The History of Tasmania Volume I Part 26

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 a second motion for adjournment, to enable the colonial secretary to correct these discrepancies. On the re-a.s.sembling 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 He stated that the colony would be obliged to expend a sum nearly equal, although all the convicts were withdrawn; for their sakes, he said, the island was colonised; they const.i.tuted the working population; and he added that in the military and naval protection, the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 pa.s.s-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 pa.s.s-holders unemployed, 7,000 in private service, 6,000 about to emerge from the gangs, 8,000 with tickets-of-leave or conditional pardons, 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 n.o.bleman 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 mult.i.tude 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 he proposed 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. Thus they 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 pa.s.sing 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 ent.i.tled 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 antic.i.p.ated relief not having arrived, the governor again a.s.sembled 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 12-1/2 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 pa.s.s 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 acc.u.mulation of debt which must 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 embarra.s.s. 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 unconst.i.tutional. They a.s.serted 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed through the committee, the numbers present being less than one third, and the governor giving his double vote. Mr. Smith gave his opinion 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 reb.u.t.ted 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. .h.i.therto adverse. This motion being lost--before the Appropriation Act could be carried--the opposition quitted the council. Those remaining did not const.i.tute a quorum, and the legislative session was abruptly terminated. The _Gazette_ of 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sisting 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 a.s.sume 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, the _six_ sent a letter of explanation to Lord Stanley. In summing up their complaints they a.s.serted that they were called on to vote an expenditure the colony could not bear,--to antic.i.p.ate 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 pa.s.s 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, unconst.i.tutional, and disloyal: under these circ.u.mstances 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 embarra.s.sment. Repeated motions for the attainment of the same object are certainly incompatible with legislative order. A small party might r.e.t.a.r.d 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 embarra.s.s 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 a.s.sailed with scandalous abuse,--so easily is the n.o.blest 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 232: Agricultural Dinner, October 18, 1843.]

[Footnote 233: Despatch, June 28, 1843.]

[Footnote 234: Despatch, No. 34, 1843.]

[Footnote 235:

NO TAXATION!

A meeting will be held at the Theatre.

Auctioneers, rise at our bidding.

p.a.w.nbrokers, pledge the public your interest.

Butchers, show your pluck.

Publicans, prove your spirit.

Stage-coachmen, drive on.

Cabmen, make a stand.

Carters, put your shoulders to the wheel.

Eating-house keepers, support the const.i.tution.

Boatmen, a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether.

G.o.d save the Queen!

August 6, 1845.]

[Footnote 236: Despatch. December 5, 1843.]

[Footnote 237: January 24, 1845.]

[Footnote 238: Despatch, Jan. 31, 1845.]

[Footnote 239: Correspondence, January 5, 1843.]

[Footnote 240: Mr. Maclean's Report, 1844.]

[Footnote 241: Dr. Hampton's Report.]

[Footnote 242: Despatch, January, 1845.]

[Footnote 243: Mr. O'Connor, however, had protested against the police expenses in the following terms:--"Because, were this not a penal colony, one-third of its present police force would be adequate to its protection. I therefore do not consider that in common justice the colonial government ought to be required to defend themselves, at their own expense, against the aggression of convicts sent hither princ.i.p.ally for the benefit of the mother country" (July, 1844).]

[Footnote 244: Letter of Captain Swanston to Lord Stanley.]

[Footnote 245: Despatch to Sir G. Gipps, Jan. 1st, 1845.]