Pioneers and Founders

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  This good man, Samuel Marsden, was the son of a small farmer at Farsley, near Calverley, in Yorkshire, and was educated at the free Grammar School at Hull by Dr. Joseph Milner, whose Church History used to be a standard book in the early part of this century. He began his career as a tradesman at Leeds, but his school influences had given him higher aspirations; and a body termed the Elland Society, whose object was to educate young men of small means and suitable character for the ministry, and whose chief supporters were Wilberforce, Simeon, and Thornton, selected him as one of their scholars, and placed him at St. John's College, Cambridge. He had not even taken his degree when, to his surprise, he was offered a chaplaincy in New South Wales! The post was no doubt a difficult one to fill,-for who would willingly undertake to be one of two clergymen sent to labour among an untamed multitude of criminals?-and Mr. Wilberforce was, no doubt, glad to suggest a young man so blameless and full of zeal, and of whom, from personal observation at Cambridge, Mr. Simeon had so high an opinion.

  Samuel Marsden wished to decline it at first; but finding that no one else would come forward to undertake the charge, he accepted it; and in the spring of 1793 he was ordained, and married, being then nearly twenty- nine years of age. His wife, Elizabeth Tristan, was thoroughly worthy of him, and ruled his house admirably, never calling him back from any duty, but so managing that his open-handed charity never brought him into difficulties. They were obliged to take their passage in a convict ship, which was to sail from Hull. Marsden was engaged to preach in a church near the harbour, and was just about to enter the pulpit when the signal- gun was fired to summon the passengers on board. He took off his gown, gave his arm to his bride at her pew door, and walked to the beach, the whole congregation streaming out after them down to the boat, where the young clergyman stood for a few moments ere pushing off, to give his parting benedictions.

  The ship went round to Portsmouth to receive her load of convicts; and while she was lying there, Marsden visited the Isle of Wight, and one Sunday preached in Brading Church. The effect of his sermon in touching the heart of one young woman was long remembered, in consequence of a memoir of her, entitled "The Dairyman's Daughter," which was drawn up after her death by the clergyman of her parish, the Rev. Legh Richmond.

  It was as trying a voyage as Henry Martyn's, except that even less was to be expected from his shipmates. The captain was unwilling to allow prayers to be read even on Sunday, saying he had never known a religious sailor; and though, after a time, Mr. Marsden prevailed, he never felt himself making much impression for good. One of his books on the voyage was the Life of David Brainerd, that torch of missionaries, and who proved the example which served to stir Mr. Marsden to look beyond his own immediate field of labour, severe though that was, and unflinching as was his toil.

  His arrival at Paramatta, his new home, was in the March of 1794, when the convict system had prevailed about seven years, and had been sufficient to form a population disgraceful to human nature. None of those endeavours to reclaim the prisoner which now prevail had then been attempted, and jails were schools and hotbeds of crime, whence the transported were sent forth to corrupt each other more and more on board ship; and then, though employed on Government works or assigned to free settlers as servants, so soon as they had worked out their time of servitude they were let loose to live after their own will.

  Such as had any capacity for steady industry soon made their fortunes on the parcels of land allotted to them by Government, to which they added by purchase; and these persons, by the influence of wealth and property, rose into colonial rank and authority, though without any such real training in the sense of uprightness or morality as could fit them for the posts they occupied. The least tainted by crime were the Irish, who had been deported by wholesale after the rebellion, some without even a form of trial, but these were idle and prone to violence; while of the regular convicts there was a large proportion addicted to every brutality that vice could conceive, and their numbers were continually being recruited by fresh shiploads after the assizes at home. The only attempt at securing order and tolerable safety was by visiting every offence, even the slightest, of which a convict was accused in a court of justice, with the most unrelenting severity; and this, of course, had the effect of further brutalizing these felon people, making them reckless of the deeds they committed, and often driving them to become bush-rangers-outlawed wild men of the woods-a terror to the colony. A powerful military force was kept up to repress these wretched beings by physical force, but of moral training there was only what was afforded by the openings for industry in a new country, and religious teaching was represented by-two chaplains, for convicts, soldiers, settlers, and all! No wonder that the senior soon broke down under the hopeless toil of such a position, and left the junior to struggle with it alone. And nobly he did struggle! Wilberforce had made a wise choice of a man in the prime of youth, whose bullet-headed portrait speaks of the most dogged determination, with nerves, health, and weight enough to contend for a whole lifetime with the horrible depravity around him-the only clergyman, and with three settlements far apart dependent on his ministry. And in the outset he was severely tried by domestic sorrows; for his eldest son, at two years old, was thrown out of his mother's arms by a jolt to the carriage over the rough road, and killed on the spot; and a younger child, who was shortly after left at home from dread of a similar accident, was allowed by its attendant to stray into the kitchen, where it fell backwards into a pan of boiling water and was fatally scalded.

  The father bore these calamities as one who had steadfast faith and resignation-"one who felt much and said little." The demands on his time, indeed, left him no leisure for giving way to grief. Spiritual matters were not all that came upon him. In the utter lack of conscientious men to perform the functions of the magistracy, he was at once appointed to the bench; nor, indeed, was there the same feeling in England then as now against the combination of the clergyman and justice of the peace. The most exemplary parish priests viewed it as a duty to administer justice in their villages; and the first, and till quite recently the sole manual of prayers to be used with prisoners, was the production of one of these clerical magistrates. A Yorkshire farmer's son could not be expected to know much about law, but good sense, uprightness, perception of justice, and intense determination, he had, as well as Christian humanity; and in these he was superior to any of his colleagues on the Paramatta bench, whom he was continually striving to raise to some comprehension of the commonest rules of justice, mercy, and decency; and in this, after a long course of years, he in some measure succeeded; but not till after his strong hand, impartial justice, and hatred of vice, had made him enemies among all parties; and it is only too probable that his secular authority, though always nobly wielded, impeded rather than otherwise his pastoral influence.

  His farming education served him well when he received a grant of land, and of thirteen convicts to bring it into order. It was part of his payment, almost indispensable for procuring to his family the necessaries of life, and it gave him, besides, the means of imparting instruction in honest labour. His property became the model farm of New South Wales, and the profits afforded him the means of establishing the schools, benevolent institutions, and missions, for which there were few, if any purses to draw upon. He won himself respect on all sides, especially from the Governor of the colony, Captain King, a hasty, violent, but good- hearted man, with whom more than once he had misunderstandings, but such as were made up again. On one of these occasions, the chaplain's advice was asked by the Governor, and promised on condition that he might speak as to a private individual. So, when they met, Mr. Marsden locked the door, and, in plain and forcible terms, gave Captain King a thoroughgoing remonstrance on the faults of Governor King, which was taken in perfect good part.

  Nevertheless, the whole construction of Society was so atrocious, that nothing could effect any improvement but interference from higher authority. The Court of Judicature in New South Wales was
the most shamelessly corrupt and abandoned in existence, and a rebellious spirit broke out which imperilled the military authority of the Governor. Mr. Marsden saw no hope, except in laying a full statement in person before the home Government; and therefore, at the end of fourteen years, when Governor King was about to return home, he resolved to go himself, and make a strong personal representation to Government. The two families sailed in the same ship, the Buffalo, which proved to be leaky; and, when a heavy gale was expected, it was proposed that the passengers should quit her, and take refuge in a stronger vessel; but Mrs. King was too unwell to be moved, and Mrs. Marsden would not leave her, so that the proposal was abandoned, and most providentially, for the ship that had been thought secure was lost in the night and never seen more!

  The voyage was a slow one; and the first thing Mr. Marsden heard on arriving was, that the insurrection he had expected had actually broken out. This rendered Lord Castlereagh, then Colonial Secretary, the more anxious to obtain the advice of a sensible, clear-headed man like Samuel Marsden, and he was encouraged to explain his views. First, he was anxious for whatever would tend to reform the convicts; and having observed that the most respectable of these were such as had married, or whose wives had come out to them, he begged that, for the future, the families of the married men might be sent out with them. This was refused; but his representation that the convicts ought to be instructed in trades was attended to, when he showed that, by this means, the whole expense of their clothing might be saved. He had discerned the wonderful capacities of Australia for sheep farming, and having brought home some wool, and found it much approved by the manufacturers, he thereupon ventured to petition the King for a couple of merino {f:221} sheep from the royal farm at Windsor, to improve the breed. The request was after "Farmer George's" own heart; he gave five, and thus Mr. Marsden did the work of agricultural improvement of the Benedictines of old. He also obtained that three more clergymen and three schoolmasters should be sent out; and he strove hard for other institutions, chiefly for the reformation of the female convicts, which he could not at the time get carried out. He likewise conducted an immense correspondence on behalf of persons who had not found any other means of communicating with their homes; and, at the same time, he became personally acquainted with Wilberforce, and many others of the supporters of the cause of religion.

  Above all, it was in this visit to England that Mr. Marsden laid the foundations of the missions to New Zealand, and prepared to become the apostle of the Maori race. These great islands of New Zealand had been discovered and named by Tasman in 1642, and first visited by Captain Cook in 1769. He found them inhabited by a brave, high-spirited, and quick- witted set of natives, with as large a proportion of the fine qualities sometimes found in a wild race as ever savages possessed, but their tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs, fowls, and potatoes-no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time, whalers occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome, and characterized by mutual outrages, when, if a white man were made prisoner, he was sure to be killed and eaten, to serve as a sort of triumphal and sacrificial banquet.

  Nevertheless, it was plain that these Maories were of a much higher type of humanity than the Australian natives, whom Mr. Marsden had found so far entirely unteachable and untameable, but for whom he was trying to establish some plan of training and protection. Such a spirit of curiosity and enterprise possessed some of the New Zealand chieftains, that they would come on visits to Australia, and on these occasions Mr. Marsden always gave them a welcome at his parsonage at Paramatta. At one time there were thirty staying there, over whom he had great influence. Once, when he was absent from home, the nephew of one of the chiefs died, and his uncle immediately prepared to sacrifice a slave; nor could Mrs. Marsden prevent it, otherwise than by hiding the intended victim till her husband came home, who made the chief understand that it was not to be done, though the man continued to lament that his nephew was deprived of his proper attendant in the other world, and seemed afraid to return home, lest the father of the youth should reproach him with the omission.

  Mr. Marsden made known all that he had been able to gather of the promising nature of the field of labour in New Zealand, and sought aid from the Church Missionary Society, since the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was then unable to reach beyond the colonies. The almost universal indifference of the upper classes to missionary labour was terribly crippling in the matter of means; and perhaps the fact was that the underbred class of agents of the Societies stirred up by the example of Marshman and Carey, together with the vulgarly-sensational appeals against which Ward's good taste so strongly protested, greatly tended to make them incredulous. It was not till the statements of scholars and gentlemen, like Henry Martyn and Bishop Heber, became generally known, that the work was looked on without sarcasm, provoked by vulgarity, even where there was great devotion.

  No clergyman could be found to undertake the mission to New Zealand; but William Hall and John King, two laymen, undertook to act as pioneers, with instructions to establish family worship, converse on religion with the natives, and instruct their children; trying, at the same time, to show the benefits of civilization, but to take care it was not confounded with Christianity.

  These two good men, who were presently followed by Thomas Kendall, sailed in the same ship with Mr. Marsden, when, in August 1809, he paid his last farewell to his native land, and sailed in the Ann for New South Wales. Strange to say, this very ship contained a Maori, on his return home! He was a young chief named Duaterra, who had, in a spirit of adventure, embarked on board a whaler named the Argo, and worked as a sailor for six months, till the captain, having no further occasion for his services, put him ashore at Port Jackson, without payment or friends. However, he embarked in another whaler, and worked his way home, but soon was on board of a third English ship, the Santa Anna, in search of seal- skins, and having conceived a great desire to see the country whence these vessels came forth, and to know its chief, he engaged to come to England in it, the captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the Santa Anna reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George's house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on shore. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the Ann, to be taken back to Australia, and when he asked for his wages, to provide some clothing, told him that the owner of the ship would give him two muskets when he should reach Port Jackson.

  The poor fellow was little likely to reach it, for lung disease, the great foe of the Maori, had set in; and he was in a pitiable condition when Mr. Marsden, by chance, remarked his brown face on the forecastle, and inquired into his history, which was confirmed by the master of the Ann, and was really only a specimen of a sailor's vague promises, and incapacity to understand that a dark skin ought to be treated with the same justice as a white one. Duaterra was a man of much intelligence, and even under these most unfavourable circumstances had been greatly impressed with the civilization of England, and was so desirous of improvement that, on arriving at Port Jackson, Mr. Marsden took him to his farm, where he applied eagerly to the learning of husbandry.

  Duaterra was not the only Maori ill-treated by British sailors. Another chief having been used in like manner, or worse, on board the Boyd, bided his time till the ship was in the Bay of Islands, and then brought his tribe, armed with clubs and hatchets, to revenge his sufferings. They overpowered the crew, slaughtered and feasted upon them, burning the ship, and only retaining as captiv
es two women and a boy. Nevertheless, Hall and King were ready to take the missionaries to this dangerous spot, but Mr. Marsden thought it best to give time for the passions thus excited to cool down.

  Meantime Governor Macquarie had come out to take charge of New South Wales. He was a man of great determination and despotic will, and carried out many regulations that were of exceeding benefit to the colony, but he did not know the limits of his authority, dealt with the chaplains as with subordinate officials, and sometimes met with staunch opposition from the sturdy Yorkshireman, his senior chaplain, so that they were in a state of almost constant feud throughout his government, although at the end of his career he bore the strongest testimony to the merits of the only man who durst resist him. The old game of Ambrose and Theodosius, Hildebrand and Henry, Becket and Plantagenet, has to be played over and over again, wherever the State refuses to understand that spiritual matters lie beyond its grasp; and when Governor Macquarie prescribed the doctrines to be preached and the hymns to be used in the churches, and commanded the most unsuitable secular notices to be promulgated by the clergy, if Mr. Marsden had not resisted the Church would have been absolutely degraded. When convicts of wealth and station, but still leading most vicious lives, were raised to the magistrates' bench, Mr. Marsden could not but refuse to associate or act with them, and even tendered his resignation of the magistracy, but Macquarie would not accept it. How uncompromising these sermons were is evidenced by an anecdote of a man, who, being stung to the quick, fancied that the words had been individually aimed at him, and determined to be revenged. Accordingly, as soon as he saw the chaplain riding near a piece of water he jumped in, and when Mr. Marsden at once sprung after him, did his utmost to drown his intended deliverer; but after a violent struggle the Yorkshire muscles prevailed, and the man was dragged out, so startled by the shock that he confessed his intention, and, under the counsel he had so fiercely spurned at first, became truly penitent, and warmly attached to Mr. Marsden, whose service he ultimately entered.