320 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



were based. The reasons for this were not far to seek. Many 

 individuals in the Colony had given information to the Com- 

 missioner which they did not wish their neighbours to peruse. 

 All the quarrels and petty disagreements which were probably 

 unavoidable in such a remote and curious settlement as that 

 of New South Wales might have been roused afresh by the 

 publication of all the correspondence and evidence, and to pub- 

 lish a selection only was thought unwise. 1 The most important 

 witnesses also were as a rule those who most desired their evid- 

 ence to be treated as confidential. Even as it was Bigge was 

 forced to insert in his third report a virtual apology for the 

 references to W. C. Wentworth's " Pipe " on Molle which he 

 had made in the first report. 2 On the whole, however, his work is 

 a monument of official discretion ; though a glance at the un- 

 published evidence shows that to make it so must have been a 

 matter of no small difficulty. 



As the main object of his mission had been to consider the 

 fitness of New South Wales for a penal station, Bigge's first 

 Report dealt almost entirely with the subject of the convicts and 

 " their treatment, character and habits ". Already his description 

 of their actual conditions has been many times quoted, and in 

 this place it is more important to consider his recommendations 

 for their future treatment. In this respect the most striking 

 note of his report is its absolutely conservative character. 

 Whether or no the Government had been sincere in their sug- 

 gestion of bringing transportation to New South Wales to an 

 end, such a project never seems in Bigge's mind to have come 

 within the sphere of practical politics. This was not because 

 he approved of the system enforced by Macquarie, but rather 

 because he did approve the system advocated by the land-owning 

 agriculturalists, and because he saw quite clearly that New South 

 Wales might, with profit to the mother country and to at least 

 a portion of her inhabitants, be turned into a great wool-producing 

 country under one of the simplest systems of capitalist pro- 

 duction ever established. This project was foreshadowed in 



J See letter from Bigge to Lord Bathurst, 5th May, 1822. R.O., MS. 



2 See end of Report III. See Correspondence of Bigge with C.O., 1823. 

 R.O., MS. Wentworth appears to have threatened him with legal proceedings 

 though without denying in so many words that Bigge's statement was true. 



