the action.

2. Although I had guns on this merchant ship at odd times during the action, I had not fired, and as she was making off fast, I pursued and overtook her at 12.10, firing a gun across her bows and hoisting International Code Signal to stop, which she did. I sent an armed boat, and found her to be the ss. Buresk, a captured British collier, with 18 Chinese crew, 1 English steward, 1 Norwegian cook, and a German prize crew of 3 officers, 1 warrant officer, and 12 men. The ship unfortunately was sinking, so I took all on board, fired four shells into her, and returned to Emden, passing men swimming in the water, for whom I left two boats I was towing from Buresk.

3. On arriving again off Emden, she still had her colours up at mainmast head. I inquired by signal, International Code, "Will you surrender?" and received a reply in Morse, "What signal? No signal books." I then made in Morse, "Do you surrender?" and subsequently, "Have you received my signal?" to neither of which did I get an answer. The German officers on board gave me to understand that the captain would never surrender, and therefore, though very reluctantly, I again fired at her at 4.30 p.m., ceasing at 4.35, as she showed white flags and hauled down her ensign by sending a man aloft.

4. I then left Emden and returned and picked up the Buresk's two boats, rescuing two sailors (5.0 p.m.) who had been in the water all day. I returned and sent in one boat to Emden, manned by her own prize crew from Buresk and one officer, and stating I would return to their assistance next morning.

5. I lay on and off all night, and communicated with Direction Island at 8.0 a.m., November 10th, to find that the Emden's party, consisting of three officers and forty men, one launch and two cutters, had seized and provisioned a 70-ton schooner (the Ayesha), having four Maxims with two belts to each. They left the previous night at six o'clock. The wireless station was entirely destroyed, one cable cut, one damaged, and one intact. I borrowed a doctor and two assistants, and proceeded as fast as possible to Emden's assistance.

6. I sent an officer on board to see the captain, and in view of the large number of prisoners and wounded, and lack of accommodation, etc., in this ship, and the absolute impossibility of leaving them there, he agreed that if I received his officers and men and all wounded, "then as for such time as they remained in Sydney they would cause no interference with ship or fittings, and would be amenable to the ship's discipline." I therefore set to work at once to tranship them--a most difficult operation, the ship being on weather side of island, and the send alongside very heavy. The conditions in the Emden were indescribable. I received the last from her at 5.0 p.m., then had to go round to the lee side to pick up 20 more men who had managed to get ashore from the ship.

7. Darkness came on before this could be accomplished, and the ship again stood off and on all night, resuming operations at 5.0 a.m., on November 11th, a cutter's crew having to land with stretchers to bring wounded round to embarking point. A German officer, a doctor, died ashore the previous day. The ship in the meantime ran over to Direction Island to return their doctor and assistants, send cables, and was back again at 10 a.m., embarked the remainder of wounded, and proceeded for Colombo by 10.35 a.m., Wednesday, November 11th.

8. Total casualties in Sydney: killed, 3; severely wounded (since dead), 1; severely wounded, 4; wounded, 4; slightly wounded, 4. In the Emden I can only approximately state the killed at 7 officers and 108 men from captain's statement. I had on board 11 officers, 9 warrant officers and 191 men, of whom 3 officers and 53 men were wounded, and of this number 1 officer and 3 men have since died of wounds.

9. The damage to Sydney's hull and fittings was surprisingly small; in all about ten hits seem to have been made. The engine and boiler rooms and funnels escaped entirely.

10. I have great pleasure in stating that the behaviour of the ship's company was excellent in every way, and with such a large number of young hands and people under training it is all the more gratifying.

It will be seen from Captain Glossop's despatch that he was on escort duty with the convoy under the charge of Captain Silver of H.M.A.S. Melbourne. This convoy was carrying Australian and New Zealand troops to the scene of the great conflict in Europe. The act of self-denial on the part of Captain Silver in sending the Sydney to engage the Emden, instead of taking that duty upon himself, certainly deserves to be noted. This officer denied to himself and to the officers and men under his command, the privilege of dealing with the notorious raider, and in so doing he was actuated solely by his high sense of duty and the responsibility that he owed to his country. In his judgment the Sydney was the more suitable ship, so she was sent, and the Melbourne remained with her convoy until the affair was concluded.

LANDING ON GALLIPOLI

+Source.+-—Dispatch from a special Correspondent at the Dardanelles printed in The Times, 7 May 1915

Soon after the commencement of the war Turkey joined the Central Powers, and consequently the Australian Imperial Forces, having experienced a rigorous training in Egypt, were used to assist the Navy and other Allied troops in an attempt to force the Dardanelles.

VIEWED FROM A BATTLESHIP

Slowly through the night of April 24th our squadron, which was to land the covering forces of the Australian contingent just north of Gaba Tepe, steamed towards its destination....

At 1 a.m. the ships arrived off their appointed rendezvous, five miles from the landing-place, and stopped. The soldiers were aroused from their slumbers, and were served with a last hot meal. A visit to the mess decks showed these Australians, the majority of whom were about to go into action for the first time under the most trying circumstances, possessed at 1 o'clock in the morning courage to be cheerful, quiet, and confident....

At 1.20 a.m. the signal was given from the flagship to lower the boats, which had been left swinging from the davits throughout the night. Our steam pinnaces were also lowered to take them in tow....

On the quarter-deck, backed by the great 12 in. guns, this splendid body of colonial troops were drawn up in serried ranks, fully equipped, and receiving their last instructions from their officers, who, six months ago, like their men, were leading a peaceful civilian life in Australia and New Zealand, 5,000 miles away....

At 2.5 a.m. the signal was given for the troops to embark in the boats which were lying alongside, and this was carried out with great rapidity, in absolute silence, and without a hitch or an accident of any kind....

The whole operation had been timed to allow the pinnaces and boats to reach the beach just before daylight, so that the Turks, if they had been forewarned, would not be able to see to fire before the Australians had obtained a firm footing and, it was hoped, good cover on the foreshore....

At 4.53 a.m. there suddenly came a very sharp burst of rifle fire from the beach, and we knew our men were at last at grips with the enemy. This fire lasted only for a few minutes, and then was drowned by a faint British cheer wafted to us over the waters....

The first authentic news we received came with the return of our boats. A steam pinnace came alongside with two recumbent forms on her deck and a small figure, pale, but cheerful, and waving his hand astern. They were one of our midshipmen, just sixteen years of age, shot through the stomach, but regarding his injury more as a fitting consummation to a glorious holiday ashore than a wound; and a chief stoker, and petty officer, all three wounded by that first burst of musketry, which caused many casualties in the boats just as they reached the beach.

From them we learned what had happened in those first wild moments. All the tows had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched almost on the shore, opened up a terrible fusillade from rifles and also from a Maxim. Fortunately most of the bullets went high, but, nevertheless, many men were hit as they sat huddled together forty or fifty in a boat.

It was a trying moment, but the Australian volunteers rose as a man to the occasion. They waited neither for orders, nor for the boats to reach the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore, and, forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy's rifles. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with cold steel, and I believe I am right in saying that the first Ottoman Turk since the last Crusade received an Anglo-Saxon bayonet in him at 5 minutes after 5 a.m. on April 25th. It was over in a minute. The Turks in this first trench were bayoneted or ran away, and a Maxim gun was captured.

Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere half-way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below, and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the second landing party.

Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but these Colonials are practical above all else, and they went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few moments to pull themselves together, and to get rid of their packs which no troops could carry in an attack, and then charged their magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy's fire. They lost some men but did not worry, and in less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position, either bayoneted or in full flight.

This ridge under which the landing was made, stretches due north from Gaba Tepe, and culminates in the height of Coja Chemen, which rises 950 feet above the sea level. The whole forms part of a confused triangle of hills, valleys, ridges, and bluffs which stretches right across the Gallipoli Peninsula to the Bay of Bassi Liman, above the Narrows. The triangle is cut in two by the valley through which flows the stream known as Bokali Deresi....

In the early part of the day very heavy casualties were suffered in the boats which conveyed the troops from the destroyers, tugs, and transports to the beach. As soon as it became light, the enemy's sharpshooters, hidden everywhere, simply concentrated their fire on the boats....

Throughout the whole of April 25th the landing of troops, stores, and munitions had to be carried out under these conditions, but the gallant sailors never failed their equally gallant comrades ashore. Every one, from the youngest midshipman straight from Dartmouth and under fire for the first time, to the senior officers in charge, did their duty nobly....

When the sun was fully risen and the haze had disappeared, we could see that the Australians had actually established themselves on the top of the ridge, and were evidently trying to work their way northwards along it....

The fighting was so confused, and took place amongst such broken ground that it is extremely difficult to follow exactly what did happen throughout the morning and afternoon of April the 25th. The role assigned to the covering force was splendidly carried out up to a certain point, and a firm footing was obtained on the crest of the ridge which allowed the disembarkation of the remainder of the force to go on uninterruptedly except for the never-ceasing sniping.

But then the Australians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching themselves and waiting developments, pushed northward and eastward inland, in search of fresh enemies to tackle with the bayonet. The ground is so broken and ill-defined that it was very difficult to select a position to entrench, especially as after the troops imagined they had cleared a section, they were continually being sniped from all sides. Therefore they preferred to continue the advance.... The Turks only had a comparatively weak force actually holding the beach, and they seemed to have relied on the difficult nature of the ground, and their scattered snipers, to delay the advance until they could bring up reinforcements from the interior.

Some of the Australians who had pushed inland were counter-attacked and almost outflanked by these oncoming reserves, and had to fall back after suffering very heavy casualties.

It was then the turn of the Turks to counter-attack, and this they continued to do throughout the afternoon, but the Australians never yielded a foot of ground on the main ridge, and reinforcements were continually poured up from the beach as fresh troops were disembarked from the transports. The enemy's artillery fire, however, presented a very difficult problem. As soon as the light became good, the Turks enfiladed the beach with two field guns from Gaba Tepe, and with two others from the north.... In vain did the warships endeavour to put them out of action with their secondary armament. For some hours they could not be accurately located, or else were so well protected that our shells failed to do them any harm....

Later in the day the two guns to the north were silenced ... and a cruiser moving in close to the shore, so plastered Gaba Tepe with a hail of shell that the guns there were also silenced and have not attempted to reply since.

As the enemy brought up reinforcements, towards dusk his attacks became more and more vigorous, and he was supported by a powerful artillery inland, which the ships' guns were powerless to deal with. The pressure on the Australians and New Zealanders became heavier, and the line they were occupying had to be contracted for the night. General Birdwood and his staff went ashore in the afternoon, and devoted all their energies to securing the position, so as to hold firmly to it until the following morning, when it was hoped to get some field guns in position to deal with the enemy's artillery.

Some idea of the difficulty to be faced may be gathered when it is remembered that every round of ammunition, all water, and all supplies had to be landed on a narrow beach and then carried up pathless hills, valleys, and bluffs, several hundred feet high, to the firing line. The whole of this mass of troops, concentrated on a very small area, and unable to reply, were exposed to a relentless and incessant shrapnel fire, which swept every yard of the ground, although, fortunately, a great deal of it was badly aimed or burst too high. The reserves were engaged in road-making and carrying supplies to the crest, and in answering the calls for more ammunition.

A serious problem was getting away the wounded from the shore, where it was impossible to keep them. All those who were unable to hobble to the beach had to be carried down to the hills on stretchers, then hastily dressed and carried to the boats. The boat and beach parties never stopped working throughout the entire day and night.

The courage displayed by these wounded Australians will never be forgotten. Hastily dressed and placed in trawlers, lighters, and ships' boats they were towed to the ships.... I have, in fact, never seen the like of those wounded Australians in war before, for as they were towed amongst the ships, whilst accommodation was being found for them, although many were shot to bits, and without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night, and you could just see, amidst a mass of suffering humanity, arms being waved in greeting to the crews of the warships. They were happy because they had been tried for the first time in the war and had not been found wanting. They had been told to occupy the heights and hold on, and this they had done for fifteen mortal hours, under an incessant shell fire, without the moral and material support of a single gun ashore, and subjected the whole time to the violent counter-attacks of a brave enemy, led by skilled leaders, whilst his snipers, hidden in caves and thickets and amongst the dense scrub, made a deliberate practice of picking off every officer who endeavoured to give a word of command or lead his men forward.

No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, the storming of the heights, and above all, the holding on to the position thus won whilst reinforcements were being poured from the transports. These raw Colonial troops in those desperate hours proved themselves worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons and the Aisne, Ypres, and Neuve Chapelle.

WHAT ANZAC MEANS

By Senator Pearce (Minister of State for Defence)

+Source.+--The Melbourne Argus, 25 April 1916

In an army a knowledge of its past achievements is a mighty factor in its future success. Before this war Australia had practically no army traditions, and it is to the meaning of the Gallipoli campaign in this connection that I would direct attention to-day, twelve months after the historic landing.

To the peoples of Europe the thought of war was ever present in the popular mind; but to the Australian, born and bred in an atmosphere untainted by war, living amid peaceful surroundings and desirous of remaining on terms of friendship with the rest of mankind the word itself has a jarring sound. Yet the German challenge to the Mother Country finds 233,720 of her Australian sons who have voluntarily wrenched themselves from their parents, wives, and friends, and from comfortable and cheerful homes, to answer the call of their country to fight the Empire's battles on distant shores.

Nor has the thunder of the cannon been necessary to inspire Australians with a conception of their duty; and the explanation of it all is that we have inherited to the full that spirit of our forebears which enabled them, not so long ago, to tear themselves from homeland firesides to shape careers in this great island continent, and to overcome with indomitable pluck the awful hardships of a pioneering life.

For generations to come the story of the entry of the Australian troops to the European battlefield will ring in the ears of English-speaking nations. The chronicler of the future will provide many thrilling pages of history, magnificent material for the moulding of the youthful Australian character.

A distinguished military officer told us before the war that Australians would require to be in the majority of two to one in meeting a foreign foe on our own shores; but the furious onslaught that accompanied the landing at Gallipoli, the bitter fighting and terrible trials of the occupation, and the wonderful skill that made possible the bloodless evacuation have shown us that the Australians carried out a feat of arms not excelled by the most highly-trained regulars of any nation of the world. The following messages are eloquent in their tribute to Australian bravery:

"I heartily congratulate you upon the splendid conduct and bravery displayed by the Australian troops in the operations at the Dardanelles, who have indeed proved themselves worthy sons of the Empire."--His Majesty the King, April 1915.

"The capture of the positions we hold will go down to history as a magnificent feat of the Australians and New Zealanders."--General Sir William Birdwood, November 1915.

"Happen what may, the Australians who have fought at Gallipoli will bequeath a heritage of honour to their children's children."--General Sir Ian Hamilton, November 1915.

These are examples of the praise which that feat of arms has won, and such is the standing of military bearing which the improvised army of Australian citizens has set up for the citizen army of Australia--a standard which, we may rest assured, has not failed to impress our enemies in computing the military value of our forces.

Every unit of the citizen army will now have its tradition. Every soldier of the Australian army will have that inspiring example of the Anzac heroes to live up to in his military work, and we can regard the future with a calm confidence in the military prowess of our soldiers.

The Allied troops evacuated the Gallipoli Peninsula in December 1915, and the majority of the Australian Imperial Force was then transferred to the Western Front in France, where on fiercely fought fields such as Pozières, Messines, Cambrai, Amiens, and others too numerous to detail here, they won imperishable fame.

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