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, the
n 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.
Chapter Sixteen
The house for emancipated females and the new wool factory was completed. The first proper road from Sydney to Parramatta had been built.
The entire area of Parramatta was reshaped and reformed, new streets and avenues were mapped out and given names. Every district, the Governor insisted, must have a main thoroughfare and a grass common.
Meanwhile, other convicts were occupied with completion of the road from Sydney to Windsor; and the Sydney to Liverpool turnpike road was in full progress. In the town of Sydney itself, the foundations for a new hospital were being laid.
In the harbour, a convict ship had arrived pouring five hundred more convicts into the settlement, while others who had completed their sentence were freed.
None of the new emancipists had the money to pay their passage home – transportation to the antipodes was always supplied with nothing more than a one-way ticket, no matter how short or long the sentence. So they applied to the Governor for a licence to set up in business as tradesmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers and butchers, in accordance with their former occupations, while the rest applied to the Governor for a land grant in order to become farmers.
No licence or land was ever granted by Lachlan Macquarie without a lecture – informing the applicant that he expected good industry and good conduct – otherwise he would take the licence or the land back.
And with each land grant he released, Lachlan saw the land being cleared and the colony extending in size. The emancipists settlers were industriously making this land their own, and it filled his heart with satisfaction just to watch them.
In his private life, too, Lachlan was finding happiness in New South Wales. Elizabeth had proved to be his greatest source of strength, his loyal c0nfidante, his most ardent supporter.
In the drawing room at Government House he found Elizabeth sitting in the evening sunlight by one of the long windows, absorbed in a book. He had been away for two days examining the area around George's River. As always her face brightened into a smile when she looked round and saw him.
‘Elizabeth,' he said good-humouredly, then a figure in the garden caught his eye and his expression lost all jest. He moved to the window and gazed out.
‘Oh, George …’ he said quietly. ‘I sometimes think he feels as out of place here as he did in England and Scotland.’
Elizabeth leaned forward and saw George Jarvis sitting alone on a bench in the garden.
‘I would not have said he feels out of place,’ she said honestly. ‘He seems quite content in his day-to-day life. He is always busy and goes almost everywhere with you.’
‘Yes, but that is his work. What of his private life?’
‘I believe he could have his pick of the maids.’
Elizabeth had learned this from Mrs Ovens, who had confided that a number of the maids found George very attractive and one had even written a love-letter to him.
‘And George?’ Elizabeth had asked. ‘How does he respond to the maids?’
‘Oh such airs! Such graces!’ Mrs Ovens had rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘He's always nice and polite to me, of course, and, well, I like the young man myself, but if you ask me he’s too good-looking by far. And although it's not my place to say it, George Jarvis is far too aloof for his own good!’
The maids – you mean the convict girls?’ Lachlan asked with a frown. ‘No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know anything more.’
Lachlan returned his gaze to the garden and George Jarvis who, in turn, was gazing at the world as he always did, with unruffled interest.
Over the years George had changed from the boy he had been in India into a reserved young man. It was as if his education in Britain had changed his entire perspective on life and opened him up to a world of serious thought.
But his innate sense of humour remained.
Even now, dressed in his tailored suits with only a trace of white silk at the neck and cuffs, and always looking neat and perfect, he would still pass visitors in the wide hall of Government House and respond to their questioning look with a quiet smile as he joined his hands in an exaggerated salaam, as if to say, Yes, I am a brown-skinned Arab, from India, and allowed to stroll through Government House as if I lived here! Curious, isn't it?
Ever polite, he was never humble.
George Jarvis now seemed to view the world and its pretensions with a look of silent amusement, and apparently felt no attachment to anyone, except Lachlan. But even with Lachlan, he could be reserved and remote.
Lachlan sighed. ‘In his young days, in India, George was always so full of laughter, so full of mischief and fun. The tricks he would pull on Bappoo and drive the poor man mad … yet Bappoo adored him, wept his eyes out when George left with me for England … maybe that was my mistake, taking George from the East to the West.’
‘And now he is in neither the East or the West but in the South,’ Elizabeth said. ‘His loyalty to you has brought him a long way.’
‘To a convict colony …’ Lachlan sighed again, the old worry back in his heart. ‘It would distress me if I thought George was unhappy, but at times it's hard to know what he is even thinking, let alone feeling. I wonder what does he think? About his life? His future? At times, he is like a sadhu.’
‘What is that?’
‘A holy man, in India, who spends long hours in silent reflection.’
Oh, yes, I agree with you there.’ Elizabeth murmured, having decided long ago that George Jarvis, for all his agreeable good nature, was as deep as a well.
Chapter Seventeen
For the third year running there had been no winter rain.
July and August came in with occasional dews, but no rain. The harvest looked destined to fail again.
Through the Gazette, Lachlan issued numerous General Orders instructing the people to conserve all their grain. Heads of household were advised to ration their families to only so much bread per week as could be made from a gallon of wheat and a gallon of corn. This way the small farming settlers could survive if the harvest failed totally.
The bushels of wheat in the Government stores, which he had been delighted to reduce from ten shilling a bushel to eight, now rose to nine shillings.
By Christmas, all the rivers were drying up. The grass was parched and the hungry cattle were unable to pasture. By the end of December 1814 large numbers of sheep and cattle had perished. The colony was facing the worst famine it had ever known. And all looked to Governor Macquarie to save them from starvation.
There was not enough time to seek help from the Mother Country: a consignment of grain and food supplies would take too long to reach them. So once more Lachlan looked towards India.
He wrote to the Governor of Bengal requesting that two hundred and fifty tons of wheat be shipped to New South Wales with the greatest speed.
Through the Gazette he pleaded with the large landowners and settlers who had their own hidden hoards of grain to bring them to the King's Stores for sale to the Government.
His plea fell on deaf ears.
The supplies in the King's Stores were getting lower and lower. The price of wheat rose to fifteen shillings a bushel.
Governor Macquarie's pleas to those hoarding hidden supplies of grains turned into threats.
He warned that unless they offered their supplies to the Government, he would resort in future to buying all grain needed for the King's stores from India at half the price, and when the drought was over they would find no market in New South Wales for their expensive local grain.
He issued a proclamation that was not only published in the Gazette, but also ordered to be read out in all squares and districts, no matter how far from the metropolis.
Settlers – especially those who are in opulent circumstances, principally owing to the assistance they have received from the boun
ty of the Government in originally granting them lands, stock, provisions and convicts to help them cultivate their grounds, ought to have been the first to come forward at such a time to supply Government with such grain as they could conveniently spare, and at a reasonable and moderate price.
All to no avail. The Exclusives were waiting until the price rose even higher.
*
A ship was spotted turning round the South Head of the harbour. It was the grain from Bengal! Eagerly everyone ran down to the harbour to cheer it in. Amongst them was the Governor who stood waiting with a smile of relief.
But the ship's cargo was not the tons of Indian grain. It was another shipment from England of five hundred more convicts, all in dire need of being fed.
And with the convicts came another batch of adventuring ‘emigrant’ settlers – come to take advantage of the land grants and free labour that New South Wales offered to those who wanted to make a quick fortune to take back to Britain. Very few of them had any worthwhile skills to offer the colony, all depending on the convicts to do the work for them.
Lachlan fumed.
‘These people are useless to the colony,’ he wrote home to the Colonial Office, ‘completely useless!’
Chapter Eighteen
‘These people are human beings too,’ the girl cried indignantly, ‘and probably a lot more honest than you are!’
The girl’s voice made John Campbell turn away from the captain and look at the row of female convicts lined up on the ship’s deck. All were unwashed and unkempt … but there was something about the girl’s voice, and the way she held her head high … and that splendid hair …. unkempt of course, hanging down around her shoulders, but still managing to shine golden here and there under the sun’s rays.
‘Quiet, you whore,’ a sailor snapped.
‘Don’t you dare call me a whore!’ the girl retorted, tears now glistening in her eyes. ‘Oh, the humiliation of this!’ she cried, ‘Being made to stand for inspection like cattle at a fair!’
The Far Horizon Page 11