TASMANIA - HISTORICAL SKETCH  3 ...

Atlas Page 99
By James Smith

THE darker chapters of Tasmanian story were by this time rapidly turning their last pages. An intelligent and liberal popular opinion was coming into existence, and the power and influence of the old restrictive officialdom were beginning to show unmistakable signs of decay. The viceregal term of Governor Denison, who followed, marks the dawn of the new day which was to see the picturesque island assume a new name and turn a brighter chapter in its hitherto gloomy story.

One of the first acts of Sir William Denison on assuming office in January, 1847, was the restoration to their seats in the Council of the six men who had resigned; a step which met with the approbation of Earl Grey, who was at the head of the Colonial Office. That nobleman also sought the advice of the new governor upon the questions of instituting responsible government in Van Diemen’s Land, and as to the current of public opinion in the island with respect to transportation. Sir William Denison pronounced himself adverse to the first and the circulars he caused to be issued as regards the second occasioned an animated and protracted controversy. On the one side were ranged those who were earnestly in favour of the total and immediate abolition of transportation, and on the other those who thought cheap labour and a large outlay of money from the Imperial treasury outweighed the evils of a penal settlement. Sir William Denison lent the weight of his opinion to the latter view. But wiser councils prevailed for a time in Downing Street, and it seemed as if the pernicious system was about to be abolished. These expectations were frustrated by the arrival at Hobart Town, on November 12th, 1848, of the convict ship "Ratcliff," with two hundred and forty-eight criminals on board. The leading inhabitants of the city waited on the governor with a protest, but it was ineffectual; and in the course of the following year, as many as twenty convict vessels anchored in the Derwent, and one thousand eight hundred and sixty criminals were thus added to the population of the island. In the meantime, attempts had been made to land prisoners from England at Cape Town, at Sydney, and at Melbourne, and had been successfully resisted in each instance, so that there appeared every prospect of Van Diemen’s Land becoming the sole receptacle of the moral filth of the entire empire. In this emergency the Reverend John West, of Launceston, who afterwards became the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, took the lead in organising an Anti-Transportation League, to which the other colonies promptly gave in their cordial adhesion; and although Sir William Denison was indiscreet enough to characterise the effect it had produced in Van Diemen’s Land as "beneath contempt," and to declare that so long as convict labour was in demand he was not prepared to admit "that it would be for the benefit of the country in either a moral or industrial point of view, that transportation should cease;" public opinion both in Great Britain and Australia had determined that it must, and that forthwith. Accordingly, when Earl Grey retired from office In 1852, and was succeeded by Sir John Pakington, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, that statesman arrived at the decision that transportation should be abolished; and his successor, the Duke of Newcastle, communicated the gratifying announcement to the people of Van Diemen’s Land in the early part of 1853. Returning to the narrative of general events in their chronological order, we note that in the year 1849 seven leaders of the Young Ireland party, implicated in the abortive insurrection of 1848, were tried and convicted of sedition, or of high treason, and being sentenced to various terms of transportation, arrived in the island as political prisoners and were almost immediately offered parole. Six of them, Messrs. Meagher, Mitchell, Martin, McManus, O’Dogherty, and O’Donoghue accepted it, but the seventh, Mr. Smith O’Brien, refused to do so, and was imprisoned at Maria Island, from whence he endeavoured to make his escape, but was re-captured and removed to Port Arthur. Ultimately he accepted a ticket-of-leave, and went to reside at New Norfolk. A conditional pardon was bestowed upon him in 1854, and he returned to Ireland two years afterwards. McManus, who had been deprived of his liberty on account of an alleged breach of discipline, and was therefore released from his parole, succeeded in effecting his escape to California; whither he was soon followed by Meagher, who had given the district police magistrate notice of his intention to withdraw his parole, and had immediately galloped off to the sea coast where a ship’s boat was awaiting his arrival. Mitchell also renounced his parole, and after many unsuccessful attempts was fortunate enough to rejoin his compatriots on the Pacific Slope; while Martin remained in the island until 1854, when he received a free pardon.

In the year 1850, the Imperial Parliament passed an act for the better government of the Australian Colonies, and among its provisions was one for the establishment of a Legislative Council in Van Diemen’s Land, to consist of eight members nominated by the governor for the time being, and sixteen to be elected by as many districts. But before bringing the act into operation Sir William Denison took upon himself to proclaim certain land regulations, which while probably intended to promote agricultural settlement in combination with grazing pursuits, had the effect of throwing very large areas of valuable country into the hands of a small number of lessees, and thus preventing the creation of a class of yeoman farmers, who would have become rooted, as it were, in the soil. Had a different policy been adopted, the efflux of population from the island which subsequently occurred might have been materially diminished.

The new Legislative Council did not meet for the despatch of business until January 1st 1852, and one of its earliest proceedings was to pass a resolution condemnatory of the continuance of the system of transportation, at which the governor saw fit to express his deep sorrow. But the representative members, strong in popular support, and firm in their patriotic determination that the island should no longer be a receptacle for the worst criminals cast out of her prisons by the mother country, addressed a memorial to the Queen soliciting the abrogation of the order in council authorising transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. While consenting to forward the document to the Colonial Office, Sir William Denison intimated his total dissent from its prayer, a compliance with which, he believed, would be calamitous to the best interests of the colony, without improving the moral condition of the people. Nothing daunted, the compact majority in the council proposed and carried a vote of want of confidence in the governor. This was embodied in another address to the Queen, and the humiliating duty of transmitting it to Her Majesty devolved upon himself. With a strange misconception of the strength and earnestness of popular sentiment with respect to this question, not only in the island but in the colonies on the mainland, Sir William Denison pertinaciously advised the Secretary of State for the Colonies to uphold transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, and stigmatised its opponents as "a few itinerant agitators." Happily, wiser counsels prevailed in Downing-street, and when the Earl of Aberdeen came into office the Duke of Newcastle was enabled to convey to the people of Van Diemen’s Land the gratifying assurance that, in conformity with the decision of his predecessor, Sir John Pakington, transportation to that island had been put an end to for ever. The welcome despatch which apprised the colonists of this decision was published in the Hobart Town Gazette, in the month of May, 1853.

Before this, however, an event had occurred in Victoria which, for a time at least, threatened to drain away from the neighbouring island the greater part of its adult male population. This was the discovery of gold in such large quantities and in such numerous localities as to arouse the most torpid minds to action, and to inflame those of more imaginative persons with visions of boundless wealth procurable by a few days’ labour with a pick and shovel. Every steamer that quitted Launceston for Melbourne was crowded with gold-seekers; and any seaworthy sailing vessel was eagerly taken up for the conveyance of passengers across the straits. "Some of the country districts," writes Mr. Fenton, "were utterly deserted by the male inhabitants;" and it was some years before the island recovered from the effects of this sudden withdrawal of so many of the most productive of its population. The marketable value of every description of produce raised in Van Diemen’s Land was further re-acted upon by the remarkable inflation of prices which had taken place in Victoria consequent upon the great rush of population to its goldfields, combined with the abundance of the precious metal, and the limited supplies of food and merchandise which were at first available. All kinds of grain, flour, fruit, vegetable, pressed hay, timber, and other building materials, commanded high prices. Land rose in value commensurately; and although the population, which had been forty thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven in 1842, dwindled down to twenty-two thousand two hundred and sixty-one when the gold-mining excitement had reached its climax, the producers who remained were so prosperous that the import and export trade of the island underwent a remarkable expansion, in which the public revenue also participated, for this showed a surplus of sixty-six thousand pounds over expenditure; while the tonnage of shipping engaged in the external commerce of the colony was more than double what it had been ten years previously. In the year 1853, the value of the imports into Van Diemen’s Land —which was nearly balanced by that of the exports —was upwards of two millions and a quarter sterling, or, in round numbers, one hundred pounds per head for every man, woman, and child of its population. And the full significance of these figures will be best appreciated when we mention that this is five times the mean value per capita of the imports of the whole of the Australian colonies at the present time, and nearly ten times that of the imports of the United Kingdom. Under such circumstances the islanders might be excused for taking sanguine views of the future, while at the same time the prosperity which had flowed in upon them so suddenly and abundantly, and from so apparently healthy a source, conduced to an elation of feeling which presently found scope in a jubilee celebration.

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