Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/70

 Australia. He was distinguished by his self-reliance and constant energetic action. If the comparison had not been vulgarised, one might liken him, comparing small with great, to Napoleon. His was the same order of mind -- views narrow but clear -- essentially a materialist in politics. In New South Wales wealth was the visible sign of success, and Macquarie rewarded success wherever he found it. He made roads, erected public buildings, and again and again traversed the whole length and breadth of the colony, following closely in the footsteps of new explorers, distributing grants to skilful settlers, planning townships, and pardoning industrious prisoners. His activity was untiring, his vai ity boundless. He seldom condescended to ask advice, and, when he did, generally followed his own opinion. With charming naïveté he observes, in answer to a despatch from the Secretary of State, informing him that it was not the intention of the Government to appoint a council to assist the governor, as had been recommended: "I entertain a fond hope that such an institution will never be extended to this colony."

Even the recommendations of Secretaries of State he disregarded; and, as he was successful, he was permitted to pursue his own course. He infused his own active spirit into the settlers, and under its influence the material progress of the colony was extraordinary. Higher praise his administration scarcely deserves. The moral, not to say the religious, tone of the settlement owes little to his eare. One instance will suffice. He requested, in one of his despatches, that as many men convicts as possible should be transported, as they were useful for labour, but as few women, as they were costly and troublesome; thus losing sight altogether of the inevitable demoralisation which must be the result of a community of men.

Macquarie has been much attacked for saying "that the colony consisted of those who had been transported, and those who ought to have been;" and "that it was a colony for convicts, and free colonists had no business there: "but there was truth at the bottom of both these rude speeches. He looked upon New South Wales as a place where convicts were sent to be subsisted at the least possible expense, and certainly neither he nor any one else at that tune foresaw a period when it would cease to be a convict colony. His strong common sense told him that the cheapest way of ruling his felon subjects was to make them wealthy and respectable. Under his predecessors the idea had grown up that convicts were sent over to be the slaves of the free settlers. Governor Macquarie would perhaps have had no objection to that arrangement on moral grounds, had it been possible; but it was