The Far Horizon (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Although ruled by a soldier, Sydney was becoming more and more like a well-regulated civilian town. But in order for it to function efficiently, there were a number of civic posts that still needed to be filled.

Yet Lachlan found, to his dismay, that the only freely come persons to the colony that had any administrative or executive ability were his own officers. So, without qualm, he continued to seek men of capacity and merit within the emancipist community to fill these positions.

In quick succession a number of emancipists were appointed to civic and government posts, including the appointment of Simeon Lord and Andrew Thompson as magistrates.

Reverend Samuel Marsden was apoplectic when he found he was expected to sit on a committee with two emancipists. He faced the Governor armed with the wrath of God.

‘You expect
me
to join my priestly name with these two men whose characters are notorious for improprieties!’

‘Yes, I do,’ Lachlan replied calmly. ‘And they are
not
notorious characters, as you well know. Simeon Lord was sent out here at the age of nineteen for a crime so insignificant it is not even in the records. Since then his behaviour has been exemplary.’

‘Say what you will of Simeon Lord, he is still a former convict. And as for the other one, Andrew Thompson, he is even worse! His crime was
political!
’

‘Of political origin, yes. He burned a landlord's haystack at the age of sixteen and served seven years in Botany Bay in retribution. Those seven years are gone, Reverend Marsden. The debt has been paid.’

Reverend Marsden shook his head stubbornly. ‘I would find it totally incompatible with my sacred functions to sit on any committee with two men who have worn leg-irons. It would be a degradation of my office as senior chaplain of the colony!’

Lachlan regarded him coldly. ‘I am well aware, Reverend Marsden, that you have been sent out here in a
religious
capacity. But if you continue to regard emancipists with condescension and contempt, then I see you serving little purpose to the majority of the population. If we cannot expect humanity and some small degree of
charity
from a Christian priest, then who – in God's holy name – can we expect it from?’

Reverend Marsden swept imperiously out of Government House, muttering his fury. If Macquarie thought he could order the saints to mix with the sinners then he would find himself facing a holy war in New South Wales.

*

Reverend Marsden's holy campaign started the following day. He visited all his Exclusive parishioners, confiding to them in tones of pious despair the fears he was beginning to harbour about Governor Macquarie's ‘peculiar system.’

‘He is trying to unite the free and convict population,’ Marsden said. ‘Like goats and sheep.’

Weeks later he was still murmuring his fears, although when speaking to those Exclusives he knew to be somewhat less than devout, he edged his words on a different vein, that would cut just as deep.

‘He is trying to raise one class and lower the other. He is trying to bring the bonded and the free to a common level.’

Now he had stirred it, the reaction was just as Reverend Marsden hoped it would be. Even those who had happily mixed with all classes in the open air on Sydney's first Race Day, were now beginning to see underlying currents of evil and destruction in Macquarie's system. All agreed that some of his policies were totally unacceptable and had to be stopped.

They formed a delegation and made their way to Government House, voicing their displeasure to Governor Macquarie, very candidly.

Lachlan, however, had never been impressed with this small pompous group of mock gentry, believing that any true
gentleman
doing well in England would not need to leave it to do better elsewhere – especially in a convict colony on the other side of the world.

He forbore patiently with all the complaints of the Exclusives, but as conciliatory as he was reputed to be, they soon discovered he was not to be bullied.

They hastened to agree with him that those convicts who had served their sentence should, indeed, have a place in the future of the colony, but not, definitely
not
on the same footing as themselves – a class of superior society who had
never
committed any crime.

The emancipist's role, as they saw it, should be a penitent one of labouring and serving the gentry, whatever their former occupation might have been.

Governor Macquarie begged to differ. ‘It is my intention,’ he said firmly, ‘to make this colony an effective member of the British Empire to which it owes its existence. And to that end I intend to call forth
all
the energies of the colony, for the benefit of
all
its inhabitants.'

When they sought to argue further, sought to remind him sternly that he was a soldier of the
Crown
and not – surely not – an advocate of the democratic principles of the
French
revolution, he smiled at them coolly, but his eyes held the light of battle. Lachlan Macquarie’s weakness for standing by the underdog, which had first started in the West Indies, and then grew in India, was now flowering into a full-blown obsession in New South Wales.

‘In this Colony,’ he said, ‘there are seven thousand inhabitants, out of which only
one hundred and sixty
are settlers who have not been former convicts. You are only a mere handful of the population – yet you
demand
not only the cream, but
all of the milk as well!’

He shook his head positively. ‘No, sirs, you shall
not
have it all! Not while I head the government here. The emancipist who has served his time
must
be given a chance to benefit from his own good conduct and return to his former place in society. The convict, too, must
also
see a chance to benefit from his own good conduct – otherwise why should he ever abandon bad conduct – if it’s going to profit him
nothing?
’

They were stunned by his anger.

He made it clear that he would not be dictated to by the whims and greed of any free settler who wished to grow rich on the toil of convict and emancipist labour.

‘And neither,’ he added vehemently, ‘will I allow a convict sentenced to seven years, upon completion of such sentence, to find himself penalised for
life!
’

As the delegation of angry Exclusives left Government House, George Jarvis stood by the window and watched them go, regarding them with his usual unruffled interest.

Why, he wondered, was it only small-minded men who sought self-gratification from power over others? Why the petty need to destroy and lay waste the hopes and dreams of other men while in their own pursuit of grandeur?

And these men – these so-called Exclusives – with their need to sit in high places and domineer others, men who ruled over houses filled with free convict servants who did all the work and called them ‘master’, who would these Exclusives
be back in Britain
– without
their free servants –
without
their free land granted to them by the government?

Most had arrived in the colony with very little money, and even less intelligence – not all, but many whom he had met. Yet once here, in possession of all their free government gifts, they demanded even more special privileges and authority, demanded to be regarded reverently at all times as one who is above the common herd of less fortunate men.

George turned from the window and looked at Lachlan. ‘
Nabobs
,’ he said with a half smile.

Lachlan nodded, placing papers in the drawer of his desk. ‘Nabobs of the worst kind, George. What they have gained for themselves, they don’t want others to gain also.’

Lachlan was still fuming at the group whom he considered as no more than the trumped-up bogus aristocracy of New South Wales. They came here, desperate to gain the land and lifestyle that would have been beyond their reach and status in England, and now they had achieved that lifestyle and grand houses built by convicts, their desperation to prevent any attempts by the emancipists to achieve the same advancement and privileges displayed nothing more than the pathetic snobbery of
upstarts.

He himself had mixed and moved amongst some of the leading and wealthiest households in England’s aristocracy where good breeding and true gentility could be seen as fact; but even the most haughty of those would have been shocked and disgusted by this ruthless clawing by the Exclusives to get their hands on everything that could be got, while refusing anyone else to reach the same pinnacle of privileges as themselves.

Even back in Britain, the unfairness of the aristocratic system was softening and slowly changing, but here in New South Wales it was hardening to a level that was laughable, although it wasn’t funny. These were the new pioneers of the new Australia, this greedy and self-interested bunch of malcontents.

‘Why do they call themselves Exclusives?’ George asked.

‘Because although they will happily participate in
trading
with emancipists in business they would rather die than allow them any rights on a social level.’

‘They are fools,’ George decided.

‘Of course they are, George. When an army advances,
all
the soldiers march forward, not just the top-ranking officers and generals – and the same goes for a country and its people.’

*

While the Exclusives gathered to gossip and seethe, Lachlan ignored them and got on with his work.

For some time he had been giving thought to Elizabeth’s concern that many young convict girls, on completion of their sentence, were forced to turn to prostitution as the only means of earning their fare back home; and now he had come up with a solution – not a perfect solution – but the only one he could think of.

He took Francis Greenway, his architect, out to the site he had chosen away from the busy city in the more airy and open land at Parramatta, and discussed with him the specifications for his new project.

‘What we need, Francis, is a very large house to be built right here – a house as large as a hospital would be – with enough ground at the back and sides of the house to make a few suitable gardens.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘For the purpose of giving the girls a safe home to live in after they have completed their sentences.’

Francis Greenway said hesitatingly, ‘But what good is that, if all the girls want to do is get back home?’

‘Yes, I’ve thought of that,’ Lachlan replied, walking away and measuring the distance with each pace he made.

‘And here,’ he said, stopping and turning, ‘just a short walk away from the house – we will build a new wool factory for the girls to work in. Many of them work in the old wool factory anyway, but that is part of their punishment.’

Greenway was still puzzled. ‘So what difference will working in this new factory be? It’s a way of getting back home the girls want.’

‘Exactly,’ Lachlan nodded. ‘And when they become emancipated and receive their freedom, the girls can live safely in the house
there,
and work safely in the factory
here
, producing wool for the government to sell abroad – and getting
paid
for their work – enabling them to earn enough money to pay for their passage home, without having to resort to prostitution at the docks.’

‘Well I never …’ Francis Greenway thought it was a wonderful idea.

‘Do you think you could get the plans drawn and all the work done in three months?’ Lachlan asked. `The need is becoming very urgent.’

‘Three months?’ Greenway grinned. ‘I’ll give it a fair go, but I’ll need more than one gang of convicts assigned to do the building work.’

And as England was continuing to send ship after ship filled with convicts out to the colony, and as it was Lachlan’s duty to find them employment, he told Greenway, ‘You can have as many gangs as you need. but you
must
make sure that all overseers
remember the new rule – no unnecessary use of whips by the overseers, and no floggings are to be carried out unless the crime warrants it and is therefore ordered by a magistrate.’

As they walked back to their horses Francis Greenway felt bound to say, ‘The Exclusives are furious about it, you know, Governor Macquarie? This new rule of yours that forbids flogging without the order of a magistrate. They cannot see how a master can maintain order in his own home, nor obedience from his convict servants – if he’s not allowed to use the whip.’

Lachlan paused to think about that, and then shrugged. ‘If a man needs to use a whip to keep order in his own home, then he’s not much of a man or a master.’

And knowing Governor Macquarie as well as he knew him now, Francis Greenway knew that was the end of the subject.