292 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



commercial monopoly. It would, however, be equally difficult 

 to give any clear account of the colonial policy of the whole 

 Tory party at this period, though the principles upon which 

 New South Wales was founded and governed were sufficiently 

 lucid. 



At the time of its foundation it was necessarily a mere 

 military station under autocratic rule. That such a form of 

 Government continued so long may be considered as due to a 

 deliberate policy and as a natural outcome of the Tory principles 

 of the period of reaction. For this theory there is support in 

 the fact that the only other Colony of which England at this 

 time became possessed which was at all similar to New South 

 Wales, the Cape of Good Hope, shared the unenviable distinc- 

 tion of being placed under an autocratic Governor unrestrained 

 by a Council. Both Colonies were to be agricultural, and both 

 were expected to prove self-supporting. 1 Neither could be 

 considered as a mere military station, and the plea that one 

 contained a hostile Dutch, and the other a hostile convict 

 population was not a rational one. In the case of New South 

 Wales at least such a position was ridiculous. In spite of the 

 rising in 1805, no sign of a convict rebellion ever again occurred, 

 either under the military government or after the establishment 

 of a Council in 1825. Yet from 1805 to 1821 the opportunity 

 of the convicts was unique. They far outnumbered the rest of 

 the population, and from 1815 to 1821 the military protection 

 of the Colony was admittedly insufficient.- Yet the garrison 

 constituted the only efficient and reliable police. The Home 

 Government did not until 1821 increase it, but they did year 

 by year increase the number of convicts. If the reply to Ellis 

 Bent was that it was still considered necessary to preserve 

 military government, the reason must have been, not fear of 

 risings which would have to be dealt with by rapid decrees 

 (indeed by declaring martial law, that might have been done 

 under any Government), but rather a belief in the efficiency of 

 an autocracy. 



Probably the Secretary of State feared more from the 



1 See Chapter I. 



* See Correspondence of C.O. with Treasury, 1818 to 1821 (R.O. and C.O). 

 See also Riley, C. on G., 1819. 



