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hundred per cent. throughout the colony. The company, with a "long pocket," was a universal purchaser, and sellers were never wanting as long as they had any money to invest.

A reaction of course followed, as it always does follow extravagant expectations of pecuniary profit. The colony, nevertheless, derived advantage from the introduction of the company's capital and superior stock in sheep, horses, and cattle. The grand ideas of vineyards, olive oil, opium, silkworm cultivation, and orange groves, which formed applauded passages in speeches in the House of Commons and the court-room of the company, were never extended beyond the resident manager's or commissioner's gardens.

Unfortunately the beneficial influences were neutralized by the coal monopoly, which not only handed over a large tract of coal seams to the superior machinery and active capital of the company, but actually precluded the colonists from working, on any terms, coal which might happen to be found under their estates.

These doings seem monstrous. They were at that period ordinary transactions, in which honourable men and liberal politicians took a share without shame. In the same perverse spirit of monopoly, the authorities and merchants at Sydney, until 1826, compelled every ship to enter and break bulk at Sydney before calling at the ports of Van Diemen's Land. Monopoly was then as much an article of faith with statesmen as free trade is at present.

Under Governor Darling emigration from England of persons of moderate capital increased. Unfortunately a vicious system was established in the surveyor's office, for the benefit of favoured or feeing parties, by which surveys of waste land were kept secret from the uninitiated. In 1830 the author of a letter of advice to emigrants recommends "every settler to bring out an order from the secretary of state to be allowed to inspect charts and maps in the surveyor's office;" and adds, "From being denied such inspection, emigrants wander about the interior of the colony at great expense, but to little purpose." Reform makes slow progress in the Colonial Office. In 1848 there existed secret choice reserves near the town of Melbourne, which, by the open sesame of a letter from Earl Grey, were, after being long retained, handed over to a German colony.

The times of the short allowance of

Darling ruled the convicts with a rod of iron. "first fleeters," the irresponsible flogger, and the coarse food were revived. A penal settlement was formed at Moreton Bay, and there, it is commonly affirmed, the prisoners were so badly treated that they committed murder in order to be sent for trial to Sydney

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At the same time the county magistrates were empowered to award any number of lashes for insolence, idleness, or other indefinite offences. As it was not lawful for a man to flog his own assigned servants, he exchanged compliments with a neighbour. Considering the class of persons who were then frequently selected for magistrates in the colonies, it may easily be conceived to what brutal excesses such irresponsible authority led.

But year by year the civilizing elements of society made way. At one time, in 1826, we find a dispensary opened in the following year a great public meeting is held, with the sheriff in the chair, to petition. the King and both Houses of Parliament for the civil rights of trial by jury, and a House of Assembly; and the next year a general post-office throughout the colony, and an Australian jockey club, are established. The editor of a newspaper is found guilty of libel, and two gentlemen fight a bloodless duel. A dispensary, a post-office, an action for libel, and a duel !—the banes and antidotes of civilized society.

The two last years of Governor Darling present events and contrasts still more remarkable.

A Legislative Council, being a step in advance of the Executive Council established by charter of 1828, held its first meeting in 1829. This was the check against which Governor Macquarie so earnestly and naïvely protested. The council consisted of the Archdeacon (now Bishop) Broughton, who superseded Mr. Scott, the Commander of the Forces, the Chief Justice, Attorney-General, and Colonial Treasurer, Alexander M'Clean, afterwards (at eighty years of age) the first speaker of the first Australian Legislative Assembly, and four members selected by the governor.

The proceedings of this council were secret, under an oath administered to that intent; and the governor had an absolute veto. The majority were officials, totally unacquainted with the colony; and, looking at the minority in which, in the open Legislative Assembly, the nominees of the government were constantly found, it is not extraordinary that this council gave no manner of satisfaction to the colony. Yet it must be owned that in 1829 New South Wales did not possess the materials for representative institutions.

The first act of the council was to establish trial by jury in civil

cases.

In the following year, on the 31st March, 1831, the first steam-boat in Australia was launched; two other steam-boats came into use within a few months. Close after the steam-boat followed Dr. Lang, from Scotland, the first Australian agitator, a Presbyterian O'Connell, who,

having professed and printed every shade of political opinions, has recently avowed his preference for a republic, and his hope that he "shall yet see the British flag trailed in the dust."

Decidedly, in 1831, Australia was making progress.

In October General Darling resigned his government, and was succeeded by General Sir Richard Bourke.

The history of General Darling's administration reads more like that of one of Napoleon's pro-consuls than that of an Englishman reigning over Englishmen.

The case of Sudds and Thompson is an instance which stands out in the history of the colony as a sort of landmark of the termination of the Algerine system of government, affording a singular example of the state of society in which such an outrage on law, justice, and constitutional rights could be not only done but defended.

The story is worth relating, if it were only to show what deeds may be done and defended in the same age by the same race that expended millions in redeeming negro slaves, and in efforts to convert aboriginal cannibals.

Sudds and Thompson were two private soldiers in the 57th Regiment, doing duty in New South Wales in 1825, the second year of Sir Ralph Darling's reign. Thompson was a well-behaved man, who had saved some money; Sudds was a loose character. They both wished to remain in the colony.

In New South Wales they saw men who had arrived as convicts settled on snug farms, at the head of good shops, and even wealthy merchants and stockowners. As to procure their discharge was out of the question, Sudds, the scamp, suggested to Thompson that they should qualify themselves for the good fortune of convicts, and procure their discharge by becoming felons.

Accordingly they went together to the shop of a Sydney tradesman and openly stole a piece of cloth, were, as they intended, caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be transported to one of the auxiliary penal settlements for seven years.

In the course of the trial the object of the crime was clearly elicited. It became evident that the discipline of the troops required to keep guard over the large convict population would be seriously endangered if the commission of a crime enabled a soldier to obtain the superior food, condition, and prospects enjoyed by a criminal. Accordingly, Sir Ralph Darling issued an order under which the two soldiers, who had been tried and convicted, were taken from the hands of the

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civil power, and condemned to work in chains on the roads of the colony for the full term of their sentence, after which they were to return to service in the ranks.

On an appointed day the garrison of Sydney were assembled and formed in a hollow square. The culprits were brought out, their uniforms stripped off and replaced by the convict dress, iron-spiked collars and heavy chains, made expressly for the purpose by order of the governor, were rivetted to their necks and legs, and then they were drummed out of the regiment, and marched back to gaol to the tune of "The Rogue's March." Sudds, who was in bad health at the time of his sentence from an affection of the liver, overcome with shame, grief, and disappointment-oppressed by his chains, and exhausted by the heat of the sun on the day of the exposure in the barrack square—died in a few days. Thompson became insane.

A great outery was raised in the colony: the opposition paper attacked, the official paper defended, the conduct of the governor. The colony became divided into two parties; until the end of his administration, Sir Ralph Darling, whose whole system was a compound of military despotism and bureaucracy, was pertinaciously worried by a section which included some of the best and some of the worst men in the colony combining together for the extension of the liberties of the colony, they found in the Sudds and Thompson case the inestimable benefit of a grievance.

It would be unjust to consider Sir Ralph Darling's sentence by the light of public opinion in England. He was governor of a colony in which more than half the community were slaves and criminals; he had to punish and to arrest the progress of a dangerous crime; but as the representative of the sovereign, by ex post facto decree, he exercised powers which no sovereign has exercised since the time of Henry VIII., and violated one of the cardinal principles of the British constitution,— rejudging and aggravating the punishment of men who had already been judged.

At the present day it is, as we before observed, only as an historical landmark that it is right to recal attention to a transaction which can never be repeated in British dominions, although we may find precedents in the decrees of a president of the French republic, and decisions of Californian committees of vigilance, where the absence of all evidence and acquittal by legal tribunals have not saved the victims of a mob, or a despot, from condign punishment.

During General Darling's government further successful explorations of the interior were made, both by private individuals and

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officials. Among the latter were Major (now Sir Thomas) Mitchell, Mr. Allan Cunningham, Mr. Oxley, and Captain Sturt, the most fortunate of all.

In his second expedition, in 1829, Captain Sturt embarked with a party in a boat on the Morrumbidgee (which receives the waters of the Macquarie, the Lachlan, and Darling), until he came to its junction with the Murray, an apparently noble stream. Pursuing his voyage, in spite of many impediments, hardships, and dangers, from rocks, snags, sandbanks, and hostile savages, he reached the Lake Alexandrina, and discovered the future province of South Australia. This lake is a shallow sheet of water, sixty miles in length and forty miles in breadth, which interposes between the sea and the river, thus unfortunately presenting an impassable obstacle to ocean communication.

The hopes excited by the discovery of this picturesque river have hitherto not been realized. Although broad, deep, and bordered by rich land for many score miles, the perpetual recurrence of shallows limits the draught of water to two feet, at which steamers cannot be profitably navigated.

Captain Sturt, having made this important discovery, returned by reascending the river.

Having unfortunately become blind, in consideration of these and other services rendered to South Australia, the new Legislative Council of that colony have recently voted him a pension of £500—an act of liberality for which no precedent is to be found in the proceedings of the other settlements.

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