Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/288



Bent had left for England, and Field, who arrived early in 1817, had opened his court, the Colony settled down to a time of comparative tranquillity. A change had come over the settlement since 1810, which grew more and more marked as each year passed. The day of the adventurers had gone—men no longer grew suddenly rich by trade monopolies and by traffic in spirits. Between 1810 and 1820 the lot of the settlers was no easy one, and those who came intending to amass a fortune and return to England found their project a mere dream, and that they needed steady perseverance before they could make their way in the Colony itself. Bigge noticed that New South Wales was unlike any other British Colony, inasmuch as the colonists looked upon it as their future home. This was not only because sudden fortunes could no more be made. The deeper and more fundamental cause lay in the fact that the children of the convicts felt that New South Wales offered them a chance of free and honourable careers such as, weighted with the shame of their parentage, could not have been before them in the older country. Nationalism, the strongest characteristic of the Australian of to-day, is a legacy from these sons of exiles for whom Australia was a land of hope and promise, and the sense of a national character seems even at that early time to have impressed itself upon the observer. The young Australian was constantly referred to as though he could already be differentiated from the Anglo-Saxon. The youths were described