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

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[* Page 42 Appendix to the Report of the House of
Commons in 1812.]

What else, indeed, could be expected from a system which is
every day enlarging the circle of poverty and distress? Is it
within the possibility of belief that people should become more
honest as they become more necessitous? That they should
scrupulously refrain from making inroads on the possessions of
their richer neighbours, while they themselves are suffering
under the influence of progressive penury? Under such
circumstances it would be the very height of absurdity to expect
an increase of virtue and honesty. Wherever it is not within the
compass of industry to provide for its wants, a recourse to crime
in order to make up the deficiency is inevitable to a certain
extent even in a moral country. What then must be the result of
this inability in a felon population, long habituated to theft,
and naturally predisposed to criminality? In such a community as
this, the government are doubly bound to neglect no measures
which may be calculated to repress this vicious propensity. If
they adopt the contrary line of conduct; if they administer
stimulants to vice instead of anodynes; if they, in fact, create
incitements to dishonesty too potent even for virtuous misery to
withstand, are not _they_ the authors of a system thus
impregnated with corruption, virtually the parent of the
monstrous litter to which it gives birth? And though according to
the inflexible principles of justice, any violation of the
property of another is not to be exculpated, humanity will always
pity the distressed delinquent, and wish that she had the power
of substituting the primary author of the crime in the place of
the condemned criminal. How would the world be reformed, if the
framers of the unjust and impolitic laws, which are every where
the bane of mankind, and the cause of so much misery and vice,
were arraigned at the bar of justice, and compelled to answer for
all the depravity that might be traced to the demoralizing
influence of their measures?

The picture of the colony which I have presented, aggravated
as it is, faithfully delineates the different descending
gradations by which it has sunk to its present abyss of misery,
and is of itself sufficiently demonstrative of the radical defect
that there is in its polity, and of the necessity for an
alteration in it: nevertheless, it may not be altogether
inexpedient to dive a little into futurity, and to view through
the mirror of the imagination the further results which the
experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the
same course of restriction and disability will infallibly lead
to. It requires not the gift of divination to foresee that the
manufacturing system, which has already taken such deep root, and
so rapidly shot up towards maturity, will still further confirm
and consolidate itself with the increasing poverty of the
community. For several years the importation of British
manufactures, particularly of cottons, has been comparatively
speaking on the decline, in consequence of the competition
occasioned by large importations of those articles from India;
which though in general of inferior quality, have been more
adapted to the circumstances of the colonists from their inferior
price. The consumption of hats and woollen cloths has also been
diminished, but not to the same considerable extent by the
colonial manufactures of the same denomination, which are
likewise much inferior to the British, but have the two-fold
advantage of being cheaper, and to be obtained for wool, grain,
meat, etc. without the intervention of money, which it is
generally out of the power of the consumers to furnish.

This system of barter, which has materially favoured their
growth, and must necessarily still further encourage and extend
it, is not, as might at first be imagined, prejudicial to the
manufacturer; since the wool which he thus receives in exchange
for his commodity is the raw material required for its
reproduction, and therefore saves him the trouble of seeking it
in other quarters; and the meat, grain, etc. are distributed
among his workmen at the market prices of the day, and free him
from the necessity of paying the full value of their labour in
money, which under existing circumstances would most probably be
impracticable. The system itself, therefore, seems to have been
engendered by events, and to be peculiarly adapted to the present
state of poverty and wretchedness, to which the great mass of the
colonists are reduced. And although in other countries, and even
in this, if its agricultural powers were unfettered, the workmen
employed in the fabrication of these manufactures would not
perhaps consent to receive this mixed compensation for their
labour, yet amidst the actual difficulties of procuring a
subsistence, and possessed as they are of trades, for which till
lately there was no demand whatever, and for which at the present
moment there is far from an active competition, they are not only
glad to accept this mode of payment, but would even submit to
much harder conditions. We may therefore perceive, that if the
manufacturer can sell for ready money as much of this commodity
as is requisite to the payment of the residue of their wages, and
at the same time equivalent to the profit which he may derive
from his concern, it is all that he need absolutely require. This
manufacturing system being thus not only suited to the increasing
poverty of the community at large, but also favourable to the
interests of all the parties concerned in it, whether the
proprietors or the workmen, cannot but gain ground. A few years,
in fact, will completely put it out of the power of at least
seven-eighths of the population to have recourse to the
manufactures of this country: the expences of the colony will,
indeed, as I have satisfactorily proved, continue to increase,
but still only in proportion to the augmentation in the body of
convicts and others, maintained at the charge of the government;
while, on the contrary, the population of the colony, in spite of
all the checks imposed on it, will be extending itself more
rapidly within, than by transportation and emigration from
without. Its revenue, therefore, will be every year to be divided
among a number of competitors increasing much more rapidly than
itself. Thus their ability to purchase the more perfect and
expensive commodities of this country, will become daily more
circumscribed, till at length the use of them will be entirely
superseded, or at best confined to the higher orders of society;
who, it is probable, may be induced in the long run both by the
growing perfection of their native manufactures, and by
patriotism, to abjure the consumption of all goods that may have
a tendency to augment the prosperity of their common oppressor.
The colonists, in fact, have only to advance a few steps further
in the manufacturing system to be completely independent of
foreign supply. Already fabricating to a considerable extent
their own cloth, the first perhaps of manufactures in utility and
importance; already furnishing in a great measure their own hats,
leather, soap, candles, and earthenware, they have only to
provide their own linen, and to erect iron founderies, to become
possessed of all that can be termed strictly necessary to their
subsistence and even comfort. And these two objects will
doubtless be soon effected by the active agency of the same
powerful necessity, which has so rapidly given rise to the
various manufactures already mentioned. It is, indeed, rather a
matter of surprise than otherwise, that attempts have not been
already made to establish manufactories of these two highly
important articles; since the colony, on the one hand, is
peculiarly adapted to the growth of flax, and on the other
abounds, as it has been seen, with iron ore of the richest
quality.

To what feelings, then, to what conduct, it may be asked, will
this independence in the resources of the colonists, the bitter
fruit of so much privation and misery, give birth? Will this, the
painful result of so many years' injustice and oppression, tend
to strengthen the bond of union between the colony and this
country? Or will it not be the crisis that will sever it for
ever? England, placed as she is at present on the pinnacle of
glory, and reposing in security on the basis of that commercial
and maritime greatness, from which the gigantic efforts of united
Europe have not been able to remove her, may laugh to scorn the
presumption of any colony, however powerful, that might attempt
to shake off her authority. Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only
to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her
colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies.
No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at
the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for
colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of
this country, dream of its immediate execution. Still let her not
lull herself into a false security; let her not measure the
forbearance of the colony by its own impotency and
insignificance. Despair always begets resources, and inspires an
unnatural vigor. The enmity of the most feeble becomes
formidable, when it has justice ranged under its banners, and
ought not to be excited without necessity. Besides, is it worthy
the character of a nation, who has evinced herself the determined
enemy of tyrants, and the avenger of the freedom of the world, to
become the oppressor of her own subjects, and that too for the
mere sake of oppression, in subversion alike of their interests
and of her own? Has she not, and will she not always have
_external enemies enow_ to contend with, without thus
creating, _unnecessarily_ creating, _domestic ones?_
Let her from the midst of the glory with which she is environed
compare her situation, brilliant and imposing as it is, with what
it might have been: let her look at the consequences of her
former injustice. Is not the most formidable on the list of her
enemies, a nation, which might have this day been the most
attached and faithful of her friends? A nation which, instead of
watching every occasion to circumscribe her power, would, if its
rights had been respected, have been still embodied with her
empire and confirmatory of her strength? Will this terrible
lesson have no influence on the regulation of her future conduct?
Will not this dear bought experience teach her wisdom? Or has she
yet to learn that the reign of injustice and tyranny involves in
its very constitution the germ of its duration and punishment?
Let her ask herself, "what would have been the consequence if,
during the late war with America, the ports of this colony had
been open to the vessels of that nation?" How many hundreds of
the valuable captures, which the Americans made in the Indian
seas and on the coast of Peru, might have safely awaited there
the termination of the war, which were recaptured by her cruisers
in view of the ports of their country? How many hundreds of their
own vessels, that shared the same fate, would have still belonged
to their merchants? And is there no probability, that a
perseverance in the present system of injustice and oppression,
may on some future occasion, urge the colonists to shake off this
intolerable yoke, and throw themselves into the arms of so
powerful a protector? May they not by these means acquire
independence long before the epoch when they would have obtained
it by their own force and maturity? Or at least may they not
place themselves under the government of more just and
considerate rulers? How would this country repent her folly, if
she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if
she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already
the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime
ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions,
at the main external source of her wealth and prosperity?

To those who are acquainted with the local situation of this
colony; who have traversed the formidable chain of mountains by
which it is bounded from north to south; who have viewed the
impregnable natural positions, that the only connecting ridge by
which a passage into the interior can be effected, every where
presents; to those who are aware that this ridge is in many
places not more than thirty feet in width, and have beheld the
terrific chasms by which it is bounded, chasms inaccessible to
the most agile animal of the forest, and that will for ever defy
the approach of man; to those, I say, who are acquainted with all
these circumstances, the independence of this colony, should it
be goaded into rebellion, appears neither so problematical nor
remote, as might be otherwise imagined. Of what avail would whole
armies prove in these terrible defiles, which only five or six
men could approach abreast? What would be the effect of artillery
on advancing columns crowded into so narrow a compass? A few
minutes exposure to such a dreadful carnage, would annihilate the
assailing army; or at best only preserve its scattered remnants
from destruction by raising an intervening barrier of the
carcases of its slaughtered martyrs. If the colonists should
prudently abandon the defence of the sea-coast, and remove with
their flocks and herds into the fertile country behind these
impregnable passes, what would the force of England, gigantic as
it is, profit her? She might, indeed, if they were unassisted in
their efforts by any foreign power, cut off their communication
for awhile with the coast; but her armies entirely dependent on
external supply, and at so great a distance from the centre of
their resources, would gradually moulder away, as well by the
incessant operation of a partisan warfare, as by defection to
their adversaries, whom her troops would be led to combat only
with regret. They would not enter into a war of this description
with the same animosity and desire of vengeance that might
actuate their leaders. They would behold in their opponents,
Britons, or the descendants of Britons, placed in hostile array
against them unwillingly, and not from any ancient and inveterate
spirit of hatred and rivality, but from constrained resistance to
tyranny, and in vindication of their most sacred and indubitable
rights. Nor would they in the midst of their disgust for so
unjust and unnatural a contest, behold the beauty and fertility
of the country without drawing a comparison between their
condition, and what it would be, were they to quit the ranks of
oppression, and become the champions of that independence, which
they were destined to repress. Such will be the consequences of
the impolitic and oppressive system of government pursued in this
colony; such the probable results of the contest to which it must
eventually give rise. If I have been unqualified in expressing my
reprobation of such unwise and unjust measures; if I have evinced
myself the fearless assertor of the rights of my compatriots; and
if I have spoke without reserve of the resistance which the
violation and suppression of those rights will in the end
occasion, I must nevertheless protest against being classed among
those who are the sworn enemies of all authority, and who place
the happiness of communities in a freedom from those restraints
which the wisdom of ages has established, and demonstrated to be
salutary and essential. I hope, therefore, that my principles
will not be mistaken, and that I shall not be exposed to the hue
and cry which have been justly raised against those persons who
are inimical to all existing institutions. There is not a more
sincere friend to established government and legitimacy than he
who mildly advocates the cause of reform, and points out with
decency the excrescences that will occasionally rise on the
political body, as well from an excess of liberty as of
restraint: such a person may prevent anarchy; he can never
occasion it.

These are the views by which I have been actuated in writing
this essay. If my hopes should be realized, if I should happily
be the means of averting the thunder cloud of calamity and
destruction which is even now gathering on the horizon of my
country, and threatens at no very remote period to burst over its
head, and to scatter death and desolation in its bosom, it is all
the recompence I seek. If my efforts should unfortunately prove
abortive; if I should fail to rouse the friends of peace and
humanity to its succour and relief, I shall have experienced a
sufficient mortification, without undergoing the additional one
of being classed with a band of ruffian levellers, who under the
specious pretext of salutary reform seek, like the jacobin
revolutionists of France, the subversion of all order, and the
substitution in its stead, of a reign of terror, anarchy, and
rapine, amidst the horrors of which they may satiate their
avarice, and glut their revenge. Let then the purity of my
motives be unimpeached, if I should be defeated in the
accomplishment of my object. But why should I despair of success,
when I have every support that ought to ensure it? Right, reason,
expediency, morality, religion, are all on the side of my
oppressed country, and must eventually procure the termination of
her sufferings. The disabilities, indeed, under which she has
been so long groaning, grounded as they are in no motives of
policy, but averse to them _all_, ought rather to be
ascribed to inadvertence than design. Engaged as this country has
been in a tremendous conflict, on the dubious issue of which her
very existence as a nation was staked, she has had little or no
leisure for attending to the internal economy of her colonies: in
the midst of her own unparalleled sufferings and sacrifices,
theirs have been disregarded or forgotten. It is the knowledge of
this circumstance that has shed a ray of hope and consolation
athwart the gloom which has been thickening year after year
around the colony. It is this consideration that has enabled its
inhabitants to support burdens which would otherwise have been
found intolerable. Let then their just expectations be at length
fulfilled, and let them not continue the only portion of the
king's subjects, who have no personal reason to rejoice at the
happy termination of this long and arduous contest. Their
moderation and forbearance under their grievances, have given
them an additional claim to redress, scarcely less forcible than
the existence of the grievances themselves. Yet already years
have elapsed, since the consolidation of general peace and
tranquillity, and no attention has been paid to their situation
and remonstrances. Already, therefore, the spirit of discontent
so long repressed by hope, but reviving with the progress of this
unnecessary, this unaccountable delay, has begun to manifest
itself, and will soon assume a determinate shape and form. Let
the government repress this feeling of hostility, while they have
yet the power: a few years further inattention will render it
hereditary and rivet it for ever. It is in the tendency of
colonies to overstep even legitimate restraint; they will never
long wear the fetters of injustice and oppression. I am aware
that it is not one of the least difficult proofs of legislative
wisdom to frame regulations adapted to each progressive stage of
colonization, and that this difficulty increases with the
maturity which the colony in question may have attained; but
although the treatment of colonies upon their arrival at that
degree of ascendency, when the enforcement of ancient
restrictions, founded on the interests, or supposed interests of
the parent country, but contraventory of the prosperity of the
colonies themselves, becomes dangerous or impracticable, is, it
must be allowed, a point of extreme delicacy and tenderness;
there can at no time be any doubt entertained of the propriety of
abandoning a system founded upon error and injustice, and
productive of detriment, as well to those who have imposed it, as
to those who are suffering under its baneful operation. It is
therefore to be hoped that so unwise and unjust a system will no
longer be continued; that his majesty's government will at length
allow the colonists to use freely the natural productions of
their country, and to increase to the utmost its artificial ones;
that they will, permit them to call their own energies, their own
resources, into life and action, and no longer impoverish them by
rendering them the prey of richer colonies, and what is still
more absurd and vexatious, of foreigners; that they will, in
fine, grant them the free unrestricted enjoyment of those
privileges which the bounty of the Creator has extended to them,
and which it is not in any human authority to withhold,
consistently with the eternal, immutable principles of right and
equity.

These privileges consist in the removal of certain
agricultural and commercial restraints, which I shall separately
enumerate; and in a free government, under the protecting shade
of which, the colonists may fearlessly exercise and enjoy their
personal and private rights, without molestation or
hindrance.

PART III.

VARIOUS ALTERATIONS SUGGESTED IN THE PRESENT POLICY OF THIS COLONY.

Of all the steps that could be taken for the relief of the
colony, none certainly would prove of such immediate efficacy, as
the creation of distilleries, and the imposition of so high a
duty on the importation of spirits from abroad, as would amount
to a prohibition. The advantages that would be attendant on this
measure may, perhaps, be most forcibly illustrated by a short
review of the actual loss which the colonists have sustained
during the last fifteen years, from the want of its adoption. The
spirits imported during this period may be safely estimated on an
average at the annual value of L10,000, amounting in
fifteen years to the sum of L150,000: and if we add to this
L100,000 more, which it may be calculated that the
government have expended in this interval, in the importation of
corn, flour, rice, etc. from other countries, we have a grand
total of L250,000, that would have been saved to the colony
by the erection of distilleries. The application of so large a
sum to the immediate encouragement of agriculture, would have
imparted life and vigor into the whole community, and would have
effectually prevented that increasing poverty, and the black
train of evils consequent on it, which I have already depicted.
And although from the increased demand for foreign luxuries,
which so great an addition to the colonial income would have
naturally occasioned, but a small part perhaps of this sum would
have eventually continued in general circulation, still the means
of the colonists would have at least been brought to a level with
their wants; and a sterling circulating medium would have
remained sufficient for all the purposes of domestic economy.
Under such circumstances there can be little doubt that the
active and enterprizing spirit of our countrymen would have long
since effected the establishment of an export trade, which would
have freed the colony from future embarrassment, and the mother
country from the enormous expence which she is annually forced to
incur in its support. But the continual and amazing fluctuations
which have taken place in the price of corn, have been a
death-blow to the success of every effort that has been directed
to this most important object. At least but one out of all the
numerous attempts that have been made by individuals, (for none
have been made by the government,) to raise various articles of
export, has realized the expectations of its sagacious author,
and promises to become eventually of permanent relief and
importance to the colony. But it will be more in the order of the
arrangement which I have marked out for myself, to treat of this
very important subject hereafter: I recur, therefore, to the
conclusion which I was about to draw from the foregoing premises;
that to the perfect success of every enterprize of a manual
nature, it is essential that the price of provisions in general,
but of corn in particular, should be reduced to such a point as
to afford a fair profit to the grower; and at the same time that
it should not be subject to any such extraordinary rise as to
superinduce a proportionate increase in the price of labour. To
keep the value of corn in this just mean, it is necessary that
the growth of it should be encouraged to a pitch far beyond the
sphere of the ordinary demand; and this is to be effected
generally in two ways, by augmenting the internal consumption by
artificial means, as by breweries, distilleries, etc. and by
permitting a free exportation of the surplus. But the colony is
at present unable from the smallness of its resources and its
remoteness from Europe, the great mart for the surplus corn of
other countries, to become a competitor with them in this branch
of commerce: it follows, therefore, that the constant abundance
of corn indispensable to the establishment and maintenance of an
export trade, can only be guaranteed by the enforcement of all
such measures as have a tendency to increase internal
consumption; and of these I again repeat that the erection of
distilleries, etc. is the most easy and the most efficacious.

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