History of New South Wales From the Records
VOLUME 1 - GOVERNOR PHILLIP 1783-1789

G. B. Barton - 1889

PART I

A Vain Petition

 

WHILE Phillip was thus employed in getting his ships ready for sea - running backwards and forwards between the Navy and the Victualling Boards, the Admiralty and Whitehall - two Roman Catholic priests came forward with a petition addressed to Lord Sydney, praying that they might be allowed to go out with the Fleet as spiritual advisers to their co-religionists on board. In a letter addressed, without date, to his lordship, one of them pointed out that there were probably not less than three hundred of the convicts belonging to their denomination, woefully in need of religious instruction, and earnestly desirous that some minister of their own faith might be suffered to go with them. He also urged that the presence of Catholic priests among them might not only be of great service in cultivating a spirit of obedience to their officers, but might be the means of making them in the end useful members of society in the new world. The appeal was thus adroitly based on political as well as religious grounds; but unfortunately it made no impression on the Minister. The prayer was not granted; and judging from the fact that no reply to the letter can be found among the records, it may be inferred that none was sent (1).

My Lord, - You have been apprised of the desire which two clergymen of the Catholic persuasion have to instruct the convicts, who are of their faith, who are destined for Botany Bay. I beg leave to inform your lordship of my sentiments concerning their request. There are not less probably than three hundred, ignorant, you may imagine, of every principle of duty to God and man. The number is great, and consequently constitutes an object of consequence to every man who has the happiness of his neighbours at heart. That the Catholics of this country are not only of inoffensive principles, but that they are zealously attached to the Constitution of it, I may presume, is well known to your lordship. For my part, who am one of those clergymen who wish to take care of the convicts of my persuasion, I beg to acquaint your lordship that if I be so happy as to be permitted to go, that I trust my endeavours to bring these unhappy people to a proper sense of their duty as subjects and citizens may be attended with some salutary consequence. They earnestly desire some Catholic clergymen may go with them, and I trust to the known humanity of Government that a request which seems to promise some hopes of their reformation will not be denied. It is well known that these people will not pay the attention to other ministers which they do to their own. Perhaps, also, the presence of such may be of great use to make them readily obey every order of their governors, and I have no doubt our conduct will meet the approbation of them.

I sincerely pity these poor people, not so much for the disagreeable situation into which they have brought themselves, as for the misdemeanours which have made them deserving of it. Yet I trust, if their ignorance be removed, and their obligations as men and Christians be forcibly inculcated to them, that this may be a means under Providence of their becoming useful to themselves, and perhaps afterwards to their country.

At least this I sincerely wish, nor do I think I can ever be as happy elsewhere as in the place of their destination, employed in using my endeavours to bring them out of the wretched state of depravity into which they have fallen. I entreat, therefore, most humbly that this our request may be granted. These poor people will bless and thank you. I shall take care that they be not forgetful of their obligations to Government and Lord Sydney.

I have the honor of subscribing myself
Your lordship's most humble servant,

THOMAS WALSHE,
Priest. 

My lord, - We are not so presumptuous as to wish support from Government; we offer our voluntary services; we hope, however, not to offend in entreating for our passage.

If the statement by Mr. Justice Burton on the authority of the Rev. Samuel Marsden represents the facts of the case, Lord Sydney's indifference to the Roman Catholic appeal needs no explanation. Ministers of religion, whatever the sect they might belong to, did not appear to the official mind as at all necessary members of a colonising expedition. Whether or not the appointment of a chaplain to the First Fleet was obtained only through the intervention of Sir Joseph Banks at the last moment, there is no doubt that the subsequent expedition to Port Essington sailed without any chaplain at all. The neglect in one case is the best explanation that can be given of the indifference in the other.

It would certainly not be just to find fault with Phillip, because, while engaged in cataloguing in his "memo." all the needful means he could think of for governing the peculiar people committed to his charge, he did not see the necessity for providing a moral police force as well as an armed one. Neither to him nor to Lord Sydney did it occur that any better means of control for such a population could be found than those which had already been provided, in the shape of marines with fixed bayonets. It was not until Phillip had begun to form his settlement at Sydney Cove that the serious nature of the oversight presented itself to his mind. One of the very things he had to do was to appoint overseers or superintendents for the purpose of keeping the convicts in order; but no men of the proper kind having been sent out, he was obliged to appoint convicts to that position. The inevitable results soon made their appearance; the so-called superintendents were either unable or unwilling to exercise any authority over the men, who were thus left to themselves about the way in which their work should be done. Under such circumstances, it was a very difficult matter to get any work out of them at all. In this exigency Phillip was driven to appeal to the military for assistance, and accordingly requested the officers of the garrison to exercise their influence over the men by encouraging those whom they saw disposed to be diligent, and threatening the idle and disorderly with punishment. The officers, under Major Ross's instructions, bluntly refused to do anything of the kind, saying that they would not "interfere with the convicts" in any shape, except as a garrison force.

The most essential means for the good government of the community was thus absolutely wanting, and the natural results soon showed themselves. It might have been foreseen in the first instance that physical force alone is not enough to rule any people, even the most degraded; and that without some efficient moral influence at work, it is not possible to keep the constituent elements of society in working order. The defect was first felt by Phillip in the absence of overseers - the non-commissioned officers, so to speak, whose services he needed so much from day to day. But it was afterwards felt in the absence of a sufficient number of religious instructors, as well as of ordinary teachers. No schoolmaster, or teacher of any kind, formed part of the first establishment, although there were many children among the soldiers' families as well as among the convicts; and although it must have been known that even the men and women needed instruction in one way as much as the children did in another. One minister of religion only had been sent out - the Rev. Richard Johnson, "one of the people called Methodists (2);" and he was left to preach in the open air until he found means to put up a thatch-roofed building for religious service. Had the petition of the Roman Catholic priests met with more consideration than it did, Phillip's labours would have been greatly lessened in his efforts to reform the degraded characters around him. The combined influence of the clergy would have been on his side, and he might have been spared the humiliation of applying to the marines for aid in one of his greatest difficulties, and being refused. He was thus forced to govern with the lash and the hangman's rope.

How much misery and how much crime might have been avoided had Lord Sydney and his colleagues but recognised one of the simplest truths in political philosophy, by arming Phillip with the moral and religious assistance he required, may be left to conjecture. But in this, as in many other instances, may be seen how hard and merciless was the age in which they lived. The statesmen of that time had not yet learned that every government lives under a moral obligation to prevent crime as well as punish it; and when, notwithstanding the severity of their laws, they found its growth unchecked, they saw no other remedy but that of increased severity. A short shrift and a bloody shroud was the usual fate of the unhappy wretches condemned to die, even when the crime was nor more serious than a theft committed under the pressure of hunger. Many of these criminals, too, were mere boys, in most cases wholly uneducated, who had been left in childhood to seek their means of living in the streets.

How the question of juvenile crime and depravity was looked at by Pitt and his colleagues may be seen in a speech delivered by the Solicitor-General in the House of Commons in June, 1785, when moving for leave to bring a bill "for the better securing the peace (3)." After describing the extraordinary prevalence of crime in the metropolis, he referred to "the crowds that every two or three months fell a sacrifice to the justice of their country, with whose weight the gallows groaned;" and he then mentioned "as a certain truth, that of the whole number hanged in the metropolis, eighteen out of every twenty were under the age of twenty-one." To remedy this evil, the Government proposed - not to establish a system of State schools combined with juvenile reformatories - but to effect certain changes in the regulation of the police. There was no proposal to deal with juvenile delinquents as they are dealt with in the present day; they were left to take their chance as before. Something might be done, he seemed to think, for -

friendless and deserted children who were at present picked up at the age of eight years and regularly educated to the trade of villainy. He should wish them to be taken up and sent to the Marine Society; but as the governors of that institution might possibly object, on the ground of temporary inconvenience, to take them in, he feared it would be necessary to find some other establishment for them.

Beyond that, however, the Government were not prepared to go. Legislators in those days, and in much later times, did not believe in the efficacy of education as a means of preventing crime. Sir Samuel Romilly mentions that in 1807 he supported a bill which proposed to establish schools for the education of the poor in all the parishes of England; but, he adds, -

"The bill will certainly be lost. Many persons think that the subject requires further consideration and a more matured plan; but I am afraid that a much greater portion of the House think it expedient that the people should be kept in a state of ignorance (4)."

 

NOTES:

(1) Mr. Justice Burton, in his work on the State of Religion and Education in New South Wales, published in 1840, states, on the authority of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, who acted as chaplain in the colony from 1794 to 1838, that "when the First Fleet was on the point of sailing, in the year 1787, no clergyman had been thought of, and that a friend of his own, a pious man of some influence, anxious for the spiritual welfare of the convicts, made a strong appeal to those in authority upon the subject, and through the interest of the late Bishop Porteus with Sir Joseph Banks the Rev. Richard Johnson was appointed chaplain."

Burton also mentions, in a foot-note that "an oversight equally remarkable" occurred in connection with "the recent expedition to Port Essington," under the command of Sir J. Gordon Bremer, in H.M.S. Alligator, accompanied by the brig Britomart, which ships sailed "with upwards of five hundred souls, unprovided with any minister of religion." On their arrival at Sydney, the Bishop of Australia "furnished them with such means as were in his power" - a temporary church, bibles, prayer-books, and other religious publications.

(2) Major Grose, in a despatch to the Home Secretary, 4 September, 1793.

(3) Parliamentary History for 1785, vol. xxv, p. 888. The debate on this motion is full of information on the social condition of England at that time, which should be carefully borne in mind in connection with the Expedition to Botany Bay.

(4) Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 207.

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25/04/2004

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