112 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



inquiry should be held into the antecedents of pardoned 

 or expiree convicts, but that, due regard being had of 

 their rank and character, they should be placed on 

 the same footing ^vith freemen. He it was gave definite 

 shape to the scheme of the Home Government, and, in 

 formulating it, developed it. He made of it the con- 

 scious end and deliberate policy of the Government. 

 By his own confession he " saw the necessity and justice 

 of adopting a plan on a general basis, which had always 

 been practically acted on, towards those people " — 

 the convicts. The error lay in the formulation. He 

 almost necessarily blundered. As Dr. Marion PhiUips 

 has clearly perceived, this is the key to all the collisions 

 and all the discontent under Macquarie. 



It was well that the policy should be distinctly shaped 

 and systematically acted on. Perhaps in no other way 

 could its futility have been discovered. Yet it served 

 an end. Macquarie could not raise the convicts to the 

 level of freemen, or give them the status of free la- 

 bourers, but he improved their position, and did some- 

 thing to wipe away the stain from meritorious emanci- 

 pists. Throughout his entire term he set himself to exalt 

 the convict class and their sympathizers, while he de- 

 pressed and endeavoured to abase the free settlers. Under 

 his rule gi-ew up the emancipist party. Upon D'Arcy 

 Wentworth he heaped favours, and the Wentworths, 

 both father and son, became thorough emancipists. They 

 were naturally devoted to Macquarie. D'Arcy did not 

 hesitate, at Macquarie's instance, to accept a trusteeship 

 that Marsden had refused, because it involved the 

 trusteeship of two ex-convicts. In his father's house 

 young Wentworth met with his father's friends, and 

 these were ex-convicts. A Dr. Bland (whose name was 

 afterwards given to a suburb of Sydney), who had been 

 transported to Australia from India for there killing 

 a man in a duel, warmly took up the convict cause, and 

 contributed to its respectability. Dr. Wardell, who 

 immigrated to Sydney as a barrister, taking up the 

 emancipist cause as he would take up any cause at the 



