[1851 A.D.]

intelligence was made known in April or May; and then began a rush of thousands-men leaving their former employments in the bush or in the towns to search for the ore so greatly coveted in all ages. In August it was found at Anderson's Creek, near Melbourne; a few weeks later the great Ballarat gold field, 80 miles west of that city, was opened; and after that, Bendigo, now called Sandhurst, to the north. Not only in these lucky provinces, New South Wales and Victoria, where the auriferous deposits were re

The

vealed, but in every
British colony of
Australasia, all ordi-
nary industry was
left for the one excit-
ing pursuit.
copper mines of South
Australia were for the
time deserted, while
Tasmania and New
Zealand lost many
inhabitants, who em-
igrated to the more
promising country.
The disturbance of
social, industrial, and
commercial affairs,

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, SYDNEY

during the first two or three years of the gold era, was very great. Immigrants from Europe, and to some extent from North America and China, poured into Melbourne, where the arrivals in 1852 averaged 2,000 persons in a week. The population of Victoria was doubled in the first twelvemonth of the gold fever.b

In the year of the gold discovery Victoria was established as an independent colony. Two years later (1853), the imperial parliament enacted as law the new constitution drawn up by the New South Wales legislative council which made the colony self-governing on a responsible representative basis.a

Any one, who had patiently studied the statistics of Australia during the opening years of the nineteenth century might have been puzzled to name the advantages which were likely to result from the foundation of the settlement. Yet there were, even at that time, causes in operation which were slowly securing success for the colony. In 1791 the same ship which had brought out a load of fever-stricken convicts carried a young man, John MacArthur, who had bought a commission in the corps which the government decided to form for New South Wales, and who was resolute to seek his fortune in the colony. Three years afterwards, when land was granted to officers, MacArthur purchased sixty Bengal ewes and lambs which had been imported from Calcutta, and two Irish ewes and a young ram. The Indian sheep produced coarse hair, but by crossing the two breeds, MacArthur had the satisfaction to see the lambs of the Indian ewes bear a mingled fleece of hair and wool. He had the perspicacity to infer from this circumstance that the climate of the colony was suited to the production of wool, and he had the courage to speculate on the conclusions which he formed. It so happened that a flock of Merino sheep was on sale at the Cape of Good Hope, that its value was not understood by the Dutch, and that an agent whom MacArthur

[1851-1879 A.D.]

employed succeeded in securing five ewes and three rams from among them. Taking every precaution to preserve the breed pure, MacArthur subsequently added to his flock 1,200 sheep which he purchased at the Cape. In 1801 he carried to England specimens of the wool which he had obtained from his flock; and in 1804 he succeeded in obtaining a grant of 5,000 acres of land and an assignment of convicts for the prosecution of his experiment. Confident as MacArthur was, he could hardly have foreseen, and he did not himself live to see, the full consequence of what he was doing. In 1800 New South Wales possessed 6,757 sheep, or probably as many sheep as there were people in the colony; in 1821 she had 120,000 sheep, or about three sheep for every person in the colony. In 1834, when the population had risen to between 50,000 and 60,000, the sheep had increased to 1,000,000. In 1839, when the population exceeded 100,000, the sheep numbered 3,000,000. In 1856 the colony contained 265,000 persons and 7,700,000 sheep. In the next twentyfive years the population was trebled, and the huge stock of sheep increased more than fourfold.j

Ministry succeeded ministry at short intervals, and it was some years before constitutional government worked smoothly. The powers of the new parliament were utilised for extending representative institutions. Vote by ballot was introduced; the number of members in the assembly was increased to 80, and the franchise was granted to every adult male after six months' residence in any electoral area. Meanwhile the material progress of the colony was unchecked.

During the régime of Sir John Young, afterwards Lord Lisgar, who succeeded Sir William Denison in 1861, several important events occurred. The land policy of previous governments was entirely revised, and the Land Bill, framed by Sir John Robertson, introduced the principle of deferred payments for the purchase of crown lands, and made residence and cultivation, rather than a sufficient price, the object to be sought by the crown in alienating the public estate. This measure was followed by similar legislation in all of the Australian colonies. It was during the governorship of Sir John Young that the distinction between the descendants of convicts and the descendants of free settlers, hitherto maintained with great strictness, was finally abandoned. In 1862 the agitation against the Chinese assumed importance, and the attitude of the miners at Lambing Flat was so threatening that a large force, military and police was despatched to that gold-field in order to protect the Chinamen from ill treatment by the miners. The railways were gradually extended, and the condition of the country roads was improved. The only drawback to the general progress and prosperity of the country was the recrudescence of bushranging, or robbery under arms, in the country districts. This crime, originally confined to runaway convicts, was now committed by young men born in the colony, familiar with its mountains and forests, who were good horsemen and excellent shots. It was not until a large number of lives had been sacrificed, and many bushrangers brought to the scaffold, that the offence was thoroughly stamped out in New South Wales, only to reappear some years afterwards under somewhat similar conditions.

The earl of Belmore was governor from 1868 to 1872. Sir Hercules Robinson, afterwards Lord Rosemead, was sworn in as governor in 1872. During his rule the long series of political struggles, which prevented any administration from remaining in office long enough to develop its policy, was brought to an end by a coalition between Sir Henry Parkes and Sir John Robertson. Lord Augustus Loftus became governor in 1879, in time to inaugurate the first international exhibition ever held in Australia. The census taken during the

[1880-1895 A.D.]

following year gave the population of the colony as 751,468. The railway to Melbourne was completed in 1880; and in 1883 valuable deposits of silver were discovered at Broken Hill, near the western frontier of New South Wales. In 1889 the premier, Sir Henry Parkes, gave his adhesion to the movement for Australasian federation, and New South Wales was represented at the first conference held at

Melbourne in the beginning of 1890. Lord Jersey assumed office January 15, 1891, and a few weeks afterwards the conference to consider the question of federating the Australian colonies was held at Sydney. A board of arbitration and conciliation to hear and determine labour questions and

ST. MARY'S CATHEDRAL AND HYDE PARK, SYDNEY

disputes was formed and by later legislation its powers have been strengthened. Federation was not so popular in New South Wales as in the neighbouring colonies, and no progress was made between 1891 and 1894, although Sir Henry Parkes, who was at that time in opposition, brought the question before the legislature. The right honourable Sir William Duff, who followed Lord Jersey as governor, died at Sydney in 1895, and was succeeded by Lord Hampden.n

When Van Diemen's Land, as the island of Tasmania was first called, was first occupied in 1803 it was intended to devote it to colonisation of the more dangerous criminals, particularly the Irish rebels of 1798. For almost a quarter of a century it was little but a convict settlement under the control of the governor of New South Wales, represented by a lieutenant-governor at Hobart Town. In 1810 the total population was only 1,300. Bushranging was rife, and there was no guarantee of safety to either life or property. In December, 1825, Van Diemen's Land, its population being then over 8,000, was separated from New South Wales and made a separate colony under the governorship of Sir George Arthur, who continued in control until 1836. He was an able man, and a strict and perhaps at times a rather autocratic disciplinarian. But strict discipline was exactly what the colony demanded and the administration of Governor Arthur marked the beginning of a new era for the island that was to prepare the way for the still better time to come when the convict transportation should cease. During this period too occurred the expeditions against the aborigines known as the Black War. This was an attempt to hem in by a cordon drawn across the island the remainder of the native tribes which had been giving trouble to the rapidly growing sheep raising communities. An inglorious campaign in which 3,500 regular and volunteer troops were employed resulted in the expenditure of £30,000 but nothing more. In 1837 conciliatory methods prevailed where force had failed and the remnants of the native population were removed en masse to Flinder's

H. W.-VOL. XXII. R

[1803-1853 A.D.] Island. Sir John Franklin of Arctic exploration fame, succeeded Sir George Arthur as governor in 1836 and free immigration soon commenced. For years the political history of Van Diemen's Land is confined almost exclusively to agitation against transportation. The system known as "assignment" was tried and failed. The introduction of "probation gangs" was infinitely worse. At length a league was formed with the other colonies and in 1853 this iniquitous system, so long a blot on the fair fame of Australia, was abolished. Even the old name of the island was changed to that of Tasmania in the effort to efface from memory the awful régime which the name of Van Diemen's Land must ever recall,a

THE CONVICT SYSTEM IN VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

It mattered little in earlier times whether the convict was located at Hobart Town, in the bleak and inhospitable regions of Macquarie Harbour, or later still at Port Arthur or on Maria Island — there was no material difference in the nature of the punishments inflicted on him, and it would be a stretch of the imagination to suppose that worse things have ever happened in Siberia. Weighted down with heavy chains, which made walking exceedingly difficult, the convict was required to toil in the woods or in the immediate neighbourhood of his prison, from day to day and month to month, without hope of his fetters ever being removed or the exactions upon his powers of physical endurance made less irksome or hard to bear. If he complained that he was too ill to continue with his gang, no relief was forthcoming. His physical weakness was called malingering, and his complainings only increased the brutality of his jailers and sent him to the triangle, where fifty lashes, and sometimes a hundred, upon his bared back and loins were applied as a preventive of any complaints in future. Flogging was resorted to sometimes for the most trivial breaches of prison discipline, and the cat was painfully in evidence upon many occasions when there was not the slightest justification for recourse to that method of punishment. Solitary confinement, for days and even weeks upon the most inadequate sustenance, was frequently the sequel to the barbarous lash, and if the convicts survived the trying ordeal, they emerged from it with a fixed determination to revenge themselves whenever they had a chance, by taking the lives of those whose cruelties had converted their hearts to stone and made them utterly reckless and desperate, careless of prolonged existence after the accomplishment of the deeds of vengeance they had resolved to perpetrate upon their inhuman persecutors. Many of them succumbed before they had the opportunity, and straight from the triangle to the deadhouse was the last record of some who ceased to live before the full number of lashes could be inflicted upon them. It was an offence to some of the prison officials if a convict endured his flagellation unflinchingly, and then the cat was applied more ferociously to break his spirit and ensure submissiveness. But the cruellest part of the proceedings at these penal establishments was when a man was called upon to flog a fellow convict, and, if he refused to comply, straight away he was fastened to the triangle and as many lashes administered as suited the whim of the monster whose odious command had been disobeyed. Orders of this description, however, were sometimes given effect to by convicts of weaker spirit who dreaded the lash more than anything else, and if they displayed any merciful feelings by making their strokes lighter than it was considered they should be, they were instantly threatened with flagellation, and the force of their strokes was increased accordingly.

The discipline was so rigorous and the punishments so severe at these

[1803-1853 A.D.]

penal establishments, that instances occurred where convicts took each other's lives so that they themselves might suffer death, and suicide was by no means infrequent.

Incredible as it may seem, but only two well substantiated by positive testimony, incidents of this kind sometimes happened. Convicts, maddened to despair, brooded over the sufferings inflicted upon them, and seeing no possible means of escape, resolved to face death as the only release from tortures and agonies which

were truly revolting. Utterly careless of their lives, three or four of these men who were subjected to treatment so diabolical would conspire amongst each other to put an end to sufferings which were beyond endurance. How was this to be accomplished? They decided the question in this way: they drew lots, and one of their number-the man who drew the shortest straw was to be murdered by the others, so that they might be hanged for his murder. The man who drew the shortest straw was called the lucky one, and he was soon despatched out of his misery. There was no effort to deny how he had come by his death; self-accusation served the purpose of his murderers, and they were executed for a crime which they had

GEORGE STREET, SYDNEY

arranged amongst themselves to commit in order that the scaffold might claim its voluntary victims. "Anywhere, anywhere out of the world," it mattered not how ignominiously, was a welcomed termination to their miserable and brutalised existence in the penal prisons of Van Diemen's Land. The instruments of torture at these places were various, and always too ready at hand: the iniquities of the Spanish Inquisition were perpetrated with impunity upon helpless victims, and the poor wretches courted death and met it voluntarily and unflinchingly, as though it had been a heaven-sent deliverance from their dreadful trials. It is with shame one has to admit that such things were not only possible under the convict system, but that they actually took place in the penal establishments of Van Diemen's Land and Australia until the exposure of these inhuman outrages led to their discontinuance. Had the British government and people of a past generation been sooner apprised of them, it is only just to their feelings of humanity to believe that drastic measures would have been taken at a much earlier period to punish those who were responsible for these atrocities, and to reform the transportation system.

More convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land than anywhere else;