25/04/2004
History of New South Wales From the Records
VOLUME 1 - GOVERNOR PHILLIP 1783-1789G. B. Barton - 1889
PART I
England A Hundred Years Ago
THE fact that Phillip's expedition attracted very little public attention in England is one of the most striking circumstances connected with it. Measyred by its results, it may be said to have been one of the greatest events in English history during the eighteenth century, just as Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts to colonise North America formed one of the greatest events of the sixteenth; but few except Phillip seemed to have formed any conception of its real importance. The MInisters who organised it and carried it into execution introduced it to the notice of Parliament simply as a plan for the disposal of felons and the relief of gaols. No one in the House of Commons had much to say about it. Lord Sydney claimed no credit for it. Pitt never made any reference to it. Burke, whose sympathy with the American colonists had been so strongly moved for many years previously, and who, beyond all his contemporaries, had learned to appreciate the importance of the colonies, was silent upon the subject. He touched the skirts of it, so to speak, in 1785, when he pleaded for some merciful consideration towards the unfortunate people who were then awaiting transportation, crowded together in the gaols to the number of 100,000. The swampy coasts of Africa were then supposed to be their destination. It was understood that the Government had some design of establishing convict settlements in that part of the world, notwithstanding its known unhealthiness; and probably Burke's protest against any such project, which he pronounced inhuman, had some share in its ultimate abandonment. There can be no doubt that "the idea of colonising Africa with felons," to which he alluded, had assumed some shape, however indefinite, in the minds of Ministers. The despatch of the Nautilus to the African coast, to which Lord Sydney referred in the letter already quoted, is sufficient evidence on that point. The ship was sent on the recommendation of a Committee of the House of Commons, to "explore the southern coast of Africa in order to find out an eligible situation for the reception of convicts, where, from their industry, they might soon be likely to obtain means of subsistence" - in other words, to become self-supporting. In pursuance of these instructions, the eastern coast was carefully explored from Port Mozambique to the southern borders of Kaffirland; but the report brought back by the Nautilus was so unfavourable - the coast being pronounced "unfit for settlement" - that the scheme was immediately abandoned. The Government then fell back on the proposals made for colonising New South Wales.
The silence which prevailed in Parliament with respect to the Expedition was not owing to the existence of far more important events, such as wars abroad or disturbances at home. It was a year of profound peace in England. The long and disastrous struggles in which the country had been engaged for many years previously had been brought to an end shortly before. The war with the American colonies, which began in 1775, was finally closed in 1783; and the contest with France and her allies, Spain and Holland, was brought to an end in the same year. For ten years afterwards England lived at peace with her neighbours, until the great war of the French Revolution broke out. There was no foreign complication, therefore, to distract the national attention while Sydney and his colleagues were maturing their plans for the establishment of a new colony in the southern hemisphere; and even supposing that all proposals of the kind had become absolutely distasteful to the British public by reason of their bitter experience in North America, it is difficult to find a reasonable explanation of the profound indifference with which the Expedition of 1787 was regarded in political circles. It did not occur to the most far-sighted statesmen of the day that a new empire might date its history from the day on which Commodore Phillip's fleet should furl its sails in Botany Bay. There was no Canning to rise in the House of Commons and declare that he had called into existence a new world in order to redress the balance of the old. If we turn to the political history of the time, in order to ascertain the momentous questions which absorbed the attention of Parliament, there is nothing that can be placed in comparison, as a matter of historical importance, with the colonisation of new South Wales.
The great subjects of parliamentary discussion at that time have all faded more or less into oblivion; even the speeches of the most renowned orators of the day awake but a languid interest in the reader. Perhaps no questions gave rise to greater excitement in political and social circles during the year 1787 than those which turned on the rumoured marriage of the Prince of Wales - afterwards George the Fourth - with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the payment of his Royal Highness's debts. Public interest became intense when Fox made his celebrated declaration on "direct authority," that the alleged marriage "not only never could have happened legally, but never did happen in any way whatever." This sensation, however, had hardly subsided than another took its place, when it became known that the marriage had really happened after all, and that the great orator had been painfully duped by his princely friend. Such were the absorbing topics of discussion in the month of April, 1787; now, they barely deserve a place in the history of the nation. During Phillip's lasts days in England before the departure of the Fleet, Burke, Fox, and Sheridan were addressing the House from day to day on "the articles of charge against Mr. Hastings." On the 10th of May, Burke's motion "that the said W. Hastings, esquire, be impeached of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, " having been carried, the majority of the Commons immediately attended Mr. Burke to the bar of the House of Peers, where he solemnly impeached Mr. Hastings accordingly. On the following day he reported to the House that he had been to the bay of the House of Lords in obedience to their commands, and there, in the name of the House of Commons and of all the Commons of Great Britain, impeached Warren Hastings, esquire, of High Crimes and Mis demeanors (1). The ex-governor of Bengal then succeeded the Prince of Wales as the centre of attraction in English politics; Mrs Fitzherbert and her marriage ceased to monopolise the conversation of society, and the approaching trial before the Peers was looked upon as one of the monumental events of English history.
That was the great sensation of the day; and in the midst of all the excitement it occasioned the Sirius and her convoy set sail for their destination without the faintest demonstration of public interest in the matter. It was not even recognised as a national event in the historical records of the time. The comprehensive summary of contemporary history originated by Burke, and known as the Annual Register, made no mention of it in its chronicle of passing events (2). Strangely enough, the indifference with which it was regarded at the times seems to have influenced later historians to such an extent that they have all apparently agreed to ignore it. Massey's History of the Reign of George the Third, for instance - a work professedly written "to illustrate not only the Political and the Military but the Social History of England" during that period - does not contain the slightest reference to it; and yet Massey wrote as late as 1863. A history of the reign of Elizabeth, or of the reign of James the First, which should make no mention of the attempts to colonise North America, would certainly not be considered either a complete or a philosophical one; but all the histories that have been written of the times of George the Third may be searched in vain for a sketch of Captain Phillip or an account of the First Fleet. Had it been a secret expedition against a Spanish outpost or a French Colony, it would no doubt have been watched with the liveliest interest, and its movements would have figured conspicuously in the annals of the time; but being nothing more than a colonising movement, there seems to have been little in it either to attract the notice or touch the sympathies of the nation (3).
NOTES:
(1) Parliamentary History for 1787, vol. xxvi, p. 1147. The trial began in the following year, lasted for seven years, and ended in a verdict of acquittal.
(2) Post, p. 466.
(3) Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century - a much more philosophic production than Massey's - disposes of the whole subject in the following sentence:- "The same energy which showed itself in reckless and distempered speculation showed itself also in commercial enterprise; the discoveries of Captain Cook extended the horizon of the world, and in New Zealand and Australia he founded colonies which already contain a far greater English population than the American colonies at the same time of their separation, and which seems likely to play a great and most beneficent part in the history of mankind." - Vol. vi, p. 187.
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