Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales Part 1

Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land.

by William Charles Wentworth.

FOREWORD

There can be little doubt that when my great-grandfather began to write this book, his thoughts were centred on the objective which he describes in his own Preface--the diversion to Australia of some part of the stream of emigration then running from the British Isles to North America. Perhaps, even more urgently, he may have wanted to forestall any British tendency to withdraw from the colony and abandon New South Wales altogether.

But as he wrote, he found that he had to make some explanation for the defects which he saw in the current life of the colony, and naturally he was led into propounding some way in which these defects could be overcome. Contemporary reviewers, then, were not so far wrong when theycommented that the book looked almost like two books written by separate hands.

The secondary theme became the most important part of the book, because the remedies he then proposed for his country's ills became the guidelines for his own policies when he returned to Australia. Through the influences which he and his friends exerted over the next thirty years, these policies determined much of the course of Australian history in those times. Most of his proposals were eventually accepted, though in some cases much later than he wanted, and in some cases with modifications which he himself made or which were forced on him by the pressure of events.

At the time he wrote this book he was in his middle twenties, having returned to England to complete his education soon after partic.i.p.ating in the first crossing of the Blue Mountains.

Waterloo had just been won; Europe was settling down and trying to forget Napoleon. The wounds of the American Revolution were closing; British merchants and industrialists were preparing to change the face of the world in accordance with the precepts of Adam Smith.

In his attempt to divert the migration stream he was no enemy of America, (indeed he had chosen the name "Vermont" for his own farm on the Nepean) but he was perhaps the first Australian really to support Macquarie's drive for Australian expansion and Australian independence from London administration. He did this at a time when some influential Englishmen were urging the abandonment of the whole Botany Bay venture, which, after thirty years, was still not self-supporting and which seemed doomed to suffer from recurrent crises.

Apparently Macquarie had dreamed of a great transcontinental river, which was to flow 2,000 miles westwards from the Dividing Range, through fertile and well-watered fields, until it reached the sea somewhere on the north-west coast. The Lachlan had been found to peter out into swamps, but Oxley believed that the Macquarie River would have a happier issue, and at the time of the first Edition of this book (1819) that theory was still tenable. It was not long, of course, before these hopes were to perish in the Macquarie Marshes, to be succeeded by prospects of a mythical Inland Sea, though it was decades before the enthusiasts realised that they would have to be satisfied with Lake Eyre.

This first edition accepts as fact the phantom of that transcontinental stream and expatiates on the blessings which it would bring, patterning its concept of the Heart of the Australian Continent upon what was known of the Great Plains of America, then just being opened up. Any child with an Atlas in hand can now decry the mistake of having given to this concept more credence than did Oxley or Macquarie: does not hindsight make history so simple?

Abandonment of simple optimism on this physical fact must have been quick and uncomfortable: but abandonment of some other precepts must have been slow and more painful. At the time of this first edition, the influence of the Enlightenment was completing its penetration into politics and economics. Man had only to be given freedom, and he would enter into a political Paradise: the forces of the free market had only to be left untrammelled, and they would create of themselves an economic Eden!

These are the enthusiasms of the first edition, where Bligh represents the forces of repression and darkness, while Macquarie and Macarthur are both to be numbered among the angels. By the time of the third edition (1824, nearly contemporary with the author's return to Australia) the winds of change had blown through the Australian scene. Bigge had presented his Report, which destroyed so much of Macquarie's work, and the Exclusives, in the author's view, were leagued with enemies of Australian ident.i.ty.

For the next thirty years the politics of New South Wales were vigorous and variegated. n.o.body who was at their centre could have maintained all his illusions as to the essential goodness of human nature, if only it could be freed from the unnatural chains with which society had bound it. Nor could anyone who partic.i.p.ated in the commercial life of those times, who had lived, for example, through the depression of the forties, have preserved untarnished the precepts of Ricardo--published only a few years before 1819, and accepted as gospel in that first edition.

So some of those 1819 enthusiasms had to be abandoned: but the objectives were not. Most of them were eventually to be translated into action and actuality. It was in their modification, perhaps, that the author was to display most of all his foresight and ac.u.men. From 1848 onwards he recognised the true nature of "the spectre which haunted Europe"--and which still haunts the world. From then onwards he was not to write in the way which he wrote here.

W. C. Wentworth

24th February, 1978

PREFACE

It may prevent those inquiries that would be naturally made by the public, respecting the manner in which the author acquired the information contained in this work, when he states that he was born in the colony of New South Wales, and that he resided there for about five years since his arrival at the age of maturity. This is a period which will, at least, be allowed to have been sufficient for acquiring a correct knowledge of its state and government, and for enabling him to observe the destructive tendency of those measures, of which it has been his endeavour to demonstrate the injustice and impolicy, and to procure the speedy repeal. He would not, however, have it concluded that the present work has been the result of mature and systematic reflection; it is, on the contrary, a hasty production, which originated in the casual suggestions of an acquaintance, and which was never contemplated by him, during his long residence in the colony. He has consequently been obliged not only to omit giving a detail of many interesting facts, with which he might have become acquainted previously to his departure, but has also been under the necessity of relying in a great measure on the fidelity of his memory for the accuracy of many of those circ.u.mstances which he has stated: still he is not without hope, that five years attentive observation will have enabled him to communicate many particulars, of which, in the absence of abler works on the same subject, most of the inhabitants of this country cannot but be ignorant, and many must wish to be apprized.

His only aim in obtruding this hasty production on the public, is to promote the welfare and prosperity of the country which gave him birth; and he has judged that he could in no way so effectually contribute his mite towards the accomplishment of this end, as by attempting to divert from the United States of America to its sh.o.r.es, some part of that vast tide of emigration, which is at present flowing thither from all parts of Europe. In furtherance, therefore, of this design, he has described the superior advantages of climate and soil possessed by this colony; he has explained the causes why these natural superiorities have not yet been productive of those beneficial consequences which might have been expected from them; he has pointed out the arguments which offer for the abandonment of the present system, and the subst.i.tution of another in its place; and by adducing, in fine, what he considers to be irrefragable proofs of the expediency, merely as it regards the parent country, of adopting the measures which he has proposed, he hopes that he shall eventually occasion an alteration of polity, by which both the parties concerned will be equally benefited. He has not, however, presumed on a contingency which it is thus reasonable to believe cannot be either doubtful or remote; but has restricted himself to an enumeration of the inducements to emigration which exist under actual circ.u.mstances; and, by comparing them with the advantages which those writers, who have given the most favourable accounts of the United States, have represented them as possessing, he has proved that this colony, labouring as it is under all the discouragements of an arbitrary and impolitic government, has still a great and decided preponderancy in the balance. How much this preponderancy will be increased, whenever the changes and modifications which he has ventured to suggest, shall be in whole, or in part carried into effect, he has left to all such as are desirous of emigrating, to form their own estimate; and to decide also how much longer a system so highly burdensome to the parent country, and so radically defective in its principles and operation, is likely to be tolerated. To all those, who are of opinion with him that it cannot be of much longer duration, the inducements for giving this colony the preference will become so weighty, as scarcely to admit of the possibility that they should hesitate for a moment in their choice between the two countries.

If, in the course of this work, he has spoken in terms of unqualified reprobation of the baneful system to which the unhappy place of his nativity has been the victim, he would have it distinctly understood, that it has been furthest from his thoughts to connect the censure which he has bestowed on it, with those who have permitted its continuance. He is too deeply impressed with a sense of the arduous and momentous nature of the contest which they have had to conduct, not to allow that it was justly ent.i.tled to their first and chief attention. Our whole colonial system, in fact, he considers to have been but a mere under plot in the great drama that was acting. It could not, therefore, be reasonably expected that the grievances of any one colony should become the subject of minute and particular investigation; and still less could it be imagined that the government should convert their attention to the relief of one, which has comparatively excited but a small share of public interest, and has. .h.i.therto been considered more in the light of a prison, than of what he has endeavoured to prove it might be rendered,--one of the most useful and valuable appendages of the empire. This apology, however, for the neglect which the colony has experienced during the war, cannot be pleaded in vindication of a perseverance in the same impolitic and oppressive course in time of peace. Nor is it to be wondered at, as upwards of three years have now elapsed since the consolidation of the tranquillity of the world, that the colonists should begin to feel indignant at the continuance of disabilities, for the abrogation of which the most powerful considerations of justice and expediency have been urged in vain. To remove such just grounds for dissatisfaction and complaint, and to allow them, at length, the enjoyment of those rights and privileges, of which they ought never to have been debarred, would, at best, be but a poor compensation for an impeded agriculture and languis.h.i.+ng commerce; but it is the only one that can now be offered; and, although it cannot repair the wide ravages which so many years of unmerited and absurd restrictions have occasioned, it may arrest the progress of desolation, and prevent any further increase to the numbers who have already sunk beneath the pressure of an overwhelming system. It is, therefore, to be hoped that the cause of humanity will no longer be outraged by unnecessary delay, and that the only atonement, which can be made the colonists for their past and present sufferings, will no longer be withheld.

The author is fully aware that, in the course of this work, he has developed no new principle of political economy, and that he has only travelled in the broad beaten path in which hundreds have journeyed before him. For troubling, therefore, the public with a repet.i.tion of principles, of which the truth is so generally known and acknowledged, the only plea he can urge in his justification is a hope that the reiteration of them will not be deemed unnecessary and obtrusive, so long as their application is incomplete; so long as vice and misery prevail in any part of the world, from the want of their adoption and enforcement.

PART I

NEW SOUTH WALES.

STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE SETTLEMENTS IN NEW HOLLAND.

The colony of New South Wales is situated on the eastern coast of New Holland. This island, which was first discovered by the Dutch in 1616, lies between the 9 degrees and 39 degrees of south lat.i.tude, and the 108 degrees and 153 degrees of east longitude; and from its immense size, seems rather to merit the appellation of continent, which many geographers have bestowed on it. Since that period it has been visited and examined by a galaxy of celebrated navigators, among whom Cook and Flinders rank the most conspicuous. Still the survey of this large portion of the world cannot, by any means, be deemed complete; since not one of all the navigators who have laid down the various parts of its coasts, has discovered the mouth of any considerable river; and it is hardly within the scope of possible belief, that a country of such vast extent does not possess at least one river, which may deserve to be ranked in the cla.s.s of "rivers of the first magnitude."

If a judgment were formed of this island from the general aspect of the country bordering the sea, it would be p.r.o.nounced one of the most barren spots on the face of the globe.

Experience, however, has proved that such an opinion would be exactly the reverse of truth; since, as far as the interior has been explored, its general fertility amply compensates for the extreme sterility of the coast.

The greater part of this country is covered with timber of a gigantic growth, but of an entirely different description from the timber of Europe. It is, however, very durable, and well adapted to all the purposes of human industry.

The only metal yet discovered is iron. It abounds in every part of the country, and is in some places purer than in any other part of the world. Coals are found in many places of the best quality. There is also abundance of slate, limestone and granite, though not in the immediate vicinity of Port Jackson.

Sand-stone, quartz, and freestone are found every where.

The rivers and seas teem with excellent fish; but the eel and smelt, the mullet, whiting, mackarel, sole, skate, and John Dory are, I believe, the only sorts known in this country.

The animals are, the kangaroo, native dog, (which is a smaller species of the wolf,) the wombat, bandicoot, kangaroo rat, opossum, flying squirrel, flying fox, etc. etc. There are none of those animals or birds which go by the name of "game" in this country, except the heron. The hare, pheasant and partridge are quite unknown; but there are wild ducks, widgeon, teal, quail, pigeons, plovers, snipes, etc. etc., with emus, black swans, c.o.c.katoos, parrots, parroquets, and an infinite variety of smaller birds, which are not found in any other country. In fact, both its animal and vegetable kingdoms are in a great measure peculiar to itself.

There are many poisonous reptiles in this country, but few accidents happen either to the aborigines, or the colonists from their bite. Of these the centipede, tarantula, scorpion, slow-worm, and the snake, are the most to be dreaded; particularly the latter, since there are, I believe, at least thirty varieties of them, of which all but one are venomous in the highest degree.

The aborigines of this country occupy the lowest place in the gradatory scale of the human species. They have neither houses nor clothing; they are entirely unacquainted with the arts of agriculture; and even the arms which the several tribes have, to protect themselves from the aggressions of their neighbours, and the hunting and fis.h.i.+ng implements with which they administer to their support, are of the rudest contrivance and workmans.h.i.+p.

Thirty years intercourse with Europeans has not effected the slightest change in their habits; and even those who have most intermixed with the colonists, have never been prevailed upon to practise one of the arts of civilized life. Disdaining all restraint, their happiness is still centered in their original pursuits; and they seem to consider the superior enjoyments to be derived from civilization, (for they are very far from being insensible to them) but a poor compensation for the sacrifice of any portion of their natural liberty. The colour of these people is a dark chocolate; their features bear a strong resemblance to the African negro; they have the same flat nose, large nostrils, wide mouth and thick lips; but their hair is not woolly, except in Van Dieman's Land, where they have this further characteristic of the negro.

These people bear no resemblance to any of the inhabitants of the surrounding islands, except to those of New Guinea, which is only separated from New Holland by a narrow strait. One of these islands, therefore, has evidently been peopled by the other; but from whence the original stock was derived is one of those geographical problems, which in all probability will never be satisfactorily solved.

Rude and barbarous as are the aborigines of this country, they have still some confused notions of a Supreme Being and of a future state. It would, however, be foreign to the purposes to which I have limited myself, to enter into a detail of their customs and manners; nor would it, indeed, be the means of increasing the fund of public knowledge: since, whoever may be anxious to be informed on these topics, will find a faithful and minute account of them in the work of Mr. Collins.

Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, is situated in 33 degrees 55' of south lat.i.tude, and 151 degrees 25' of east longitude. It is about seven miles distant from the heads of Port Jackson, and stands princ.i.p.ally on two hilly necks of land and the intervening valley, which together form Sydney Cove. The western side of the town extends to the water's edge, and occupies with the exception of the small s.p.a.ce reserved around Dawe's Battery, the whole of the neck of land which separates Sydney Cove from Lane Cove, and extends a considerable distance back into the country besides.

This part of the town, it may therefore be perceived, forms a little peninsula; and what is of still greater importance the water is in general of sufficient depth in both these coves, to allow the approach of vessels of the largest burden to the very sides of the rocks.

On the eastern neck of land, the extension of the town has been stopped by the Government House, and the adjoining domain, which occupies the whole of Bennilong's Point, a circ.u.mstance the more to be regretted, as the water all along this point is of still greater depth than on the western side of the Cove, and consequently affords still greater facilities for the erection of warehouses and the various important purposes of commerce.

The appearance of the town is rude and irregular. Until the administration of Governor Macquarie, little or no attention had been paid to the laying out of the streets, and each proprietor was left to build on his lease, where and how his caprice inclined him. He, however, has at length succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a perfect regularity in most of the streets, and has reduced to a degree of uniformity, that would have been deemed absolutely impracticable, even the most confused portion of that chaos of building, which is still known by the name of "the rocks;" and which, from the ruggedness of its surface, the difficulty of access to it, and the total absence of order in its houses, was for many years more like the abode of a horde of savages than the residence of a civilized community. The town upon the whole may be now p.r.o.nounced to be tolerably regular; and, as in all future additions that may be made to it, the proprietors of leases will not be allowed to deviate from the lines marked out by the surveyor general, the new part will of course be free from the faults and inconveniences of the old.

This town covers a considerable extent of ground, and would at first sight induce the belief of a much greater population than it actually contains. This is attributable to two circ.u.mstances, the largeness of the leases, which in most instances possess sufficient s.p.a.ce for a garden, and the smallness of the houses erected in them, which in general do not exceed one story. From these two causes it happens, that this town does not contain above seven thousand souls, whereas one that covered the same extent of ground in this country would possess a population of at least twenty thousand. But although the houses are for the most part small, and of mean appearance, there are many public buildings, as well as houses of individuals, which would not disgrace the best parts of this great metropolis. Of the former cla.s.s, the public stores, the general hospital, and the barracks, are perhaps the most conspicuous; of the latter the houses of Messrs. Lord, Riley, Howe, Underwood and Nichols.

The value of land in this town is in many places half as great as in the best situations in London, and is daily increasing.

Rents are in consequence exorbitantly high. It is very far from a commodious house that can be had for a hundred a year, unfurnished.

Here is a very good market, although it is of very recent date. It was established by Governor Macquarie, in the year 1813, and is very well supplied with grain, vegetables, poultry, b.u.t.ter, eggs and fruit. It is, however, only held three times a week; viz. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It is a large oblong enclosure, and there are stores erected in it by the Governor, for the reception of all such provisions as remain unsold at the close of the market, which lasts from six o'clock in the morning in summer, and seven o'clock in winter, until three o'clock in the evening. The vender pays in return a small duty to the clerk of the market, who accounts quarterly for the amount to the treasurer of the police fund. The annual amount of these duties is about 130.*

[* Vide Market Duties in the Appendix.]

Here also is a Bank, called "The Bank of New South Wales,"

which was established in the year 1817, and promises to be of great and permanent benefit to the colony in general. Its capital is 20,000, divided into two hundred shares. It has a regular charter of incorporation, and is under the controul of a president* and six directors, who are annually chosen by the proprietors. The paper of this bank is now the princ.i.p.al circulating medium of this colony. They discount bills of a short date, and also advance money on mortgage securities. They are allowed to receive in return an interest of 10 per cent. per annum.

[* See Appendix.]