FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[228]Narrative of some passages in the History of Van Diemen's Land, during the last three years of Sir John Franklin's administration of its government.[229]Franklin's Narrative, p. 21.[230]Back's Expedition, p. 180. 1836.[231]Quarterly Review.

[228]Narrative of some passages in the History of Van Diemen's Land, during the last three years of Sir John Franklin's administration of its government.

[229]Franklin's Narrative, p. 21.

[230]Back's Expedition, p. 180. 1836.

[231]Quarterly Review.

Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot, Bart., succeeded Sir John Franklin, August 21st, 1843. His short and troubled administration, although crowded with incident, presents few events of permanent interest. Charged with the development of a gigantic scheme of penal discipline, founded on erroneous data, and imperfectly sustained by material resources, he was involved in the discredit of its failure. The opposition of the colony to his measures he too readily resented as disrespectful to himself, and thus a long and useful public life was closed in sadness.

Sir Eardley Wilmot received his appointment from Lord Stanley, whose political leadership he followed in his secession from the whigs, occasioned by the reduction of the Irish church. During successive parliaments he represented Warwickshire, and for twenty years was chairman of the quarter sessions of that county,—in England a post of some consequence. He inclined rather to the liberal than the tory section of the house, and supported most measures favorable to civil and religious freedom. On the question of negro slavery he was a coadjutor of the decided abolitionists, and on his motion apprenticeship, a milder form of slavery, was finally terminated. He contributed papers on prison discipline, and initiated a bill for the summary trial of juvenile offenders. Thus he appeared not unqualified to preside in a colony where penal institutions constituted the main business of government, and where many religious opinions divide the population.

The gazette which announced his appointment contained the nomination of Sir Charles Metcalf to the governorship of Canada, vacated by Sir George Arthur. An article in the LondonTimesattacked Sir E. Wilmot with uncommonacrimony, attributed by himself to the influence of private spleen. He was described as a mere joking justice, accustomed in his judicial office to "poke fun" at prisoners, destitute alike of talents and dignity, and his character a contrast with that of the new Canadian governor. This bitter diatribe was published in the colonies, and was not forgotten in the strife of factions. Metcalf was indeed a governor with whom the widest comparison would scarcely find an equal. Every Capital he ruled is adorned with his statue, and when he descended to the dust his tomb was wet with the tears of nations. He consulted the ministers with the independence of a patriot, and governed the people as one of themselves.

Wilmot landed at a distance from Hobart Town, and delayed his entrance on office to afford time for a removal of Franklin's household. When he was sworn in the town illuminated, and the usual excitement of novelty wore the appearance of public welcome.

The open and affable address of the governor attracted the people. He rapidly traversed the island. The agricultural knowledge he possessed, his promptitude in forming and expressing opinions, contrasted with the habits and manners of his predecessor. Those who were experienced in official life foresaw the dangers of a temper so free and of movements so informal. The opponents of the late governor recommended the neglect of all the distinctions which had limited intercourse, and some persons, never before seen at government-house, were admitted to the closet, and boasted their intimacy and influence.

Scarcely had Wilmot entered office, when an exercise of mercy brought him into collision with one of the judges. Kavanagh, a notorious bushranger, was condemned to death. He had fired on a settler, whose house he attempted to pillage. In giving sentence the judge remarked that he had seldom tried a culprit stained with so great an aggregate of crime. Ten minutes before the time appointed for his execution the governor granted a reprieve. Judge Montagu was indignant, and those who had suffered by the depredations of the robber shared in his opinion. The press, in commenting on the commutation, predicted that the culprit would not long escape the scaffold. He was implicated in the murders of Norfolk Island, and suffered death (1846). Judge Montagu, shortly after the reprieve, tried four men for a similar crime, and instead of pronouncing sentence, directed death to be recorded. He stated that the sparing of Kavanagh could only be justified by the almost total abolition of capital punishment. At ameeting of the Midland Agricultural Association Wilmot noticed these reflections, and declared that he would never inflict death in consideration of offences not on the records of the court, and that in this case robbery only had been proved. He thus early complained of anonymous attacks, and admitted that in offering these explanations he was out-stepping the line of his situation. Topics of a far more agreeable nature were suggested by the special business of the day. He dwelt with great fluency on the advantages of agriculture, and dilated on the importance of independent tenants and an industrious peasantry. "You," he observed, "are to consider yourselves as the column of a lofty pillar; but, depend upon it, a tenantry form the pedestal,—a virtuous, moral, and industrious peasantry the foundation on which that pillar rests. I see around me some of your largest proprietors, who this day are lords of wastes and princes of deserts; but who, if the system of tenantry be carried out as fully as it deserves, will become patriarchs; and the future Russells, Cavendishes, and Percys of the colony may be proud to date their ancestry from any one of you."[232]This strain of compliment was returned by Mr. Kemp, the oldest of the settlers,—so many years before distinguished in the deposition of Governor Bligh. He congratulated the meeting on the appointment of his excellency, whose presence he compared to "the vivifying rays of the sun after a long cheerless winter, encouraging the ploughman to resume his labors with fresh spirit."

The prevalence of bushranging, though far less than at an earlier period, induced the midlanders to project a yeomanry corps. They were to provide weapons, meet for exercise, and always stand prepared to answer a summons. They proceeded to the choice of a treasurer and secretary—Messrs. Keach and Leake, Jun. They were, however, informed that the levying of armed men is the prerogative of the Queen. On reference to the governor, he declined to sanction their incorporation, while he praised their martial spirit. Bushrangers rarely move in numbers, and a military is not the kind of power best adapted to suppress them.

On meeting his council for the first time (October 21, 1843), Wilmot expressed his admiration of the colony, its soil, its climate, and immense resources. He promised to consider the pecuniary difficulties of the settlers, with a view to their alleviation. Referring to the appointment of acomptroller-general, the chief officer of the convict department, he declared his cordial concurrence with the new discipline as a reformatory system; and, noticing the recent arrival of a bishop, he avowed his preference for the episcopal church, and, in still stronger terms, his attachment to religious liberty and equality.

The salary of the governor was augmented to £4,000 per annum: the former uncertain but expensive allowances were withdrawn. Franklin had enjoyed £2,000 per annum, as salary, and the government houses of Hobart Town, New Norfolk, and Launceston; a farm at New Town, and a large garden in the domain. The salary of the new governor was given in full discharge of all demands. The beautiful gardens he determined to throw open to the public.

Having accepted the office of president, Wilmot convened the Tasmanian Society, formed by Franklin, and presented a series of alterations in its organisation. He proposed that it should consist of a president, four vice-presidents, and a council of twelve, to be nominated by the governor; and that at first it should be limited to fifty fellows. The project was distasteful to the original members of the Tasmanian Society, who objected to the summary increase of their body. Wilmot proceeded to incorporate those who concurred with his views as "The Horticultural and Botanical Society of Van Diemen's Land." They were then intrusted with the government garden, and the appropriation of a grant of £400 per annum, required for its cultivation. The discarded society complained of the haste of the proposed revolution. They thought past services demanded a consideration of their wishes. They had received in trust an endowment from Lady Franklin of some prospective value; they corresponded with men of the first scientific circles; and they had published a journal which widely extended the physical knowledge and European fame of this hemisphere. None who are experienced in the causes of political discontent will consider such trifles without serious effect on the tempers of parties and the peace of rulers.

Wilmot received the government in a condition most unfavorable to his tranquillity. The arrival of many thousand prisoners had for a time quickened trade, and some months elapsed before they became competitors for the bread of the free mechanics. The universally low price of labor, the demand for dwellings, and the closing of a local bank, which liberated small capitals, occasioned a competition for town allotments, and set all classes to building. But this stimuluswas soon exhausted, and workmen of every grade began to suffer distress. They found hundreds of passholders working at a price to them, indeed, ample, but on which a family would starve. The regulations introduced by Lord John Russell discouraged employment of prisoners in the towns, where they could easily indulge every evil inclination, and where they abated the value and respectability of labor; but such was the pressure of numbers on the colonial government that its officers were glad to abandon all reformatory theories to get rid of the crowds which idled their time and burdened the British treasury. The free operative classes appealed to the governor for redress. Wilmot replied by appeals to their humanity: he said that many prisoners of the crown, influenced by bad example, ignorance, and want, had lost their liberty; that it would be unkind and unjust to obstruct their progress to competence and reformation. These excuses for a policy which tended to depress honest workmen only convinced them that it was time to retire from the country. A more powerful class might have shown that the proper office of mercy is to shorten the duration of a sentence, and not to inflict punishment on unoffending families of freemen.

A party of colonists, who chose Mr. Gilbert Robertson as their secretary, formed an association to promote the amelioration of financial embarrassment. They nominated a "central committee," to prepare information for the guidance of the government, and to watch over legislation. In explaining their plans to Wilmot they professed to feel confidence in his liberality, judgment, and zeal. To this he replied in glowing terms. He told them that during a short residence he had traversed the colony and acquired a knowledge of its value; that he had projected many schemes for the improvement of agriculture and the relief of the treasury. He gave strong assurances both of his expectation of better days and his efforts to hasten them; but then he complained that the association, by its structure and schemes, depressed his anticipations; that they proposed to supersede imperial instructions, and to supplant his constitutional advisers. The objections he offered, and the tone in which they were urged, induced a practical dissolution of the society—scarcely compatible with regular government.

For the last time in these colonies application was made by the settlers for a law to restrict the amount of usury. It had been a favorite object for many years. They asserted that the exactions of capitalists involved the colony in a hopelessstruggle. England had, however, abrogated usury laws, and left the value of money to be determined by the ordinary relations of supply and demand. To this principle the governor resolved to adhere (1844).

What the law could not effect was produced by a less exceptionable process. The merchants and professional men addressed the banks, and urged an abatement of interest, then 10 per cent. for short-dated bills, and 12½ for renewals. They appealed rather to liberality than to abstract right. This was followed by a reduction in the Van Diemen's Land Bank,—an example which the other establishments did not readily adopt. Eight per cent. soon, however, became the highest amount usually exacted in regular transactions.

The difficulties of the agriculturists from the low price of grain, induced them to look for artificial relief. With too much facility Wilmot gave hopes which he could not realise. The imposition of a heavy duty on New South Wales tobacco, amounting to prohibition, and that just as it was reaching considerable perfection, led to the imposition of a duty on our grain. It was the wish of the Tasmanian settlers to restore free trade between the colonies, and to impose discriminating duties on the produce of foreign countries; but the harsh and ridiculous system of colonial government, which discriminated between Australian and Canadian grain, compelled one British colony to treat another, its next neighbor, as an alien, and that while England demanded free admittance for English manufactures. The peremptory instructions of Stanley were conveyed to the local governors in terms of intimidation.[233]They were forbidden to allow any kindred colony the least advantage over foreigners, or to pass any bill for that purpose, and were told that any evasion of this restriction would occasion the high displeasure of the crown. The reason alleged for this interference was that colonies could not be expected to understand the treaties and trading system of the parent state; as if any treaty should have hindered a commerce actually not more distinct than the trade between London and Liverpool. Wilmot warmly espoused the claim of the Australian colonies to share in the privilege of Canada, in favor of which the duties had been relaxed on colonial grain. Mr. Hutt brought their petitions before the attention of parliament; but he could not plead a political necessity, and the ministers were able to resist without the risk of a rebellion. They asserted that thedistance made the concession of no practical value, while it would tend to augment the alarm of the English farmers! Thus, while they humored the empty fears of their own constituents, they afforded another example of the futility of colonial petitions which, however just, it is convenient to disregard.

To assist agriculture, the council passed an act interdicting the use of sugar, under certain conditions, by public brewers. The trade strongly objected to the restriction, as impolitic, vexatious, and impracticable. Their objections were admitted by the secretary of state, who quietly observed that he had been advised that sugar could not be considered deleterious. This is the last attempt at protective legislation.

To benefit the rural interest the governor proposed a grand scheme of irrigation. An eminent engineer, Major Cotton, was employed to report on the subject, and suggested the detention of the waters of the vast lakes which overflow from the heights of the western mountains. A rate to be imposed on the various estates was to discharge the cost. Thus in those seasons of drought which sometimes occur the lowlands would be made increasingly fertile. The immediate object—the employment of probation labor at the colonial cost—detracted something from the charms of the project. Nor did it seem just that the settlers should risk the ultimate cost of an undertaking they could not limit. Sir E. Wilmot earnestly recommended the scheme to the home government, but Lord Stanley hesitated until the evils of the probation system enforced a change, and lessened the labor at the disposal of the crown. Had the men been employed on a work so popular they would have been withdrawn from the colonial eye, and the interest of their new labors might have extinguished the prevailing discontent. But while the governor waited for instructions the men were idle, or employed in useless attempts at cultivation on barren land, of which the produce rarely defrayed the cost of the implements destroyed.

The charge for police and gaols had always been borne by the legislative council with impatience. The estimates were accompanied by an annual protest against entailing on the colony any pecuniary consequence of British crime. But when the convict labor was withdrawn from the roads, and new taxes demanded, the time arrived for the most decided resistance, and the event proved that the councillors who refused their consent acted with prudence. The ministerhimself was compelled to own at last, that the exaction of twenty shillings per head for police, was unexampled in civilised governments.

In 1836 Mr. Spring Rice (now Lord Monteagle) took advantage of a considerable local land fund to throw on the council the police establishment of the colony, occasioned by transportation. The sum then required (£14,000) was comparatively unimportant, and it was urged that the labor of convicts employed on public works at the cost of Great Britain, except £4,000 for superintendence, was a sufficient compensation. But the charge for constabulary and prisons gradually increased to £36,000. The land fund, after deducting £97,000, expended for emigration, for the support of aborigines, and the working of the land office, yielded in ten years a surplus of £207,000, carried to the general revenue; but during this time the charge for police and gaols exceeded £311,000. The increase of judicial expenses, and especially of witnesses, was proportionately great; and this last item in one year (1846), although most lighter crimes were disposed of in a summary way, rose to £6,000. The execution of public works by the crown had been the sole vindication of these charges. From this arrangement Lord Stanley departed, and in peremptory terms prohibited a spade to be moved but on payment from the colonial treasury. Thus at a season of commercial stagnation the benefit of convict labor was withdrawn, while the charges for police and gaols rose to one-third of the entire revenue of the colony, and in two years and a-half a debt accumulated to £100,000.

Notwithstanding the obvious injustice of this burden, the treatment of the New South Wales legislature gave slight hope of redress. Lord Stanley directed Sir George Gipps to obviate the threatened resistance of that council by hastening pardons to the prisoners, by withdrawing them from the service of the settlers, and by sending those not otherwise disposable to Van Diemen's Land. He was forbidden to relieve extreme financial difficulties by drafts on England, or draw from the military chest, although at the period an immense body of convicts remained long after transportation had ceased. This disregard of a more powerful colony led the people of Van Diemen's Land to infer that from a minister so unscrupulous no justice could be expected while evasion was possible.

Wilmot was deeply embarrassed, but he determined to adhere to the instructions of the secretary of state,whose distance prevented his perceiving the hopelessness of his project until that discovery was unavailing. The positive nature of these injunctions left no room for discretion. The governor was commanded not to adopt any detailed regulations at variance with the scheme prescribed by the crown, or to depart from its provisions without express authority.[234]

Sir Eardley Wilmot resolved that the utmost extent of taxation should be tried rather than infringe the orders of Stanley. A bill to raise the duties on sugar, teas, and foreign goods from 5 to 15 per cent. encountered an earnest but unavailing opposition. This bill was still more obnoxious from a clause, afterwards abandoned, to levy the duty on the current value of goods at the market of consumption, instead of export—a mode which taxed all the expenses of shipment. Mr. Gregson proposed the rejection of an impost required only by the extraordinary pressure of convictism. Several of the non-official members voted with the governor for the last time.

A committee of the council had been appointed to ascertain how the expenditure could be reduced and the revenue augmented. They enumerated various forms in which further taxation might be practicable. These were proposed by the governor. Auctioneers, pawnbrokers, publicans, butchers, eating-house keepers, stage-coach and steam-boat proprietors, cabmen, and watermen, were to be subject to new or increased license fees.

This project aroused the people to an unusual degree. On the day of public meeting[235]a procession of cabs and waggons, decorated with flags bearing the inscription, "No taxation without representation," presented a novelty in colonial agitation. Mr. Kemp, the veteran politician, presided. The opposition prevailed, and the governor resolvedto withdraw the obnoxious measure. It would be difficult to discern a line beyond which taxation might not pass, if every trade and profession can be subject to arbitrary imposts levied by a legislature at the mere dictation of the crown.

Referring to this meeting as a triumph which history would report to the latest posterity, theCourieradded—"Rulers will henceforth recoil from the virtuous indignation of the people, as the reptile recoiled from the touch of Ithuriel's spear." It was supposed by Wilmot that this not very lucid prediction conveyed a gross and personal insult, and that it attributed to him the artifices and loathsome habits of the fiend. The private secretary was instructed to withdraw the subscription of the governor, and to explain the cause of his displeasure. Such petulance took the colony by surprise. A less experienced politician might have been expected to disregard a heavier censure; and this conflict with a local editor was noticed by the London press as a curious instance of official sensibility.

The sheriff refused to call a meeting to consider the condition of the colony, because one of the objects was to notice the appropriation of the public revenue. This he had been advised was an interference with the royal prerogative! The friendly tone of his refusal restrained the wrath it was calculated to excite. It is quite impossible to suppose any branch of politics more clearly within the sphere of popular remonstrance than the expenditure of the public money (August, 1845).

Mr. Bicheno, the colonial secretary, who, like the governor, might have been popular in quiet times, was little qualified for a stormy debate. He announced the most arbitrary notions in the blandest tones, and asserted that the doctrine of concurrent representation and taxation was a wild revolutionary idea, exploded by American independence. The revenues he called the Queen's, and thought it monstrous that any should dispute her right to her own. Though he compared the parent country to the hen and the colonies to chickens, he could see nothing to disturb the analogy in a demand for fresh contributions. He asserted that all constitutional history showed that it was the prerogative of the crown to tax the people, and instanced the Cape—a conquered province—as an example. He affirmed that customs were not taxes, as the public were not compelled to use the articles on which they were levied. The prosperity of communities he asserted rose with the increase of taxation; thatthe placards posted over the town were a complete delusion. Taxation and representation—a cry first introduced by Lord Chatham, was, he said, never adopted by the liberal whigs (August, 1845). Such un-English notions were no assistance to the cause of the executive, and were distasteful to all who pretended to value constitutional government.

Thead valoremduties, raised to 15 per cent., for some time produced less than they realised at five. The licensing scheme being rejected, nothing remained but to reduce the expenditure or increase the debt. To relieve the revenue and employ the convicts the executive proposed a road act, and another for lighting and paving Hobart Town. The great objection to these measures was their design to evade the question at issue between the home government and the colony;—with many more odious still as recognising a right in a crown appointed legislature either directly or indirectly to tax the people. Mr. Gregson stated early in the session that he would not levy a shilling additional until the burdens of police were equitably adjusted. Supported by Captain Swanston, formerly a staunch adherent of Sir G. Arthur, he successfully moved the rejection of these bills. Their discussion drew forth many expressions of personal feeling. The governor declared he would not stay in office one hour did he not believe that Lord Stanley meant fairly by the colony, or could he not conscientiously act upon his lordship's instructions; and he begged that all the opprobrium cast on Lord Stanley might be considered equally applied to himself. He remarked that the opposition had exhibited a spirit "more radical and even Jacobinical" than he ever had witnessed in parliamentary factions. These reproaches were repelled by Mr. Gregson, who contended that in resisting unjust exactions for convict purposes he was promoting the real interests of the colonial government. The governor retorted that with such support as the honorable member afforded he would readily dispense.

When the estimates for the year were presented (August 20th) the country party insisted on enquiry, and Mr. Dry proposed the appointment of a committee to ascertain the proportionate burdens transportation imposed. This motion was rejected by the governor's casting vote. Another, made for adjournment, to give the members time to investigate the items, met a similar fate. It was, however, discovered when the estimates were read that they differed from the copy in the hands of the members. The chief justice supported asecond motion for adjournment, to enable the colonial secretary to correct these discrepancies. On the re-assembling of the council (25th) the governor stated that considering the determination avowed by the members to refuse all items for the expenses of convictism, and the general state of popular feeling, he had resolved to pause, and to await the arrival of expected despatches on the subject of dispute from Lord Stanley, in reply to his own.

Sir E. Wilmot was sensible of the financial burden inflicted by the convict establishments. A committee of government officers sat shortly after his arrival, and pointed out the many and large items to be traced to the prevention and punishment of crime. This report he forwarded to Lord Stanley. He complained that charges never before thought of were levied by the commissariat, as well as the full value of convict labor, and insisted that the expences incurred by the colonists for police ought in fairness to be defrayed by the crown, or that the labor at its disposal should as formerly be allowed in compensation.[236]

So late as August, 1844, the secretary of state refused to entertain the claim for relief. He stated that the colony would be obliged to expend a sum nearly equal, although all the convicts were withdrawn; for their sakes, he said, the island was colonised; they constituted the working population; and he added that in the military and naval protection, the support of the unemployed convict, and the capital and cheap labor poured into the colony, a fair proportion of expenditure was borne by the crown.

Pressed by extraordinary difficulties, Wilmot again[237]urged the injustice of these conclusions. He complained that not only India, China, and the Cape of Good Hope, but New South Wales, were pouring in felons of the worst description, who, as pass-holders, occasioned a vast outlay for the suppression of crime. He told his lordship that for several years the land fund had totally failed, while the expenses of police and gaols, of judges and witnesses, had risen to £50,000. At this time the number of arrivals was five thousand annually, sent from every colony and dependency of the empire, as well as from the United Kingdom. There were between three and four thousand pass-holders unemployed, 7,000 in private service, 6,000 about to emerge from the gangs, 8,000 with tickets-of-leave or conditionalpardons, and in all more than 30,000 unqualified to quit the island without the consent of the crown.[238]

It is impossible to read these representations without feeling indignant at the nobleman who suffered the representative of the Queen to struggle with difficulties so manifold and great,—who left him to the alternative of breaking through positive prohibitions or of incurring popular distrust and aversion. To this delay the governor owed much of the opposition he suffered, and the imperial government inconveniences of lasting consequence. Nothing was conceded to justice—nothing to entreaty; and the secretary of state yielded at last as despotism must ever yield,—without merit and without thanks.

The whole change in the details of the convict department was marked by a spirit eminently opposed to the colonial welfare. With singular acuteness and perspicuity Lord Stanley described the former systems as subject to local influence and subservient to local ends. Every governor, he alleged, was under a strong bias in favor of expense, as the patron of a multitude of officials. He stated that the executive council were equally benefited by the wasteful expenditure, either in their own persons or those of their official brethren, and that every colonist had an interest in the multiplication of bills on the British treasury. To prevent these abuses, the convict estimates were thenceforth to be prepared by the colonial secretary, the comptroller-general, and the commissariat officer, subject to the approval of the secretary of state.

The management of the prisoners being confided to the judgment of the governor, Lord Stanley deemed the chief cause of its many changes, and its subservience to colonial prosperity. The deference of the ministers to this discretion he attributed to the unwillingness of the home office to interfere with a functionary in correspondence with the colonial office, and the reluctance of the secretary for the colonies to guide a penal system designed for interests exclusively imperial. Thus, he stated, the governor was practically independent, and had strong inducements to render the labor of convicts subservient to colonial wealth, and to disregard the great design—the prevention of crime in Great Britain. He declared that all schemes of convict management were of colonial origin, and all contemplated local interests as their main object. To prevent these devices heproposed to retain in the colonial-office the exclusive management of the details of transportation.[239]

Among the items of convict expense was a charge of £164,000 for rations. This Lord Stanley considered an extravagant outlay. He deemed it highly improper that in a country where all the means of subsistence existed in such abundance with an unlimited supply of manual labor, this charge should remain. He however feared that while the convicts were permitted to labor on works of colonial utility the local authorities would always find means to increase the charges for their subsistence (Feb. 28, '43). The treasury concurred in this view, and requested that explicit instructions might be given to Wilmot and the comptroller-general to prevent the employment of labor for the colonial benefit, and to devote their utmost efforts to raise the food on the waste lands of the colony.

The convict department attempted agriculture, and they selected for the experiment cold, damp, and barren soils. Gardens of a few acres occupied a thousand men: the cleared land was utterly worthless. Garden seeds were brought into the colonial market, and potatos sold at twenty shillings which cost the government £10 per ton. Several hundred men idled their time in cultivating land which did not equal in the aggregate a single farm.[240]The estimated value of all the articles produced on two stations, Deloraine and Westbury, in 1846, by four hundred men, was less than £2 per man; while the salaries of their officers were nearly double that sum.[241]

Mr. Montagu, the late colonial secretary, in estimating the cost of the convict department, presented a calculation £100,000 annually less than the estimate of the officers on the spot. This difference Lord Stanley set up as proof of the culpable negligence and profligacy of colonial expense. He considered the body of persons employed in the control of prisoners excessive. A reduction was therefore enforced, and in the end less surveillance was employed than free labor usually requires.

To each party of three hundred seven overseers were attached, without constables or other restraint. The sub-division of these parties in labor left them often to the practical oversight of a single person, and he an expiree. Thusthey were able to make excursions for the purposes of robbery and pleasure: their clothing tended rather to disguise than distinguish them. As the terms of their service expired they were discharged in the prison dress, and no one could tell whether they were or not illegally at large. Escaped prisoners have been known to walk through bodies of men on the road without challenge. In several instances robberies were committed on travellers within the precincts of the stations. The enclosures were often merely the common garden fence. The judges avowed that in passing sentence for crimes they could not punish them with severity, considering the strong temptations of the men. Remembering the number virtually and legally at large, the degree of safety, or rather the instances of exemption from pillage, must be considered almost miraculous. A great portion of minor crimes were not prosecuted, and a still larger number were undetected; but eight hundred recorded crimes—a scourge to ten thousand families, and full of terror and danger to all—would not seem extravagant when divided among thirty thousand prisoners.

The despatches of Wilmot to Lord Stanley described with accurate minuteness the social effects of the probation system. Those who remember his apparent apathy when those evils were the topics of colonial complaint will deplore the strange fidelity to his political chief which induced him to conceal his own sentiments from the colonists. He stated that the territory was inundated with unemployed prisoners; that no labor being in demand, they must either starve or steal; that a yearly increasing pauper population, without adding one atom to colonial wealth, would swell the catalogue of crime and increase the public expense in every form; that the number out of employment was fearfully great; and that land—cleared, fenced, in complete cultivation, with houses and buildings—might be bought at the upset price of waste land. To remedy these evils he proposed the extension of conditional pardons to the Australian colonies, the remission of the price of crown lands to emigrants, and the letting of allotments at a nominal rental for seven years to conditionally pardoned men, with a contingent right of purchase.[242]

To all these remonstrances, so far as they affected the colonist, Lord Stanley had a ready reply. The colony was originally penal, and could claim neither compensation nor relief.He considered that in emigrating the colonists surrendered at discretion; that they were not entitled to object to the trebling of their police burdens and to the importation of all instead of a small part of the convicts of the empire, as was the case up to 1840. His rejoinder was felt with that bitterness which none can realise who have not known the tyranny of irresistible despotism. Happily for mankind there is no power above the steady and determined operations of truth and right. The cruel desertion of the people in the hour of their distress—the scornful defiance of their complaints, has involved the cabinet of England in difficulties for which nothing but great sacrifices will fully obviate. No people in this hemisphere will entirely trust a British minister until the history of Van Diemen's Land is forgotten.

The anticipated relief not having arrived, the governor again assembled the council on the 21st of October. He now proposed several expedients to meet the exigencies of the moment. He had, unauthorised by the council, borrowed money of a bank. He proposed to stop the forage allowance of the clergy, and to retain 12½ per cent. of the salaries of the officials. Both these measures were withstood—the last effectively. The chief justice denied the power of the council to interfere with his income. When a new set of estimates was offered they were found to be unintelligible, and an adjournment, to enable the colonial secretary to afford the necessary information, was proposed by Mr. Dry. This reasonable request was lost by the governor's casting vote, and several motions with a similar object were defeated in the same manner. Mr. O'Connor, the non-official member who supported the executive, was absent, and thus the votes of the official and country party were equal, and the balance was in the governor's hands.[243]At the next sitting of the council Wilmot proposed to pass the estimates. Ineffectual efforts to postpone their consideration exhausted all means of evasion, and Mr. Dry moved that the Appropriation Act should be read that day six months. He expatiated on the injustice of the system which condemned the colony to the cost of an imperial scheme, and insisted on the solemn obligation of the council to resist an accumulation of debt whichmust involve the colony in ruin. Mr. Gregson followed, and referred to the unavailing representations of Sir G. Arthur, Sir John Franklin, and Sir E. Wilmot himself, in reference to police expenses, and dwelling on the evils of the convict system. An adjournment of the debate being moved the governor opposed it with his deliberative and casting vote, and added that he resisted the motion because it was only intended to embarrass. The Appropriation Act would then have gone to the third reading, but the non-official members at once quitted the chamber, and reduced the number below the legal quorum. On the day following Mr. Gregson appeared at the table and apologised for the absence of his honorable brethren, who were preparing a protest to present on the morrow. Wilmot complained of discourtesy, and denounced the opposition as disloyal and unconstitutional. They asserted that quitting the council chamber was not unusual, and was not a concerted movement, and resented in decided language the charge of disloyalty,—amounting in sworn councillors to perjury, if rigorously construed. The governor afterwards explained that he had reference only to the particular instance, and not to their general intentions.

It had been publicly rumored that rather than allow the Appropriation Act to pass, several members had resolved to resign. Captain Swanston, less prominent in opposition, waited on the governor, and earnestly advised him to forward another set of estimates, prepared by Captain Swanston, for the approval of the secretary of state. He warned him that should he persevere a rupture would inevitably follow. In this interview the governor expressed his determination to proceed. He forgot, it would seem, some of those forms of civility which no man can safely neglect, and Captain Swanston left him with a sense of personal affront,—an immedicable wound.[244]

In this temper the council met on the 3rd of October. Mr. Gregson called the attention of the members to a question submitted to Mr. Francis Smith, a barrister: Whether, as chairman of a committee, the governor had a deliberate and casting vote, and whether the quorum required by law at a meeting of council was requisite in committee; and thus whether the estimates were legally passed through the committee, the numbers present being less than one third, and the governor giving his double vote. Mr. Smith gave hisopinion that the estimates were in law rejected instead of carried; but the chief justice considered the sitting of committee merely a convenient method to sift beforehand items afterwards to receive a legal sanction in the council. The attorney-general without notice was unprepared to give an opinion, and a motion of Mr. Gregson for delay was lost. The colonial secretary then moved the third reading of the obnoxious bill, when Mr. Dry rose to read a minute, signed by the members in opposition, objecting to the proceedings. This being rejected as irregular, Mr. Gregson proposed that the third reading should be delayed that the members dissenting might bring forward other estimates. In urging this motion he rebutted the "disloyal" imputation, and referred the governor to the unity existing in the country party in proof that inevitable necessity alone had prompted the co-operation of persons hitherto adverse. This motion being lost—before the Appropriation Act could be carried—the opposition quitted the council. Those remaining did not constitute a quorum, and the legislative session was abruptly terminated. TheGazetteof November the 4th announced that Charles Swanston, Michael Fenton, John Kerr, William Kermode, Thomas G. Gregson, and Richard Dry, Esquires, had resigned their seats.

The obligation of the official members of the council to vote with the governor on all government questions had been long before decided. The non-official were only bound by their oaths to assist in all measures necessary for the good of the colony, but the nature of their powers and the proper mode of their exercise were subjects of dispute. Wilmot maintained that they were assisting in "a council of advice" on subjects submitted to their judgment, and were not qualified to question the general policy of the executive. All beyond a simple aye or no he deemed usurpation. Thus when they demanded papers, called for committees, and obstructed obnoxious measures by the artifices of parliamentary debate, they were charged with forgetting the duties of their office. These gentlemen, however, maintained that it was their duty to hold the executive in check on behalf of the people, and that whatever was not abstracted from their supervision by specific laws was proper for their consideration. The governor claimed a deliberate and casting vote; and thus one non-official member, by concurring with the executive, or even by abstaining from voting, neutralised the voice of the rest. The official members had no discretion allowed. Lord Stanley had ruled that, choosing to assume relations disqualifying them to vote with the governor, they were perfectly free to do so; but having done so, they could not retain their employment. He alleged that there would be an end of official subordination, and that the public service would be brought into serious discredit by allowing a different course. He admitted that exceptions might occur, but their force was left to the judgment of the governor.[245]This decision reduced the official debates to a mere pantomime, and a seven-fold vote would have better expressed the real character of the legislature than the disguise of separate suffrages. The chief justice was alone independent.

Having resigned their office, thesixsent a letter of explanation to Lord Stanley. In summing up their complaints they asserted that they were called on to vote an expenditure the colony could not bear,—to anticipate a revenue higher than the customs department calculated on receiving; that they were denied information, although they were bound to deliberate; that they were expected to augment an alarming debt, and, when crime was increasing, to diminish police protection; that they were told by the governor he would carry the estimates by his casting-vote, before they refused to pass or had examined them; that the governor claimed power to borrow and spend without legislative consent; and finally, that discussion and enquiry were denounced as factious, unconstitutional, and disloyal: under these circumstances they resigned their seats, as the only open course, and submitted their conduct to the judgment of the Queen.

The opposition to the measures of Wilmot could not be in every instance justified if separately considered. But the colony discovered in the governor an inflexible determination to carry out the system of probation under the instructions of Lord Stanley. It was not possible to resist the secretary of state, the chief aggressor. The imperious tenor of his despatches taught the people that mere remonstrance would be unavailing. They could only arrest his attention by involving his agents in embarrassment. Repeated motions for the attainment of the same object are certainly incompatible with legislative order. A small party might retard the public business, and gain no good end by delay; but the exact line between fair and factious opposition is not easily discovered and can be often only ascertained by the result.In this instance the object was clearly expressed in a rejected resolution:—"This council do decline voting the sums stated in the estimates laid on the table for the payment of the judicial, police, and gaol establishments during the ensuing year, as far as the expenses of the convict department with respect to those items are incurred. At the same time they desire to place on record an expression of regret that they should, by a sense of duty, be compelled to adopt any measure likely even temporarily to embarrass his excellency's government."[246]

The cause of "the patriotic six," as they were called, was eagerly espoused by the colony. To supply the vacancies occasioned by their retirement was the labor of weeks. The governor defended himself from the charge of despotism, and declared that he would never interrupt the freedom of debate or attempt to force the compliance of the council. The opposition press held up to scorn those disposed to accept a nomination, and gentlemen who did so were assailed with scandalous abuse,—so easily is the noblest cause degraded by its friends. A more suitable expression of popular feeling was given on the return of Mr. Dry to his native town. He was escorted by a large concourse of people and with all the usual tokens of public esteem. The father of Mr. Dry was exiled during the political troubles of Ireland in the last century, and after a respectable career attained considerable wealth. The son, the first legislator chosen from the country-born, the colonists saw with pleasure consecrate himself to the cause of his native land. Mr. Gregson, the leader of the opposition, was honored in a more substantial form. A body of his admirers, by contributions of large amounts, raised a testimonial in the shape of 2,000 guineas, and plate with a suitable inscription. On no previous occasion had public sympathy so attended political controversy, and never was the legislative freedom of the country more earnestly desired.

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