Lachlan Macquarie
6th Governor of New South Wales
Pages Mentioning Macquarie |
Colonel Lachlan Macquarie (31 January, 1762–1 July, 1824), sixth Governor of New South Wales was regarded by many as the real founder of Australia, was born in the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides islands of Scotland. He joined the Army in 1776 and served in North America, India and Egypt. After serving for 12 years as a Captain he considered leaving the Army, but his break came in 1808 when he was appointed Governor of New South Wales. He was given a mandate to restore government and discipline in the colony following the Rum Rebellion against Governor William Bligh.
Macquarie was a conservative disciplinarian who believed, in the words of the historian Manning Clark, "that the Protestant religion and British institutions were indispensable both for liberty and for a high material civilisation." When he arrived in Sydney in December 1809, he found a struggling, chaotic colony which was still basically a prison camp, with barely 5,000 European inhabitants. Macquarie ruled the colony as an enlightened despot, breaking the power of the Army officers such as John Macarthur who had run the place since Bligh's overthrow.
Macquarie made it clear that he had a vision for Australia's future. He ordered the construction of roads, bridges, wharves, churches and public buildings. The oldest surviving buildings in Sydney, such as the Hyde Park Barracks, have his name inscribed on their porticoes. He appointed magistrates to outlying posts such as Van Daemon's Land and the Bay of Islands (now New Zealand). He founded new towns such as Richmond, Windsor, Pitt Town and Castlereagh. He appointed a Colonial Secretary, a government printer and a government architect. All these actions reflected his view that New South Wales, despite its origins as a penal settlement, was now to be seen as a part of the British Empire, where a free people would live and prosper and eventually govern themselves.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought a renewed flood of both convicts and settlers to New South Wales, as the sea-lanes became free and as the rate of unemployment and crime in Britain rose (as they always did when armies and navies were demobilised). Macquarie presided over a rapid increase in population and in economic activity - by the time of his departure the population had reached 35,000. The colony began to have a life beyond its functions as a penal settlement, and an increasing proportion of the population earned their own living. All this, in Macquarie's eyes, made a new social policy necessary.
Central to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists: convicts whose sentences had expired or who had been given conditional or absolute pardons. By 1810 these outnumbered the free settlers, and Macquarie insisted that they be treated as social equals. He set the tone himself by appointing emancipists to government positions: Francis Greenway as colonial architect and Dr William Redfern as colonial surgeon. He scandalized settler opinion by appointing an emancipist, Andrew Thompson, as a magistrate, and by inviting emancipists to tea at Government House. In exchange, Macquarie demanded that the ex-convicts live reformed lives, and in particular insisted on proper marriages.
Macquarie was the greatest sponsor of exploration the colony had yet seen. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior. There he ordered the establishment of Bathurst, Australia's first inland city. He appointed John Oxley as surveyor-general and sent him on expeditions up the coast of New South Wales and inland to find new rivers and new lands for settlement. Oxley discovered the rich Northern Rivers and New England regions of New South Wales, and in what is now Queensland he explored the present site of Brisbane.
Explorers soon learned that the Governor liked things named after him: so Australia has the Macquarie River and Mount Macquarie, Lake Macquarie and Port Macquarie, Macquarie Harbour and Macquarie Island. Elizabeth Bay and Mrs. Macquarie's Chair (a headland in Sydney Harbour) are named for his wife. Macquarie's own contribution to Australian nomenclature was the name "Australia," suggested by Matthew Flinders but first used in an official dispatch by Macquarie in 1817.
Macquarie's policies, especially his championing of the emancipists and the lavish expenditure of government money on public works, aroused opposition both in the colony and in London, where the government still saw New South Wales as a place to dump convicts and not as a future dominion of the Empire.
His statement, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, that "free settlers in general... are by far the most discontented persons in the country," and that "emancipated convicts, or persons become free by servitude, made in many instances the best description of settlers," was much held against him.
Of course in 1822, Governor Macquarie was also quoted as saying of the New South Welshmen - "There are only two classes of person in New South Wales. Those who have been convicted, and those who ought to have been."
Leaders of the free settler community, such as Wentworth and Macarthur, complained to London about Macquarie's policies, and in 1819 the government appointed an English judge, John Bigge, to visit New South Wales and report on its administration.
Bigge generally agreed with the settlers' criticisms, and his reports on the colony led to Macquarie's resignation in 1821: he had however by then served longer than any other governor.
Bigge also recommended that no governor should again be allowed to rule as an autocrat, and in 1825 the New South Wales Legislative Council, Australia's first legislative body, was appointed to advise the governor.
Macquarie wrote, in a submission to Commissioner Bigge;
‘At my first Entrance into this Colony, I felt as you do, and I believe I may Add, every one does; at that Moment I Certainly did not anticipate any Intercourse but that of Control with Men who were, or had been Convicts; a Short
Experience shewed Me however, that Some of the Most Meritorious Men of the few to be found, and who were Most Capable and Most willing to Exert themselves in
the Public Service, were Men who had been Convicts! I saw the Necessity and Justice of adopting a Plan on a general Basis which had always been partially
acted upon towards these People, namely, that of extending to them generally the Same Consideration and Qualifications, which they would have Enjoyed from their Merits and Situations in Life, had they never been under the Sentence of the
Law, and which had been partially or rather individually adopted towards them by My Predecessors. I have never had Cause to find I had Mistaken the Object I had in View, namely, holding out to the Minds of Men the greatest Incentive to
virtue which Can be employed to Promote that End
You already know that above Nine-tenths of the Population of this Colony are or have been Convicts, or the Children of Convicts. You have Yet perhaps to learn that these are the people who have Quietly submitted to the Laws and Regulations of the Colony, altho’ informed by the Free Settlers and some of the Officers of Government that they were Illegal! these are the Men who have tilled the Ground, who have built Houses and Ships, who have made wonderful Efforts, Considering the Disadvantages under which they have Acted, in Agriculture, in Maritime Speculations, and in Manufactures; these are the Men who, placed in the balance as Character, both Moral and political (at least since their Arrival here) in the opposite Scale to those Free Settlers (who Struggle for their Depression) whom you will find to preponderate
Let not the Disposition, with which Nature Seems to have Endowed you for doing good, be overwhelmed by an over Strained Delicacy, or too refined a Sense of Moral Feeling; for such I Consider the Preference given to a bad Man, who has perhaps
Narrowly escaped the Stigma of having once been a Convict, to one who is now good, but who has been proved not to have been always so."
Macquarie returned to Scotland, and died in London in 1824 while busy defending himself against Bigge's charges. But his reputation continued to grow after his death, especially among the emancipists and their descendants, who were the majority of the Australian population until the gold rushes.
The following letter is taken from the letters to the editor section of ‘The Scots Magazine “, November 1996.
"Dear Sir,
I refer to the mention of Lt. General Lachian Macquarie in your September issue (Letters). The common mistake is to spell his name with two ‘rs’.
In 1809 he was appointed Governor -General of New South Wales, which in those days extended far north and south of the present state. His governorship in this penal colony was so humane that here at home there were cases where despairing individuals deliberately committed some act that would ensure transportation to the more tolerable conditions of a convict settlement in New South Wales.
Lachlan Macquarie also explored extensively and left behind him many names that reminded him of home.
Born in 1761, son of a small farmer on the island of Ulva, beside Mull, he so loved the island that he acquired the estate of Gruline, at the head of Loch na Keal, with Ulva’s Isle high to the west, which he renamed Jarvisfield after his wife’s name; later it reverted to its old name of Gruline. The estate includes the village of Salen on the Sound of Mull, which he established in 1808.
Honoured and respected as the ‘Father of Australia’, he retired in 1820 to his Mull estate, where he died in 1824. He is buried with members of his family, in the mausoleum in the quiet woods beside Gruline House, where two marble slabs are incised with a full record of his life’s achievements. The mausoleum was maintained for many years by the National Trust for Australia until it was passed in recent years to the National Trust for Scotland.
He was a man who should have received more recognition by his country , but this was denied him through jealous administrators at home.
PA. MacNab, West Kilbride, Scotland."
Today he is regarded by many as the real founder of Australia as a country, rather than as a prison camp. The nationalist school of Australian historians have treated him as a proto-nationalist hero. His grave in Mull is maintained at the expense of the National Trust of Australia and is inscribed "The Father of Australia." As well as the many geographical features named after him in his lifetime, he is commemorated by Macquarie University in Sydney, which publishes the Macquarie Dictionary.
Macquarie had many things named after him, including
-
Macquarie University in Sydney
-
Macquarie Island between Tasmania and Antarctica
-
Lake Macquarie on the coast of New South Wales between Sydney and Newcastle
-
Macquarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania
-
Macquarie River a significant inland river in New South Wales which passes Bathurst, Wellington, Dubbo and Warren before entering the Macquarie Marshes and the Barwon River.
-
Lachlan River, another significant river in New South Wales.
-
Port Macquarie, a city at the mouth of the Hastings River on the North Coast, New South Wales.
-
Macquarie Street, one of the principal streets of downtown Sydney, home of the New South Wales Parliament
-
Macqaurie Lighthouse, Australia's first and longest operating navigational light