CHAPTER IX. 



THE STIRRING OF POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS. 



AUTHORITIES. Despatches, etc. (especially Appendix to Bigge's Reports) 

 in Record and Colonial Offices. Sydney Gazette (especially 1819, 1820). P.P., 

 1819, VII.; 1822, XX.; 1823, X. 



AFTER Bent had left for England, and Field, who arrived early 

 in 1817, had opened his court, the Colony settled down to a 

 time of comparative tranquillity. A change had come over the 

 settlement since 1810, which grew more and more marked as 

 each year passed. The day of the adventurers had gone men 

 no longer grew suddenly rich by trade monopolies and by 

 traffic in spirits. Between 1810 and 1820 the lot of the settlers 

 was no easy one, and those who came intending to amass a for- 

 tune and return to England found their project a mere dream, 

 and that they needed steady perseverance before they could 

 make their way in the Colony itself. Bigge noticed that New 

 South Wales was unlike any other British Colony, inasmuch as 

 the colonists looked upon it as their future home. 1 This was 

 not only because sudden fortunes could no more be made. The 

 deeper and more fundamental cause lay in the fact that the 

 children of the convicts felt that New South Wales offered them 

 a chance of free and honourable careers such as, weighted with 

 the shame of their parentage, could not have been before them 

 in the older country. Nationalism, the strongest characteristic 

 of the Australian of to-day, is a legacy from these sons of exiles 

 for whom Australia was a land of hope and promise, and the 

 sense of a national character seems even at that early time to 

 have impressed itself upon the observer. The young Australian 

 was constantly referred to as though he could already be differ- 

 entiated from the Anglo-Saxon. The youths were described 



1 Bigge, Report III. 

 (26b) 



