Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/318

 he came to act in closer connection with prison and criminal law reformers in the House of Commons, his interest in New South Wales was placed on a wider basis. But in earlier years when he and Pitt were close friends it was the religious interests of the Colony alone which he attempted to influence.

From 1803 to 1812, Lord Hobart, Mr. Wyndham, Lord Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool held successively the seals for War and the Colonies. But in June of the latter year Lord Bathurst came into office and he remained Secretary until 1827. In August, 1812, Henry Goulburn, as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, replaced Robert Peel, who had in that position made his entry into official life. Goulburn remained in this office until the end of 1821.

At that period the parliamentary chiefs of the department appear to have been in every sense the administrators, and the permanent officials of the Colonial Office held an altogether unimportant position. But even the Secretary of State, as has been seen in earlier chapters, often had insurmountable difficulty in enforcing his policy upon the colonial Governors. Nevertheless the personality and opinions of the Secretary and Under-Secretary were of importance in affecting the development of the Colony, and it is of interest to know what manner of men they were.

Lord Bathurst was a kindly Tory of the old school, well fixed in the old ways, and was one of those who retired altogether from politics with the passing of the Reform Bill. He was industrious and religious, with a strong inclination towards the Clapham sect, and he had plenty of plain common-sense. During a long Parliamentary career he made one speech only, and that a short one, which rose above the merest mediocrity. He was a high-minded public-spirited aristocrat, who had probably gone into politics as a kind of family duty, was a tolerably competent official, had a close regard for routine and a total lack of imagination.

It is very difficult to describe Goulburn. He was even at this time a very close friend of Peel's, and his relations with all his colleagues, so far as they can be judged from the