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Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. Turn off Animations. Turn on Animations. About Parliament. Home About Parliament. Page Content. Governor Macquarie: the Last Autocrat Control of the colony by the army rebels of the Rum Rebellion of was ended in , with the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie as the new Governor.
Macquarie brought with him his own regiment, the 73rd Regiment. The New South Wales Corps was disbanded. Macquarie had been appointed Lieutenant Governor. However, when the chosen Governor fell ill, Macquarie stepped into the difficult situation.
He was to prove to be the most memorable and significant of all Governors. He was the first to see above the limits of the convict settlement or the opportunties for self-enrichment which had characterised the early colony. His vision, by , was shown in a public building and town planning program that had established a solid infrastructure for the colony.
Exploration had reached deep into the inland, and settlement and agriculture were following, north and south along the coastline and inland beyond Bathurst. Agriculture was, in fact, creating the conditions for the colony to become almost economically self-sufficient. The non-Aboriginal population of the colony including Van Diemen's Land was approximately 37,, of whom at least 8, were free settlers or born in the colony.
However, his impatient and autocratic style had won him many enemies and some with influence in England. Within this now significant non-convict population, many were feeling that governors had too much authority which they could too easily exercise in an arbitrary fashion. Demands grew for a council which could represent the interests of the settlers. Justice Under Macquarie Although the New South Wales Corps and its monopoly were ended, the military influence continued, with the military officers still dominating the courts.
Macquarie's rank was now lieutenant-colonel on the staff, the promotion being dated back to 7 November These were strenuous days for him not only militarily but socially, for the 'awkward, rusticated, Jungle-Wallah', as he jocularly described himself, moved in the highest society. He was presented to the king ten days after his arrival and to the queen and all the princesses the following week, 'a grand and most pleasing Splendid Sight of the finest Women in all the World'.
Equally flatteringly, Lord Castlereagh consulted him about Indian affairs. Clearly Macquarie felt himself in his element despite the expense. This is the Macquarie of Opie's fine portrait in the Dixson Gallery, Sydney, the handsome, spruce young veteran of In these circumstances he found it easier than might have been expected to reconcile himself to postponing his trip north and it was not until June that he was able to get away.
His uncle was on his deathbed so the reunion was short. Macquarie had the melancholy task of breaking the news of Lochbuy's death to his mother at their first meeting since There was tragic irony here as elsewhere in his life. While at home Macquarie carried out his resolution to consecrate his new estate to his late wife under the name of Jarvisfield. He also met there, and admired immensely, an amiable and accomplished kinswoman Elizabeth , a Campbell of Airds, whom he was in due course to marry.
Macquarie's return to India could not be long delayed. He may have helped to precipitate this event by his foolish and unsuccessful attempt to deceive the Duke of York about the age and whereabouts of two young relatives, the subjects of an anonymous letter which the duke had received from Mull.
Though Macquarie protested that he had misrepresented nothing, he was lucky to avoid the ruin and disgrace which he himself feared would be the result of his 'bold fiction'; however, his application for a transfer to the guards was rejected out of hand and he was ordered back to India. Macquarie left Portsmouth in the City of London on 24 April , his heart lightened by the knowledge that Elizabeth had agreed to wait for him. His second tour of duty was comparatively brief.
At Bombay in October he learnt that the Duke of York had promoted him to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 73rd Regiment which had already returned home. After serving in the north with his old regiment against Holkar Macquarie left India for the last time on 19 March This time he decided to take the overland route carrying dispatches.
Taking ship to the Persian Gulf, where he narrowly escaped drowning, he and his companions went to the British factory at Basra; learning there that Turkey, at war with Russia, had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain, he decided to travel via St Petersburg. Seventeen days later he married Elizabeth Campbell in the little parish church of Holsworthy in Devon, and took her to Perth where his new regiment was garrisoned.
By their first wedding anniversary they were also celebrating, with all the enthusiasm of belated parenthood, the arrival of a daughter, christened Jane Jarvis, but her death on 5 December threw a cloud over their lives which long lingered.
Dramatic distraction from grief was provided by the decision of the government at the end of to send Major-General Miles Nightingall and the 73rd Regiment to New South Wales to replace the deposed governor, William Bligh , and the mutinous New South Wales Corps. Macquarie was to accompany his regiment, but the prospect of going abroad again so soon did not please him, especially as he reckoned that he was already the oldest lieutenant-colonel in the army and feared that the colony would be too remote to assist his further promotion.
He therefore wrote at the end of March to General Sir David Dundas, the new commander-in-chief, reminding him of his thirty-two years service in the army and asking for promotion to colonel in the colony. More important, he applied to Castlereagh, secretary of state for the colonies, for the post of lieutenant-governor, and this appointment he received with the support of the Duke of York and Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.
When he heard that Nightingall had changed his mind about accepting the governorship, Macquarie boldly wrote to Castlereagh again, offering his services as governor. As the government was anxious about the situation in New South Wales the preparations for departure were hurried, but with characteristic canniness Macquarie wrote an effusive thank-you to Castlereagh 'Great men like these attentions—and they never do any harm' and a respectful letter to Sir Joseph Banks , the colony's original patron, discreetly reminding him of hospitality the clan Macquarie had given him many years before.
Banks was not well enough to see Macquarie but was favourably disposed. Macquarie also consulted T. Plummer, a lawyer, about the improvements desirable in the colonial government. A week before departure he received confidential Instructions in which Castlereagh emphasized that 'The Great Objects of attention are to improve the Morals of the Colonists, to encourage Marriage, to provide for Education, to prohibit the Use of Spirituous Liquors, to increase the Agriculture and Stock, so as to ensure the Certainty of a full supply to the Inhabitants under all Circumstances'.
Macquarie's policy in the colony can only be understood in the light of this exhortation. On 22 May Macquarie and his wife sailed with the regiment from Portsmouth in the storeship Dromedary escorted by H.
During the seven-month voyage both of them kept a diary, his terse, hers lively. Also on board were Ellis Bent , the newly-appointed deputy judge advocate, and his family. Thus the last of the autocratic, and non-constitutional, governors came to Australia with the first properly trained law officer.
This relieved him of the disagreeable duty of having to deal with them in the colony. Macquarie was sworn in on New Year's Day Addressing the citizens at the ceremony he expressed the hope that the recent dissensions would now give way to a more becoming harmony among all classes.
Officers displaced since Bligh's arrest were reinstated and all other acts of the 'revolutionary' government annulled. After Bligh arrived in Sydney on 17 January it required all the tact that Macquarie could muster to keep his relations with his predecessor more or less amicable until Bligh finally sailed for home on 12 May with Colonel William Paterson and the New South Wales Corps.
With the past out of the way Macquarie could devote his undivided attention to the present, and the future. Privately he had been pleasantly surprised to find the colony thriving and 'in a perfect state of tranquillity'. He was also pleased with the setting and the climate and hoped 'we shall be able to pass five or six years here pleasantly enough'.
The first year certainly passed pleasantly. By the time Macquarie was being congratulated on the first anniversary of his government the characteristics of his twelve-year administration had emerged.
One was the new modelling of the public departments, including the commissariat, and the organization of the Police Fund as the basis of colonial revenue. Here he was able to draw on his experience as a staff officer, expertise the naval governors had largely lacked.
Like his predecessors he levied customs duties without authority, and these had to be retrospectively confirmed by an Act passed in He opened a new market-place in Sydney in October and in March the first public fair held 'by regular authority' took place at Parramatta.
In July the colony at last obtained a coinage in place of the notes of hand and barter previously used. At the end of , despite the opposition of the British government, he encouraged the creation of the colony's first bank. But the most urgent problem, and an intractable one, was to increase agricultural production and livestock. Despite his efforts to encourage farmers to improve their properties alternate spectres of glut and famine continued to threaten the economy during most of his administration.
Macquarie embarked on his first tour of the outlying districts on 6 November and three days later was lost in the bush for several hours in the Bankstown district. He named Windsor and Richmond on this trip and paid some discreet compliments in calling new towns he marked out Liverpool, Castlereagh, Pitt-town and Wilberforce. This was the first of a series of tours including two visits to Van Diemen's Land in and , three to Newcastle, one to Port Macquarie, which he founded in , and one to the Illawarra in After the Blue Mountains had been crossed Macquarie set off on the new road across the range and selected the site of Bathurst on 7 May He encouraged so much exploration that by the time he left the colony the explored area was many times what it had been when he arrived.
Public works were another continuing concern. Despite Castlereagh's injunction about economy Macquarie was convinced that a new army barracks, a new general hospital, and a turnpike road to Parramatta and beyond could not be postponed. The barracks were completed by the end of , the Parramatta road in April The hospital was built by D'Arcy Wentworth , the principal surgeon, and two other colonists by a contract dated 6 November , giving them a limited monopoly of importing spirits, the consumption of which Macquarie had found it impossible to prohibit.
This was clearly a cheap way of obtaining an urgently needed building, and at a time when convict labour was very scarce it probably did not seem an altogether eccentric device to an old Indian officer; but it ran contrary to his own suggestion earlier that spirits should be freely imported, and it was strongly criticized in London.
These undertakings were the first in an expensive building programme which transformed and still adorns Sydney, Parramatta and the new townships.
In this he had the assistance of Francis Greenway a convict whom he appointed civil architect. In Macquarie listed works of varying scale which had been carried out during his rule. All these projects were accomplished with the help of convict labour, which became embarrassingly plentiful as time went on. In the governor was unable to assign more than half the new arrivals, and had to recommence at Emu Plains the government farming operations which he had thankfully abandoned in For all that he reduced the average annual expenditure per convict by about two-thirds during his administration, even though the total doubled as the number of prisoners increased about tenfold.
At the same time he tried to restrain the excessive use of corporal punishment by magistrates, tightened up the pass regulations, built barracks in Sydney, Parramatta and Windsor for the better control of the 'government' convicts and issued new regulations for the granting of tickets-of-leave.
Central to Macquarie's administration was his concern for public morality. In some of his earliest orders the prevailing habit of cohabiting without marriage was denounced, constables were directed to enforce laws against Sabbath-breaking, and a regular church parade was introduced for convicts in government employment. Already in October he claimed that 'a very apparent' change for the better had taken place in the 'Religious Tendency and Morals' of the inhabitants.
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