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CHAPTER XX

MR. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED PENAL COLONY

Archbishop Whately and Charles Buller-Dr. Bland and the Australian Patriots-Review of the Transportation Question-Mr. Gladstone's Despatches to Sir Charles Fitzroy-Wentworth's Select Committee-The Penal Colony in North Australia-Robert Lowe in the Atlas-A Popular Idol

In order to complete the narrative of Lord Sherbrooke's career in New South Wales, it will be necessary to lay special stress on the two great colonial questions in the discussion of which he took so large a share, namely, the settlement of a genuine yeomanry on the public lands, and the stoppage of the transportation of criminals from Great Britain and Ireland.

But before entering into these matters, it may be well to pause and note that the chief actors heretofore on our stage had now disappeared. Sir George Gipps was succeeded by Sir Charles Fitzroy as Governor of New South Wales, and Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, was succeeded, firstly for a brief while by Mr. Gladstone, and then by Earl Grey. During Mr. Gladstone's tenure of the office he attempted an experiment in Northern Australia, so remarkable in itself and so suggestive, in the light of his successor Earl Grey's transportation policy, that it may be well to consider it with some degree of care and fulness.

When Mr. Gladstone stepped into Lord Stanley's place, an article appeared in the Atlas headed British Politics,' in which the new Colonial Secretary was thus referred to: Whether Mr.

Gladstone will prove himself to be more conciliatory and more constitutional [than Lord Stanley] remains to be seen. He is, we believe, an amiable and kind-hearted man, whose only failing is stated to be a leaning towards the foolish doctrines. of Puseyism. If he has a due respect for the civil liberty of his fellow-subjects in the colonies as well as in the mother country, and has good sense and independence enough to liberate himself from the trammels of his underlings, he may do some good as much perhaps as the present system will admit of.'

Little did the writer imagine that the first act of Mr. Gladstone as Colonial Secretary would be to send out despatches to Sir Charles Fitzroy in favour of the resumption of criminal transportation. To realise the commotion that the publication of these despatches caused in the colony it will be necessary to explain the state of public feeling which had grown up both in England and in Australia on this question.

Mainly through the exertions of that wonderfully clearheaded and able man, Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, Sir William Molesworth's Committee of the House of Commons (1838) had pronounced against transportation to Australia as the accepted form of what was called 'secondary' as distinguished from capital punishment. Before this committee Dr. Ullathorne, the Roman Catholic Vicar-General, gave some appalling personal testimony as to the social condition of the island of New Norfolk, whither were drafted all the worst and most incorrigible convicts from New South Wales. Nothing, however, even in the pamphlet which he subsequently published on this subject, is more horrible than the plain statement made to Sir William Burton by an intelligent convict when the judge visited New Norfolk for the purpose of trying a number of refractory prisoners in 1834. Let a man's heart,' he said, 'be what it will when he comes here, his Man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a Beast.' Of course, the colony of New South

Wales was by no means in the awful state of its wretched insular satellite, which was entirely reserved as a receptacle for incorrigible criminality. For all that, the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons clearly shows that it was in a condition that no civilised and selfrespecting community could much longer tolerate, while Van Diemen's Land was only a shade better, if at all, than Norfolk Island.

But it should be clearly stated that there is no greater myth than the prevailing impression that shiploads of criminals were forced by hard-hearted English officials on unwilling colonists. This statement, which may sound rather heterodox, especially in the ears of Young Australia,' can be proved to demonstration. Dr. William Bland, one of the leading colonists of New South Wales, who was then the colleague of Wentworth in the representation of the city of Sydney, wrote on behalf of the Australian Patriotic Association a series of 'Letters to Charles Buller, Jun., Esq., M.P.' These 'Letters' were published, and dedicated to William Charles Wentworth, Esq., M.C., in Admiration of his Talents, and as a Token of sincere Regard.' (Sydney, 1849.)

The purpose of this correspondence with Charles Buller was to endeavour to convince him that the transportation of criminals, and the assignment of convicts to private service, were alike beneficial to England and to Australia. These 'Letters' afford conclusive evidence that while leading Englishmen, notably such men as Archbishop Whately, Sir William Molesworth, and Charles Buller, were on the broadest and most disinterested grounds working for the cessation of criminal transportation, many leading colonists, among whom were the Australian patriot,' William Charles Wentworth, his friend and colleague Dr. Bland, and Sir John Jamieson, the most prominent of pastoralists, were moving heaven and earth-or, rather, doing a vast amount of subterranean political wire-pulling to stock their country afresh with English and

Irish jail-birds. In one of these letters to Charles Buller Dr. Bland unblushingly observes: We are aware of the difficulties in our way-that the leaders of every party in the House of Commons are opposed to the continuance of those systems, particularly to that of private assignment.'

The patriotic doctor then goes on to explain to his correspondent that an assigned convict' is, in respect to his assignee," precisely in the same position as the free servant is to his master.'

It is startling, but perhaps wholesome, to compare such views with the notable utterance of Archbishop Whately, who wrought a revolution on the subject in the minds of thoughtful Englishmen.

The punishment (said Whately to Judge Denman) is one which causes more mischief than it does pain, and which is the more severe to each in proportion as he is less of such a character as to be deserving of it.. When Shakespeare makes someone remark to Parolles: If you could find a country where but women were, who have undergone so much shame, you might begin an impudent nation,' he little thought, probably, that the experiment of beginning such a nation would be seriously tried, and from not having quite enough of shameless women, we should be sending out cargoes of girls to supply the deficiency.2

Charles Buller, in reply to Dr. Bland, pointed out to him and the other Australian Patriots,' that, as long as transportation existed, they could not hope to have responsible government. Buller knew well what he was talking about, and did not mince matters. I am fully convinced,' he wrote, that it is idle to make any effort for the establishment of representative institutions in New South Wales as long as transportation to it continues.'

For, as he pointed out, even the most liberal-minded English statesman would hesitate to confer such institutions on a

At no time were many Scottish criminals sent to Australia, which is a reason generally overlooked for the superior energy and morale which have made the Scotch so pre-eminently successful as colonist there.

2 Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Whately, third edition, p. 96.

convict-ridden community. Free emigrants of a better class, too, would not choose a penal colony for their adopted home, and that of their wives and children. Nor will that prejudice,' he added, 'be removed while men of great influence like the Archbishop of Dublin, and periodical publications of no less influence, continue by denunciations of the state of the Penal Colonies to foster and augment the dislike to emigrate to them.' But Dr. Bland and the Australian Patriots' were quite unabashed, and even ventured to controvert the Archbishop's unanswerable arguments against transportation; for which of us cannot find arguments in support of a profitable practice?

The following brief letter from Bland to Charles Buller is quite an historical curiosity in its way :

Sydney: November 22, 1840.

You state that all parties are agreed in withholding free institutions from New South Wales while it continues to be a penal colony. We regret the error on which this determination is founded, and not less the lateness of the receipt of information in this country in respect of that error, and which alone prevented its timely refutation on our part. This circumstance we attribute to the unfortunate interval in the representation of this country in Parliament between ' the years 1837 and 1839. For though on the retirement of Mr. Bulwer,' that office was nominally transferred to yourself, yet from your unavoidable absence in Canada we have been possessed of the benefit of your important services only from the opening of the session of 1839.

Despite these Australian patriots,' transportation practically ceased from 1840, and no criminals were sent to New South Wales during the governorship of Sir George Gipps. As often happens in the conduct of human affairs, this great moral reformation came at the very worst possible time. It came

Lord Lytton, the novelist, who afterwards became Secretary of State for the Colonies. He had previously written to the Patriotic Association, advising them to appoint a Parliamentary agent in London; they accordingly appointed him, and forwarded a cheque for 500l., the amount of the annual honorarium, which, however, he declined to accept, and gave his services gratuitously.