# The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 5

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London: Ingram, Cooke and co., pages 52–59
CHAPTER VI.
GOVERNOR BLIGH.
1806 TO 1809.
CAPTAIN BLIGH appears to have received his appointment as Governor of New South Wales as a reward for his gallant conduct in successfully conducting an open boat, with eighteen companions in misfortune, scantily provided with food and water, 3,618 miles, to the ​Island of Timor, without the loss of a single man, after being cast adrift by the mutineers of the Bounty. No man could be more unfit for such an office. But governors are appointed for the oddest reasons: sometimes because they are distinguished soldiers or sailors: sometimes because they have written a timely book or pamphlet; often because they are related to some great personage, and, being in debt, want an opportunity for saving money. But no matter for what cause, or by what influence a governor is appointed, the most important quality of all, the temper of the candidate, is seldom taken into account; and yet in the governor of a colony no talents can compensate for a violent or spiteful temper.
Bligh had a very difficult task to perform. Almost the only unconvicted colonists were the military and civil officers, and their relatives, who formed a sort of Venetian oligarchy of government and trade, and who, beside enjoying the lion's share of grants of land and use of labour, had been accustomed to divide with previous governors, at a price arbitrarily imposed upon the importers, the cargoes of vessels as they arrived, and enjoy the profits derived from distributing articles in demand among the unprivileged settlers at a monopoly tariff. Spirits formed a principal part of these cargoes, and it became the interest of every civil and military officer in the colony that the settlers, free and bond, should drink as much spirits as possible. Bligh brought out instructions to put down this traffic, and hence his immediate unpopularity. But he was a specimen of the naval captain now happily nearly extinct—violent in temper, coarse in language, hating the military, despising the civilians. To those of the humblest class who cringed before him he could be generous of public land and public money; but to those who dared resist, or even question his authority, he was implacable.
At an earlier period in the career of the colony no one would have ventured to question his acts, however tyrannical; but in 1806 the character of the settlement was slowly changing. A few respectable free settlers had arrived under Governor King. They found profitable employment in growing produce for the use of the government by the help of convicts, whom the government also fed and clothed—a very safe speculation. All the officials were, as already observed, more or less engaged in barter; but some of the New South Wales Corps had quitted the military service, in order to betake themselves exclusively to agriculture and commerce. Among these was John M'Arthur, formerly a lieutenant in that regiment, a man of far-seeing views, great energy, great intelligence, and indomitable courage.
​M'Arthur observed the improvement produced by the climate of New South Wales in the texture of the hairy Indian sheep, and appreciated the value of the district called the Cow Pastures, on which the produce of the lost herd of cattle were found feeding. In 1793 he purchased eight fine-wooled sheep which had been sent out by the Dutch Government to the Cape, and re-exported to Sydney as the Dutch farmers preferred their own fat-tailed breed. His purchase subjected him to much ridicule among his brother colonists, who thought it more profitable to grow wheat or pigs for sale at the commissariat stores.
In 1803, in consequence of grievances of which he had to complain at the hands of the colonial authorities, M'Arthur visited England, and there not only obtained permission to purchase a few pure Spanish merinos from the flock of George III., at a time when the exportation
Merino Ram.
of the merino from Spain was a capital crime, and the breed was only to be procured by royal favour, but produced such an effect on the Privy Council, before whom he was examined on his wool projects, that he carried out to the colony on his return an order for a grant of ten thousand acres. This grant he selected on the banks of the Cowpasture River, for he appreciated the discrimination of the lost herd which had there fattened and increased while the colonists starved. This spot has since become famous as "Camden," where the first pure ​merinos were bred and the first vineyards planted in New South Wales. To Camden, perhaps, future generations of grateful Australians will make pilgrimages. For not greater services the Greeks made of Jason a demi-god. No doubt the Golden Fleece was shorn from a merino ram.
Soon after Bligh landed, Captain King introduced him to M'Arthur, who invited the new governor to visit Camden and inspect his flocks, the result of the crosses from the King's merinos. The answer was a refusal in the language of the forecastle, expressive of Bligh's contempt for all such occupations. This was characteristic of the man. When the mother and uncle of young Hey wood (a boy midshipman on board the Bounty, who received a free pardon and afterwards rose to distinction in the navy) entreated his aid in obtaining mercy for one whose only crime had been not forcing his way through and springing into the overladen boat, he answered in a few lines: "I very much regret that so much baseness formed the character of a young man I had a real regard for, and I hope to hear that his friends can bear his loss without much concern."
It would be unnecessary to dwell upon Bligh's numerous acts of cruelty and tyranny, were it not that his government was one of the great epochs in the history of New South Wales. The results of his despotism turned the attention of the English public to the resources of the colony, and the defeat of his crowning act of oppression enabled M'Arthur to change the destinies of Australia, and make it, instead of a mere gaol, the finest emigration field in the world.
A little anecdote related by Wentworth, culled from hundreds floating in the colony at that period (1816), illustrates a form of government and a state of society strangely at variance with our notions of the rights of Englishmen. Governor Bligh, having heard from his cowkeeper that the servant of an officer of the staff had made some impertinent remarks because disappointed of the customary supply of milk for his master, on the following morning sent for the dissatisfied delinquent. Wondering and trembling, he was ushered into the presence of his excellency, was received with a condescending smile, and told that, as the chief constable's house was on his way home, the governor had merely sent for him to save a dragoon the trouble of going there with a letter. The poor fellow, his mind relieved, respectfully received the missive, delivered it, was immediately tied to the triangles, and rewarded with twenty-five lashes from the cat-o'-nine-tails.
After a career of two years, during which the person and property of every class of the community were at the mercy of his temper for the day, Governor Bligh proceeded with arbitrary illegality to summon, ​arrest, and try Mr. M'Arthur, on a frivolous charge of infringing the customs laws, hatched up for the purpose of wreaking his long-smouldering spite.
M'Arthur having refused to notice an illegal summons, the Advocate-General Atkins arrested him, lodged him in prison, and proceeded to try him in a court over which he himself presided, with the assistance of six officers of the New South Wales Corps. This Atkins had been appointed by private interest in England, had no knowledge of law, and was described in a private despatch to the Secretary of State as "accustomed to inebriety, the ridicule of the community, pronouncing sentences of death in moments of intoxication, his knowledge of law insignificant, subject to private inclination."
To supply his deficiency of legal knowledge he took for his councillor and secretary a convict attorney of the name of Crossley, transported for forgery.
With the help of this miscreant Atkins prepared a monster indictment, charging M' Arthur with a series of offences—from contempt of court up to high treason. M'Arthur protested against being tried by a man who was at once judge, juror, and prosecutor, beside having a private quarrel of some years' standing with the prisoner. The judge-advocate refused to receive the protest, and actually threatened to commit him for words spoken in his own defence. Fortunately for the fate of the colony, the six officers, who, with the advocate-general, formed the court, sided with the prisoner. They admitted him to bail, and repeatedly, in the most respectful terms, addressed the governor, praying him to supersede Atkins and appoint an impartial advocate-general. Bligh refused; perhaps he had no power to adopt that step; but he could have put an end to proceedings, which ought never to have been commenced, by entering a nolle prosequi. But it was his object to crush M'Arthur, so he persisted; and when he found the six officers of the New South Wales Corps equally firm in protecting him, he proposed to arrest and imprison the six officers on a charge of high treason. At this stage of the proceedings the patience of the colony was exhausted. On the 26th of January, 1806, Major Johnstone, lieutenant-governor, commanding the New South Wales Corps, who had been prevented by severe illness from attending to the repeated summonses of the governor, rode into town. He was surrounded by his friends and brother officers, who represented to him the madly tyrannous course which the governor was bent upon pursuing, and urged him to place the governor under arrest.
In order to support him in taking this extreme step, the following ​memorial was signed by every respectable settler then in the town of Sydney:—
"Sir, The present alarming state of the colony, in which every man's property, liberty, and life are endangered, induces us most earnestly to implore you instantly to place Governor Bligh under arrest, and to assume the command of the colony. We pledge ourselves, at a moment of less agitation, to come forward to support the measure with our fortunes and our lives."
Immediately after the presentation of this address, the drums of the New South Wales Regiment beat to arms, the troops formed in the barrack square, and then marched, with Major Johnstone at their head—bayonets fixed, colours flying, and band playing—toward Government House, which they surrounded. Mrs. Putland (afterwards married to General O'Connell, commander of the forces in New South Wales), the widowed daughter of the governor, courageously endeavoured to resist the entrance of the insurgent officers through the Government gate: failing in that, she tried to conceal her father under a bed, whence, after an anxious search, he was dragged, and conducted, without personal injury, to the presence of Major Johnstone, who immediately placed him in custody, and assumed the command of the colony. Thus ended the first act of this bloodless revolution—the 1688 of New South Wales. Had Bligh succeeded in his conspiracy to ruin M'Arthur, the progress of the colony would have been retarded for years. Up to 1845, wool of the breed introduced and improved by the persevering experience of M'Arthur formed the only certain staple export of Australia. Without fine-woolled sheep Australia must have remained dependent for subsistence on the commissariat expenditure, and would, perhaps, in a fit of economy, have been abandoned, in favour of some penitentiary plan or island prison nearer home.
Cowardice has been imputed to Bligh for concealing himself, but without reason. He was neither king nor even commander to awe the troops with his presence; and any man may be excused for flying from an infuriated regiment; above all a man like Bligh, conscious that there was scarcely an individual in the assemblage which surrounded Government House whom he had not injured or insulted.
Major Johnstone transmitted to the Secretary of State a full account of the events which had forced upon him the government of the colony. Lieutenant-Governor Foveaux, arriving from England ignorant of the insurrection, superseded Major Johnstone, and was himself superseded by Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson, who arrived from Van Diemen's Land on the 1st July, 1809; by him Governor Bligh's arrest was continued until the 4th February, when the colonel agreed to put him in possession ​of his ship, the Porpoise, on condition that he should embark on the 20th, and proceed to England without touching at any part of the territory of New South Wales, and not return until he should have received the instructions of his Majesty's ministers. Released from arrest, Bligh treated engagements entered into under duress as void, and lingered on the coast for some time, in hopes of provoking a movement in his favour. He afterwards repaired to Van Diemen's Land, where he was at first treated with much attention, but, on communications arriving from the lieutenant-governor at Sydney, was constrained to remain on board his ship.
It is easy to imagine the sensation created in the king's cabinet when they learned that the gaol colony of Botany Bay had imitated our forefathers of 1688, and, after sending a tyrant unscathed packing, had continued the government of the colony with a new governor and new officials, without bloodshed or plunder. Vigorous measures were decided on, and an able man was selected to execute them.
Lachlan Macquarie was appointed governor, and sent out with instructions to reinstate Captain Bligh in that office, and, after the expiration of twenty-four hours, to resume his own authority to declare void all appointments, grants of land, and processes of law which had taken place between the arrest of Governor Bligh and his own arrival; and further, to send home Major Johnstone in close arrest, to be tried for his rebellion. At the same time the 73rd, Colonel Macquarie's own regiment, was sent out to relieve the New South Wales Corps, which was disbanded, the privates being, however, permitted to volunteer into the 73rd. These orders were obeyed.
Major Johnstone was tried at Chelsea Hospital on the 11th May, 1811, found guilty 5th June, and sentenced to be cashiered. His conduct was clearly illegal and revolutionary, but it saved the colony. He made that a peaceable revolution which would otherwise have flamed into a wild riot, how ending, with the fearful materials present there, it is impossible to foretel. Major Johnstone returned to the colony, and lived many years on his farm at Annandale, near Bathurst district, much respected. We have not been able to learn whether the signers of the memorial ever attempted to compensate him for the ruin of his own professional prospects. The gratitude of a mob, well dressed or ill dressed, is as vain a thing as the gratitude of a prince.
Bligh became an admiral, but was never again called into active ​service. The slight sentence passed upon Johnstone was a stigma he carried to his grave. He died in 1817.
Since the time of Bligh there have been colonial governors as violent in temper, as tyrannical in disposition, but their powers have been limited not only by law, but by public opinion, the influence of a free press, and the effects of a ready communication with Europe.
Without a free press or a public to restrain him, out of sight and h caring of a British Parliament, had Bligh confined his tyrannies to the humbler classes he might have lived honoured and prosperous, while his victims sank brokenhearted, or died under the lash, as hundreds have on the shores of Port Jackson and Paramatta; but he ventured to attack a gentleman—the comrade of soldiers—a man of courage, eloquence, and determination—and the unjust governor fell.
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