Chapter I: A Few Pages From Clide De Winton’s Note‐Book (4)

I ought to have been the first to approach, as I arrived before the others; but as soon as Father Egidio seated himself in the confessional, which, according to the Italian style, was only closed by a low door, he perceived the children awaiting him, and, leaving the door open, he made them a sign to approach. One by one they presented themselves before him. He bent down his head as he addressed them, and the innocent faces raised towards him were marked by a pious attention that was touching. He smiled occasionally as he listened to them, and the hand they kissed when they were done, he afterwards placed on their heads in benediction.

When the children had finished I was obliged to wait still longer, for a young man brushed hastily by me and fell on his knees in the place they left vacant, and this time the confession was long. Father Egidio, resting both hands on the shoulders of his new penitent, bent his head to listen without interrupting him, and when the young man ceased speaking, the advice he gave in return must have touched his penitent’s heart, for, as he listened, he bent his head lower and lower towards the old priest’s knees, and when he rose his eyes were inundated with tears.

At last my turn came, and I knelt in the place usually taken at confession. My voice trembled as I began, but grew stronger by degrees, and I continued with clearness and the wish to be sincere. My troubles, alas! were closely connected with my faults, and I not only opened my heart and soul, but laid before him my entire life, feeling, as I did so, the relief there is in the avowal of one’s weaknesses in confession that can be compared to no human confidence, however great the wisdom or sympathy that wins it. He murmured two or three times as he listened, “Poor child!” but did not otherwise interrupt me till I had finished.

The words he addressed me then were the mildest and yet most powerful that ever roused the human heart to a sense of duty. But when he finally told me that though I had banished him whose presence was so dangerous to my soul, I must likewise banish his memory with equal resolution; that the recollections in which I still indulged without scruple ought to be resisted, overcome, rooted out, and rejected, I felt an insurmountable repugnance, and replied:

“No, father, I cannot do it.”

He again repeated, “Poor child!” and then said in a tone of mingled compassion and kindness:

“You are not willing, then, to give God the place he has a right to in your heart?”

I did not understand his meaning, and replied:

“Father, I cannot help what I think and feel, or what I suffer.”

Without losing anything of his mildness, but with an authority that subdued my rebellious spirit, he said:

“I know, my child, what is in your power, and what does not depend on your will; but in the name of Him who now speaks to you through me, I ask you to repeat with a sincere heart these words, which comprise all I have just said:

“O my God! root out of my heart everything that separates it from Thee.”

These words, the accent with which they were uttered, and the prayer that I have no doubt rose from the depths of the holy soul from which they sprang, inspired me with the wish and strength to obey.

O my God! enable me now to make others understand what then took place in my soul.

I leaned my head against my clasped hands, and after a moment’s silence, during which I summoned all the strength of my will, I slowly repeated with the utmost sincerity the words he dictated:

“O my God! root out of my heart everything that separates it from Thee.”...

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

O merciful, divine Goodness! how shall I speak of Thee? how tell of thy marvellous grace and love? While uttering these words, before they were even ended, I felt touched by some strange, mysterious, supernatural influence. My heart and soul seemed filled with light. My whole being was transformed. I was inundated with a joy that could not be expressed in human language, and the source of this joy, the sensible cause, which I still feel, and shall never cease to feel, was the conviction made audible in some miraculous manner that _God loves me_!

God loves me. Yes, I heard these words. I comprehended their entire signification. _The Veil was forever withdrawn._ The mysterious enigma of my heart was solved as clearly and obviously as my eyes beheld the light of day.

I loved, not as we try, but in vain, to love our fellow‐creatures; I loved with _all_ the strength of my heart! and with so much strength that I could not have loved more without dying!...

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

All human language is inadequate, I know, to speak of supernatural grace. I can only stammer as I attempt it, and will no longer dwell on the ineffable moment which wrought an entire transformation in my life. I no longer recollect what words I then uttered, or what was said to me: I only remember the holy absolution I received with bowed head, and these words, afterwards uttered in a tone of emotion: “Be calm, my child, and go in peace.”

I had knelt down overwhelmed with sadness. I rose up so happy that I suffered from the great intensity of a joy my heart was too weak to endure!

XXXVII.

Long years have passed by since that day, and perhaps long years still await me; but whatever be the duration of my life nothing will ever efface the remembrance—not of the moment I have just described, for that moment is always present, it can never become a memory of the past—but of the effect which the sight of the earth, the sky, and the sea had on me when I issued from the church where I had received so great a blessing. Everything seemed to have assumed a new aspect, a new meaning, a more glorious signification; for the torrent of happiness in my soul seemed diffused over all nature! I no longer wished for anything. I had found all. I was freed from all anxiety. Hope had become certitude—a certitude more complete than can be derived from the surest of earthly things; for great indeed is the certitude of that assurance which _nothing_ can deprive us of, except _through our own will_!...

_Nothing_ could quench the source from which sprang my joy, or deprive me of its benefits: _nothing_, for my will was henceforth absorbed, and, so to speak, _lost_ in the most ardent love!

To love with strength, disinterestedness, and passion the worthiest object on earth, and learn all at once we could not be deprived of it without the consent of our own heart, would not this induce us to utter the word _never_ with an absolute meaning that the things of this world do not admit of? It was thus God gave me the grace to love, to feel sure of loving always, sure of the impossibility of ever being deprived of the object of my love!

The beauty of the natural world around me now seemed a mere ray of this joy. Never had I found it so lovely. And yet (those whom I _alone_ address now will understand this, however contradictory it may appear) I felt an almost equal disgust for all created things, an ardent desire to renounce everything, a profound contempt for all that had hitherto seemed worthy of so much esteem. Wealth, honor, dress, display, luxury, even the beauty, so uncertain, which I prized so much—they all lost their importance and became worthless in my eyes, not through satiety, or a feeling of melancholy, but through the disgust one naturally feels for the mediocre after seeing the beautiful, and for the beautiful after seeing the perfect!

On the other hand, in spite of this fountain of inexhaustible joy, I by no means imagined I was released from suffering; and what was also strange, perhaps, I did not desire to be. I already felt there was a lively, poignant, and sometimes terrible suffering inherent in the divine love I had just begun to experience. He who has described this love better than any other human being, doubtless because he felt it in a greater degree; he who more than six centuries ago wrote the following words: “Nothing is stronger than love, nothing more generous, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth.... When weary it is not tired, when straitened is not constrained, when frightened is not disturbed, but like a lively flame and a torch all on fire, it mounts upward and securely passes through all opposition;”(154) he who uttered these and so many other burning words, likewise said these: “There is no living in love without some pain or sorrow.” I knew it, and my heart was as ready to embrace the one as the other. As to the ordinary trials of life, it seemed to me I had sufficient courage to encounter them all, and that henceforth I should have nothing in the world to fear, nothing to complain of....

To the reader who comprehends me, and knows all this is perfectly true, I need not say that the state I have just described, though a blessed and rare one, has in all ages, as well as ours, been one to which a great number of souls have arrived by slow but natural progression. When, therefore, I speak of this as _miraculous_ and supernatural, I merely apply the word to the sudden wonderful grace which shortened the way for me, making me pass in an instant from a totally different frame of mind to a plenitude of faith and happiness!

And now ... how did they who were much more closely interwoven with my life than the natural world around me, appear in this new light? How did I now regard them in my heart?—Lorenzo! Livia! Stella! Gilbert! What were the feelings of my heart and soul towards them now that I was so suddenly brought to see and feel what was clear and right?...

In order to express my sentiments with regard to them, I will employ an illustration that may seem obscure, and yet I know no better way of making myself understood. It seemed to me that all the pure, tender, legitimate, and noble feelings of my heart found in this luminous flame a new and powerful aliment, while all others were consumed by this flame as quickly as pernicious weeds cast into a fiery furnace!

Nothing, therefore, was changed in my feelings towards Livia and Stella, unless I loved them more tenderly than before, one seeming more than ever an angel, and the other the dearest of friends!

As to Lorenzo, the change was great, sudden, and profound!... My affection for him, which he had mortally wounded and extinguished, was now rekindled at the divine source of all true love, and became equal to that I had felt at the time of my brightest hopes. The wish I once so ardently felt seemed now to be the only one worthy of occupying my mind. What did a little more or less of human love matter to me now? As Livia had predicted, my heart was satiated; I was rich, even if I did not possess the affection of a single heart on earth. It was, therefore, no longer through a selfish thirst for happiness I now wished to set his soul at liberty, but from a desire a thousand times more ardent—so ardent that it seemed to become my only passion!

And now, Gilbert! ... how shall I speak of him? How, in the light of this divine flame, did the dangerous attachment, the enervating, subtle affection that had so absorbed my mind, appear to me now? And those vague, false hopes—those impossible dreams—those harrowing regrets? And my foolish and culpable longing for his return?

All this was consumed like the pernicious weeds I have just spoken of, and I distinctly saw the abyss on the edge of which I had been walking. I turned away from the danger I had escaped with terror. I felt with profound gratitude that I was saved! ... and like one who has escaped from the perils of the sea, I looked back with horror on the waves that had so recently threatened to engulf me.

This impression was so strong that it began to render the memory odious that I so recently thought the only joy of my life—the joy I could not make up my mind to deny myself. The miraculous effect of the divine mercy had been in answer to the very essence of my prayer; the obstacle that separated me from God had been completely rooted out of my heart. In this respect, more than any other, I felt changed and transformed. But this powerful impression was modified by degrees, and I was soon able to see Gilbert in so clear and true a light as to think of him henceforth without the least disturbance of mind. I now thought of his danger, and the thought filled me with regret. I perceived my secret participation, the primary, and often the only, cause of others’ faults, from which it is so rare to be wholly exempt in such cases, and I prayed God to pardon me and heal the wounds of his soul as perfectly as he had healed mine!

Perhaps I have dwelt too long on this event—the greatest, the only great event of my life—and the effect it had on me in so many ways. But it was necessary to describe the transfigured state of my soul in order to explain what I still have to relate—this day having, thank heaven! set its ineffaceable seal on every succeeding day of my life.

XXXVIII.

For several days I had some difficulty in concealing the irrepressible joy I betrayed in my face in spite of my efforts, and which there was apparently nothing to justify.

Lorenzo’s attitude, in fact, remained the same. He continued, as he had done since his return, to appear only at the hour of his repasts. A part of the morning he remained shut up in his studio, which he now rarely allowed me to enter, and he spent all his evenings abroad. Mario had returned to Sicily; Stella had not yet wholly resumed her usual ease with me, and Lando, absorbed in his own affairs, was less interested than usual in mine.

Our customary reunions continued, however, and the same visitors assembled every evening, as before. I frequently heard my aunt loudly lament the departure of _quel Francese simpatico_, and declare how much il Kergy was missed by everybody. In fact, Gilbert’s name was continually repeated, and I sometimes thought Stella was astonished at my calmness, which was incomprehensible to her, whereas, on the contrary, I was not in the least surprised at her silence, which I understood perfectly. But we continued our tacit agreement never to speak of him to each other. Several days passed in this way, during which Livia was the only person from whom I concealed nothing. How great her joy was when, on seeing me again, she read with a single look the recovered peace of my soul, it is useless to say here. From that time we seemed to be united by a stronger tie than that of blood, and to have become more than sisters. But when, in the transport of my new joy, I declared that the luxuries of my beautiful home now seemed a burden and a fetter, and that I preferred the austere simplicity which surrounded her, she at once checked me.

“Our tastes should correspond with our vocation, Gina. Yours is not to leave the world, or even to lay aside its superfluities. Endeavor to please Lorenzo, to win him back. That is your mission, which is as high as any other; and when you feel your former affection for him revive in your heart, believe me, _carina_, it will meet with no opposition from the love God has revealed to your soul! You have dreamed of great things for Lorenzo. Come, Gina, courage! now is the time to realize them!”

It was thus she led me back to a great but evident truth. I comprehended it in spite of the different feelings I had experienced, and trusted time would give me an opportunity of winning back my husband’s heart, which was even sorer than mine had ever been. My eyes were often filled with tears, in spite of myself, as I saw the alteration in his face, his anxious look, his brow furrowed before the time, and all the sad indications by which a soul that is tarnished betrays the reaction which has such an injurious effect on physical beauty itself. But the time was gone by when it seemed possible to form some project, and achieve it in a day. I had learned the value of the words _patience_ and _silence_.

I rose now every morning as soon as it was light, and went with Ottavia to the church of a neighboring convent to seek strength for the day and, so to speak, draw fresh joy from the inexhaustible fountain. I afterwards carried myself the alms which, in my pride and indolence, I had hitherto been contented to distribute by her hands. This was the only outward change in my way of life, and it was one that nobody perceived. But it was not quite the same with the change that had unconsciously taken place in my language, manners, and even in the expression of my face, and though Lorenzo seldom had an opportunity of noticing me, I soon fancied he had recovered a certain ease of manner towards me. Until now, he had been, not only wounded in his pride and passion, but especially humiliated in my presence; and it must be acknowledged that the coldness and disdain that constituted the mute form of my reproach were not calculated to conciliate him. The freezing haughtiness of his air in return, which seemed to add outrage to perjury, increased my exasperation to the utmost, and irritated me more than his actual offences did at the time I gave myself up with desperation to the thought of Gilbert, as a kind of intoxication which made me at once forget my grief and my anger. Now I no longer sought to escape from the one, and the other was wholly extinguished. This new state of my soul produced an outward calmness and serenity I had never possessed before.

Lorenzo’s quick, penetrating eye soon detected the change without being able to imagine the cause. One day, after looking attentively at me for a moment, a sad, thoughtful expression came over his face, and I thought there was something like affection and respect in his look.

This did not prevent him, however, from spending the evening away from home, and I anxiously followed him in spirit as usual, not daring to utter a word to detain him, and still less venture to question him. A whole week passed in this way, in the vague hope of finding some means of influencing him, but nothing of the kind happened. All at once, one morning, by some extraordinary accident we happened to be alone a moment together, and after causing me some anxiety by the gloomy expression on his face, he gave me a great but pleasant surprise by saying:

“What would you say, Ginevra, if I proposed your taking a journey to Sicily with me?”

I uttered an exclamation of joy.

“What a question, Lorenzo! You know well nothing could give me more pleasure than to see my father again, and Messina, the dear old palace, and....”

Here I stopped, too much affected to continue, and fearing to awaken remembrances that might seem like a reproach. He perceived it and was grateful.

“Well, my lawsuit is about to be tried. Don Fabrizio desires my presence, and I would not for anything in the world renounce the pleasure of hearing him plead. We will start next week, then, if you are willing.”

This proposition caused me the liveliest and most unexpected pleasure. To leave Naples! To go with him! and to a place where, more easily than anywhere else, it seemed to me I could overcome the fatal remembrance in his heart I had to struggle against! And from there—who could tell?—induce him perhaps to go to some distant land; persuade him to let me follow him, go with him to the ends of the earth, if necessary, in search of the pure air he needed to restore him to health! All this crossed my mind in the twinkling of an eye, and for the first time for a long while I saw a ray of hope before me.

When I announced the projected journey to Stella with a satisfaction I made no attempt to conceal, she looked at me with an air of surprise.

“You have entirely forgiven Lorenzo, then?” said she.

“Yes.”

“Then I conclude he has at last acknowledged his offences and begged your pardon.”

“No.”

“No?... In that case, Ginevra, you have greatly changed.”

“Yes, a blessed change has come over me.”

“I have noticed it for some days, and if I ask what has produced it, will you answer me sincerely?”

“Yes, without hesitation. I will tell you the plain truth.”

And without turning my eyes away from hers, which were fastened attentively on me, I calmly continued:

“Between my violent indignation against Lorenzo, and my strong fancy for Gilbert, I went very far astray from God, Stella. A single instant of extraordinary grace enabled me to see this. Everything is clear to me now. I no longer seek happiness: I possess it.”

The moment Stella heard me pronounce Gilbert’s name, which we had invariably avoided of late, the pupils of her eyes dilated, and, as I went on, took that intensity of color and expression which all emotion imparted to them. But she merely replied:

“I do not wholly understand you, Ginevra, I confess, but I see you are happy and courageous: that is sufficient.”

After a moment’s silence, I resumed:

“And will you allow me to ask you a question in my turn, Stella?”

She blushed without making any reply. I hastened to say that my question only concerned Harry Leslie. At his name, she resumed her usual expression, and a double smile beamed from her eyes and lips.

“Certainly, ask anything you please.”

“Well, he came yesterday with a gloomy air to announce his departure. Am I wrong in thinking you have something to do with it?”

“No,” replied she, smiling, “not if it is true he cannot remain in Naples without marrying me, for I have not otherwise ordered him to go away.”

Desirous of drawing her out on this point, I continued:

“But, after all, Mr. Leslie is kind, handsome, excellent, very wealthy they say, and of a good family. You are very difficult, Stella.”

“Yes, perhaps so,” replied she with agitation and a kind of impatience. Then she continued in a melancholy tone of anguish:

“Ginevra, never speak to me again, I beg, either of happiness or the future. I do not know as I shall ever be any happier than I am now, but I know I can be less so.... Oh! may what I now possess never be taken away from me. I ask nothing more.”

She shuddered and stopped speaking, as if she could not give utterance to her fears. It was not the first time I had seen her seized with a kind of terror when the words future and happiness were mentioned before her. One would have said she thought there was no happiness in reserve for her, unless at the price of that she already possessed, and this thought came over her like a vision of terror.

Poor Stella! Alas! how insecure the joys of earth! To be deprived of them, or tremble lest we may be—that is to say, to possess these joys with a poignant fear that empoisons every instant of their duration, and increases more and more in proportion to their prolongation!...

Is it, then, really necessary for a supernatural light to open our eyes to force us to acknowledge that this world is only a place of promise, of which the realization is in another?

To Be Continued.

The Brooklet.

From The German Of Goethe.

O brooklet silver bright and gay! For ever rushing on thy way, I, lingering, ever ask thee whence Thou comest here, where goest thou hence?

“From the dark rock’s deep breast I come, O’er flow’rs and moss I toss and roam; While on my bosom smiles and lies The hovering vision of the skies.

“Ask not of me, a laughing child, Whither or whence my foot steps wild; Him do I trust to guide me on Who called me from the senseless stone.”

The Colonization Of New South Wales By Great Britain.(155)

Some few years ago it became known that the government of Great Britain were thinking of renewing the experiment of transporting convicts to Australia with the object of affording them a chance of reformation. This time, however, it was its western shore which was to be tried, and that, too, on a scale not inferior in magnitude to that on which the attempt had been so unsuccessfully made in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. The bare suggestion of such a proposal sufficed to kindle a flame of indignation throughout the whole Australian continent—for such must an island be called which is as large as Europe. To judge from a letter which we shall have occasion to quote further on, the system as pursued in Eastern Australia, although upon so insignificant a scale, is fraught with evils similar to those which so signally characterized its more important precursor in the west. Yet were the eastern colonists, or an influential and active portion of them, ready to risk the reproduction of the baneful curse which for nearly half a century blighted the prosperity and checked the growth of their western rivals, and from the consequences of which the latter are suffering to this day. So bitter, however, was the remembrance of this system amongst the western colonists, so keen their sense of the dire mischiefs still resulting from its action, that they went the length of avowing their fixed determination to separate from the mother‐country, if the experiment were attempted, although some thousands of miles intervened between them and the spot where the experiment was proposed to be renewed.

What were the causes of a failure so disastrous? The objects proposed in the original undertaking were of the noblest. To colonize a newly‐ discovered country of great extent and promise, to develop its resources, and to bring it under the sway of a benign and noble civilization, was a worthy object of ambition. To unite with this a scheme for the reformation of criminals, in a land where they would be entirely removed from old associations, where they might enter upon a new career without being ever dogged by the spectre of the past, was a great and beneficent design. How was it that the proposed reformatory became a horrible curse alike to the convicts and the colony, and that no prospect of progress in any form could be reasonably entertained until the original scheme was utterly swept away, and the local administration taken altogether out of the hands of the home government, and placed upon its present independent footing?

The question of the reformation of criminals is not only of pressing importance, but one that appeals to our higher feelings; and it has of late become a subject of special investigation to the somewhat interested philanthropy and eminently shallow psychology of the day. It is impossible to say that any solution of the question was seriously attempted in the original transportation project to Botany Bay. It was the one object, nevertheless, which assumed a prominent place in the experiment; and to the history of its failure we propose to devote our chief attention. The colonization of the country was distinctly announced as forming part of the scheme; nor, indeed, is it easy to see how it could very well have been dissociated from it. On this subject, therefore, we will offer a few remarks by way of introduction.

The recolonization of Southern Europe by the Northern tribes in the Vth and VIth centuries of the present era offers a striking contrast to the colonization of Australia by a nation calling itself Christian. Anything but prepossessing is the description given us by the historians of those Northern invaders, whose deeds but too faithfully bear out the description. Over depopulated provinces, cities in ashes, and the ruins of the noblest monuments of religion and art, they swarmed into their new settlements. Vandals, Franks, Goths, and Huns, all alike were distinguished for an unpitying cruelty, although the Huns surpassed the rest in licentious profligacy and crime. Yet amidst the ruin they had made, and the prodigious havoc with which they had desolated the fairest countries of Europe, the winning accents of Christian civilization stole into their ears and subdued their untutored souls. In one respect they had the advantage of the first English settlers in Australia. They had not been flung out of their own country like garbage. They came under no ban of law. They bore not with them the consciences of convicted criminals. They marched to the spoil under the (to them) legitimate banners of ambition, or to satisfy their greed of gain. The untutored instincts of humanity, grand even in their lawlessness and ferocity, urged them on. Deformed, as might have been expected, with many of the gross vices of the savage, they were not wanting in some of the more attractive features of the nobility of nature. Their ears had never listened to the loving voice of the Virgin Daughter of Sion. Their hearts had never been disciplined nor their minds formed by the revelation from heaven committed to her keeping. Theirs was not the guilt, as it has been of some of the nations of this XIXth century, to have _apostatized_ to the barbarous maxim that “might makes right.” They knew no better. No sooner, however, did the majestic vision of the Spouse of Christ—the Catholic Church—meet their gaze, than, far from treating her with insult and outrage, they threw themselves with loving veneration at her feet, bowed their necks with the truthful docility of children to her discipline, and arose to prove themselves her most faithful defenders.

But whilst the men‐eating aborigines of Australia had no civilization to communicate, the first invaders of its shores from Great Britain were, some of them, of the worst class of barbarians—the barbarians of civilization. They were of those whose untamable souls law, civilization, and religion had failed to subdue. They were the offscouring of the criminal class of the three kingdoms. The society they had outraged had cast them out from itself upon the coasts of Australia. They stepped on shore convicted as felons. They had forfeited the citizenship of their own country; and, although still undergoing their respective sentences, it was understood that they were to have the opportunity of making a fresh start in their new country, should their conduct correspond with the clemency of the executive. On a career that, more than any other, requires a spirit of enterprise, light‐heartedness, and courage, they had set out under the ban of expatriation, the burden of shame, and all the depressing influences of detected guilt. Of such were the first settlers of Australia.

On the evening of the 26th of January, 1788, the English dominion over what has been called the fifth division of the globe was inaugurated by the solemnity of pledging the king’s health round a flag‐pole. His majesty’s subjects in New Holland, at the period of this imposing function, numbered one thousand and thirty souls. Of these seven hundred and seventy‐eight were convicts. The remaining two hundred and fifty consisted of the soldiers who formed the garrison of the new settlement, and their officers, together with a few civil functionaries. In this rude germ of future commonwealths the elements neither of agriculture nor of commerce as yet existed. An encampment of huts was its first abiding‐ place. For food it depended on the stores brought with it from the mother‐ country; amongst which was neither seed nor other provision for future crops. At the moment at which we write, after a lapse of eighty‐six years, the flocks and herds of a wealthy agricultural population range over an area as large as that of Europe; five splendid provinces, each with its own court and parliament, can boast of cities equal in size to many European capitals, and constituting commercial marts second to none on the face of the globe.

Of the prodigious strides they have made in material prosperity, Mr. Therry, in his interesting _Reminiscences_, gives the following striking illustration:

“It has been ascertained that our South Pacific colonies take from
us in imports for every man, woman, and child of their respective
populations, on the average, from £8 to £10 per head per annum,
while the United States were only customers to us in 1859 (before
the war began), at the rate of 17s. per head. The amount of
imports received by Canada, which comes nearest to Australia, is
£5 per head; that of New South Wales alone is £21 3s. 4d. per
head; of Victoria, £25” (p. 9).

The commerce of these colonies with all parts of the world is nearly three times larger in money value than was the whole export commerce of England less than a century ago; and they receive from the United Kingdom upwards of twenty times the value of exports which the North American colonies were receiving at the time of their separation from the mother‐country. To crown the social edifice, a contented people live and prosper under the shadow of the freest institutions, in many respects surpassing, in this particular, the much‐vaunted model on which they have been framed.

It is certain that the prevailing motive of the English government in despatching a penal colony to Botany Bay was to supply the place of her lost American colonies. No doubt the idea of colonizing the country was present to their minds. But it never went beyond words. Not a single provision was made for colonial development. On the contrary, the whole constitution of the exiled community was fatal to such an object. For nearly half a century the inherent vices of the system struggled against and forcibly restrained any efforts to profit by the advantages of a country of such wonderful promise; nor was it before the original government scheme had been quite abandoned that the colony rose from its inaction, like an unfettered giant, and, as it were, almost at a stride, arrived at a pitch of prosperity unexampled, in so short a period of time, in the annals of the world, with the single exception of the American colonies after they had disembarrassed themselves of the yoke of the mother country.

The defection of those colonies had stopped an important outlet for the criminal population of the three kingdoms. We are told by Bancroft, in his _History of the United States_, that

“The prisoners condemned [in England] to transportation were a
salable commodity. Such was the demand for labor in America that
convicts and laborers were regularly purchased and shipped to the
colonies, where they were sold as indented servants.”

The Irish malcontents, moreover—of whom, owing to the long misgovernment of the kingdom, Ireland was full, and whose disaffection had been stimulated by the revolt of the North American colonies—threatened to increase the convict population by a large and particularly unmanageable element. It was only a year or two before that a country happened to be explored and taken possession of in the name of England so happily fitted for colonization, and of which such admirable use has since been made. The discovery was the result of sheer accident, so far as the British government was concerned. The expedition to which it owes it was sent out by the Royal Society for scientific purposes; the object being to make accurate observations of the transit of Venus from the island of Otaheite. The islands of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland were explored on the way home. The astronomical expedition returned to England in the midsummer of 1771.

In 1786, the government decided on establishing permanent settlements on the coast lately explored by Captain Cook, accompanied by Messrs. Green and Banks and Dr. Solander. The colony consisted exclusively of the convicts and the military in charge; of prisoners and their jailers. Any class out of which a free civil community might be formed could only arise out of chance settlers, or of those among the convicts whose position was the result rather of untoward circumstances than of any irreclaimable criminality of disposition, and who were prepared to re‐commence in those distant lands a career from which their misfortune or their fault had shut them out at home.

The constitution of the expedition was as follows: A governor, lieutenant‐ governor, judge‐advocate, commissary, and chaplain; a surgeon and two assistant surgeons; an agent for the transports; two hundred and twelve soldiers and mariners, including officers; their wives, numbering forty, and their children; five hundred and forty‐eight male convicts, and two hundred and thirty female.

The neighborhood of Botany Bay having been judged unsuitable for the new settlement, the expedition landed at a spot situated at the head of one of the coves of Port Jackson Harbor, which had been judiciously selected by the governor as the site of the future capital. The 26th of January, 1788, was the day of disembarkation, and it was on the evening of that day that the inaugural rite, to which we have before alluded, was solemnized. After a lapse of eleven days, consumed in putting up the public and private structures needful for the new colony, the ceremony of inauguration was supplemented by one of a yet more imposing character. On the seventh of February was held a formal assembly of all the members of the new commonwealth. An occasion of greater interest could not be imagined. Upon no band of colonists was ever lavished a greater wealth of hope and fortune. No guilt of diplomatic fraud or commercial overreaching marred their title to the new territory. Through no bloodshed, no violence, but quite unopposed, they had entered on its peaceable possession. No foreign power, to whom the new state might be calculated to give umbrage, threatened its future welfare. A magnificent harbor sheltered its ships and transports; and it was only one of many such with which a coast of vast extent was indented. A whole continent of virgin soil stretched out before them, which, under the influence of the finest climate under heaven, waited only the bidding of man to quicken within itself an exhaustless luxuriance of vegetable life. A mighty Empire of the South offered itself to any hands that were willing and able to grasp it. It was only reasonable to expect that England, having just lost her supremacy in the New World, would have devoted her utmost resources of civilization and statesmanship to laying deep and wide the foundations of her new dominion. If none of the members of an aristocracy enjoying more advantages and more power than were ever possessed by the most privileged class of any the most privileged nation, were willing to leave the home of their ancestral traditions, the softness of hereditary ease, and an absolute independence of fortune’s caprice, in order to join in the struggling life of a young community, we should at least have expected that the mother‐country would despatch a contribution from each of the other classes of her citizens to assist in the formation of the new settlement. Her system of jurisprudence, admirable in spite of the inextricable jumble of statutes and precedents amidst which it has been reared, would be represented, one would have thought, by a sufficient number of lawyers of character; her merchant princes would be encouraged to carry their spirit of enterprise to so rich and promising a field; still more, that which forms the only true and solid basis of material prosperity—agriculture—would be abundantly cared for in the shape of a due supply of competent masters and sturdy laborers; last, though not least, some provision would be made, not only for the moral and religious training of the people, but for such mental cultivation as was compatible with the condition of an infant community. What no one in his senses could have anticipated was that the government of a great and ancient nation should have sent out as the founders of a new colonial empire a contingent of malefactors, guarded by a few marines. Upon the occasion of the formal inauguration ceremony the whole colony were assembled around the governor. Nearest to himself were the lieutenant‐governor, the judge‐advocate, provost‐marshal, commissary, adjutant, doctor, and chaplain. The two hundred and twelve marines, including no less than fifteen commissioned officers, were drawn up in battle array. Apart from the rest, as under the ban of crime, stood the bulk of the community—namely, the convicts. To this assemblage the judge‐ advocate read the royal commission and the act of Parliament which constituted the court of judicature. After the reading of which documents the one hundred and ninety‐seven marines shouldered old “Brown Bess,” made ready, presented, and fired three times.

The ceremony was not imposing, but it was on a par with the rest of the proceedings. The governor, Capt. Phillip, wound it up with a speech in which, in spite of grammatical errors which may be pardoned in a sailor, he displayed considerable ability and eloquence, but a marvellous absence of common sense. In the course of a somewhat inflated panegyric on England and her fortunes, his excellency went on to portray his native country as the peculiar favorite of heaven, and to ascribe her successful colonization of New Holland—a matter considered by anticipation as already accomplished, and that, too, in the teeth of the recent defection of her most splendid colonies on the plea of tyrannical misgovernment—to a prolonged special intervention of Divine Providence.

“Nor did our good genius desert us,” continued the governor, “when
we reached our destination. On the contrary, it was then that
her(?) crowning favor was bestowed. Witness the magnificent harbor
which before us extends its hundred beautiful bays. Witness the
beautiful landscape, the islands, capes, and headlands, covered
with waving foliage, rich and varied beyond compare. Witness every
surrounding object which, as regards a situation for our future
homes, our necessities could demand or our tastes desire. Happy
the nation whose enterprises are thus favored by the elements and
by fortune! Happy the men engaged in an enterprise so favored!
Happy the state to whose founding such propitious omens are
granted!”

It is clear from the following passage, incredible as it may appear, that the government of the day did really contemplate founding a new state beyond the seas out of the criminal population, the moral refuse of society. Gov. Phillip even challenges for the scheme the praise of magnanimity.

“The American colonies,” he said in his inaugural address, “smarting under what they considered a sense of injustice, had recourse to the sword, and the ancient state and the young dependency met in deadly conflict. The victory belonged to the American people, and Britain, resigning the North America continent (?) to the dominion of her full‐grown offspring, magnanimously seeks in other parts of the earth a region where she may lay the foundations of another colonial empire, which one day will rival in strength, but we hope not in disobedience, that which she has so recently lost” (_Flanagan_, vol. i. p. 30).

It is, however, remarkable that Mr. Flanagan grounds his own attribution of magnanimity on the absence of those very features of the new territory on whose conspicuous presence the governor, standing on the spot, congratulates his fellow‐colonists, as one of the signs of a special interposition of Providence in their favor.

“To incur vast expense,” writes the author of the _History of New
South Wales_, “encounter great dangers, and overcome great
difficulties, in order to possess and colonize a country more
remote than any hitherto brought under subjection by Europeans—a
country presenting _no pre‐eminent attractions in soil, destitute,
so far as was then known, of the precious metals_, and inhabited
by a people in the greatest degree barbarous and devoid of all
riches—while countries possessing all those attractions which New
Holland wanted were within her reach, is the best evidence which
can possibly be afforded of national magnanimity” (_Flanagan_,
vol. i. p. 2).

“How grand is the prospect which lies before the youthful nation!”
exclaimed the enthusiastic governor to the new colony in his
inaugurative speech. “Enough of honor for any state would it be to
occupy the first position, both in regard to time and influence,
in a country so vast, so beautiful, _so fertile_, so blessed in
climate, so rich in all those bounties which nature can confer;
... _its fertile plains tempting only the slightest labor of the
husbandman to produce in abundance the fairest and the richest
fruits_; its interminable pastures, the future home of flocks and
herds innumerable; _its mineral wealth, already known to be so
great as to promise that it may yet rival those treasures which
fiction loves to describe_—enough for any nation, I say, would it
be to enjoy those honors and those advantages; but others not less
advantageous, but perhaps more honorable, await the people of the
state of which we are the founders.”

“To these,” continued the governor, addressing that engaging instalment of British civilization which the imperial government had sent forth from the shores of their country to take possession, in its name, of this new land, and develop its abundant resources, “will belong the surpassing honor of having introduced permanently the Christian religion and European civilization into the southern hemisphere. At no distant date it will be theirs to plant the standard of the cross and the ensign of their country in the centre of numerous populous nations to whom both these have hitherto been but little known. Such are the objects which will arouse the enterprise and stimulate the energies of the people of this young country—enterprise and energy, directed not toward conquest or rapine, chiefly because Australia, rich beyond measure in her own possessions, cannot desire those of others, but towards the extension of commerce, the spread of the English language, the promotion of the arts and sciences, and the extension of the true faith. Such are the circumstances and conditions which lead to the conviction that this state, of which to‐day we lay the foundation, will, ere many generations have passed away, become the centre of the southern hemisphere—the brightest gem of the Southern Ocean” (_Flanagan_, vol. i. pp. 32, 33).

Were these, then, whom Capt. Phillip addressed the men to introduce the Christian religion and European civilization in a newly‐discovered continent? Were a detachment of jail‐birds and their keepers to “develop commerce, spread the English language, promote the arts and sciences, and extend the true faith?” Were such as these the missionaries to plant the standard of the cross, or even that of their own country, amidst populations alien to both alike? Did the English government seriously propose to make a missionary college out of a reformatory, if such it could be called? Were the Barabbases of England to be the pioneers of civilization, the Artful Dodgers of the metropolis the heralds of the Christian faith?

The truth is that the only object directly provided for by the government to which England was indebted for this “magnanimous” deed of colonization was the establishment of a secure and distant depot for the worst criminals of the country.

The noble object to which the exhaustless resources of the continent they had just taken possession of were to be devoted was left to the chapter of accidents. A picture of the future greatness of the equivocal colony was, it is true, dashed off, in glowing colors, by Commodore Phillip, but no provision of any kind was made for its realization.

There was nothing whatever to hinder the attainment of both these objects, or at least an attempt to attain them. On the contrary, never was a fairer opportunity for an experiment of the kind offered to a people. Before them lay the wide, almost limitless landscape in all its exuberant beauty and unexhausted fertility. There it lay, as a kind of treasure‐trove, at their feet, with no one to dispute its possession. Their first object ought assuredly to have been to bring a large portion of the soil under cultivation; agriculture being that on which more than on anything else the prosperity of a country, and especially of a young country, depends. Not one shilling did these original and eccentric colonists invest in the soil of that vast island continent, every acre of which was theirs, with all its latent wealth, whether that wealth consisted in its as yet untried productive powers, or in the hoard of precious metals which might be locked up in its secret depths.

The home government thus had it in their power to offer to a superior class of yeomen inducements of the most persuasive kind to try their fortunes in the new colony. Sufficient area being left for the development of a splendid capital, they should have been planted in middling‐sized farms as closely around the reserved area as seemed desirable, and stretching out into the continent in gradually‐encroaching circles. A small contingent of married men, of good reputation amongst their neighbors, and of superior capacity and attainments, should have been encouraged to throw their fortunes into the colony. To these a greater extent of land should have been granted. These settlers would have formed the nucleus of a class from which could have been selected men fitted for holding the most responsible positions. The young colony could very well dispense with hereditary titles of honor. But it could not so well dispense with a class such as we refer to, if it was to become a country to which men of character and position would not hesitate to resort. A class was wanted other than the emancipists—the very worst that could have been chosen—to supply persons of standing, acquirements, and, above all, of reputable experience for the magistracy, and for other national, so to speak, as well as local, offices of trust and administration. Such a class of yeomen having been thus provided, the staff of government officials, the military and naval forces, and the continually increasing influx of convict laborers, added to the population of those classes themselves, would have supplied a considerable population, ready to hand, of customers and consumers. The mercantile and professional classes would soon have sent their contributions from the overstocked mother‐country, not in arrear, at all events, of the ordinary course of supply and demand. A manufacturing class would have developed of itself quite as soon as the interests of the colony required it. And, lastly and most imperatively of all, had the mother‐country been Catholic, the interests of religion would have been the very first consideration. Priests and a nucleus of one or more religious orders would have been despatched with the expedition. Churches would have been the first structures raised. Land would have been set apart for their support, and for the appropriate splendor of Christian worship. And hospitals, attended by religious of both sexes, would have been erected, and endowed with sufficient land for their perpetual support.

Nothing of the sort was so much as attempted. Thirty years after the memorable inauguration day, a period of time embracing nearly one‐half of the entire age of the colony, the then governor, Macquarie, we are told by Mr. Therry, “_considered the colony was selected as a depot for convicts; that the land properly belonged to them, as they emerged from their condition of servitude; and that emigrants were intruders on the soil._” Ten years afterwards, little more than seventy years ago, the state of “the brightest gem of the Southern Ocean,” in spite of the encouragement given to emigration by Macquarie’s successor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, during the three years of his administration, is thus described by the very competent authority just quoted: “_The majority of the community he_ (Sir Thomas Brisbane) _ruled over were of the convict class, who were not respectable nor right‐minded. It consisted of very inflammable materials, composing two‐thirds of the whole community, which it required the exercise of a stern authority to repress._”

Natural advantages have triumphed over the obstacles offered by human folly. The present condition of the Australian colonies more than realizes the glowing expectations of the head‐jailer of the first convict gang that landed on their shores. Indeed, if those utterances of Commander Phillip were to be judged by the results, we might be tempted to ascribe them to the inspiration of even prophetical sagacity. One merit, at all events, may be accorded to the enthusiastic sailor. He did not overestimate the boundless resources and advantageous position of the noble country of which he and his prisoners were assuming the proprietorship “on behalf of the British people,” utterly incapable as they were of taking advantage of them.