Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/321

 colonists' discontents than from convict rebellions. The Bligh affair cast an unpleasant shadow long after tranquillity had been restored. But the presence in the Colony of what Goulburn called "such inflammable material" as the convicts, and past troubles with Bligh, probably did no more than give a colour of reason to the Tory principle of the period. It was after all a time when government by the benevolent despot was a favoured system. The people were to be ruled by those selected for that purpose by the highest authority, and due subordination was to be preserved. A belief in inequality was not questioned as a prejudice, but firmly adhered to as a fundamental principle. For a small Colony it appeared obvious that such a system was a fitting one. The settlers belonged to a comparatively low stratum of society, the convicts of course lower still. It was but natural and proper that all should be governed by a superior (though not necessarily an exalted) intelligence selected for them by the Government at home. Lord Castlereagh, who was perhaps the harshest of this set of reactionaries, wrote of colonists in an undoubted tone of contempt. Lord Liverpool, much more liberal in his opinions, yet considered the Constitutional Act for Canada of 1791, with its moderate constitutional freedom, as a fatal error. But though from the scanty materials at hand this suggestion cannot be too much pressed, it is at least strange that the reasons for continuing the peculiar form of Government in New South Wales were never set forth more at large. From 1800 the policy was one of pure negation and only one definite advance, the reform of the courts in 1814, can be recorded until in 1817 the Government began to falter in their reiteration of the necessity for a military government and finally set out to modify the system.

Under these circumstances it fell naturally to the lot of the opposition to champion the cause of discontented colonists. It is one of the ironies of history that the retired army and naval officers, gentlemen farmers and graziers, all of them men with a natural bias towards Toryism, being discontented with the