W. C. Wentworth

“ The Mediterranean has given rise to so many great and powerful nations, only from the superior advantages which it afforded for commerce during the long infancy of navigation. The number and fertility of its islands, the serenity of its climate, the smoothness of its waters, the smallness of its entrance, which although of itself sufficient to indicate to the skilful pilot the proximity of the ocean, is still more clearly defined by the Pillars of Hercules, towering on each side of it, and forming land-marks not to be mistaken by the timid, the inexperienced, or the bewildered. ”

“ What health and vigor can belong to that body politic which is forced to inhale the nauseous effluvia of tyranny? Prosperity is a plant that can only flourish in an atmosphere fauned by the wholesome breath of freedom. The highest fertility of soil, the greatest benignity of climate, the most commanding superiority of position, will otherwise be unavailing. Freedom may in the end convert the most barren and inhospitable waste into a paradise ”

“ An authority such as the governor of this colony possesses, might be tolerated under a despotic government; but it is a disgrace to one that piques itself on its freedom. What plea can be urged for encouraging excesses in our possessions abroad, that would be visited with condign punishment in our courts at home? Are those who quit the habitations of their fathers, to extend the limits and resources of the empire, deserving of no better recompence than a total suspension of the rights and liberties which their ancestors have bequeathed them? ”

“ Can any reason be adduced why British subjects residing in one colony, should be excluded from the whale fisheries more than British subjects residing in another? Why vessels built in Canada, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, or the Bahama islands, should possess a privilege denied to vessels built in New Holland or Van Diemen's Land? The whale fishery is not more contiguous to the inhabitants of the former colonies than to those of the latter; yet every encouragement is afforded for the carrying on of the one, and every obstacle thrown in the way of the successful prosecution of the other. ”

“ And shall not this sole efficacious remedy be administered, because a set of interlopers, persons in no wise connected with the purposes for which this colony was founded, wish to monopolize all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, power, and dignity to themselves? Shall the vital interests of the whole community sink before the ambitious projects of a few designing individuals, who have no object in view, but their own personal aggrandizement, and the maintenance of a self-assumed aristocratic importance? ”

“ But if he believe that the hour is at hand when the present system is to be abolished; when oppression is to be hurled from the car in which it has driven triumphantly over prostrate justice, virtue, and religion; and when the dominion of right and morality is to be asserted and established; then I have no hesitation in recommending him to give a preference to this colony. In the agonies of approaching dissolution, the efforts of tyranny will be feeble and impotent. ”

“ The institutions which have occasioned anarchy and devastation before, will, if persisted in, produce them again. Vile and detestable as have been the monsters of antiquity, the world still contains their parallels; and if they languish in obscurity, if they have not attained a celebrity equally atrocious, it is because they possess not equal facilities for the display of their real character and propensities. Human nature is still the same, and wherever a field is opened for the growth of tyranny, there that poisonous fungus, a tyrant, will shoot up. ”

“ He will, in fine, be convinced even to demonstration, that the erection of a free government in the colony of New South Wales would be a panacea for all its sufferings; that it is the only measure which can ease this country of the enormous burden which it will otherwise entail on her, and save the unspent millions that will be ingulphed, uselessly ingulphed, in the devouring vortex of the present system ”

“ Whoever is convinced that he has no rights, no possessions that are sacred and inviolable, is a slave, and devoid of that noble feeling of independence which is essential to the dignity of his nature, and the due discharge of his functions. This noble assurance that he is in the path of duty and security, so long as he refrain from the violation of those laws which may have been framed for the good of the community of which he is a member, is the main spring of all industry and improvement. ”

“ Under such circumstances it would be the very height of absurdity to expect an increase of virtue and honesty. Wherever it is not within the compass of industry to provide for its wants, a recourse to crime in order to make up the deficiency is inevitable to a certain extent even in a moral country. What then must be the result of this inability in a felon population, long habituated to theft, and naturally predisposed to criminality? In such a community as this, the government are doubly bound to neglect no measures which may be calculated to repress this vicious propensity. ”

“ If it were politic in his majesty's government to concede any superiority of privilege to any one body of the king's subjects over another, surely a colony composed entirely of Englishmen has reason to expect that such a concession should be made in its favour, and not to its prejudice in favour of a country acquired and in some measure maintained by force, and connected with the parent country by no ties of common origin and affinity, by no congeniality of habit, by no similarity of religion. ”

“ But this dignified feeling cannot exist in any society which is subject to the arbitrary will of an individual; and although the governor of this colony does not exactly possess the unlimited authority of an eastern despot, since he may be ultimately made accountable to his sovereign and the laws, for the abuse of the power delegated to him, I may be allowed to ask, should he invade the property, and violate the personal liberty of those whom he ought to govern with justice and impartiality, where are the oppressed to seek for retribution? ”

“ Measures have been already taken to carry the humane intention here manifested by his majesty's government into effect; and many hundreds who would otherwise have quitted the colony, will now remain there, and thus both the permanency of their reformation will be guaranteed, and the march of colonization greatly accelerated. Generous Britain, not more renowned in arts and arms, than in mercy and benevolence; may thy supremacy be coeval with thy humanity! ”

“ So radically defective, indeed, is the government to which they are subjected in its very constitution, that it not only holds out, in the uncontrolled authority which it vests in the hands of an individual, the strongest temptations for the exercise of tyranny to those who may habitually possess an overbearing and despotic temperament, but has also a manifest tendency, as history amply attests, to vitiate the heart, and to produce a spirit of injustice and oppression in those who may have been antecedently distinguished by a well regulated and humane disposition. ”

“ From these striking illustrations, this steady coincidence of cause and effect, deduced from the records of the greatest among ancient and modern empires, I have concluded that every community which has not a free government, is devoid of that security of person and property which has been found to be the chief stimulus to individual exertion, and the only basis on which the social edifice can repose in a solid and durable tranquillity. ”

“ The very principle which forbids their utter inadmissibility to become legislators, demands that none should be able to arrive at that dignity, but those whose conduct during their abode in the colony shall have been absolutely unimpeachable. Retrospection should not be pushed beyond the period of their arrival; but their subsequent behaviour should be subjected to the severest tests, to the most rigorous scrutiny. Conviction either before a court or a magistrate, for any offence of a criminal nature, should be a bar to their pretensions for ever. ”

“ Malthus, who has immortalized himself by his essay on this branch of political economy, has so satisfactorily shewn that the increase of population is proportioned to the facility of procuring subsistence, and administering to the various wants of a family, that it is quite unnecessary for me to repeat arguments with which every one ought to be familiar, to prove that this colony has not been exempt from the destructive influence of causes whose operation has been steady and invariable in all ages and in all countries. ”

“ Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies. No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of this country, dream of its immediate execution. ”

“ Still let her not lull herself into a false security; let her not measure the forbearance of the colony by its own impotency and insignificance. Despair always begets resources, and inspires an unnatural vigor. The enmity of the most feeble becomes formidable, when it has justice ranged under its banners, and ought not to be excited without necessity. ”

“ It is only by establishing this prosperity on a solid basis, by encouraging the growth of exports, until they rise to a level with its imports, that it can be converted from an unproductive and ruinous dependency into a profitable and important appendage. Whenever it shall have attained this point of advancement, whenever it shall have acquired an independence in its resources, then, and not before, will it begin to answer the real ends of all colonization, the extension of the commerce and rescurces of the empire. ”

“ But, while I am thus contending against the total exclusion of such as may have been convicts from the enjoyment of this great privilege, I would by no means imply that the doors of the legislative assembly should be thrown open to all indiscriminately who may happen to be free. An unrestricted ability to exercise a function of such great confidence and dignity, would superinduce consequences equally fatal with those against which I would guard: in endeavouring to shun one extreme, it behoves us equally to avoid falling into the other. ”

“ If then the promotion of agriculture be more politic in many independent states, which have not yet attained the same maturity of growth and civilization, that characterize the principal manufacturing nations of the world, by how much more prudent must the encouragement of it be in a dependent colony like this; possessed as it is of all the requisites for an unlimited extension of its agriculture in the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate, and the extent of its territory, and wanting all the essentials for the production of manufactures, skill, capital, and population? ”

“ Happily for the colony the realization of their projects depends not upon themselves; and his Majesty's ministers will not lend their sanction to schemes of private aggrandizement, which can only be accomplished by the sacrifice of the public good. If these men have not themselves the sagacity to dive into futurity, and to foresee the dangers and contests to which unjust privileges and distinctions must eventually give birth, shall the government be equally blind and improvident? ”

“ For the distance of five or six miles from the coast, the land is in general extremely barren, being a poor hungry sand, thickly studded with rocks. A few miserable stunted gums, and a dwarf underwood, are the richest productions of the best part of it; while the rest never gives birth to a tree at all, and is only covered with low flowering shrubs, whose infinite diversity, however, and extraordinary beauty, render this wild heath the most interesting part of the country for the botanist, and make even the less scientific beholder forget the nakedness and sterility of the scene. ”

“ In embellishing the capital, and erecting various public edifices, of which, however, I do not mean to question the utility, their attention appears to have been chiefly absorbed. It seems never to have come into their contemplation that all these embellishments would have been the natural and inevitable results of the increasing prosperity of the community, but that they could never of themselves either create or promote it. ”

“ But this class, which contains the great capitalists of all countries, are precisely those whose means, if they could be enticed into activity, would be productive of the most beneficial results. No soil is so barren, no climate so forbidding, as not to present facilities more or less favourable for the absorption of capital, and the extension of industry. Wherever the tide of improvement is at its height, and a reflux ensues, it is to the impolicy of the government, and not to the sterility of the country, that this retrogradation is to be attributed. ”

“ But is it a less sacred duty to take all such steps as may be calculated to deter his successors from treading in his footsteps; because they will only have thousands to trample upon instead of millions? Ought not oppression in every community, whether great or small, to be discouraged by every possible means? ”