NEW SOUTH WALES AND PARLIAMENT. 293 



colonists' discontents than from convict rebellions. The Bligh 

 affair cast an unpleasant shadow long after tranquillity had been 

 restored. But the presence in the Colony of what Goulburn 

 called " such inflammable material " as the convicts, and past 

 troubles with Bligh, probably did no more than give a colour of 

 reason to the Tory principle of the period. It was after all a 

 time when government by the benevolent despot was a favoured 

 system. The people were to be ruled by those selected for that 

 purpose by the highest authority, and due subordination was to 

 be preserved. A belief in inequality was not questioned as a 

 prejudice, but firmly adhered to as a fundamental principle. 

 For a small Colony it appeared obvious that such a system was 

 a fitting one. The settlers belonged to a comparatively low 

 stratum of society, the convicts of course lower still. It was 

 but natural and proper that all should be governed by a superior 

 (though not necessarily an exalted) intelligence selected for them 

 by the Government at home. Lord Castlereagh, who was per- 

 haps the harshest of this set of reactionaries, wrote of colon- 

 ists in an undoubted tone of contempt. 1 Lord Liverpool, much 

 more liberal in his opinions, yet considered the Constitutional 

 Act for Canada of 1791, with its moderate constitutional freedom, 

 as a fatal error. 2 But though from the scanty materials at hand 

 this suggestion cannot be too much pressed, it is at least strange 

 that the reasons for continuing the peculiar form of Govern- 

 ment in New South Wales were never set forth more at large. 

 From 1800 the policy was one of pure negation and only 

 one definite advance, the reform of the courts in 1814, can be 

 recorded until in 1817 the Government began to falter in their 

 reiteration of the necessity for a military government and finally 

 set out to modify the system. 



Under these circumstances it fell naturally to the lot of the 

 opposition to champion the cause of discontented colonists. It 

 is one of the ironies of history that the retired army and naval 

 officers, gentlemen farmers and graziers, all of them men with 

 a natural bias towards Toryism, being discontented with the 



1 See, e.g., Lord Castlereagh's Correspondence, 1851, vol. viii., p. 187. Letter 

 Duke of Manchester, Governor of Jamaica, nth February, 1809. 



2 Life of Lord Liverpool, by C. D. Yonge, 1838, vol. i., p. 31. Letter to Sir 

 J. Craig, 1810. 



