‘Ohhhh!’ cried Mrs Kelly passionately, flopping back in her chair and putting a hand to her brow. ‘Will I ever forget! And me just an innocent young widow …’
‘That’s more like it,’ smiled Mrs Ovens, settling herself more comfortably in her chair in readiness to hear more about Mrs Kelly’s handsome young lover.
‘Tell me in what way you almost killed the rascal and got charged with attempted murder?’
Chapter Twenty-Five
In London, John McArthur knew his time to move against Lachlan Macquarie had come.
Being one of the masterminds behind the coup against Governor Bligh, and having travelled to London to defend himself against all charges, John McArthur had got off lightly, but as the Colonial Office regarded him as one of the main troublemakers in that shameful affair, it had steadfastly refused to allow McArthur to return to New South Wales – despite the fact that before leaving the Colony he had secured himself a vast landholding near the Hawkesbury River, as well as a huge number of sheep.
Over the years John McArthur’s place in New South Wales had grown into a rich man’s plantation in both size and grandeur, which for the past eight years had been run by his wife, Elizabeth, who had remained behind.
But she would not be running it on her own for much longer, McArthur was determined, and the large number of assigned convicts who were helping her to run it would soon find their days of ease and Macquarie’s ‘Sundays free from work’ to be a thing of the past.
Even now, John McArthur could not believe that Governor Macquarie had officially banned all flogging of assigned convicts by their masters, unless a crime had been committed and an order was for any flogging was to be given y a magistrate.
The changes that were continually taking place in New South Wales appalled John McArthur, but there was one change – the worst of all – that utterly sickened him.
‘Can it really be true,’ he wrote with disgust in a letter to his wife, ‘that Governor Macquarie has invited men who once wore leg-irons to dine at his table in Government House?’
Proving that during his years in exile in England, McArthur had kept in constant touch with those Exclusives who held the same view as he did regarding emancipists.
*
In the Colonial Office, Lord Bathurst had a reputation of being ‘a very busy man’ and indeed he was. It was in Bathurst’s nature to keep himself busy at all times, whether he needed to or not, and sometimes the strain became too much for him.
In response to the endless letters of complaints he had been receiving for years about Governor Macquarie from the Exclusives in the Colony, he finally wrote a letter to the Governor warning him to be less helpful to the emancipists, to implement harsher rules and greater punishments for the convicts, and – most importantly – to give as much support and patronage as possible to the free settlers who were, naturally, more deserving than the emancipists, and who had sent him many complaints about the Governor’s liberal attitude and leniencies.
*
So now that the Colonial Office was seeking to reprimand and oppose him, and take the side of that sanctimonious elitist group which Elizabeth had began to refer to lately as “those villains” because of their obsession in trying to cause trouble for him at every turn, Lachlan replied to Lord Bathurst and, with undisguised contempt, gave his own view on the situation:
‘No doubt, many of the free settlers (if not all) would prefer never to admit any persons who had been convicts to any situation of equality with themselves. But in my humble opinion, in coming to New South Wales they should consider that they are coming to a convict country, and if they are too proud or too delicate in their feelings to associate with the population of this country, then they should bend their course to some other country in which their prejudices in this respect would meet with no opposition.’
Then he defended his principle of appointing emancipists to positions of civic office.
‘My principle is, that when once a man is free, his former state should no longer be remembered, or allowed to act against him. What can be so great a stimulus to a man of respectable family and education, who has fallen to the lowest state of degradation, as to know, that it is still in his power to recover what he has lost, and not only to become a worthy member of society, but to be treated as such? Let punishment be as severe as may be necessary, but when that which the Law has ordained has been fulfilled, for the sake of mercy and justice - there let it terminate.’
But he was becoming sick of all the complaints and petty tirades of the Exclusives, he had done his eight years, and he had done his best, so in the same dispatch with his reply to the Earl of Bathurst, Lachlan tended his resignation to both the Colonial Office and the King.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the meantime, while he waited for a response, Lachlan Macquaries plans for the new Australia continued.
He had brought the colony through two famines, had overseen the building of roads across the Blue Mountains, and despite the financial restrictions imposed on him by the Treasury officials in London, who could not understand his enthusiasm for erecting fine architecture in a convict colony, he continued to administer New South Wales with humanity and courage, and an unswerving belief in its future.
On 8th April 1817, in Sydney, the doors of the first Bank of New South Wales were opened with great ceremony.
It was to prove a life-saver to many of the settlers who did not want to leave the land on which they had built their houses, and applied to the Bank for a mortgage instead, agreeing to pay back the loan with interest as the climate and times improved.
Governor Macquarie was very proud of the new bank. He firmly believed it would save the Colony from eventual ruin, and said so many times during long meetings over dinner with prospective shareholders at Government House.
A board of Directors had been appointed, with George Howe of the Gazette becoming one of the shareholders. Happy was delighted with his new position. He had handed over the editorship of the Gazette to his twenty-year-old son, Robert Howe.
On the day the first Bank of New South Wales officially opened for business, after a number of speeches from the directors, the first depositor, Sergeant Murphy of the 73rd Regiment marched up to the cashier and deposited the colossal sum of £50.
The directors were beaming: even the military were prepared to trust the new bank.
Their smiles quickly vanished when the second depositor proudly marched in – a male convict servant, not yet freed, who became very indignant when his promissory note was not accepted as a cash deposit.
*
In London, in the Colonial Office, Lord Bathurst was once again ‘very busy’ writing a reply to Governor Macquarie, a man to whom he had always given his unfailing support, assuring the Governor that his previous letter did not in any way imply a lack of faith in him, and as a consequence he was refusing to pass on his resignation to the King.
‘… I cannot give a better proof of the confidence which is still reposed in you, than by deciding not to take any measure for appointing a successor to you, unless I shall learn that you persist in your determination to return to England.’
Before Bathurst could arrange for the dispatch of the letter, he received yet another visit from John McArthur.
This time, McArthur informed Lord Bathurst that he had secured the support of some of the most influential people in London for his application to return to New South Wales, and one of those influential gentlemen was Sir Thomas Brisbane.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Brisbane?’
Lord Bathhurst and the Colonial Office had always held firm in their refusals to allow John McArthur to return to New South Wales, but if a growing number of men of rank and class in England were now supporting him …
‘Our main concern is for Governor Macquarie,’ said Bathurst sternly. ‘We cannot risk another coup against the King’s Viceroy in the Antipodes like that carried out against Governor Bligh – and you, Mr McArthur, were
one of the main manipulators behind that coup.’
‘For which I have apologised many times,’ McArthur replied with a fake sincerity. ‘And had I known those officers of the New South Wales Corps were planning a revolt against Governor Bligh, I would have had nothing at all to do with them.’
Lord Bathurst’s face remained stern as he listened to John McArthur, still unsure whether to believe him … but if men of rank and class were supporting him …
‘And Governor Macquarie is, I am told, a very different type of ruler than Governor Bligh,’ John McArthur added. ‘They say he is a humane man, of great energy and intellect, as well as possessing a very courteous and gentlemanly manner.’
‘That is correct.’
‘So who in New South Wales could possibly wish to oppose him? Not I, certainly. Nor would I wish to tie my horse to the wagons of any others who would wish to oppose him.’
When Lord Bathurst remained silent, his eyes still cold, John McArthur insisted, ‘I assure you, my lord, I have only one interest in life, and that is sheep.’
Lord Bathurst finally blinked. ‘Sheep?’
‘Yes, my lord, the flocks of sheep I already own and hope to extend in New South Wales.’
And then John McArthur pressed on, telling Lord Bathurst the same things he had told all the other men of the ruling class in England who now supported him … that now the Blue Mountains had been crossed and fine grazing land had been found on the other side, the new wealth of the Colony could be created from the rearing of sheep, huge herds of them, making the Colony self-sufficient in its own right without having to depend on all of its bills being met by England.
Lord Bathurst sat thoughtful, realising how valuable the supply of cheap Australian wool would be for the Mills in England, much less expensive than foreign imports.
He said, ‘The land in New South Wales is British land, so any wool exported from there would in fact be British wool, and therefore it would have to be supplied to us at a very reasonable cost by the sheep farmers.’
John McArthur forced a smile. ‘Certainly, my lord, it will be the cheapest wool in the world.’
And seeing Bathurst’s awakening interest, John McArthur took that opportunity to fire the same sly salvo against Lachlan Macquarie that he had subtly done with those other Englishmen of wealth and rank.
‘And with the Colony eventually being able to support itself from the sale of wool from its own sheep,’ McArthur added, ‘Governor Macquarie could still have his buildings of the finest architecture in his city of convicts without the cost being met by the Colonial Office.’
‘Finest architecture?’ Lord Bathurst frowned. ‘My understanding is that all buildings have been ones of absolute necessity, such as schools and a hospital and a church.’
‘Just so, just so,’ McArthur agreed, ‘and I believe they are very impressive and grand with no expense spared in their construction. A home for orphans too, and even a village and a school for the Aborigines! And there. my lord, is the difference between Governor Bligh and Governor Macquarie…’ John McArthur sighed admirably. ‘Governor Bligh would never have been so kind to the Aborigines by using money sent from the Colonial Office, but Governor Macquarie … England must be very proud of him.’
The chilled expression on Lord Bathurst’s face still had John McArthur smiling a week later when, with official permission finally granted, he set off to board his ship back to his wife and his family and New South Wales.
What a fool Bathurst was, and how easily the English ruling pomps were seduced by their own greed, McArthur was thinking as his ship set sail.
‘If it came in plenty, we could even sell some of that wool to other countries in Europe,’ Sir Thomas Brisbane had said excitedly. ‘Wool is a very valuable commodity there too.’
But what neither Brisbane nor Bathurst nor any of those other high-ranking gentlemen knew, was that he, John McArthur, held the monopoly in New South Wales of pure merino rams that would be so necessary for the breeding of more sheep, and the growth and production of so much wool.
Oh, yes, indeed. England could well make a huge fortune in the future from the cheap wool sent to them from New South Wales – but not before John McArthur had made his own huge fortune first.
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was now over eight months since John McArthur had left England to return to New South Wales; and Lord Bathurst was still being inundated with letters from the colony’s Exclusive faction who continued to dip their pens in bitter gall to send him their relentless complaints about Governor Macquarie.
Although now it was not only to the Colonial Office they were sending their infuriated letters, but also to influential people of the ruling class as well as to Members of Parliament.
England was almost bankrupt due to the cost of its long war with France; the poor were even poorer, and even the rich were finding it hard to stay rich. The crime rate continued to rise, and threats of a ‘people’s revolt’ to bring down the government were escalating.
The shadows of the French Revolution still darkened the corridors of Whitehall and Westminster and those Members of Parliament who were constantly being heckled in the House of Commons and threatened by their constituents on the street, were now using the letters from the Exclusives to save themselves from all accusations of incompetence.
In Lachlan Macquarie – the Exclusives had gifted these politicians with the perfect scapegoat to detract attention and blame from themselves. And as the man himself was twelve thousand miles and half the globe away, how could he refute any of it?
Their first public accusation against the Governor of New South Wales was the horrendous financial cost to the United Kingdom for his building programmes.
‘It seems…’ one politician declared, ‘that convicts transported to the antipodes no longer find themselves arriving in a penal colony – but in a place to rival one of Europe's finest cities!’
They even charged him with being responsible for Britain's rising crime, insisting that many of those soldiers who had limped home from the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, and with no other employment available to them, had consequently and deliberately gone out to commit crime in the hope of being transported to Macquarie's promised land.
One soldier, they claimed, had received his sentence of transportation with a nod of thanks, then left the court singing, ‘Too-ra-loo-ra-lay, I'm off to Botany Bay.’
Lords Harrington and Castlereagh and many others would not tolerate hearing a single word against Lachlan Macquarie, whom they had all known personally; nor would the King who, as the Prince of Wales, had also known General Macquarie fairly well in earlier days.
Of all the people least affected by these accusations was Lachlan Macquarie himself, because he knew nothing about them; but Lord Bathurst was in a turmoil. As Colonial Secretary he had to do something to quieten those complaining politicians, but what?
Then it came to him – an inquiry! He would send someone out to New South Wales to conduct an Official Inquiry into the state of the Colony. That usually kept the bleaters quiet for a time, and would also save him the bother of having to respond to their irritating questions in the House until – ‘the official Inquiry is completed.’
Although, Bathurst was a wily enough politician himself to know that he had to cover his own back from all sides. So when giving his final instructions to the man that Whitehall had chosen to carry out the Inquiry, Commissioner John Bigge, Lord Bathurst warned him sternly:
‘Under no circumstances are you to let Governor Macquarie know the real reason for your arrival in New South Wales. Under no circumstances is he to know that this is an official inquiry into his governorship on behalf of the Colonial office.’
‘So what is the main purpose of my inquiry,’ Bigge asked, ‘underneath the official reason of a routine inquiry into how the settlement is progressing?’
‘The main purpose of your inquiry is to find out if New South Wales still fulfils its
purpose as a penal colony for felons. Transportation should be a sentence that every felon fears, and therefore it should act as a terrifying deterrent. New South Wales is an outdoor prison camp, a receptacle for offenders, but is Governor Macquarie running it as such? That is what we need to know.’
‘And the emancipists?’
‘The emancipists are a very thorny issue,’ Bathurst replied. ‘It’s because of his treatment of the emancipists that we are having this inquiry. Macquarie claims to have selected people for top civic posts according to their merit and ability – surveyors, architects, doctors – stating that many of the free settlers do not possess the knowledge or ability needed for such posts, so I shall look forward to your own unbiased view on that, Mr Bigge.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
*
The ‘unbiased’ face that Commissioner John Bigge had shown so artfully to Lord Bathurst was a false face. He had no intention of supporting any Governor who was too soft on the lower classes of humanity.
And Bathurst knew that. How could he not know it? John Bigge had been chosen for this commission due to his background as a law graduate from Christ Church, Oxford – as was Henry Goulburn – undersecretary to Bathurst. That was his first step inside the door. The second was his colonial experience in the West Indies – and a man reputed to have been ruthlessly tough on colonial slaves was unlikely to be soft on convicts or ex-convicts. Lord Bathurst was sure of that.
At the same time, in the opinion of John Bigge, Lord Bathurst was every bit as deceitful as his political masters, but they were paying him a fat yearly salary to carry out this inquiry – much more than the yearly salary they were paying Governor Macquarie to rule the colony. So, adding all these things together, John Bigge was in no doubt about the report the Colonial Office wanted him to bring back to them from New South Wales.
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