Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832-42 (Palgrave Studies in Migration History) 3030849198, 9783030849191

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MIGRATION HISTORY

Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42

Melanie Burkett

Palgrave Studies in Migration History Series Editors Philippe Rygiel Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon Saint-Germain-du-Puy, France Per-Olof Grönberg Luleå University of Technology Luleå, Sweden David Feldman Birkbeck College—University of London London, UK Marlou Schrover Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands

This series explores the history of migration, from antiquity to the present day and across a wide geographical scope. Taking a broad definition of migration, the editors welcome books that consider all forms of mobility, including cross-border mobility, internal migration and forced migration. These books investigate the causes and consequences of migration, whether for economic, religious, humanitarian or political reasons, and the policies and organizations that facilitate or challenge mobility. Considering responses to migration, the series looks to migrants’ experiences, the communities left behind and the societies in which they settled. The editors welcome proposals for monographs, edited collections and Palgrave Pivots. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15185

Melanie Burkett

Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832– 42

Melanie Burkett Hamden, CT, USA

Palgrave Studies in Migration History ISBN 978-3-030-84919-1    ISBN 978-3-030-84920-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Mom I love you, I’m proud of you, and I miss you every day.

Acknowledgements

The year 2020 was, shall we say, challenging for everyone, but turning my PhD thesis into a monograph was a bright spot and welcome distraction for me. Many thanks to the team at Palgrave—especially editors Molly Beck and Lucy Kidwell as well as my reviewers—for having faith in this project. Throughout my PhD, I benefited from the challenging yet caring guidance of my primary supervisor, Tanya Evans, and associate supervisor, Kate Fullagar, two extraordinary historians who took a chance on some random American interested in Australian history. The Modern History department at Macquarie University—especially the HDR writing group— provided an immensely collegial and collaborative community. I am lucky to have found such support. Many thanks to Ben Jones, Hannah Forsyth, and Marian Quartly (my mentor through the Australian Historical Association/Copyright Agency Bursary), who all kindly read portions of the thesis and provided valuable comments. And thank you to my examiners—Jim Hammerton, Lisa Chilton, and James Jupp—whose generous and helpful comments have made this book so much better. I could not have completed my PhD and the research on which this book is based without the support of the International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship. Macquarie also provided extensive funding for research and conference travel. Additionally, I received support and mentorship through the Australian Historical Association/Copyright Agency Bursary. Thank you to the patient librarians at Macquarie and the State Library of New South Wales, where the bulk of the research was conducted, as well as those who helped me at the vii

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Acknowledgements

National Library of Australia and the State Records of New South Wales. I am indebted to the audiences, other panellists, and conveners at the various conferences and workshops I attended for their thoughtful questions and insights. Portions of this book have been previously published. A version of Chap. 6 appeared in Australia, Migration and Empire: Immigrants in a Globalised World, edited by Philip Payton and Andrekos Varnava (2019). An article-length digest of this book was published in Journal of Migration History (2021) under the title ‘Explaining Resistance to Early Nineteenth-­ Century British Emigrants to New South Wales’. In addition to the tremendous historical community I found in Sydney, I was lucky to have Australian ‘family’, as well. My Australian ‘parents’— Sarah Fenton and Dom Kyan—earned that title in nearly every sense; I so wish adult adoption was allowed! I found Michael and Helen Burke’s granny flat online, and after three years of living in their basement and sharing dogs, they became so much more than just landlords; they are the dearest of friends. I moved home from Australia just before a global pandemic broke out, and I could not have survived without the friends and family who supported and housed me during a year of unemployment and homelessness: Char and Frank Gaus, Kristen Stenvall, Jean Brooks, Susan McLean, Rachael Murphey, and Baishakhi Taylor. I dedicated this book to my mother, Janet Burkett, who would have been so proud to call her daughter ‘doctor’ and see this book in print. But there are two secondary dedications I would like to make. First, to my dog, Hibby, who has been with me on this journey through a master’s, PhD, and a move around the planet. I’d also like to acknowledge the immigrants I study. Migrating was hard enough for me and I got to fly Qantas! I deeply admire the unimaginable courage and insane hope it took them to get on those ships and journey to the other end of the world.

Praise for Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42 “Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants provides a carefully researched, insightful exploration of the development of an anti-immigrant discourse in early Australia. As Burkett shows, this discourse was powerful: it had very real policy implications, political outcomes, and material results for both working-class immigrants and the more privileged settlers who managed the discourse. This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Australian, and by extension British World, migration history”. —Lisa Chilton, Associate Professor of History, University of Prince Edward Island (Canada) and author of Agents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860–1930 “Melanie Burkett has written an innovative analysis of Australian Colonial History and the History of immigration. Her scrutiny of the ulterior motivations behind elite hostility towards 1830s immigrants in New South Wales exposes a colonial society leadership preoccupied with status anxiety as well as self-interest. It offers a powerful model for understanding the long history of antagonism towards immigrants in settler societies”. —A. James Hammerton, Emeritus Scholar, La Trobe University (Australia) and author of Migrants of the British Diaspora Since the 1960s: Stories from Modern Nomads

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Assisted Migration in Context   4 Reshaping Social Boundaries   9 Challenging the Negative Perception  14 Deconstructing the Negative Perception  22 2 Collateral Damage in a Political Game 29 Immediate Opposition to the New Policies  31 Shunned on Arrival  33 Colonial Desire for Control  36 Governor Bourke Attempts to Seize Control  40 Different Responses to Concurrent Systems  42 The Colonial Office Asserts Control  50 The Bounty System Explodes (and Then Implodes)  53 3 The Interwoven Trio: Immigration, Representative Government, and Transportation 63 Charting the Political Landscape  66 Instigating and Controlling Immigration via Representative Government  68 Debating Priorities: Transportation or Representative Government?  72 Closing Ranks and Lashing Out in Response to the Molesworth Report  76 A Shifting Political Landscape  81 xi

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Contents

4 Land, Labour, and the Economic Development of New South Wales 91 Unintended Consequences of the Ripon Regulations  93 Building Better Capitalists  99 Attitudes Towards Labour: Control 102 Attitudes Towards Labour: Cost 107 Increasing the Labour Pool 111 Growth of a Vocal Working Class 116 Heightened Class Tensions During the Depression 120 5 When Wealth Equals Worth127 Asserting the Superiority of Wealth 131 Standards of Comportment and the Working Classes 135 Poverty Equated to Depravity 141 Attitudes Towards Poverty Resisted During the Depression 149 6 Impossible Standards: Gender Norms and the Rejection of Single Female Immigrants155 The Tension Between Emigration and Ideal Femininity 158 The (Im)possibility of Redemption 163 Linking Immigrants to Convicts 165 Single Female Immigrants as Wives 168 ‘Damned Whores’? 171 The Scheme’s End and Its Aftermath 177 7 Adversity Absent Compassion: The Migrant Experience183 A ‘Spirit of Insubordination’ En Route 187 A Behavioural Double Standard 191 Lacking Sympathy and Support on Arrival 195 Lazy, Insolent Workers or Horrible Bosses? 199 Dismissing Assisted Immigrant Disappointment 203 8 Conclusion211 Weaving Together the Political, Economic, and Cultural 213 Enduring Effects 218

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 Appendix: Number of Immigrants Arrived in New South Wales by Year227 Newspapers229 Bibliography231 Index247

About the Author

Inspired by her work with undergraduates engaging in global education opportunities, Melanie Burkett is fascinated by the experiences of world travellers from a different era: early nineteenth-century migrants. Her research examines the integration of working-class British migrants into the colonial societies they joined and the relationship of working-class migration to settler colonialism. Assistant Dean for Advising and Experiential Learning and Assistant Professor of History at Quinnipiac University, she earned her PhD from Macquarie University and her master’s in history from North Carolina State University.

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Abbreviations

CLEC CO HCPP ML NLA SANSW

Colonial Land and Emigration Commission Colonial Office papers House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 19th Century Sessional Papers Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney National Library of Australia, Canberra State Archives of New South Wales, Kingswood

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2

Comparison of criteria for receiving an assisted passage 44 Estimated labour needs compared to assisted immigrant arrivals95 Comparing actual average wages to wages advertised in Britain109

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In November 1838, young married couple Henry and Clarinda left Birmingham for London, seeking better work opportunities for Henry. They were both in their mid-twenties and had been married for two years. It took less than two weeks for London to disappoint—‘there was no place for me among the countless multitude of its inhabitants’, Henry wrote— and for their thoughts to turn to emigration.1 Henry visited the government emigration office and discovered they qualified for a free passage to the Australian penal colony of New South Wales on the grounds that they were young and had no children and, professionally, he could be characterised as a ‘mechanic’ (he was an ivory turner). Preparations began immediately. He wrote to his sisters in Birmingham and asked for their help in obtaining the required signatures on their certificates of good character. He gave instructions on which of his possessions to sell, asked his mother to sew them clothing for the voyage, and hoped that someone would be willing to keep his dog. Over the next few months, there were several more somewhat frantic letters regarding last-minute details as they believed they would leave first at the end of December and then at the end of January. In the end, they did not depart until early April 1839. In the meantime, money was scarce. Expenses in London were high and wages 1  Letter Two, 6 December 1838, Henry Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1896), 22.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_1

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for Henry were low. He had to sell some of his tools to buy food, and, even so, they went several days without anything to eat, including Christmas Day. His family occasionally sent them a little bit of money, which Henry lamented he would not be able to repay before they left, though he hoped to be able to send the handsome sum of ten pounds after he had obtained a situation in New South Wales. He had high hopes for the colony: ‘The country is the best place for making money. A man of good common sense and active habits, if he can but save a little to begin with, may get rich there in no time’.2 The scheme that took Henry and Clarinda abroad arose from major changes enacted by the Colonial Office. In 1831, Viscount Goderich, the secretary of state for war and the colonies, borrowed from popular colonisation theories and implemented new policies in New South Wales, policies that connected land to labour.3 In the past, land grants had been used to entice the emigration of men of capital, men who had the financial means both to invest in improvements in the land and to feed, house, and clothe the convict workers they would use to that end. Under the new regulations (that would come to be called the ‘Ripon Regulations’ after Goderich was created Earl of Ripon in 1833), land would no longer be granted free of cost; all land would be sold at auction in 640-acre lots with a set minimum price.4 The proceeds from these land sales would be used to pay the passages of labourers from the British Isles who were willing to emigrate but unable to afford the lengthy journey. This established the principles of so-called assisted emigration, which would bring over 50,000 English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish working-class individuals to Australia in the scheme’s first decade.5 British proponents of assisted emigration, both in government and the public sphere, saw the system as a means of alleviating pressure on the  Letter Eight, 10 February 1839, ibid., 47.  These changes also applied to the other Australian penal colony—Van Diemen’s Land— but this book focuses specifically on New South Wales, which received the bulk of the assisted immigrants in this time period. For the initial regulations see, House of Commons, Return to an Address to His Majesty, Dated 14 September 1831;—Copies of the Royal Instructions to the Governors of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Western Australia, as to the Mode to Be Adopted in Disposing of Crown Lands; Together with Such Parts of Any Despatches Addressed to Them as Relate to the Same Subject, or to the Means by Which Emigration May Be Facilitated, 13 October 1831, in CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML. 4  Initially set at five shillings per acre. 5  Including their children. See Appendix. 2 3

1  INTRODUCTION 3

home labour market, pressure created by industrialisation, a growing population, the shift to wage labour, and a relatively extended period of peace following the Napoleonic Wars.6 There were fewer jobs to support a larger (and growing) pool of potential workers. Agricultural labourers in the south of England revolted in the infamous ‘Swing Riots’ of 1830. Emigration out of the British Isles would siphon off the excess poor and prevent further unrest, or so it was hoped. Although domestic concerns were most certainly the top priority, assisted migration was also believed to hold benefits for the colonies.7 In New South Wales, convict labour was not sufficient to service an ever-expanding colonial economy. Assisted migration seemed to provide a mutually beneficial solution to labour challenges in both colony and Mother Country. Yet, when assisted immigrants like Henry and Clarinda arrived in their new home, they were predominantly met with disapproval. The press and colonial elite deemed the assisted immigrants to be ‘good-for-nothing, dissipated, and worthless characters’.8 This condemnation was not only immediate, but it also persisted in Australian migration historiography for the next 150 years, an impression that ignored the fact that most assisted immigrants found work quickly and, in so doing, fulfilled their intended purpose. A few even eventually achieved tremendous success; Clarinda’s husband was none other than Henry Parkes, future premier of New South Wales. Why were people who had taken such great risks in leaving their homes and whose labour was presumably much needed in the colony judged so harshly? The work of social historians in the latter part of the twentieth century helped resuscitate the reputation of the earliest assisted immigrants by analysing migration records, tracking policy adjustments over time, and revealing the difficulties inherent in the act of migrating. 6  For an overview of the debates in England leading up to the new policies, see H. J. M. Johnston, British Emimgration Policy, 1815–1830: ‘Shovelling out Paupers’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 7  A note on terminology: migrants leaving a particular location are referred to as ‘emigrants’, as are people en route to a location (i.e. emigrants to New South Wales). Once they arrive at a destination, they are then ‘immigrants’. People in the 1830s, however, inconsistently used the two terms and most often defaulted to ‘emigrant’. When referring to the policy of assisted migration, I use ‘assisted emigration’ when discussing the British perspective, ‘assisted immigration’ when discussing the colonial, and ‘assisted migration’ when both are involved. 8  John Dunmore Lang, Transportation and Colonization: Or, the Causes of the Comparative Failure of the Transportation System in the Australian Colonies: With Suggestions for Ensuring Its Future Efficiency in Subserviency to Extensive Colonization (London: A. J. Valpy, 1837), 47.

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But why, I ask here, did this reputation arise in the first place? As revealed in public rhetoric, judgements of and anxieties about assisted immigrants expressed a host of tensions surrounding class, gender, self-government, and the economic foundations of the colony.9

Assisted Migration in Context Government-assisted emigration was but a small stream in a flood of nineteenth-­century relocations. Between the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and the Great Depression (circa 1930), nearly 50 million people left Europe.10 Within this larger trend, Great Britain distinguished itself. Though it possessed only a fraction of the total population of Europe, Britain provided nearly half of the 50 million emigrants.11 Emigration from Britain was extraordinary for more than its mere number, however. Migration became a defining feature of the British Empire. No other European country matched Britain’s use of white settler colonies—colonies like New South Wales—in the expansion of its territory and influence.12 By the second half of the century, emigration was one way in which the lower classes could participate in the imperial project.13 Britain’s distinctiveness in emigration followed from its precocious economic development. Britain was the first country to undergo industrialisation and, thus, the first to experience the social dislocations caused by the shift from a largely agrarian economy to an industrial economy based primarily on wage labour. Previously, emigration had been a phenomenon to be lamented; a nation’s strength had been thought to be connected to the size of its population.14 But as the rise of steam power and industrial 9  These arguments have also been summarised in Melanie Burkett, ‘Explaining Resistance to Early Nineteenth-Century British Emigrants to New South Wales’, Journal of Migration History 7, no. 1 (2021): 1–23. 10  Dudley Baines, Emigration from Europe, 1815–1930 (London: Macmillan, 1991), chap. 1. 11  The British contribution is estimated at 22.6  million between 1815 and 1914. Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, ‘Mapping the British World’, in The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity, Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, eds (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 4. 12  James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the AngloWorld, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1–17. 13  Alexander Murdoch, British Emigration, 1603–1914 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 4. 14  Eric Richards, Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), chap. 2.

1  INTRODUCTION 5

machines displaced both agrarian workers and artisans while the labour base simultaneously grew due to demobilisation and a surge in natural population growth, Britain found itself with more people than the new economy could support. The costs of poor relief, the number of people relieved, and the proportion of those of prime working ages among the relieved all increased precipitously.15 Social tensions threatened to—and, indeed, did—erupt in protest, episodes of machine breaking, and antagonistic trade union formation.16 An excessively large population was now a weakness, not a strength. Emigration suddenly seemed to be a solution rather than a problem, a means by which the ‘redundant population’ (to use a common phrase of the era) could be removed and social tensions lessened. Fortuitously, the Empire provided the destinations. This shift in attitudes towards emigration was not immediate. Undersecretary of State for the Colonies (1821–1828) Robert Wilmot Horton was an early proponent of assisted emigration and spent most of the 1820s trying to gain support for his pet project. He obtained parliamentary approval for pilot schemes to settle poor families in Canada and the Cape colony and both instigated and chaired the 1826–1827 Select Committee on Emigration.17 In three reports, the Committee concluded that Parliament should consider emigration as a means ‘for correcting the redundancy of population’.18 However, the Committee was hesitant to recommend any national funds be spent on the enterprise. The Napoleonic wars had ballooned both government spending and the national debt; accordingly, various ministries worked to rein in the costs of government.19 Under these circumstances, the idea of emigration had support, but the large expenditure it would require worked against larger fiscal goals. Given 15  Steven King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700–1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 164–8. 16  E.  P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). 17  For more on the pilot schemes, see Johnston, British Emimgration Policy. For the Select Committee, see House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, HCPP, 1826–7, 404, vol. 4, IV.1; House of Commons, ‘Second Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, HCPP, 1826–7, 237, vol. 5, V.2; House of Commons, ‘Third Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, HCPP, 1826–7, 550, vol. 5, V.223. 18  House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, 1826, 2. 19  Philip Harling and Peter Mandler, ‘From “Fiscal-Military” State to Laissez-Faire State, 1760–1850’, Journal of British Studies 32, no. 1 (1993): 44–70.

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the economic precarity of the ‘redundant population’, the emigrants themselves could not pay. So as the Committee concluded its work, systematic assisted emigration seemed to be a non-starter. Enter Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the emigration theorist who solved the funding problem. He first published his ideas (anonymously) throughout 1829, including in A Letter from Sydney.20 Though he had never been to New South Wales, he wrote as though he were a discouraged settler who had struggled to succeed (despite a massive land grant) due to a lack of labour. His struggles supposedly had led him to the answer to all of the colony’s developmental challenges, a solution that could be used across the Empire. Because land was so abundant in the colony, it was cheap (the government even gave it away for free as land grants), and because labour was scarce, it was expensive. Labourers could use their high wages to become landowners, and, consequently, the colony lacked the ‘combination’ of labour in large-scale enterprises necessary for increases in productivity and capital accumulation.21 Wakefield’s solution was to end all land grants and set a ‘sufficiently’ high price for land that would put it beyond the reach of workers, thereby maintaining an adequate labour pool. Wakefield’s plan promised to provide additional benefits. Under a regime of land sales, the colony would expand slowly; remote land would presumably not be purchased until the land near it had been purchased and developed. Furthermore, land sales might create a fund to bring additional labourers to the colony via assisted migration (though this was not an essential component of Wakefield’s plan; he merely noted it was a good use of the money). But more so than for labourers, Wakefield’s primary concern was for the precarity of the British middle class, which he called the ‘uneasy class’.22 Britain’s economic transformation negatively impacted not only the working classes but also professionals and those with fixed 20  E. G. Wakefield, A Letter from Sydney, the Principal Town of Australia: Together with the Outline of a System of Colonization (London: J. Cross, 1829). 21  This was not exactly accurate, however. While labourers could potentially purchase land on the secondary market from large landowners (a continued possibility under Wakefield’s plan, though presumably secondary prices would rise, as well), primary grants from the government were actually difficult, if not impossible, for labourers to obtain. To get a land grant, the grantee had to have the ability to cultivate the land, as measured by the possession of £250 of capital for every 320 acres, the smallest possible grant. As it related to New South Wales, Wakefield was trying to solve a problem that didn’t really exist. House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on the Disposal of Land’, 1836, appendix 4. 22  E. G. Wakefield, England and America. A Comparison of the Social and Political State of Both Nations. In Two Volumes (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 82–100.

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incomes (e.g. landlords, public servants, and retired military on pensions), who faced decreasing prospects for their daughters and younger sons. Wakefield felt his theories would help these people as much as Britain or the colonies themselves; a properly functioning labour market in the colonies would provide opportunities for the middle classes to increase their wealth and thereby improve the future for their children. And indeed, following the implementation of the Ripon Regulations, there was a spike in unassisted emigration to New South Wales, levels maintained throughout the first decade of the new scheme.23 The three key elements of Wakefield’s plan were land, labour, and capital. In both Britain and New South Wales, all three were out of proportion. Britain had not enough land, but too much capital and too much labour. New South Wales had too much land, but not enough labour or capital. Wakefield’s system would correct the ratios in both places by transferring labour from Mother Country to colony, which would allow capital to be used more productively in the colony and, in turn, attract British investment. Though historians debate the influence of Wakefield’s ideas on the Colonial Office,24 the new regulations of 1831 bore a striking resemblance to Wakefield’s proposals. In the despatch informing New South Wales governor Ralph Darling of the new regulations, Goderich expressed concern that settlement had become ‘too widely extended’; asserted that, because of the land grant system, ‘every man has been encouraged to become a proprietor’; and named emigration ‘a means of relieving the Mother Country’, all language that echoed Wakefield’s rationale.25 It seems appropriate to pause the narrative here and acknowledge that this abundant land that theoretically was causing New South Wales so many problems was, in fact, occupied by Aboriginal people. The British conveniently ignored Aboriginal rights to the land ever since Lieutenant James Cook ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770, using the doctrine of terra

23  From 1831 to 1832, unassisted migration nearly trebled from 457 to 1214. Data on unassisted immigrants is sketchier than the data available for assisted, but is included where available in the Appendix. 24  For an overview of the debate, see Margaret Ray, ‘Administering Emigration. Thomas Elliot and Government-Assisted Emigration from Britain to Australia, 1831–1855’ (PhD thesis, University of Durham, 2001), 217–21. 25  Goderich to Darling, 9 January 1831, reprinted as No. 2 in House of Commons, Return to an Address to His Majesty, 1831.

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nullius (‘no one’s land’) to justify their denial.26 This project does not examine the dispossession of Indigenous peoples at any length, mostly because the rights of the Aboriginal peoples did not factor into the debates over land and immigration policy. The absence of such rhetoric was conspicuous. The colonists of New South Wales fully believed in their right to the land; in fact, it was their duty to transform this ‘waste land’ into a productive, mini-Britain. As Presbyterian minister J.  D. Lang wrote in support of immigration: This vast grant of land was doubtless given to the British nation … that the wilderness might be filled with cities … in short, that this vast island might in due time … teem with an industrious and virtuous and happy population—a population speaking the English language, governed by English laws, cherishing the high toned spirit of British freedom, and rejoicing in the hopes and exhibiting the practice that distinguish the comparatively purer religion of our father-land!27

As we will see in Chap. 2, the colonial elite used the language of ‘our land’ and ‘our land fund’ in discussions of land and immigration policies. There was even a loud outcry against the use of ‘their’ land fund to pay the salaries of the protectors of the Aborigines, demonstrating the degree to which the colonial elite had achieved a mental dissociation of Aboriginal people and the land.28 Wakefield, too, largely ignored the presence of Indigenous peoples and the effects of his theories on them. Nevertheless, dispossession was a prerequisite for the lucrative colonial economies he envisioned. Even though Aboriginal people and their dispossession are not the focus of this study, we must remember that the white population growth and pastoral boom spurred by the Ripon Regulations resulted in frontier wars, genocide, and the destruction of Aboriginal ways of life. 26  Bruce Buchan and Mary Heath, ‘Savagery and Civilization: From Terra Nullius to the “Tide of History”’, Ethnicities 6, no. 1 (2006): 5–26. 27  John Dunmore Lang, Emigration; Considered Chiefly in Reference to the Practicability and Expediency of Importing and of Settling Throughout the Territory of New South Wales, a Numerous, Industrious and Virtuous Agricultural Population; Being a Lecture Delivered in the Temporary Hall of the Australian College Sydney, 9th May 1833 (Sydney: E.  S. Hall, 1833), 6. 28  ‘Crown Lands (Continued.)’, Herald, 9 November 1838, 2; An Emigrant [pseud.], ‘To His Excellency Sir George Gipps &c. &c., and the Legislative Council’, The Australian, 31 January 1839, 3; Thomas Potter Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be (London: J. Cross, 1840), 43.

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In addition to further expropriating Indigenous land, those regulations launched a practice—assisted migration—that became a vital component of Australian immigration policy up until the late twentieth century. Just as emigration from Britain was exceptional within a European context, so too was the heavy use of assisted passages to Australia. In the waves of European migration occurring in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only around ten per cent of all migrants received official assistance from the government. In Australia, however, approximately 45 per cent of the immigrants arriving before World War II were assisted.29 Only assisted passages could overcome the immense distance between Australia and Europe on any significant scale. By providing such passages, the Ripon Regulations had an immediate effect on emigration to New South Wales. In the three years prior to the implementation of assisted migration, the colony had received only a few hundred immigrants each year.30 In 1832 (the first year the policies were in full effect), that number jumped to more than 2000 and would reach over 20,000 by 1841 (see Appendix).

Reshaping Social Boundaries Despite initial resistance to losing land grants, the immigration that accompanied this loss quickly came to be seen as vital to the prosperity of the colony, especially as the end of convict transportation appeared increasingly inevitable (see Chap. 3). The 1839 New South Wales Legislative Council Committee on Immigration proclaimed that if immigration were checked in any way, it would ‘seal the death warrant of Colonial prosperity’.31 Even so, the assisted immigrants themselves were thoroughly disdained. In the press, they were called ‘dissipated, immoral, and unfit-for work characters’; ‘mendicants … [and] confirmed drunkards’; and ‘vicious pauper rubbish, both male and female’.32 Though assisted immigrants possessed various levels of training (some were unskilled labourers, while  Baines, Emigration from Europe, chap. 7.  For the years from 1829 to 1832, New South Wales received 564, 309, 457, and 2006 total immigrants, respectively, as stated in Colonial Secretary Alexander McLeay’s report in SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS5258 [4/4705] Reports by Various Select Committees on Immigration Policy with Original Instructions of First Immigration Agent, 1834–38. 31  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: T. Trood, 1839), RB DQ 325.342/36, ML, 13. 32  Respectively, The Australian, 13 September 1833, 2; ‘State of Society’, Gazette, 26 June 1834, 2; ‘Improvement of the Town’, Monitor, 30 March 1833, 2. 29 30

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others were skilled craftsmen), they were bureaucratically a distinctive group (by virtue of their assisted passage) and definitionally (nearly) all from the labouring classes (as mandated by the criteria for receiving an assisted passage). Consequently, they were condemned en masse. The complaints about them tended to fall into two broad categories: their presumed immorality and their perceived unsuitability as workers. Rhetoric in the public sphere both derided the immigrants and described the type of people colonial commentators wished Britain would send instead. Much of the language focused on the immigrants’ economic function: colonial employers wanted skilled, productive, loyal, obedient workers as opposed to the idle, worthless, and indolent labourers they claimed to have received (see Chap. 4). At the same time, the language constructed a standard of morality for New South Wales, a standard that immigrants allegedly failed to meet (see Chap. 5). Who, exactly, was condemning the immigrants in this way? Throughout this book, the term ‘colonial elite’ will be used to describe the immigrants’ opponents. This is, admittedly, an imprecise term that encompasses more than one distinct group and that describes a faction whose composition shifted over time. At their core, the Ripon Regulations connected land to labour, and, accordingly, the most vocal critics of the labour brought by the new system were those with an interest in land: namely, pastoralists. These were men who possessed the requisite wealth and ambition to enter into large-scale enterprise;33 in other words, they were capitalists. In fact, aside from newspaper editors, discernible middle-class voices (professionals, shop owners, etc.) were largely absent from public critiques of the assisted immigrants. At the announcement of the new policies, the coterie who criticised the assisted immigrants was primarily composed of established wealthy colonists who had reaped the full benefits of land grants and convict labour and had risen to the top of the colony’s social hierarchy. Later referred to in the press as ‘old settlers’, these men may have come to the colony as soldiers or military officers, as in the cases of John Jamison and John Macarthur, the father of pastoralism in New South Wales. An old settler may have been a younger son of a family of some rank back in Britain, but even more likely, his father was probably involved in some prosaic occupation that would prevent the son from rising to the highest levels of British 33  And since I use the public sphere to access the views of the elite, it is primarily men who are discussed here. Traces of elite women in my sources are rare.

1  INTRODUCTION 11

society (so the son came to New South Wales to make his ‘fortune’). For example, prominent merchant A. B. Spark’s father was a watchmaker in Scotland.34 Though some of this group may have focused on landholding and others on trade, there was no clear division between landowner and merchant at this time, as most merchants also held land. Furthermore, it was a fairly small group; in 1821, around 80 men held 60 per cent of the land.35 Even though they were at the highest rung of the social ladder in the colony, the status of these large landowners would not have transferred back to Britain. Lacking aristocratic bloodlines, their assumed high social status was based on their wealth (and lack of convict past), and, therefore, they would, at best, equate to the British middle classes. Even here, however, they were deficient. Historian Bill Rubinstein examined probate records of the wealthiest individuals throughout the 1830s and 1840s and found that the rich in the colony were actually quite poor when compared to the most successful of Britain’s bourgeoisie. In New South Wales, total assets worth ten thousand pounds would place one among the 50 wealthiest individuals, whereas the richest businessmen in England had net worth approaching five million pounds.36 Not only did they lack absolute wealth when compared to elite Britons, but they also lacked the corresponding respect. Although the colonial elite condemned the assisted immigrants, in the British public sphere, it was they who were regularly denigrated. In describing the settlers of New South Wales, the London newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, concluded that ‘a number of them [were] indescribable adventurers, from about the twentieth rank in England. They came [to New South Wales] … to eat and drink, not to refine … but to starve their minds’.37 Nevertheless, the old settlers did resemble the British aristocracy in one important way: their position within the legal apparatus of the colony. Since the colony had no aristocracy of its own, these men served as magistrates, as masters to convicts in need of moral reform, and

34  Biographical information on the elite cited here is from Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au. 35  R.  W. Connell and T.  H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History: Poverty and Progress, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992), 57–60. 36  Bill Rubinstein, ‘The Top Wealth-Holders of New South Wales in 1830–44’, Push from the Bush, no. 8 (December 1980): 23–49. 37  Reprinted in ‘Australasia’, Gazette, 27 March 1830, 3. As we will see, wealthy colonists were well aware of the low esteem in which they were held.

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(for a select few) as Legislative Council members.38 These men saw themselves as the leaders of the colony and felt it their role to make judgements in its best interests. As the first decade under the Ripon Regulations progressed, the old settlers were joined by a wave of unassisted immigrants, the precarious middle classes Wakefield aimed to bolster. These men of small capital were lured to the colony by the promises of Wakefield’s theories: a soon-to-be properly functioning labour market that would allow for productive use of capital. While some unassisted immigrants certainly came to the colony seeking professional success,39 we once again focus on those with an interest in land and who consequently would need the labour of the assisted immigrants. At times, the newly arrived men of small capital purchased land according to the new regulations (as in the cases of Wesleyan lay preacher James Robinson and James Maxwell’s father, a retired military officer),40 but, at other times, they achieved access to land by engaging in the growing practice of ‘squatting’ (as in the cases of Thomas Tourle and surveyor Hugh Hamilton).41 In any case, they came to New South Wales seeking financial success and social prestige. These goals occasionally brought them into conflict with the old settlers, as we will see, but both groups were aligned in their disdain for the assisted immigrants. Employing a category of ‘elite’ runs several risks. First, it can create the impression that it was an homogenous group holding one shared outlook for the colony, which, of course, it was not.42 Secondly, relying on this category might create the impression that it was stable and uncontested. In reality, there was much social fluidity—and even upward mobility—in

38  I am grateful to my former colleague at Macquarie University, Michael Nicholls, for engaging me in a lively debate on these points. Bolton also agreed that the line between ‘aristocracy’ and ‘gentry’ (my ‘elite’) was blurred in the colonies. G. C. Bolton, ‘The Idea of a Colonial Gentry’, Historical Studies 13, no. 51 (1968): 307–28. 39  For example, Thomas Callaghan came to practise law, and Samuel Rawson was trained as a surveyor, but turned to sheep farming once he realised how little government surveyors were paid. Thomas Callaghan, Diaries, 1838–1845, MLMSS 2112, ML; Samuel Rawson, Family Papers 1836–1877, MS 1029, NLA. 40  James Robinson, Papers, 1822–ca. 1868, MLMSS 1533, ML; J.  A. Maxwell, Letter, 1840 Sept. 21, MS 9344, NLA. 41  Squatting will be discussed further in Chap. 4. Thomas Tourle, Letter Books, 1839–1845, MS 18, NLA; Hugh Hamilton, Diaries and Memoirs 1841–ca. 1882, MS 956, NLA. 42  Their political differences will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 3.

1  INTRODUCTION 13

the early days of the colony.43 It was a social environment in which even a select few former convicts could become very rich (e.g. Simeon Lord, Robert Cooper). It was an environment in which new arrivals were completely unknown, their backgrounds only verified through letters of introduction from ‘respectable’ men back in Britain. And, it was an environment in which even those who thought themselves ‘elite’ ‘bore the secret, uneasy awareness that their claims to social merit were in one way or another suspect’.44 Assisted immigration heightened these insecurities as the policy not only brought in a new group of labourers but also spurred a burst of unassisted immigration. The colony had to negotiate new social questions. Where did these unassisted immigrants with capital fit? How should these free workers be treated? The same as convicts? Differently? An already unstable social hierarchy had to incorporate new pieces at several levels. Nevertheless, though the composition of my ‘elite’ and the terminology used to describe various subgroups shifted over time and according to context,45 the groups I call the ‘colonial elite’ shared an interest in land, a reliance on assisted immigrant labour, and a presumption of social prestige. In short, I view my ‘elite’ much as historian Penny Russell defined her ‘society’: a ‘vast network of indeterminate focus but powerful belief in its own superiority’.46 Furthermore, as I will argue throughout, they were united by the goal of achieving a social stability as yet absent from the colony and ensuring that the resultant hierarchy placed themselves firmly at the top.

43  Russell’s work highlighted the insecurity of colonial social status in the early nineteenthcentury. For example, see Penny Russell, Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010). 44  Penny Russell, ‘The Brash Colonial: Class and Comportment in Nineteenth-Century Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (2002): 435. 45  At various points in this book, the ‘elite’ are more specifically referred to as ‘employers’, a term that slowly replaced ‘master’ as free labour replaced convict. The old settlers are, at times, described as ‘large landowners’ and ‘exclusives’ (see Chap. 3 for the latter). Similarly, unassisted immigrants were often referred to in the press as ‘men of small capital’ and formed a sizable portion of the ‘squatters’. All of these fall under the umbrella of ‘elite’ as I use the term. 46  Penny Russell, A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 12.

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Challenging the Negative Perception The earliest historians to examine assisted emigration to New South Wales primarily focused on migration as a policy with the migrants themselves ancillary to the works.47 R.  B. Madgwick’s Immigration into Eastern Australia was the first to give appreciable attention to the response to the migrants.48 Though, at times, Madgwick was willing to grant the migrants some benefit of the doubt (‘care must be taken to refrain from a general condemnation of these people simply on the ground that they were destitute … the emigrants’ greatest vice may have been their poverty’),49 on the whole, he endorsed the negative view of the colonial elite. He proclaimed that the assisted migrants ‘were hardly likely to have been imbued with any particular ambition, skill, capabilities or enthusiasm’ and that a ‘lack of initiative was the chief failing of the typical assisted immigrant’.50 As Madgwick’s became the most frequently cited of these early histories, such assessments were thereafter repeated both in works focusing on migration and in more general histories, often as casual statements of fact. In one instance, the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Colonial Office administrator T. F. Elliot stated that ‘the first migrants thus assisted were most unsatisfactory’.51 Before the advent of ‘history from below’, historians uncritically relied on sources that reflected the views of the social elite, thereby perpetuating the negative impression of the assisted immigrants. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were some early attempts to reassess the long-presumed ‘poor quality’ of the assisted immigrants. Robert Shultz’s PhD thesis used sources beyond the usual government despatches and reports, turning to shipping rolls for actual data about immigrant

47   Richard Charles Mills, The Colonization of Australia (1829–42): The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building (1915; repr., London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1968); Fred H.  Hitchins, The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931); Peter Burroughs, Britain and Australia, 1831–1855: A Study in Imperial Relations and Crown Lands Administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). 48  R. B. Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia, 1788–1851 (London: Longmans, Green, 1937). 49  Ibid., 215. 50  Ibid., 149, 250. 51  Albert A.  Hayden, ‘Elliot, Thomas Frederick (1808–1880)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/elliot-thomas-frederick-2022/text2487 (accessed online 15 July 2016).

1  INTRODUCTION 15

‘quality’.52 Other historians examined particular groups of immigrants: Scots, the Irish, and single women.53 These studies were at least willing to test the common assertion that the assisted immigrants were unworthy. Still, they stopped short of completely overturning the unfavourable impression of the immigrants. Shultz reinforced the claim of the colonial elite that bounty immigrants (brought out by private shippers) were better than immigrants brought out by the British government (albeit only ‘marginally’ better, he hedged).54 David Macmillan argued that the Scots were ‘better’ immigrants than the English and Irish, thereby implicitly supporting the negative assessment of the majority of the immigrants. In his re-­ examination of single female migrants, Jim Hammerton was hesitant to go too far, conceding that there were ‘many justified complaints about unsuitable women’ before concluding that ‘the overall character of the scheme was not harmful’.55 A sweeping reconfiguration would have to wait until a flurry of historical activity on assisted migration in the 1990s and early 2000s.56 This work attempted to repair the migrant reputation through several different avenues. One line of inquiry illuminated the process assisted emigrants had to navigate in order to relocate, such as that negotiated by Henry and Clarinda Parkes. As a result, we now have a rich picture of the logistics involved and how those logistics changed over time as the government honed the process through trial and error. We have a thorough understanding of the recruitment procedures, application processes, necessary 52  Robert J.  Shultz, ‘The Assisted Immigrants, 1837–1850’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1971). 53  Respectively, David S.  Macmillan, Scotland and Australia, 1788–1850: Emigration, Commerce and Investment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Paula Hamilton, ‘“No Irish Need Apply”: Prejudice as a Factor in the Development of Immigration Policy in New South Wales and Victoria, 1840–1870’ (PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 1979); A.  J. Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors”: Female Immigration to Australia, 1832–36’, Historical Studies 16, no. 65 (1975): 539–66. 54  The difference between bounty and ‘government’ immigrants—and the debates surrounding their differential quality—will be explained further in Chap. 2. 55  Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors”’, 548. 56  Initiated by a 1989 workshop held at the Australian National University. The resultant edited collection was the first of seven volumes in the series. Eric Richards, Richard Reid, and David Fitzpatrick, eds, Visible Immigrants: Neglected Sources for the History of Australian Immigration (Canberra: Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1989).

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pre-departure tasks, and the role of philanthropic organisations.57 Over time, the Colonial Office added emigration agents at major ports. Applications required original birth and marriage certificates as well as character references and health certificates. The passage may have been free, but emigrants incurred costs related to closing up their homes; obtaining the clothing, bedding, and utensils required for the voyage; and travelling to the port of embarkation. At times, local charities, employers, landlords, or parochial authorities assisted with these expenses. En route, we now have a sense of the day-to-day routines followed and the monotony of the passage as well as detailed knowledge of the roles of surgeons and matrons on board and of regulations implemented to protect women travelling alone.58 Finally, we know about the very limited support structures to assist immigrants in obtaining employment after arrival.59 A process that required people of limited financial means to obtain character references, pass a health check, assemble the clothing and personal effects required for the voyage, close up their homes with no intention of returning, and make their way to the port of embarkation all to spend  four months on a cramped ship eating monotonous food in order to arrive on the other side of the world with no guarantee that they would find employment or a place to live would not likely be successfully completed (or even undertaken in the first place) by someone with scant ‘ambition, skill, capabilities or enthusiasm’.60 Historians further demonstrated assisted immigrant value to the colony by using passage applications and shipping lists to build a thorough 57  Elizabeth A. Rushen, Single and Free: Female Migration to Australia, 1833–1837 (Kew, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003), chap. 3; Robin Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831–60 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Eric Richards, ‘How Did Poor People Emigrate from the British Isles to Australia in the Nineteenth Century?’ Journal of British Studies 32, no. 3 (1993): 250–79. 58  See Chap. 7 for more on the voyage. Respectively, Andrew Hassam, Sailing to Australia: Shipboard Diaries by Nineteenth-Century British Emigrants (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994); Don Charlwood, The Long Farewell (Ringwood, VIC: Allen Lane, 1981); Janice Gothard, Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001), chaps. 4 and 5; Helen R. Woolcock, Rights of Passage: Emigration to Australia in the Nineteenth Century (London: Tavistock Publications, 1986), chaps. 4 and 5. 59  Elizabeth A.  Rushen and Perry McIntyre, Fair Game: Australia’s First Immigrant Women (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2010), chap. 3; Gothard, Blue China, chaps. 7 and 8. 60  To return to Madgwick’s words. Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia, 250.

1  INTRODUCTION 17

demographic profile of those who arrived via the scheme.61 The typical assisted emigrant to New South Wales was more likely to come from southern, rural counties of England than from more urban or industrial areas.62 Agricultural workers and general labourers were much more likely to go to New South Wales (and Canada), whereas textile workers were overrepresented in the United States, in part because they did not qualify for assistance to the Australian colonies. While Australia was a minor destination within the overall scope of Irish emigration (only five per cent went to Australia), a quarter of Australia’s immigrants were Irish. The emigrant to New South Wales was more likely to travel as a family than alone. This, along with recruitment efforts targeting single women, resulted in a higher representation of women among emigrants headed to Australia in comparison to those destined for the United States.63 Women who came alone were likely to be domestic servants. When including those who could only read along with those who could both read and write, emigrants to New South Wales were highly literate.64 These general trends in the composition of the group were the result of both circumstances in the colony (such as its pre-industrial economy) as well as deliberate policy decisions (e.g. encouraging single women). Based on this information, the new wave of historians concluded that New South Wales received the

61  John McDonald and Eric Richards, ‘Workers for Australia: A Profile of British and Irish Migrants Assisted to New South Wales in 1841’, Journal of the Australian Population Association 15, no. 1 (May 1998): 1–33; John McDonald and Eric Richards, ‘The Great Emigration of 1841: Recruitment for New South Wales in British Emigration Fields’, Population Studies 51, no. 3 (1997): 337–55; Janet L. Doust, ‘English Migrants to Eastern Australia, 1815–1860’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2004); Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor. 62  Characteristics given here shift between describing emigrants to New South Wales and emigrants to the Australian colonies, more generally, based on the data set. Information about the United States and Canada is taken from Charlotte Erickson, Leaving England: Essays on British Emigration in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), chap. 5; Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 3. 63  This higher proportion of women stood in stark contrast to—and, indeed, was intended to counter—the preponderance of men among the convict population. See Chap. 6 for more on the single female immigrants. 64  In his study of bounty immigrants arriving between 1837 and 1850, Shultz found that 64 per cent could read and write, while an additional 21 per cent could read only. Shultz, ‘The Assisted Immigrants, 1837–1850’, appendix I, table XV, 393.

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people it needed; in fact, the colony may have ‘skimmed off’ some of the best available labour in the British Isles.65 Such conclusions were diametrically opposed to the prevalent belief that assisted emigration was merely an exercise in ‘shovelling out the paupers’.66 As such, historians had to argue against nearly a century of Australian migration historiography as well as contemporary concerns in both Britain and the colony; British critics of the scheme claimed the intention was to ‘shovel’, and there was much anxiety in New South Wales that Britain would use assisted emigration to rid itself of its most destitute subjects.67 To argue against such long-standing assumptions, revisionist historians had to more precisely define a nebulous phrase. ‘Shovelling out the paupers’ implied groups of indigent poor transferred directly out of the poor houses and onto emigrant ships with perhaps little say in whether they stayed or went. The research of these historians, however, painted a much different picture on several fronts. The presumption of ‘shovelling’ took root despite the stated intentions and actions of both the government and the theorists who advocated the scheme. The 1826–1827 Select Committee on Emigration advised that emigration should only happen on a voluntary basis and that ‘those in a state of permanent pauperism’ should not be allowed to participate.68 Wakefield also disapproved of turning paupers into emigrants, because he felt they would not provide the colonies with good workers.69 In response to the fears, the Colonial Office repeatedly insisted that it would only send people who would be ‘beneficial’ to the colony.70 To ensure the colony received productive workers, the Colonial Office set strict occupation,  McDonald and Richards, ‘Workers for Australia’, 31.  Those who refuted that characterisation include Elizabeth A.  Rushen and Perry McIntyre, The Merchant’s Women (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2008); Doust, ‘English Migrants to Eastern Australia’; Eric Richards, ‘British Poverty and Australian Immigration in the Nineteenth Century’, in Poor Australian Immigrants in the Nineteenth Century, Eric Richards, ed. (Canberra: Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1991), 1–30; Robin Haines, ‘“Shovelling out Paupers”? Parish-Assisted Emigration from England to Australia, 1834–1947’, in ibid., 31–67. 67  For Britain, see Johnston, British Emimgration Policy, 64. For New South Wales, see Chap. 2. 68  House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, 1826, 4. 69  Wakefield, England and America, 95–106, 218–9. 70  For example, see Elliot to Stephen, 10 July and 29 July 1837, NLA, CO 384:42, PRO 1041. See also Chap. 2. 65 66

1  INTRODUCTION 19

age, and health criteria for prospective emigrants. Not only did these criteria exist, but Robin Haines’s research also found that a vast majority of the eventual recipients of aid did, in fact, meet the requirements.71 If the emigrants met the criteria that were established specifically to prevent the mass transfer of paupers, then, on the whole, the emigrants must not have been paupers, historians concluded. Furthermore, the criteria were not just for show; people were rejected, both during the initial application process and during the pre-embarkation examination by the ship’s surgeon.72 And while there were most certainly examples of dishonest completion of the application,73 emigrant instigation of or, at the very least, complicity in such dishonesty could be interpreted as motivation on the part of the emigrant to leave, as opposed to a passive ‘shovelling out’. The work of migration historians in this period also did much to reveal emigrant agency. The emigrants were not passively ‘shovelled out’; they had to initiate the application process.74 They had to attend a recruitment meeting or, as Henry Parkes did, proactively go to an emigration agent. They could—and did—change their minds. Both Haines and Elizabeth Rushen found evidence of emigrants’ change of heart, which they attributed to finding work in between the submission of the application and the departure of the ship.75 The evidence also points to informed decision-­ making on the part of the emigrants who did leave. In analysing occupation data, both Haines and Charlotte Erickson noted a difference in the types of workers going to the Australian colonies versus the United States.76 Rural workers with agricultural skills were drawn to Australia’s pre-industrial economy over the industrialising economy of the United  Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor, chap. 2.  Haines, ‘“Shovelling out Paupers”?’, in Richards, ed., Poor Australian Immigrants in the Nineteenth Century, 52. 73  For example, Rushen found a curiously high number of precisely 30-year-old women on the ships dedicated to single female emigrants. Thirty just happened to be the upper age limit for single female migration at the time. In letters home from Irish immigrants, Fitzpatrick also found advice on how to manipulate the application process. Rushen, Single and Free, chap. 4; David Fitzpatrick, ‘“Over the Foaming Billows”: The Organisation of Irish Emigration to Australia’, in Richards, Poor Australian Immigrants in the Nineteenth Century, 143. 74  Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor, 14. 75  Rushen, Single and Free, 43; Robin Haines, ‘Indigent Misfits or Shrewd Operators? Government-Assisted Emigrants from the United Kingdom to Australia, 1831–1860’, Population Studies 48, no. 2 (1994): 223–47. 76  Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor, introduction; Erickson, Leaving England, chap. 5. 71 72

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States. Thus, as both historians independently concluded, emigrants to New South Wales were not merely defaulting to the location with free passages; they made informed decisions about the destination best suited to their skills. Far from passive, they were ‘active, enterprising creators of their own destinies who wished to improve their circumstances’.77 The negative view of Australia’s assisted immigrants—both at the outset of the policy and in succeeding historiography—was based upon exaggerated presumptions of who would/did benefit from the scheme. The characterisation of assisted emigration as ‘shovelling out the paupers’ was not entirely fabricated; the government did hope to alleviate pressures on the labour market by relocating large numbers of the working classes, and those people who qualified were, indeed, poor. But, to equate ‘relocating large numbers’ with ‘shovelling’ relied on several fallacious premises. First, this approach ignored the great deal of agency exhibited by the emigrants, agency brought to light by the post-1980s Australian migration historians. Secondly, it morally condemned all varieties of the poor at the same time it belied the range of economic circumstances in which prospective emigrants found themselves. There were many reasons one might slide into poverty, including seasonal work trends, unexpected expenses, decline of one’s industry, and life cycle events (e.g. sickness, widowhood).78 Finally, in presuming the worst about these emigrants, critics dismissed procedures enacted to ensure a good match between the needs of the colony and the emigrants’ pursuit of greater opportunity. ‘Their major crime’, Haines concluded, ‘was that they belonged to a class for whom the visible vagaries of weather and season, in combination with the invisible hand, created an unpredictable life of semi-employment in a transitional era of industrial restructuring, farm rationalisation, and new management techniques’.79 By recovering the intricacies of the application and embarkation processes as well as the agency exerted by the emigrants themselves, Australian migration historians problematised the monolithic impression of assisted emigrants. If the emigrants were not ‘shovelled out’, why did they go? Another strand of investigation focused on emigrant motivations. Most historians who have addressed this question have concluded that ‘income differential

 Rushen and McIntyre, The Merchant’s Women, 61.  King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 120. 79  Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor, 254. 77 78

1  INTRODUCTION 21

was, indeed, [the] most persuasive element in the emigrant calculus’.80 Australia’s assisted immigrants were not destitute, but the threat of poverty in Britain’s economy was very real. Historian Steven King estimated that as much as 70 per cent of the English labouring classes in his sample may have been affected by one or more of the six markers of poverty he examined.81 Facing such pressures, emigrants sought to ‘exchange lives of under-employment at home in an unstable socio-economic environment, for a chance of full employment in the colonies where their labour was in demand’.82 Connected to this was a dissatisfaction with changes underway in Britain. A by-product of industrialisation, farmers’ wages were dropping, and traditional employment and social relationships—employment by the year, boarding on the employers’ property, apprenticeships, the use of the commons, and others—were becoming more rare.83 Confronted with such changes, some emigrants were motivated by ‘a return to the kind of life they believed their British forefathers had enjoyed’.84 As I have argued elsewhere, emigrants likely thought New South Wales might provide that bygone way of life.85 Promotional literature held out the possibilities of access to Australia’s reportedly boundless amounts of land and of the independence that accompanied steady employment at fair wages. No matter the specific motivation, though, emigrants were undoubtedly simply seeking a better life.

 Richards, Britannia’s Children, 149.  Those markers were receiving outdoor poor relief, receiving charitable support, having one’s goods seized, being in arrears with one’s rent, living in low-rent housing, or being excluded from paying any taxes. King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 115. 82  Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor, 17. 83  David Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 338–9. 84  J.  M. Powell, Mirrors of the New World: Images and Image-Makers in the Settlement Process (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), chap. 2. 85  Melanie Burkett, ‘Clashing Goals: Government and Personal Objectives for Assisted Emigration to Early Nineteenth-Century New South Wales’, Melbourne Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2016): 57–73. 80 81

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Deconstructing the Negative Perception Since the early 2000s, Australian migration historiography has flourished, though it has shifted away from the earliest assisted immigrants.86 The focus has largely turned to the twentieth century which saw the implementation and gradual demise of the White Australia policy, the imperative of ‘populate or perish’ following World War II, the move to multiculturalism, and continuing controversies over refugee policy.87 Recent work has been influenced by the linguistic turn and the growth of cultural history with examinations of the language used to describe immigrants and refugees, the adaptation and assimilation of various diasporic communities, and immigrants’ place in popular memory.88 In light of these developments, Australia’s earliest assisted immigrants need revisited. The net result of the extensive work on this group completed in the 1990s and early 2000s was the general refutation of the negative impression assisted immigrants elicited in their own time. The immigrants discovered in these histories were not the lazy, immoral paupers they were so often thought to be. But, a lingering problem remained and still remains: explaining the ‘tension between the positive characterisations of the immigrants as human capital offered by the new school of historians, as against the loudly negative perceptions of immigrants uttered by so many colonial employers and contemporaries’.89 This is where Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants steps in. This book focuses on that unexplained tension by using perspectives from cultural history to 86  For an overview of recent work, see Ruth Balint and Zora Simic, ‘Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 3 (2018): 378–409. 87  To provide just one work on each topic, see respectively, Gwenda Tavan, The Long, Slow Death of White Australia (Melbourne: Scribe, 2005); Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017); Zoe Anderson, ‘Reading “Multiculturalism”: A Historiography of Policy and Ideal in Australia’, History Compass 11, no. 11 (2013): 905–17; Claire Higgins, Asylum by Boat: Origins of Australia’s Refugee Policy (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017). 88  For example, see Michelle Peterie, ‘“These Few Small Boats”: Representations of Asylum Seekers During Australia’s 1977 and 2001 Elections’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 4 (2016): 433–47; Alexandra Dellios and Eureka Henrich, eds, Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage: Beyond and between Borders (New York: Routledge, 2020); Kate DarianSmith and Paula Hamilton, eds, Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 89  Robin Haines, Margrette Kleinig, Deborah Oxley, and Eric Richards, ‘Migration and Opportunity: An Antipodean Perspective’, International Review of Social History 43, no. 2 (1998): 262.

1  INTRODUCTION 23

critique the varied forces that resulted in the denigration of assisted immigrants. The insults hurled at the immigrants reflected major pressure points in society. How the colonial elite viewed these new arrivals revealed much about how the elite viewed themselves and their role in the colony. The perception of these immigrants expressed deeply held beliefs about class and gender. The new land and immigration policies initiated a transformation in the colony; the immigrants themselves were caught up in debates over how that transformation would unfold. The practice of assisted emigration was instigated and implemented in London, and thus negative impressions of assisted immigrants disclosed colonial-imperial discord. The social friction between elite and immigrant was not isolated; it was emblematic of and directly impacted on the societal transformation underway. These themes need to be interrogated in order to understand this period of transformation and its legacy of antagonism towards immigrants. This is not an exhaustive quantitative study; much of that work has been done by Haines, Richards, Shultz, and others. Instead, colonial public rhetoric about immigration is scrutinised for its explicit content, the intention behind it, and its implications. The examination begins in 1830, the year before the new policies were announced and two years before the first immigrants sponsored by the scheme arrived. This launching point, a time when the colonial elite were clamouring for immigration, gives us a baseline from which to track changes in attitudes once abstract desires were translated into concrete policies. This study ends in 1842, when economic crisis put a temporary halt to assisted immigration. Both assisted immigration and the negative impressions of the immigrants brought by the various schemes continued well into the twentieth century. By focusing on the first decade, we chart the origin story of both policy and condemnation. This study differs from the existing historiography in another significant way: I am not attempting to evaluate whether the immigrants were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for the colony. In so forcefully arguing that the assisted immigrants were not paupers, revisionist historians of the 1990s and 2000s implied that if the immigrants had been paupers, elite complaints would have been justified. They re-evaluated a group of powerless people, but continued to use the categories/criteria/definitions set by the powerful. They rescued the reputation of the assisted immigrants while implicitly denigrating the people the immigrants had been thought to be. I instead aim to problematise the very concept of ‘quality’ by uncovering the

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arbitrary and often contradictory ways in which the criteria for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigrants were constructed. To do this, I examine colonial public rhetoric about immigration and immigrants, rhetoric that was never completely uniform, but remarkably consistent in its general deprecation of the immigrants as a group. In doing so, I unquestionably privilege the voices of the colonial elite; however, this is necessary, as it was their voices that created this image of the degenerate, incompetent immigrant in the first place and it was their voices repeated in migration historiography for so long. Unlike the early historiography, I do not accept these voices uncritically. I interrogate the origins of these negative narratives and question whom they served. I access these voices via the public sphere, the principle site for political discussion given that 1830s New South Wales had no elected representation of any kind. These discussions took place in many different forms. Elite colonists expressed their opinions through published books and pamphlets, often intended for distribution in both the colony and England.90 Public meetings provided the space for debate as well as the adoption of public petitions to the colonial and imperial governments. And, of course, the key site for political expression was the colonial press, which proliferated and diversified throughout the 1830s after a decade of contentious relationships with the colonial government in the 1820s.91 The major newspapers routinely disagreed with—and even insulted—each other, but all (with the exception of the Australasian Chronicle) were antagonistic towards the assisted immigrants, as we will see.92 These public voices are supplemented by government correspondence (between the colonial governor and the Colonial Office in London) and government reports (from committees and migration agents in both 90  See, for example, James Macarthur, New South Wales; Its Present State and Future Prospects: Being a Statement, with Documentary Evidence Submitted in Support of Petitions to His Majesty and Parliament (London: D.  Walther, 1837); Lang, Transportation and Colonization; Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be. 91  For background on the development of the New South Wales press, see Denis Cryle, ed., Disreputable Profession: Journalists and Journalism in Colonial Australia (Rockhampton, QLD: Central Queensland University Press, 1997); David Webster, ‘Terminology, Hegemony and the Sydney Press, 1838’, Push from the Bush, no. 10 (September 1981): 31–46; Alan Atkinson, ‘A Slice of the Sydney Press’, Push from the Bush, no. 1 (May 1978): 82–99; R. B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976). 92  In the notes throughout this book, I have deliberately selected articles from a breadth of newspapers to demonstrate the consensus that existed.

1  INTRODUCTION 25

locations). As assisted migration was a government-driven policy, these government records all help create context for the public discussions of the new policy. What goals did the Colonial Office hope to achieve in implementing the policy? Were colonial anxieties justified? To what extent were government officials influenced by public rhetoric? Though this book is a critique of elite rhetoric, the voices of the immigrants themselves have an important role to play, as well. The immigrants were both aware of and reacted to the aspersions cast on them. Their objections to these condemnations—sometimes made privately, sometimes publicly—formed a counternarrative to the elite view, a counternarrative that was doubly ignored. First, the elite themselves overlooked, dismissed, and attempted to discredit immigrant voices, revealing the lengths to which they were willing to go to bolster their superior social position (see Chap. 7). Early historians also ignored the immigrant perspective, and because they did so, they were able to accept uncritically the colonial elite’s negative impressions. Unearthing this counternarrative both delegitimises the prevailing elite assessment of the immigrants and demonstrates the power of the elite rhetoric that, in the end, superseded immigrant voices in the historiography. In order to highlight these competing discourses, this study supplements the public judgements of immigrants with their personal reactions to their new home as recorded in diaries and letters, both letters home and letters to the local press. Working-class diaries and letters are rare (15 such sources are consulted here),93 but luckily, we can find some traces of the immigrant voice in other sources: letters to the editors of colonial newspapers. I found over 50 letters to the editor seemingly written by assisted immigrants, letters that both relayed and sought to legitimise the immigrants’ experiences. In this way, to create their counternarrative, the immigrants turned to the very same tools of the public sphere used by the elite. The immigrants were not silent; we just have to seek out their voices. *** As this book will show, the answer to a seemingly narrow question—why were the earliest assisted immigrants judged so negatively?—is complicated and requires multiple layers of analysis. Traditionally, the assisted  Eric Richards, ‘Annals of the Australian Immigrant’, in Richards, Reid, and Fitzpatrick, 19.

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migration of the 1830s and 1840s has been studied according to a singular approach. Political historians have examined assisted migration as policy, economic historians have viewed the immigrants as inputs into a developing labour market, and social historians have both compiled a demographic profile of migrants and uncovered key aspects of the migrant experience. But the answer to the question, as this book argues, is found neither within the bounds of a political or economic history nor in a solely social or cultural analysis. Rather, the answer lies in a tangle of political, economic, and cultural factors that overlapped and reinforced each other. We must use multiple analytical perspectives to construct a comprehensive view of the ways in which assisted immigration impacted the sociocultural development of the colony. It is an approach with the potential to reveal much about the cultural development of other settler colonies dependent on immigration, as well. There is much ground to cover. The first half of the book takes a political and economic orientation. Chapters 2 and 3 argue that the denigration of the assisted immigrants was, in part, a political strategy to resist British control of colonial affairs. Chapter 2 focuses on the implementation of assisted migration itself, while Chap. 3 explores the relationship of migration to two other major issues of the day: representative government and the end of convict transportation. Chapter 4 examines the colony’s transition from an economy based on forced, convict labour to an economy based on free labour and the conflicts that transition created between employers and workers/immigrants. The second half of the book assumes a cultural perspective, analysing constructions of class and gender (Chaps. 5 and 6, respectively). Because understandings of morality, ‘respectability’, and acceptable femininity were inherently classed, the working-class immigrants were held to a standard they could not fulfil. Finally, in Chap. 7, we shift to the immigrants’ perspective, exploring the hardships experienced during migration as well as the rhetorical manoeuvres used by the elite to overlook, dismiss, and discredit those hardships. The thread that connects these various aspects is control. In deploying such negative rhetoric against the assisted immigrants, the colonial elite sought control of what they saw as their land, their money, their workforce. They also wanted to control the determinants of respectability and status. They aimed to control, at one level, who would be physically

1  INTRODUCTION 27

permitted to enter their community and, at another, who would be socially accepted. They sought to establish a social, political, and economic hierarchy with themselves at the top supported by a cheap, obedient labour force. Ultimately, this is a study of the ways in which a would-be hegemonic group delegitimised and marginalised another group—and why.

CHAPTER 2

Collateral Damage in a Political Game

In July 1830, the Sydney Gazette printed a letter that declared, ‘We have room here for thousands and ten thousands of people; the Colony is full of abundance, and we want nothing but more hands to work’.1 Less than a year later, Viscount Goderich, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, announced new policies that would seemingly give the colony just that—‘more hands to work’—by ending land grants, selling all colonial land at auction, and using the proceeds to pay the passages of labourers who wished to emigrate. The changes, however, did not receive the approbation Goderich might have anticipated. The announcement of the new regulations caused an uproar. The Sydney Herald claimed that the ‘obnoxious Land Regulations’ (as it dubbed them) were ‘at total variances with good sense and propriety’.2 The colonial elite recognised that labourers would require assistance to make the expensive journey, but they wanted Britain to pay. They had not imagined that working-class immigration would come at the expense of their land grants. Thus, because it was tied to land, the launch of assisted migration set off a political tussle between the colonial elite and the British government. 1  The letter was purportedly from ‘a gentleman in Sydney’ to his friend in England, but appears to have been a propaganda piece. ‘On the Comfort and Happiness of the Labouring Classes in the Colony of New South Wales, Compared with the Same Class in Great Britain’, Gazette, 13 July 1830, 3. 2  Quotations respectively from Herald, 1 January 1832, 2; Herald, 17 September 1832, 2.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_2

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Elite dissatisfaction with the Ripon Regulations often manifested in complaints over the ‘quality’ of the immigrants themselves. Rather than accurately reflecting immigrants’ fitness for the colony, however, complaints about them were a tactic employed to resist the Colonial Office, as this chapter argues. Voices in the public sphere clamoured for colonial control of both the funds generated by land sales and the selection of the emigrants. That the colony received ‘unsuitable’ people was cited as proof that the Colonial Office could not be trusted with the vital task of selection. The Colonial Office attempted to address some of the complaints, refining processes and selection criteria over time. Regardless of the improvements made, colonial ire grew. The colonial elite could not be satisfied, because they did not want the Colonial Office controlling the scheme at all. As we will see, the exaggerated and contradictory nature of their complaints betrayed this ulterior motive. The choice of this tactic of resistance—denigrating the ‘quality’ of the immigrants themselves—must be understood within the larger social context: a precarious, self-made social hierarchy. Great insecurity surrounded the legitimacy of that hierarchy in the eyes of the home elite. No matter how ‘respectable’ a colonist might be in New South Wales, he could not claim to be part of the upper echelons of British society, especially given the colony’s lowly penal origins. The colonial elite knew this; they knew that the acceptance and approval from home they so desperately craved most likely would not come.3 Traces of this unacknowledged discomfort surfaced again and again in the colonial elite’s battle of words with the Colonial Office. The elite repeatedly assumed the colony would be exploited by the Colonial Office (through, e.g. the sending of ‘improper’ immigrants) and asserted their worthiness by claiming they had better judgement than the men in Britain whom Goderich and his successors trusted to execute the scheme. The pursuit of social status became entwined with the political battle over migration. The perceived worth of the assisted immigrants themselves was the collateral damage.

3  Penny Russell, ‘The Brash Colonial: Class and Comportment in Nineteenth-Century Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (2002): 435.

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Immediate Opposition to the New Policies Before the Ripon Regulations were announced, the need for ‘more hands to work’ was believed to be so great that the colonial press was even willing to welcome the most destitute of the British population: ‘Let the workhouses and gaols disgorge their squalid inmates upon our shores, and the heart-broken pauper and the abandoned profligate shall be converted into honest, industrious, and jolly-faced yeomen’.4 Calls for ‘disgorging’ ran counter to later fears that parishes would ‘shovel out the paupers’. At this early date, however, the press presented the colony as the solution to Britain’s ‘redundant’ population, as the Mother Country’s saviour.5 ‘Emigration’, the Australian wrote, ‘would be a far greater mercy to dispose of the thousands that prowl through the streets of London and every part of the United Kingdom without employment … rather than … letting them starve at Home’.6 A year later, as land sales were about to commence, the same paper shifted, warning that ‘we shall run a very great risk of being deluged with infirm and useless paupers’.7 The abrupt change in tone hinged on one key factor: who would pay. From the British perspective, there was never any question that the colony would pay. As we have seen, the 1826–1827 House of Commons Select Committee on Emigration supported emigration but hesitated to use national funds for that purpose. It did, however, note the colonial need for labour and assumed the colonies would be willing to pay for the immigration to fill that need.8 As he announced the new policies, Goderich doubted land sales would generate any significant revenue immediately, so he also proposed two other potential sources of funding for migration: a tax on convict labourers and advances from employers themselves (neither of which was ever systematically implemented).9 None of these funding sources originated in Britain; all involved colonial support. In New South Wales, though the colonial press deemed immigration the ‘life-blood of a new Country’ and ‘a chief source of our wealth and

 ‘Advantages of Emigrating to New South Wales’, Gazette, 22 May 1830, 2.  For more on this theme, see Chap. 5. 6  The Australian, 22 April 1831, 2. 7  The Australian, 30 March 1832, 2. 8  House of Commons, ‘Third Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom’, HCPP, 1826–7, 550, vol. 5, V.223, 37. 9  Goderich to Darling, 23 January 1831, Despatches to the Governor, A1268 CY 905, ML. 4 5

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prosperity’,10 the willingness to pay was not as keen as the Select Committee had presumed.11 According to colonial public opinion, the funds should come from Britain, either from Parliament, parishes, or British landowners.12 Furthermore, not only would the implementation of land sales transfer colonial wealth to Britain, but it would also presumably remove the main incentive—land grants—for the emigration of men with capital. In essence, the colonial elite bemoaned, the scheme would effectively send large amounts of capital out of the colony at the same time it discouraged new capital from arriving.13 Once it became clear that the colony would foot the bill, concerns over immigrant ‘quality’ quickly surfaced. In July 1831, just as Goderich’s intentions were becoming known, Colonial Secretary Alexander McLeay sent out a survey to many prominent landowners to determine how many immigrant labourers each region might be able to employ and how much of the passage money employers would be willing to pay.14 There was much interest in hiring immigrant labourers, but about half of the 30 surviving letters explicitly indicated a disinclination or inability to contribute to labourers’ passages.15 Concerns over immigrant ‘quality’ were part of the rationale. One of the founders of the Bank of New South Wales (the first bank in Australia), Sir John Jamison, claimed the settlers in his region were ‘too poor’ to pay part of the passage for and give wages to ‘the idle worthless class of parish paupers’. Likewise, agricultural author James Atkinson cheekily expressed the ‘utmost anxiety over selection’, concerned that the colony would receive ‘incompetent or uninterested persons … worthless characters … the parish officers, for instance’. Earlier sympathetic calls to help the distressed evaporated. Moreover, Atkinson’s slight directed at the parish officers contained a hint of defensiveness; Atkinson asserted his own status by mocking officers of standing at home. 10  Respectively, The Australian, 2 August 1830, 2; ‘The New Land Regulations’, Monitor, 7 September 1831, 2. 11  The Australian, 28 July 1831, 2; Herald, 29 August 1831, 2. 12  ‘Paucity of Females in New South Wales  – Plan to Produce a Moral Equality’, The Australian, 28 April 1830, 2; Gazette, 30 December 1830, 2; Herald, 19 September 1831, 2. 13  Herald, 19 September 1831, 2; Cultor [pseud.], ‘Mr. Robert Gouger’, Gazette, 8 October 1831, 3. 14  Alexander McLeay, Circular, 18 July 1831, enclosure to Darling to Goderich, 10 September 1831, Governor’s Despatches, A1209 CY 542, ML. 15  SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS906, Special Bundles 1826+, Pauper Immigration, 1831–32, reel 2278.

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One response to the insult of being forced to pay for ‘paupers’ was to assert the colony’s worth. In November 1831, a ‘Committee on Land’, including wool patriarch John Macarthur, composed a petition to the King, requesting the new regulations be reversed.16 The petition asserted that land was best used as an inducement for men of capital to emigrate, rather than as a source of revenue. It also stressed the colony’s value to Britain. New South Wales, the writers argued, produced raw materials for Britain’s industry, consumed Britain’s manufactured goods, provided employment for its convicts, generated business opportunities for its shipping industry, and potentially could serve as a site for the emigration of its surplus population. In asserting the colony’s contribution to the Empire, the petitioners implied that the new regulations were unfair and the colony deserved better treatment. No immigrants had yet arrived, but the patterns of response were established. Differing opinions on what the colony wanted and would be willing to accept led to colonial resentment of home government policies and exacerbated colonial insecurities over the colony’s value in the eyes of the Colonial Office. Furthermore, once it became clear that the colony would have to pay for immigration, concerns about the morality and usefulness of the labourers became more prominent, suggesting that those concerns were less than sincere. These presumptions of the immigrants’ poor character created a bias that would be hard for the immigrants themselves to overcome.

Shunned on Arrival The stage was set for assisted migration to commence. In July 1831, Goderich convened a six-man commission to help establish a logistical structure for emigration generally and disseminate information about various colonial destinations.17 There was interest in emigration to Australia among the working classes, the Commission reported a few months later, but they could not afford to contribute to the cost of the voyage.18 As no money was yet available from New South Wales, the Treasury approved an

 ‘To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty’, Monitor, 16 November 1831, 3.  Goderich to the Commissioners, 1 July 1831, CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML. 18  Commissioners to Goderich, 24 September 1831, CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML. 16 17

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advance of 10,000 pounds out of future colonial land sales.19 The Commission also set the initial criteria to qualify for an assisted passage to the Australian colonies. Only married ‘mechanics’ (i.e. tradesmen) were allowed, and the application required a statement from an overseer or ‘respectable Housekeeper’ certifying that the applicant was ‘capable of earning his Livelihood by Labour’.20 Those unable to work were ineligible. With the Treasury advance and these initial criteria, 103 families emigrated to New South Wales in the early months of 1832.21 Goderich did not stop at mechanics, however. He quickly shifted his focus to the sex imbalance in New South Wales, an issue for many colonies but particularly for a penal colony given the disproportion of the sexes among the convicts.22 An imbalance of the sexes was thought to cause all manner of sins, from prostitution to drunkenness. Using the aforementioned 10,000 pound advance, the Commission arranged a ship of unemployed female agricultural workers from Ireland.23 Carrying 217 single women, the Red Rover arrived on 10 August 1832, to an initially positive reception.24 The Sydney Monitor deemed many of the immigrants ‘most respectable’ and concluded that Goderich had done the colony a favour.25 While the Red Rover sailed, arrangements for further emigration continued. New South Wales Governor Richard Bourke informed the Colonial Office that, based on early land sales, he estimated the colony would be able to contribute 10,000 pounds towards immigration for each of the next three years.26 With this news, Goderich approved additional single 19  Stewart to Howick, 27 September 1831, enclosure 4 to no. 7 in House of Commons, Return to an Address to His Majesty, Dated 14 September 1831;  – Copies of the Royal Instructions to the Governors of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Western Australia, as to the Mode to Be Adopted in Disposing of Crown Lands; Together with Such Parts of Any Despatches Addressed to Them as Relate to the Same Subject, or to the Means by Which Emigration May Be Facilitated, 13 October 1831, in CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML. 20  ‘Form to be Filled Up and Returned to the Colonial Office’, enclosure 3 to no. 9 in ibid. 21  Most travelled on merchant ships with the government reimbursing their passage. House of Commons, Emigration: Report of Commissioners, 1832, in CO 384:27, PRO 4101, ML. 22  Howick to Stewart, 16 July 1831, enclosure 1 to no. 7 in House of Commons, Return to an Address to His Majesty, 1831. 23  Goderich to Bourke, 28 September 1831, reprinted as no. 7 in ibid. 24  For an in-depth discussion of the women aboard this ship, see Elizabeth A. Rushen and Perry McIntyre, Fair Game: Australia’s First Immigrant Women (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2010). 25  ‘The Free Females by the Red Rover’, Monitor, 15 August 1832, 2. 26  Bourke to Goderich, 27 February 1832, Governor’s Despatches, A1210 CY 543, ML.

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female ships, resulting in eight more ships to the colony during the next five years.27 When the next two ships arrived in 1833, the negative tone so prominent after the announcement of the Ripon Regulations quickly resurfaced. The character of the single female immigrants was relentlessly attacked. The Monitor claimed that single female immigration amounted to an annual ‘importation of several hundred women, almost all drunkards and prostitutes, and certainly all thieves’.28 What had changed? The decision to send single women was made entirely by the Colonial Office; it was never a preoccupation among the colonial elite.29 Goderich had focused on one particular outcome: improving morality by addressing the sex imbalance. The colonial elite, meanwhile, had a different priority: labour. The need for labour was growing and would continue to grow throughout the decade in accordance with the growth of the pastoral industry.30 In response, the Colonial Office expanded the list of permissible occupations to include agricultural labourers.31 However, the highly visible single female ships, with more than 200 women arriving at once, overshadowed the intermittent arrival of male labourers on various merchant ships, so much so that it appeared no labourers were sent.32 In an August 1834 public meeting, colonial son and statesmen William Charles Wentworth claimed that the land fund had only been used to bring single women to the colony.33 In fact, nearly 1000 assisted immigrants, including over 300 labouring men, arrived in addition to the single women in 1832 and 1833.34 Regardless, it appeared to the colonial elite that the Colonial 27  Single female immigration will be discussed in detail in Chap. 6. Forster to Goderich, 23 May 1832, CO 384:30, PRO 4101, ML. 28  ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 22 May 1833, 2. 29  A conclusion also reached by both Doust and Gothard. Janet L.  Doust, ‘English Migrants to Eastern Australia, 1815–1860’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2004), 125; Janice Gothard, Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 9. 30  For a discussion of the growing urgency for labour, see Chap. 4. 31   ‘Form for Agriculturalists or Labourers Desirous of Receiving an Advance from Government in Aid of Their Means of Emigrating to New South Wales’, 1834, PAM 83–508, ML. 32  Gazette, 18 May 1833, 2; E. S. Hall, ‘To H. L. Bulwer, Esq. M. P.’, Monitor, 18 February 1834, 2. 33  ‘Public Meeting’, Gazette, 30 August 1834, 2. 34  Bourke to Stanley, 6 December 1833, reprinted as no. 15  in House of Commons, ‘Emigration. Correspondence Respecting Emigration, and Disposal of Crown Lands;–Also,

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Office was ignoring the colony’s needs. To protest Britain’s indifference to those needs, colonial commentators attacked the morality of the women.

Colonial Desire for Control The colonial elite could have argued for more male labourers without denigrating the character of the women. Nevertheless, the morality of the single female immigrants was a major focus of the complaints, in part because gender norms made it so easy to question women’s virtue (see Chap. 6). The focus on morality was also a way to resist Colonial Office control of migration. According to colonial logic, the poor quality of immigrants was due to poor selection on the part of Colonial Office authorities.35 The problem was not that there were no good candidates, only that the Colonial Office was not sending them. The Australian demanded, ‘Let them send in future those only who are likely to be useful—not those whose sole recommendation is that they are a burthen and a trouble where they are’.36 The same article went on to insist that both parties could benefit from assisted migration as ‘England may still relieve herself of a pressure of population, even if she complies with our wishes and pays attention to our rights’, a statement that suggested that the Colonial Office was, in fact, ignoring the colony’s ‘rights’. The Gazette implied a motive more nefarious than mere inattention to the colony’s desires: ‘It was never obviously … the plain wish of the … agents, to seek for quality’.37 Poor selection was seen as a deliberate act of sabotage. The colonial sense of defensiveness re-emerged. Impugning the selection of emigrants had the effect of impugning the status of the men at home who oversaw the selection. At best, the London Emigration Committee (that oversaw all but the first single female ship) had allegedly established a system whose ‘inadequacy, clumsiness, and incongruity … wanted the plainest and most candid exposure’.38 At worst, the Committee were accused of ‘enriching themselves by the moral

Despatches Relating to Consumption of Rum in Van Diemen’s Land’, HCPP, 1834, 616, vol. XLIV.291. 35  New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1835), Q304.894041/5, ML, 7. 36  The Australian, 13 March 1835, 2. 37  ‘Female Emigrants’, Gazette, 5 August 1834, 2. 38  ‘Female Immigration’, Monitor, 4 November 1835, 2.

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degradation of the country which they profess to benefit’.39 The most virulent complaints were reserved for John Marshall, the shipping agent whom the Committee had hired to arrange the ships and who also assisted with the selection of emigrants. Colonial commentators insisted that Marshall ‘filled’ his ships regardless of quality.40 He was called ‘an interested, unprincipled and notorious jobber’ and a ‘trafficker in human flesh … allowed to feed fat on the blood of his fellow creatures—to the aggrandizement only of his own pocket’.41 Since the Committee had hired Marshall, insulting the Committee and Marshall went hand in hand: ‘We blame the Committee of Noodledums … who could place Mr. Marshall in such a situation, as to make his duty inconsistent with his interest’.42 These personal attacks on Marshall and members of the Committee went beyond the rhetoric required to argue for a change in the selection process; undermining the reputations of ‘respectable’ men at home might bolster precarious colonial claims to status. That the complaints continued unabated even when the Colonial Office and the London Emigration Committee made efforts to address colonial concerns revealed that there was much more at stake than merely whether the single female ships brought a few drunkards and prostitutes. In response to colonial complaints about the preponderance of women, only two single female ships were sent in 1834 in order to allow more funds to be available for married labourers.43 In response to assertions of immorality on board single female ships, the London Emigration Committee instituted a gratuity for surgeons and superintendents, payable at the governor’s discretion should he decide proper decorum had been maintained en route.44 In regard to Marshall, the Committee restructured his contract to guarantee him payment for 200 women regardless of the actual number sent, a move aimed to protect Marshall both from financial loss and from charges that he ‘filled ships’.45 After an 1835 committee of the New South Wales Legislative Council noted that the two ships that had come from  Herald, 23 February 1835, 2.  ‘The Emigration Job’, The Colonist, 8 January 1835; ‘Female Emigration’, Monitor, 28 March 1835, 2. 41  Respectively, ‘Recent Sales of Crown Land’, The Colonist, 19 February 1835, 4; ‘Mr. Marshall’, Gazette, 23 March 1837, 2. 42  ‘Female Emigration’, Monitor, 28 March 1835, 2. 43  Stanley to Bourke, 8 April 1834, Despatches to the Governor, A1271 CY 1400, ML. 44  Forster to Hay, 30 December 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA. 45  Forster to Hay, 16 July 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA. 39 40

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Ireland ‘turned out better than any of the ships from England’,46 both ships sent in 1836 came from Cork.47 Still, the colonial elite were not satisfied. They now complained that all of the women came from Ireland and expressed an eagerness to receive some of their own ‘countrywomen’.48 There was no pleasing them. Ultimately, there was no pleasing them, because the colonial elite did not want London controlling the process at all. The corollary to the complaints about the selection of the single female emigrants was the assertion that the colony could do better. The best immigrants, the elite claimed, would be received if the colony hired its own selection agent, accountable to the colony, not to the Colonial Office.49 According to the Gazette, the Colonial Office sent ‘the pauper … indeed, [those] who are the greatest pests, by reason of their idleness … bad and troublesome characters’, but an agent hired by the colony would find himself surrounded by ‘the adventurous, moral and industrious’.50 Most importantly, an agent selected by the colony could be fired if he sent ‘bad characters’. When the Colonial Office sent unsatisfactory migrants, the colony had no recourse. A key component of these arguments was the presumed unsuitability of the immigrants themselves. If the elite admitted the immigrants were useful, there would be no grounds on which they could demand more control. Colonial commentators also claimed that the colony had no recourse when it came to use/misuse of the land fund. Despite—or perhaps because of—the initial resistance to the discontinuance of land grants, the colonial elite came to guard jealously what they considered ‘their’ money. The 46  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1835, 7. This was attributed to two factors: that more of the women came from rural areas (and thus were more suitable for agricultural work) and that there had been ‘greater care in selection’. This was another subtle dig at the London Emigration Committee, which had not been involved in the selection of either ship. The Red Rover had been orchestrated by the shortlived Emigration Commission, and a local committee in Ireland had selected the Duchess of Northumberland emigrants. 47  Glenelg to Bourke, 8 January 1836, reprinted as no. 1  in House of Commons, Emigration, 4 March 1836, in CO 384:41, PRO 1041, NLA. 48  Bourke to Glenelg, 11 October 1836, Governor’s Despatches, A1216 CY 652, ML. 49  Herald, 8 October 1832, 2; ‘Female Emigration’, Monitor, 28 March 1835, 2; Norval [pseud.], ‘Emigration’, The Colonist, 9 July 1835, 4. 50  ‘Free and Convict Labour’, Gazette, 14 August 1834, 2. Though no clear explanation was given for why the ‘adventurous, moral and industrious’ would be drawn to a colonial agent more so than to a British agent.

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Colonist felt it was ‘cruel and unjust in the highest degree to rob us of so large a portion of our land fund … to employ it in making our adopted country a common sewer, a grand dunghill’.51 The perceived immorality among the single women was an even greater insult because the women had ‘been purchased for us by our own money’.52 Even with this disappointment over quality, the colonial elite wanted the land fund devoted solely to immigration. In this early phase of assisted migration, land sales outpaced the development of the infrastructure needed to emigrate workers, a nonalignment that frustrated colonial employers and led to accusations of the Treasury’s ‘hoarding an enormous sum of money under locks, bolts, and bars’.53 Hungry for more immigration, the public sphere erupted when the Colonial Office, still attempting to rein in the costs of government, appropriated the land fund for other expenses, including Colonial Secretary McLeay’s pension and colonial police and gaols.54 Colonial voices fought these expenditures with the assertion that all of the land fund must be used for immigration.55 The colonial elite had now grown accustomed to land sales and vigorously asserted their right to determine in what ways the resultant funds would be used. When he first announced the land and migration policies that would come to bear his name, Goderich anticipated colonial resistance. ‘I am by no means surprised that on their [the regulations’] first promulgation, they should have excited such strong objections’, he wrote, ‘I trust, however, that upon more mature reflection, the inhabitants of the Colony will be convinced that they are founded upon a correct view of their interest’.56 Basically, he said, ‘they’ll get used to it’. And indeed, they did. The initial calls for the regulations to be rescinded quickly shifted to complaints over 51  ‘Immigration. II. Agricultural Labourers and Shepherds [The Subject Continued]’, The Colonist, 20 August 1835, 1 (emphasis mine). 52  ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 8 April 1837, 2. 53  The Australian, 17 July 1835, 2. 54  Respectively decried in 1834 and 1835 petitions to Parliament. For the text of the petitions, see The Australian, 2 September 1834, 2; ‘Petition to the Commons’, The Colonist, 6 August 1835, 1. 55  As argued in the 1834 petition (The Australian, 2 September 1834, 2), two 1836 petitions (in Bourke to Glenelg, 13 April 1836, Governor’s Despatches, A1215 CY 651, ML), and New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Minutes of Evidence and Replies to the Circular Letter (Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1838), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 3. 56  Goderich to Arthur, 27 January 1832, enclosure to Goderich to Bourke, 1 May 1832, Despatches to the Governor, A1269 CY 1399, ML.

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emigrant selection and the use of the funds. The colonial elite accepted the system, but resisted the manner in which it was conducted. The perhaps unintended consequence of Goderich’s decision to pay for migration via colonial land sales was a greater sense of entitlement among the colonial elite. Their money was paying for immigration, so they should get to control it. Anything the British government did would ‘infallibly degenerate into a mere job’,57 it was felt; the colony could do better. Feelings of colonial inferiority could be detected in the insults slung at the immigrants themselves and the authorities selecting the emigrants. Assertions of ‘respectability’ became weapons in the battle for control.

Governor Bourke Attempts to Seize Control The report of the Legislative Council’s 1835 Committee on Immigration encapsulated the grievances voiced in the public sphere. Convened by Governor Bourke to assess the first few years of assisted immigration and make recommendations on the ‘best means of promoting the introduction of persons of both sexes, of good moral character and industrious habits’,58 the Committee proved to be a turning point in the conduct of assisted migration as it inspired Bourke to implement major changes. The Committee recommended that single female ships cease; attention shift to obtaining married, male labourers; and the colony exercise more control over the process. Before the report even had time to reach the Colonial Office for comment, Bourke sprang to action. His approach was twofold. His first innovation was the ‘bounty scheme’. Via this scheme, colonial employers in need of labour would apply to the colonial government for permission to import workers and receive reimbursement in the form of a ‘bounty’ for the labourers’ fares aboard merchant ships.59 Bounties would be granted only after the labourers arrived in the colony and only if a committee of civil servants determined the labourers met the qualifications for receiving an assisted passage.60 Bourke was sceptical that the bounty  ‘The Emigration Job’, The Colonist, 8 January 1835, 1.  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1835, 1. 59  They would rely on personal connections in Britain to identify and select the labourers. The bounty was initially set at 30 pounds for a married couple, five pounds for each of their children over 12 months of age, 15 pounds for an unmarried woman, and ten pounds for an unmarried man, provided an equal number of unmarried women were brought, as well. 60  Alexander McLeay, ‘Immigration’, 28 October 1835, in SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS 906, Special Bundles 1826+ [4-2324, 36-8461] Miscellaneous Bundle, 1836. 57 58

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scheme would adequately fill the colony’s labour needs, however, so he simultaneously hired three surgeons from convict ships to return to assigned regions of the British Isles (Ireland, Scotland, and southern England) in order to recruit and select emigrants and personally return to the colony with them.61 In essence, he appropriated the concept of single female ships only with families as passengers and a surrogate of the colony—not the Colonial Office—managing the selection. Both systems were designed to exert some colonial control over the selection of emigrants. Under the bounty system, the importer would not be reimbursed if the immigrant did not meet the criteria, a determination made in the colony. Under the system of dedicated ships, the surgeon’s contract would not be renewed if he did not provide satisfactory immigrants. Bourke fully admitted these innovations were about control rather than about any real expectation of improvement in immigrant ‘quality’. In relaying the public preference for selection conducted by agents from the colony, he acknowledged that ‘it may be doubted whether the means of detecting imposition would be more at the command of these persons’, but nevertheless felt acquiescing to this demand would be ‘good policy’. With colonial agents, ‘much of the evil which is now attributed to negligence might be clearly seen to be unavoidable’, he hoped.62 The initial response of the Colonial Office to Bourke’s schemes was supportive. Baron Glenelg, Bourke’s sixth secretary of state in his first four years as governor, approved the bounty scheme and the agents Bourke had appointed to select emigrants for the dedicated ships.63 In accordance with the Committee on Immigration’s recommendation, Glenelg announced that no further single female ships would be sent, though single women were allowed under both systems as long as they travelled under the ‘protection’ of a married couple. So supportive was Glenelg that he even ordered the conversion of the last single female ship, the Lady Macnaghten, to a hybrid with the new system. The colonial elite may have feared that the British government wanted to monopolise the colony’s 61  It was thought that the emigrants would behave better en route if they were supervised by the same man who recruited them to make the journey. Bourke to Glenelg, 14 October 1835, Governor’s Despatches, A1214 CY 650, ML. 62  Bourke to Rice, 13 February 1835, Governor’s Despatches, A1213 CY 607, ML. 63  Glenelg to Bourke, 18 September 1836, Despatches to the Governor, A1276 CY 1056, ML.

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money for its own selfish ends, but it would appear that the Colonial Office was less concerned with specific method and more with outcome: the removal of the poor from the British Isles. The elite colonists seemed to have gotten their way.

Different Responses to Concurrent Systems In both of these two new systems, Bourke attempted to address public concerns by asserting greater colonial control over the process. In practice, though, neither system worked quite as intended. The vast majority of bounties went not to private colonists importing labour for their individual estates, but to large shipping companies from whose ‘cargoes’ the private settlers would then select employees.64 Similarly, an individual surgeon’s completing a round-trip journey proved prohibitively expensive, and the system of dedicated ships quickly transitioned, coming under the control of the Colonial Office. After the initial round of ships selected by Bourke’s agents, permanent agents appointed by the Colonial Office at certain ports selected the emigrants, maintaining Bourke’s strategy of sending ships from different parts of the British Isles. Long-time Colonial Office employee and secretary to the 1831 Commission T.  Frederick Elliot was named agent general to oversee the network of agents and to charter the ships.65 Though both systems morphed in practice, the deviations from the intended plans received much different receptions in the colonial public sphere. The bounty system—the system of private enterprise, the system in which colonial employers themselves could directly participate—was deemed superior to the ‘government’ ships. This conclusion was reached by several of the now annual Legislative Council

 Frank J.  A. Broeze, ‘Private Enterprise and the Peopling of Australasia, 1831–50’, Economic History Review 35, no. 2 (1982): 235–53. 65  Glenelg to Bourke, 29 April 1837, reprinted as no. 8 in House of Commons, Emigration (Australia), 1 June 1837, in CO 384:43, PRO 1042, ML. 64

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Committees on Immigration66 and the majority of the press.67 As in the first phase of assisted immigration, the dissatisfaction with the government system boiled down to two issues—selection and money—both of which were smokescreens for what the colonial elite really wanted: control. To condemn the government ships, the elite returned to a familiar refrain: denigrating the character and usefulness of the immigrants themselves. Hypersensitivity to perceived mistreatment reared its head again as public opinion assumed Britain would exploit the colony. The Colonist claimed that the government system was ‘a mere safety-valve for letting off the high pressure of their own redundant and starving population, without any regard to the quality or capabilities of the person whom they send here’.68 The ‘paramount advantage’ of the bounty system was that supposedly it alone introduced ‘fit and proper emigrants’.69 However, these claims that the bounty system sent ‘superior’ immigrants were somewhat hard to believe. Because the government ship criteria were based on Bourke’s instructions to the surgeons he had personally dispatched to the British Isles, the criteria used by the two systems were nearly identical (see Table 2.1). Furthermore, according to historian Robert Shultz’s research,

66  The 1838, 1839, 1840, and 1841 committees all expressed a preference for the bounty system, and the 1839 Committee even called for the discontinuation of government ships. New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1838; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: T. Trood, 1839), RB DQ 325.342/36, ML; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1841. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, and Replies to the Circular Letter on the Aborigines (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML. 67  ‘Emigration’, The Australian, 19 May 1837, 2; ‘Bounty Emigrants’, Gazette, 19 December 1839, 2; ‘Emigration’, Herald, 21 February 1840, 2; ‘The Immigration Association’, The Colonist, 22 September 1840, 2. Only the working-class mouthpiece, the Australasian Chronicle, preferred the government system, because it felt the government system better protected the health and well-being of the emigrants. Chronicle, 3 December 1839, 1. 68  Quotation from ‘Immigration Committee’, The Colonist, 18 September 1839, 2. See also ‘Bounty Emigrants’, Gazette, 19 December 1839. 69  Quotation from The Australian, 21 May 1840, 2. See also ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 15 March 1838, 2; ‘Emigration’, Herald, 16 September 1839, 1; ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 9 March 1840, 3.

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Table 2.1  Comparison of criteria for receiving an assisted passage Criteria

Bounty regulationsa

Government shipsb

Age

Married: 30 (40) Single men: 18–25 (30) Single women: 15–30 (Increased in 1837) As of 1841, married couples up to 50 years old allowed if bringing older children Mechanics, farm servants

Married: 35 Single women: 15–30 As of 1838, married couples up to 50 years old allowed if bringing older children

Testimonial of character Registry of baptism Health certificate Must likely be ‘useful members of their class in society’ Single women must be under the protection of a married couple

Written testimonials of character

Eligible occupations (men) Required documentation Additional requirements

Mechanics, farm servants

‘Must be able to establish their character for industry, sobriety, and good moral conduct’ Single women must be under the protection of a married couple

a Alexander McLeay, ‘Immigration’, 28 October 1835, in SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS 906, Special Bundles 1826+ [4-2324, 36-8461] Miscellaneous Bundle, 1836

T.  Frederick Elliot, ‘Government Emigration Office’, 20 October 1837, in CO 384:42, PRO 1041, NLA; T.  Frederick Elliot, ‘Nature and Conditions of Assistance by Government to Emigrants to New South Wales’, 27 July 1838 in CO 384:47, PRO 1051, NLA b

the people themselves were not significantly different.70 Government immigrants were slightly older, but were also slightly more skilled than bounty immigrants.71 The minor differences between the two groups did not match the sweeping rhetoric used in the public sphere. Any deviations by Elliot from the criteria were met with condemnation from the colonial elite, even when they later wanted similar adjustments in the bounty system. For example, Elliot took it upon himself to allow workers up to 50 years old if they were still capable of labouring and 70  Robert J.  Shultz, ‘The Assisted Immigrants, 1837–1850’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1971). 71  Thirty-five per cent of the government ship men were over the age of 30 versus only 20 per cent of the bounty men. Forty per cent of the government ship men were listed as an occupation other than the two unskilled categories (agricultural or unskilled labourer) versus one-third of the bounty men. Ibid., 36, 53.

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would bring older children (also capable of labouring) with them.72 When this allowance was initiated, the 1839 Committee on Immigration claimed it amounted to a fraud committed against the colony.73 But then just two years later, after bounty agents claimed the regulations were too strict,74 the 1841 Committee on Immigration supported a similar age increase.75 In another example, the skill of government ship immigrants was attacked,76 until, that is, the need for shepherds grew. Then, the colonial elite claimed anyone—regardless of occupation or experience—could be trained to be a shepherd and argued to expand the bounty to cover distressed manufacturers, including weavers, a category that was never allowed during the first decade of assisted migration.77 Thus, satisfaction with selection was more a function of the system than of the criteria themselves. This was further illustrated by another abrupt change in colonial opinion. One of the largest bounty importers was none other than John Marshall, who had received so much condemnation for allegedly engaging in the ‘human trafficking’ of single women. No outrage was expressed at his continued involvement in the bounty scheme.78 (Apparently, Marshall’s judgement of character had miraculously improved once he was no longer directly employed by the British government.) Instead, after assessing 72  House of Commons, Emigration. Return to an Address of the Honourable the House of Commons, Dated 7 May 1838; – for, Copy of a Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, from the Agent-General for Emigration from the United Kingdom, Dated 28 April 1838, 14 May 1838, in CO 384:46, PRO 1051, NLA, 9. 73  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1839, 6. 74  The two major bounty importers both called for an increased age. For John Marshall, see ‘Immigration’, The Colonist, 24 September 1840, 2. For the firm of Carter and Bonus, see Carter to Pinnock, 19 December 1840, in SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS 5247 [4/4634–35] Copies of Letters Sent to Miscellaneous Persons re: Migration to New South Wales, 1838–44, reel 3114. 75  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 3. Elliot’s principle (of allowing married couples of up to 50 years of age if they brought older children with them) was accordingly adopted. Gipps to Russell, 4 December 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1226 CY 659, ML. 76  ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 12 September 1837, 2; Herald, 7 June 1838, 2. 77  ‘The New Bounty Regulations’, The Colonist, 7 March 1840; The Australian, 7 August 1841, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 3. 78  This is not to say that all criticism of Marshall disappeared, only that public opinion of him became decidedly less one-sided when he began operating under the colony’s preferred system.

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Marshall’s advertised criteria and on-board arrangements, the Colonist proclaimed, ‘We hesitate not to say, that the Immigration scheme cannot be better carried on than … in the hands of respectable and trustworthy men’.79 Now that Marshall operated under the system which the colony controlled, he was admitted into the ranks of ‘respectable and trustworthy men’. Elliot repeatedly defended the operation he oversaw against the complaint of poor selection, insisting that ‘pains have been taken … to obtain people of fair character’.80 Nevertheless, just as the London Emigration Committee had before him, he did attempt to adjust procedures in order to increase colonial satisfaction with the immigrants. To address concerns of immoral conduct during the voyage, he created new instructions for the surgeons on maintaining order and proudly claimed that some of the private ships used the same regulations. Colonial employers disliked young children since they could not work and cost more (workers were usually given rations as well as wages, and a worker with a large family needed additional rations),81 so Elliot instructed the selecting agents to reduce the number of children under seven years of age.82 These efforts did little to placate the colonial elite, because the complaints over selection were smokescreens. What the colonial elite really wanted was control. That control was the primary goal was exhibited further by a new character-­based offensive launched by certain factions against the government ships: they allegedly brought too many Irish.83 One reason for this sudden addition to the list of complaints was sheer numbers;84 the 79  Quotation from The Colonist, 13 March 1839, 2. For less effusive, yet non-critical announcements of Marshall’s activity, see Monitor, 25 May 1838; The Australian, 26 June 1838, 2. 80  ‘Annual Report from T. Frederick Elliot, Esquire, Agent General for Emigration, to the Marquess of Normanby, dated 15 August 1839’, reprinted as no. 1 in House of Commons, Emigration, 15 August 1839, in CO 384:52, PRO 5119, ML. 81  J.  Denham Pinnock, Report from J.  Denham Pinnock, Esq., Colonial Agent for Immigration, to His Excellency Governor Sir George Gipps, on the Progress of Immigration Generally, for the Year 1838, reprinted as J. Denham Pinnock, ‘Immigration’, The Australian, 4 July 1839, 3. 82  Elliot to Stephen, 10 August 1839, CO 384:854, PRO 54, NLA. 83  Most often, the rhetoric simply named the ‘Irish’ even though it specifically referred to Irish Catholics. The Irish issue will arise again in subsequent chapters. The negative opinion of the Irish was by no means uniform, but those who held the opinion voiced it loudly. 84  Another reason was the reinforcement of Catholic leadership in the colony. In 1838, Catholic priest William Ullathorne returned to New South Wales, having recruited eleven

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proportion of Irish among assisted immigrants overall (government and bounty) was, in fact, increasing due in part to an 1839 crop failure in Ireland.85 But while prejudice against the Irish was new neither in the colony nor in Britain,86 there were several features of the debate that revealed there was more going on than just a distaste for the Irish. First was the timing and specificity. Anti-Irish sentiment did not enter the immigration rhetoric until 1839 and the early 1840s, when the antagonism between the government and bounty systems was at its peak. Though Irish immigrants did arrive via the bounty system, almost all of the anti-­ Irish rhetoric was directed at government ships. The greater visibility of the Irish in the government system—in which entire ships arrived from Irish ports—certainly contributed to the preoccupation (in a manner very similar to the earlier arrival of single female ships). In any case, the increased proportion of Irish on government ships was seen as another deliberate attempt at sabotage. ‘The vast influx of Irish Papist Immigrants by … ships on government bounty’, the Herald asserted, ‘is not accidental, but the result of a system concocted with artful policy’.87 Conversely, the increasing numbers of Irish on the bounty ships were not cause for concern because the scheming Colonial Office had nothing to do with them. Secondly, resistance to Irish immigration seemed to work against the colony’s interests. Quite counterproductively, some voices wanted to limit the number of Irish sent amidst increasingly desperate cries for more labour. Though these voices claimed the Irish were improperly selected, economist John McDonald and historian Eric Richards demonstrated that Irish migrants actually fit the criteria better than the preferred English.88 new priests and nuns to the colony. Alan Atkinson and Marian Aveling, eds, Australians 1838 (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 233. 85  The percentage jumped from 32.8% in 1839 to 39.9% in 1840 to 67.4% in 1841. Paula Hamilton, ‘“No Irish Need Apply”: Prejudice as a Factor in the Development of Immigration Policy in New South Wales and Victoria, 1840–1870’ (PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 1979), appendix 2 (c). 86  Such prejudice intensified in both locations in the 1830s. In New South Wales, tensions were inflamed by the activism of Catholic priest John Therry and Bourke’s attempts to implement a government-funded system of education based on the national schools of Ireland. Ibid., 11–3; Patrick O’Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to the Present, 3rd ed. (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000). 87  ‘Roman Catholic Immigration’, Herald, 31 August 1840, 2. 88  In analysing the immigrants who arrived in 1841, McDonald and Richards found that a greater proportion of the Irish were in the preferred age range of 15–29 and that the Irish brought fewer children with them. They concluded that the criteria were stretched for

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When the Colonial Office seemingly satisfied one colonial complaint (adhering strictly to the criteria), it managed to instigate a new complaint (too many Irish). While deeply held prejudice against the Irish was undoubtedly foundational, that prejudice was selectively weaponised against the government ships and the Colonial Office. Even more prevalent than complaints about the ‘quality’ of the immigrants were complaints about the government system’s greater cost, another issue that belied the underlying desire for colonial control. A common exercise was to calculate how many more immigrants the colony could have received if the money spent on government ships had gone to bounties.89 Once again, Elliot tried to address the concerns. He adjusted the rations, medicines, and supplies on board to save money. Since young children were the most susceptible to illness, the efforts to reduce their number decreased medical costs.90 But as with his efforts to improve emigrant ‘quality’, Elliot’s efforts to reduce costs went underappreciated. At the same time, the colonial elite paradoxically recommended changes that would make the bounty system more expensive. One contributor to the cost difference was access to the Immigrants Barracks, where only government ship immigrants—not bounty immigrants—could stay for up to a month while they looked for employment.91 Colonial commentators were largely offended by this inequity and wanted bounty immigrants to be treated the same as government ship immigrants, a demand they made without acknowledging the impact such a move would have on the total English emigrants in response to colonial complaints about the number of Irish, thereby demonstrating again the impossible nature of colonial complaints. John McDonald and Eric Richards, ‘Workers for Australia: A Profile of British and Irish Migrants Assisted to New South Wales in 1841’, Journal of the Australian Population Association 15, no. 1 (May 1998): 1–33. 89   Anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000 according to the Colonist. ‘The Immigration Association’, The Colonist, 22 September 1840, 2. The 1839 Committee on Immigration calculated that the colony would have saved £55,820 had all the government immigrants come on bounty ships. New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1839, 5. 90  Elliot to Stephen, 10 August 1839, CO 384:54, PRO 854, NLA. 91  An arrangement entirely determined by the colonial government, Elliot was quick to point out. Elliot to Stephen, 10 August 1839, CO 384:54, PRO 854, NLA. The rationale for the bounty immigrants’ exclusion from the Barracks related to the initial intentions of the bounty scheme; Bourke envisioned that bounty migrants would be brought by specific employers and therefore would have ‘situations’ immediately upon arrival. As we have seen, however, the system did not work that way in practice.

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costs of the bounty system.92 That theoretical cost was ultimately dwarfed by the real cost incurred from raising the bounty itself,93 a move made by Governor George Gipps in 1840 based on feedback from Marshall. Marshall claimed he lost money on every ship unless he obtained self-­ paying cabin passengers, as well,94 an indication that the lauded lower amount spent on the bounty system did not actually reflect the full cost. Despite the grave concerns over the cost of the government system, the colonial elite were certainly willing to spend more money on their preferred mode of migration. As with the complaints over the selection of the emigrants, this contradiction on the issue of cost showed the ulterior motives of the elite. It wasn’t really about the cost. Instead, the colonial elite wanted to control how ‘their’ money was spent. An even better outcome was if ‘their’ money was not spent at all. A primary benefit of the bounty system, it was felt, was that the bounty could be denied for anyone who did not meet the requirements; by contrast, if ineligible migrants came on a government ship, the colony would have no recourse.95 In both cases, the ineligible immigrant would still be in the colony, and the colony could still benefit from his/her labour; the difference lay in who bore the cost. Additionally, the 1839 Committee on Immigration identified another advantage of the bounty system: bounty ships also brought self-paying steerage emigrants, often family or friends of assisted emigrants who were denied bounties themselves because they were too old.96 The approval of this outcome was an about face from the logic that earlier had denounced Elliot’s allowance of overaged workers who brought older children with them. As the need for labour in the colony increased, the Gazette took this reversed logic a step further, encouraging ineligible emigrants to find alternative means of travelling to the colony: ‘We strongly recommend those artisans and labourers at home, 92  ‘The Emigrants’, Monitor, 12 March 1838, 2; ‘Immigrants’ Barracks’, The Colonist, 25 July 1838, 2; ‘Bounty Emigrants’, Gazette, 20 October 1838, 2; ‘Emigrants’, Herald, 19 November 1838, 2. 93  The bounty was raised to 19 pounds per adult. E. Deas Thomson, Regulations for the Introduction of Emigrants into the Colony of New South Wales by Private Individuals Dated 3rd March, 1840 (Sydney: Sydney Herald, 1840). 94  See Marshall’s letters in ‘The Immigration Association’, The Colonist, 22 September 1840; ‘Bounty Regulations’, The Colonist, 24 September 1840. For press support of an increase, see ‘Emigration’, Herald, 27 December 1839, 2; The Australian, 6 March 1841, 2. 95  ‘Bounty Refused on Marshall’s Emigrants at Port Phillip’, Herald, 22 January 1841, 2. 96  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1839, 9.

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who do not succeed in getting a passage to Australia under bounty, to scrape together their all, even the last penny, to purchase their own passage’.97 This call echoed the enthusiasm for ‘paupers’ that had existed prior to the announcement of the Ripon Regulations. It was not that the colonial elite did not want the ‘inferior’ or ineligible migrants to come; the elite simply did not want to have to pay for them.

The Colonial Office Asserts Control The resistance to the government system only intensified when the Colonial Office asserted more control over emigration. On this matter, it had no real choice. The Colonial Office oversaw all emigration from the United Kingdom—not just to New South Wales—and as emigration increased dramatically over the 1830s, so did complaints about the treatment of emigrants travelling to Canada.98 Furthermore, its laissez-faire stance had failed in the young colony of South Australia.99 As early as its 1836 Select Committee on the disposal of land in the colonies, Parliament had recognised that a more formal agency would be needed to oversee both emigration and colonial land policy; the job was too much for one person (Elliot) to manage.100 Hence, in January 1840, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (CLEC) was formed, with the assigned duties of collecting and disseminating information related to emigration, overseeing the sale of colonial waste lands, and applying the proceeds from land sales towards the removal of emigrants.101 Unsurprisingly, this bestowal of additional authority on a subsidiary of the Colonial Office was not well received in the colony. During a Legislative  Gazette, 29 November 1840, 3.  Total emigration from the United Kingdom more than doubled, from just under 57,000  in 1830 to over 118,000  in 1841. Fred H.  Hitchins, The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931), appendix 6, 15–21. 99  South Australia was formed on the basis of E. G. Wakefield’s principles of colonisation and was intended to require no funds from the British government. However, it faced bankruptcy by 1841, only 5 years after it was established. House of Commons, ‘Second Report from the Select Committee on South Australia; Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and index’, HCPP, 1841, 394, vol. 4, IV.9. 100  House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on the Disposal of Land in the British Colonies; Together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix’, HCPP, 1836, 512, vol. 11, XX.539. 101  Russell to Gipps, 31 January 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1282 CY 988, ML. 97 98

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Council debate, magistrate and large landowner Richard Jones asserted that the CLEC was formed ‘for the sole purpose, as appears to me, of creating patronage’.102 Colonial defensiveness resurfaced as the press launched personal attacks on each of the founding members of the board. Edward Ernest Villiers was a nobody who could have only received the job through patronage. Elliot was incompetent and had not successfully managed the emigration to one colony, let alone to all of them.103 Robert Torrens drew particular ire for his involvement with the South Australia colony, which the New South Wales elite viewed with jealousy and disdain.104 From the CLEC’s inception, it faced an adversarial relationship with New South Wales for ‘the Colonists [could] never feel secure so long as they [we]re at the mercy of a “Board,” seated in England’.105 Such was the reaction when the board was announced; as it commenced operations, colonial dissatisfaction grew and centred on the two standing issues: money and selection. The CLEC set out to create uniformity across the Australian colonies, largely using the South Australian system (itself the purest expression of E. G. Wakefield’s theories) as the standard.106 This involved major changes to the way land sales were conducted. In 1839, Glenelg had already increased the minimum price of land in New South Wales to 12 shillings an acre.107 In response, the colonial elite claimed that the fluctuating prices would discourage the emigration of men with capital.108 When the CLEC moved for further changes—eliminating sale by auction in Port Phillip (an area in modern-day Victoria opened for settlement in 1835) and dividing the colony into three districts109—those 102  Australian Immigration Association, ed., Report of the Debate in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, on Thursday, 10th December, 1840, Upon a Motion for an Address to Her Majesty Upon the Subject of a Proposed Division of the Territory; and the Introduction of a New System for the Disposal of Crown Lands: Together with Statistical and Other Documents (Sydney: Tegg and Co., 1840), 19. 103  ‘The Colonial Land and Emigration Board’, Herald, 25 May 1840, 2; Monitor, 2 July 1840, 2. 104  For condemnations of Torrens, see ‘The New Colonial Board’, The Colonist, 1 July 1840, 2; ‘Sale in England of Land in New South Wales’, Herald, 15 July 1840, 2. 105  ‘The Land Commissioners’, Herald, 15 June 1841, 2. 106  Smith internal memo, 25 February 1841, CO 384:58, PRO 5121, NLA. 107  To match the price in South Australia. Glenelg to Gipps, 9 August 1838, Despatches to the Governor, A1278 CY 1439, ML. 108  Herald, 30 January 1839, 2; The Australian, 19 November 1839, 2. 109  The former would, in effect, create a uniform price for Crown land. The latter would result in three separate land funds to better distribute the immigrants. Russell to Gipps, 31

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changes were just as strongly resisted.110 The Herald perceived a sinister plot: ‘they want the controul of our land fund, and they will stop at nothing to accomplish their ends’.111 Colonial insecurity surfaced not only in the personal attacks on the board members and suspicions of London designs on the land fund but also in the claim that the Colonial Office was actively trying to undercut the bounty system.112 The CLEC did try to bring the bounty system more under its control, but claimed its moves were based on actual complaints levied against the system.113 With the 1840 increase in the amount of the bounty, the CLEC predicted more—sometimes inexperienced—shippers would get involved. Accordingly, it moved to regulate the physical space on ships (e.g.,  ensuring there was room provided for the emigrants to exercise), to require CLEC approval of all bounty ship advertisements (to May and 20 June 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1282 CY 988, ML. In the eventual compromise—the 1842 Australian Land Sales Act—the auction system was retained for the initial attempt to sell a particular plot. Any land that had been put up for auction but had not sold would then be sold at the uniform price. Though the district plan was withdrawn at this point, it was essentially implemented later with the formation of Victoria (1851) and Queensland (1859). 110  For opposition to the end of auctions, see The Australian, 12 December 1840, 2; An Emigrant [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 15 December 1840, 2; ‘Uniform Price of Land, and Division of the Colony’, Gazette, 12 January 1841, 2; ‘Progress of Wakefieldism’, Herald, 3 February 1841, 2. For opposition to the three districts, see ‘Public Meeting’, The Australian, 9 January 1841, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Committee on the Debenture Bill. With the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: W.  J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 3; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Immigration Committee. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Australia in the Chair (Sydney: Government Printer, 1842), DSM/Q325/Pa1, ML, 5. 111  ‘Final Blow to the Bounty System of Immigration, Whereby This Efficient Principle for the Supply of Labour to the Colony is Destroyed’, Herald, 6 April 1841, 2. 112  ‘Bounty Emigrants’, Gazette, 20 October 1838, 2; ‘Final Blow to the Bounty System of Immigration, Whereby This Efficient Principle for the Supply of Labour to the Colony is Destroyed’, Herald, 6 April 1841, 2; ‘Memorandum on Immigration into the Colony of New South Wales, forming an Appendix to Sir George Gipps’ Despatch to Lord Stanley, No. 88, of the 14th May 1842’, enclosure to Gipps to Stanley 14 May 1842, A1228 CY 661, ML. 113  The CLEC reported examples of exaggerated advertisements circulated by bounty agents, and government emigration agents reported difficulty in getting bounty shippers to adhere to the minimum provision and accommodation requirements. Respectively, Elliot and Villiers to Stephen, 14 September 1840, enclosure to Russell to Gipps, 7 October 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1283 CY 1941, ML; Lean to Walcott, 1 December 1840, enclosure to Russell to Gipps, 8 January 1841, Despatches to the Governor, A1284 CY 1332, ML.

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protect emigrants against misleading claims), and to implement an approval system whereby the CLEC would ensure the emigrants’ certificates of character had been signed by reputable men.114 Naturally, these moves were viewed with suspicion in the colony. The Herald saw these initiatives as a power play by the home authorities, ‘another check to our well-being’.115 As Elliot had done before, the CLEC insisted it had no desire to end the bounty system—the more channels for emigration, the better—but also noted that the system had morphed from Bourke’s initial intentions into a commercial enterprise and therefore needed additional regulation to curb abuses.116 Protecting the ‘quality’ of their system required the CLEC to assert more control over it, a move the elite resented.

The Bounty System Explodes (and Then Implodes) In 1835, Bourke had attempted to address colonial critiques of immigration through his twin initiatives of the bounty system and dedicated emigrant ships. In 1840, facing critiques no less forceful, Gipps did the same. The hunger for labour could not be satiated (see Chap. 4). The 1838 and 1839 Committees on Immigration had even floated schemes for loans totalling up to one million pounds to pay for immigration beyond what the land fund could finance.117 Amidst this popular agitation and emboldened by record land sales,118 Gipps attempted to give the public what it wanted by generously approving requests for bounty permissions. He was 114  For the various new regulations implemented by the CLEC, see Russell to Gipps, 7 October 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1283 CY 1941, ML; CLEC to Stephen, 13 February 1841, CO 384:63, PRO 855, NLA; CLEC to Smith, 16 December 1841, CO 384:65, PRO 856, NLA. 115  ‘Impediments to Immigration’, Herald, 10 April 1841, 2 (emphasis in original). 116  Elliot to Stephen, 10 August 1839, CO 384:54, PRO 854, NLA; Russell to Gipps, 4 October 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1283 CY 1941, ML. 117  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1838, 13–5; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1839, 14–8. 118  Gipps to Russell, 30 June 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1222 CY 654, ML. Land sales amounted to over £316,000 in 1840, more than double the 1839 total, which itself had been a record. New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Report from the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), enclosure to Gipps to Stanley, 20 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML, appendix H.d.2.

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so generous that by January 1841, over 70,000 bounties remained outstanding, which, if all were redeemed, would total almost one million pounds.119 To give a sense of just how massive that number was, if all 71,315 immigrants had arrived, the number would have been two-and-a-­ half times the total number of assisted immigrants (government, bounty, and single female ships combined) brought to the colony since assisted emigration had commenced in 1832 (see Appendix). Nowhere near the full amount was redeemed, but 1841 did prove a record year for assisted immigration with nearly 19,000 arrivals, all on bounty ships. The government ship system had died an accidental death. With the 1840 formation of the CLEC and the new board’s focus on devising recommendations for policy changes, no government ships left the British Isles that year. By January 1841, the CLEC was trying to determine how much money was in the land fund, so it could plan another wave of government ships. As it did so, the CLEC noticed early evidence of Gipps’s actions. It noted that Marshall had already advertised 20 ships for the year and the firm of Carter and Bonus (the other major bounty player) ten, three-quarters of the 1840 bounty ship total and this by only January.120 The board suspected (correctly) that there would be no money left for government ships, and as such, the government ship system ended not deliberately, but rather out of necessity. Ultimately, nearly 100 bounty ships arrived in 1841, more than double the combined number of government and bounty ships from the year before.121 In the midst of the frenzy, some of the CLEC’s worst fears about the bounty system were realised, as assisted emigration became a site of commercial speculation. Bounty permissions were traded in a shadow market, leading Gipps to announce bounties would only be paid to the original applicant.122 True to the CLEC’s prediction, a greater number of shippers became involved in the trade. Many of these cut  Gipps to Russell, 31 January 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1224 CY 657, ML.  CLEC to Stephen, 15 January 1841, CO 384:63, PRO 854, NLA. 121  In 1840, seven government ships and 40 bounty ships arrived in the colony. The colony received 95 bounty ships in 1841. New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration: Extract from the Annual Report on Immigration, by James Denham Pinnock, Esq. (Sydney, 1840), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, appendix H; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report on Immigration for the Year 1841; by Francis L. S. Merewether, Esq., Agent for Immigration. With an Appendix (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, appendix A. 122  Gipps to Russell, 13 September 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1226 CY 659, ML. 119 120

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corners. The immigration agent in the colony, Francis Merewether, gave reports of bogus certificates of character that oftentimes had been falsified not by the emigrants, but rather by the shippers’ recruiting agents.123 One house in Liverpool charged emigrants six pence for pre-signed certificates.124 In one well-intentioned move that went horribly awry, Elliot had implemented gratuities for surgeons, payable should they maintain suitable order and morality on board.125 Some of the new wave of bounty agents, however, used this to increase their own profits, making the surgeon pay for his own passage out of his gratuity.126 For all the colonial complaints about the CLEC’s attempted regulation of the bounty system, 1841 proved that such regulation was needed. These abuses were acknowledged and lamented in the colony.127 Suddenly, the beloved bounty system was no longer infallible. Once again, the colony was victimised, but no longer by the scheming CLEC. Instead, it had been made ‘the unconscious dupes of a few interested and artful speculators’ who were driven by ‘a suicidal thirst for gain’.128 The result of these abuses, according to the rhetoric, was ‘unsatisfactory’ immigrants. The Australian claimed the latest batch of immigrants were selected with ‘very little regard being paid whether the parties preferred were good workmen, or of moral and decent character’.129 Merewether repeated these sentiments before the 1842 Committee on Immigration. To demonstrate that many of the recent arrivals were ‘neither physically nor 123  Still, examples of fraudulent paperwork were limited to isolated examples on fewer than a dozen of the 125 ships that arrived in 1841 and 1842. New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, appendix E. 124  Recalling the difficulties Henry Parkes had in obtaining the required signatures from afar (see Chap. 1), this fee might have seemed worth it even to emigrants who could have gotten real signatures. New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 11. 125  Normanby to Gipps, 9 March 1839, Despatches to the Governor, A1279 CY 1440, ML. 126  New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 7. 127  For indignation over the profit-driven direction bounty migration had taken, see ‘Immigration’, Chronicle, 8 September 1840, 2; ‘The Bounty System’, Observer, 9 March 1842; Gazette, 6 August 1842, 2. For discussions of faked certificates, see ‘Immigration Frauds’, Herald, 19 May 1842; ‘The Immigration Report’, Observer, 7 September 1842. For dissatisfaction with surgeons, see ‘Immigration  – Female Immigrants  – Surgeon Superintendents’, Gazette, 28 September 1841, 2; ‘Immigration’, Herald, 18 June 1842, 2. 128  Respectively, ‘Immigration  – Continued’, Observer, 2 December 1841; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, Merewether Report, 1841, 4. 129  The Australian, 14 October 1842, 2.

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morally … so good a description as might have been chosen’, he reported that 4.5 per cent of all bounties had been denied.130 Upon reflection, this does not seem that high, given the more than 20,000 people who arrived in just 15 months. In any case, what was once seen as a benefit of the bounty system—the ability of the colony to deny bounties—was now used as evidence of the ‘poor quality’ of the immigrants brought under the preferred scheme, even though the preponderance of denials were based on technicalities rather than any emigrant misconduct.131 Bounties were denied because of ineligible occupations (which should have been easy enough for the shipper to anticipate) despite the aforementioned calls in the press to expand the list of eligible occupations. Furthermore, most of the denials were based on the regulations intended to prevent the colony’s sex imbalance from worsening. Bounties were denied when a ship brought more single men than women or when single women were inadequately ‘protected’.132 Occupation and the balance of the sexes might not seem to be incontrovertible reflections of ‘quality’, and yet, the colonial elite fell back into their normal pattern of condemning the immigrants themselves when they were dissatisfied with how the system operated. In what had to have been exasperating to Elliot, some voices even began to praise government ships. J.  D. Lang’s latest newspaper, the Colonial Observer, lamented that the government system had been brought to a close just as it was reducing its costs, and Merewether recommended a return to two concurrent systems.133 The anti-Irish camp continued to despair at the increasing number of Irish, though this could no longer be blamed on the government system. Instead, some in the colony were beginning to appreciate that government ships had been evenly distributed among Ireland, Scotland, and England.134 But even those who now 130  New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 2. 131  The CLEC fielded several complaints from shippers who claimed colonial officials indiscriminately denied bounties because of the financial trouble the colony faced. Merewether used the rate of denials as proof of poor quality at a time when the colonial government may have been eagerly looking for any reason to deny. Stanley to Gipps, 21 September and 13 December 1842, Despatches to the Governor, A1289 CY 995, ML. 132  For a detailed accounting of the denials in this period, see New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, appendix C. 133  ‘The Immigration Report’, Observer, 7 September 1842; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, Merewether Report, 1841, 5. 134  Though government ships from Ireland had been quite visible (as discussed above), by design, only one-third of government ships had originated in Ireland. Under the expanded

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praised government ships were not prepared to admit that the government system had brought good immigrants, only that ‘the proportion of utterly useless and thoroughly bad people whom [the bounty] system has introduced into the Colony has been incomparably greater than would ever have found their way to our shores through an emigration conducted under the superintendence of the Home Government’.135 However the pendulum swung in the debate over which system was better, the rhetoric found a way to disparage the immigrants themselves. There was a bigger problem with the increased bounty immigration than the perceived abuses committed by shipping agents: the colony quickly ran out of money to pay for it. Gipps granted the bulk of his 70,000 bounty permissions just as Britain and the colony slipped into an economic depression. Scores of the wealthiest men in the colony were forced to declare bankruptcy, and investment from abroad dried up, resulting in decreasing land sales and, consequently, a diminished immigration fund.136 Gipps reported the extent of the outstanding bounty permissions in late January 1841 and stopped issuing new permissions in February. By late August, Gipps told the Colonial Office that there had been almost no land sales for the year and the colony would probably have to borrow to cover bounty permissions yet to be redeemed.137 In September, Gipps issued a warning to those holding unredeemed bounty promises that the government might not have the funds to honour them.138 Gipps’s efforts to bolster the colony’s favourite system of immigration ended in disarray. Why did Gipps do it? Why did he grant so many bounty permissions? His primary defence was the unlikelihood that all of the permissions would

bounty system, the common perception was that almost all ships from London would stop at Plymouth on their way out to sea to ‘fill up’ with Irish emigrants brought to Plymouth by steamer. New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 7; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 7. 135  ‘The Immigration Report’, Observer, 10 September 1842. 136  Barrie Dyster, ‘The 1840s Depression Revisited’, Australian Historical Studies 25, no. 101 (1993): 589–607. 137  Gipps to Russell, 26 August 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1225 CY 658, ML. 138  George Gipps, Land and Emigration Debentures. Minute of His Excellency the Governor, to the Legislative Council, on Presenting a Bill to Secure on the Ordinary Revenue of the Colony, the Payment of Debentures Issued to Meet the Expences of Immigration (Sydney, 1841), DSM/ Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 6.

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be redeemed.139 Gipps lamented that the ‘real inconvenience’ of the bounty system was its inherent uncertainty; there was no way to know how many granted permissions would result in action. This thin excuse only explained why he thought it was possible to grant so many bounty permissions and not what motivated him to do so. That, he revealed in a December 1841 despatch.140 The colonial elite, he explained, had been demanding the entire land fund go towards immigration and had been lodging complaints against the government ‘of the loudest and most reproachful nature’. If he had impeded immigration in any way, he felt, ‘any evil which might have befallen the Country, and all the evils which have fallen on it during the last 15  months, would have been charged upon my imbecility’. Essentially, he had been swayed by the complaints of the colonial elite, and accordingly, he had given them what they wanted. Ironically, getting what they wanted ultimately increased the CLEC’s power. We have already seen that the board was attuned to the increasing bounty activity and prudently abandoned plans for government ships in 1841. While it waited the four to six months Gipps’s updates required to arrive in London, the CLEC proactively attempted to save the colony from financial calamity. Midsummer, the CLEC required shipping agents to present orders they intended to act on in 1841, and in April 1842, it cut off all further bounty emigration.141 The colonial elite had long feared the Colonial Office was trying to end the bounty system, and it ultimately did. However, that action was done not out of spite, but rather out of necessity. The Colonial Office did not revel in the demise of the bounty system. In fact, almost as soon as it ended, discussions began on how to avoid the same issues when it resumed.142 However, it was not until September 1843 that the Colonial Office felt confident enough in the colony’s financial state to sanction a limited renewal of the bounty system for 1844.143 Bounties for up to 4000 adults would be granted, but bounty permissions would now be arranged in Britain rather than in the colony. Agents receiving bounty permissions would now be required to emigrate the approved 139  Gipps to Russell, 13 September and 2 November 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1226 CY 659, ML. 140  Gipps to Russell, 24 December 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1226 CY 659, ML. 141  Stephen to CLEC, 30 July 1841, CO 384:64, PRO 855, NLA; CLEC to Stephen, 13 April 1842, CO 384:70, PRO 856, NLA. 142  CLEC to Stephen, 7 May 1842, CO 384:70, PRO 857, NLA. 143  Stanley to Gipps, 17 September 1843, Despatches to the Governor, A1292 CY 1828, ML.

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number within a set time period. The CLEC would inspect the ships and provisions, appoint the surgeons, and coordinate the departures of ships so as to ensure a staggered arrival in the colony. Approval or denial of the bounty still rested with the colony, but in all other matters, the CLEC’s role was greatly expanded. The battle for control over migration had shifted to the CLEC’s advantage. There it would remain until New South Wales obtained responsible government in 1856. *** The first decade of assisted emigration to New South Wales operated within an uncomfortable contradiction: the colony increasingly needed more labour, and yet, the colonial elite were constantly dissatisfied with the systems created to deliver just that. This apparent paradox can be explained in one word: control. Assisted migration began with the unexpected move by the Colonial Office to end land grants, and for the next ten years, the colonial elite struggled to regain the upper hand. Gradually, they came to accept the principle of immigration paid for by land sales, but after that acceptance, they wanted to control the process and, especially, the money. During the first phase of assisted migration (1832–1836), they decried the preponderance of single women and clamoured for male labourers. While the bounty and government systems ran concurrently, they overwhelmingly expressed a preference for the former, the system they saw as under colonial control. None of the innovations or attempts to curb abuses implemented by the London Emigration Committee, Elliot as agent general, or the CLEC lessened the complaints. Their arguments for the bounty system were discredited when the expanded system fell prey to the same abuses attributed to government ships. Even though the elite had wanted extensive immigration conducted only under the bounty system, they still felt victimised, only now by commercial interests in Britain instead of the Colonial Office. It seemed nothing could placate the colonial elite. As a letter writer to the Australasian Chronicle put it, ‘no system of immigration has pleased the colonists of New South Wales; they have derided and repudiated every one that has yet been tried … each in their turn the object of attack’.144 Each was attacked because the prime issue was not the small details of how migration worked; this was about control.

144

 X [pseud.], ‘Immigration’, Chronicle, 15 June 1841, 2.

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At every step of the way, colonial dissatisfaction expressed itself as complaints about the morality and usefulness of the assisted immigrants. These complaints should not be taken at face value, for ‘morality’ and ‘usefulness’ were deployed selectively and inconsistently, depending on the system in use. The contradictions were too numerous to ignore. Bounty immigrants were deemed superior even though the government and bounty systems used nearly identical criteria. Slight alterations Elliot made to the criteria on government ships were condemned, until, that is, the same alterations were recommended for bounty ships. The colonial elite were willing to overlook immigrants who did not meet the criteria (or even, theoretically, paupers) if the colony did not have to pay for their passages. These complaints must be seen for what they were: power plays in the battle for control. ‘Morality’ and ‘usefulness’ were red herrings. Did all the complaining work? On the one hand, perhaps. Both the single female scheme and the government ship system ultimately ended. The complaints certainly influenced Bourke and Gipps, who, respectively, invented the bounty system and then allowed it to grow beyond control. Still, the complaining seemed unnecessary. Colonial perceptions to the contrary aside, the Colonial Office was quite willing to respond to feedback from New South Wales. Both the London Emigration Committee and Elliot implemented changes based on colonial complaints, and Glenelg immediately sanctioned Bourke’s innovations. In many instances, the Colonial Office did, in fact, try to address the colony’s concerns. On the other hand, no. Despite the efforts to improve the process, the Colonial Office never conceded the elites’ loudest complaint: that assisted migration brought ‘unsuitable’ people to the colony. Colonial Office officials repeatedly insisted they were sending ‘the best whom they can get’.145 More importantly, it was colonial complaints that led Gipps to overextend the system. This, in turn, forced the CLEC to seize control of the imploding bounty system, a move that ensured greater CLEC oversight when assisted migration finally resumed in 1844. Colonial resistance had won a few battles, but had ultimately lost the war. All too often, the critiques of assisted immigration were couched in shrill defensiveness, revealing a deep-seated insecurity among the colonial 145  Quotation from Elliot to Russell, 18 January 1840, enclosure to Russell to Gipps, 12 February 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1282 CY 988, ML.  See also London Emigration Committee annual report in Forster to Hay, 30 December 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA.

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elite. Paranoia and fragile vanity permeated the rhetoric at every stage. Britain was thought to be using the land fund to ‘shovel out its paupers’ or to flood the colony with first prostitutes and then the Irish. First Elliot and then the CLEC supposedly had a vendetta against the bounty system. Even the wave of late-stage bounty agents seemingly did not have the colony’s best interests at heart; they were just out to make money. The London Emigration Committee, the CLEC, and the bounty agents were not ‘respectable’ and ‘trustworthy’ men like the colonial elite were. Condemnations of the immigrants’ ‘morality’ and ‘usefulness’ must be read within this larger cultural context of defensiveness, for the condemnations and defensiveness were two sides of the same coin. The colonial elite claimed the Colonial Office mistreated the colony via migration policy and the ‘poor quality’ of the immigrants provided the proof. Both this sense of defensiveness and the rhetorical tactic of denigrating the immigrants will resurface in the next chapter, as each continued to play a role even when the political arena expanded beyond mere migration policy to the pressing issues of representative government and convict transportation.

CHAPTER 3

The Interwoven Trio: Immigration, Representative Government, and Transportation

The colony’s deep investment in and resulting antagonism with Great Britain over assisted migration did not exist within a vacuum. Immigration was inseparably linked to other pressing issues of the 1830s and 1840s: representative government and convict transportation. The various and shifting political interests in the colony differed on whether they viewed the pieces of this trio to be incompatible or complementary, but all held these issues to be of vital importance to the prosperity of the colony. Once again, the rhetoric of these political debates invoked the presumed worth of the assisted immigrants themselves, in ways that depicted them as immoral and unproductive. In the 1830s, political power in the colony was concentrated in the governor, who was advised by appointed executive and legislative councils. There was no elected representation. Whereas the Executive Council was composed entirely of government officials (an effective cabinet), the Legislative Council featured a roughly even split between government officials and influential colonists. The power of the Legislative Council was limited, however, as it had no authority to originate legislation. As the decade progressed, calls for an elected ‘representative assembly’ to replace the current Council grew louder, as we will see. In 1842, the colony was granted a partially elected legislative council, an important step towards

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_3

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‘responsible’ government (in other words, self-government) which was realised in 1856.1 At the same time the colonial elite clamoured for a representative assembly, policymakers in Britain connected representative government to convict transportation. This forced labour system, which formed the economic foundation of the colony, was under attack by activists in Britain. The system ran afoul of penal reformers, anti-slavery crusaders, and evangelicals.2 Policymakers felt that such an authoritarian system was incompatible with representative institutions. Many in the colony, however, wanted both. The colonial demand for labour could be satisfied by neither convict transportation nor free immigration. According to the Legislative Council, removing either would certainly ‘seal the death warrant of Colonial prosperity’.3 Ultimately, the colony lost this battle. The system was doomed by the antagonistic 1837–1838 Parliamentary Select Committee on Transportation chaired by William Molesworth.4 1840 saw the arrival of the last convict ship for nearly a decade. Existing histories link the two issues of representative government and convict transportation, but tend to underemphasise two important points that will be made here. First, when transportation initially ended in New South Wales, colonial opposition ran deep. Much of the historiography, however, focuses on the late 1840s and early 1850s, a period when 1  Under ‘representative government’, the voting public merely elected the body (the Legislative Council) that advised the governor. Under ‘responsible government’, however, the colonial executive was responsible to the elected assembly and, therefore, the voting public. Responsible government, then, transferred some of the governor’s authority to the elected body. I use the terminology ‘representative government’ throughout this chapter as that was granted first, although the aims of the elite themselves at this time ranged from merely an elected council to something more closely approximating responsible government. For the transition to responsible government in the 1850s, see Benjamin T.  Jones, Republicanism and Responsible Government: The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); Peter Cochrane, Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Democratic Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006); Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2006); J. B. Hirst, The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy: New South Wales, 1848–1884 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988). 2  J. B. Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), chap. 1. 3  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: T. Trood, 1839), RB DQ 325.342/36, ML, 13. 4  House of Commons, ‘Report from the Select Committee on Transportation; Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index’, HCPP, 1838, 518, vol. 191, XIX.1.

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popular opinion had shifted and when Britain’s attempt to resume convict transportation galvanised colonial demand for responsible government.5 In this historiography, the anger expressed in the 1850s over the resumption of transportation overshadowed the deep opposition to its discontinuance just a decade earlier. Philip Harling is the rare exception who stressed the complete reversal of both colonial and British positions on transportation when comparing the beginning of the 1840s to the decade’s end.6 This early colonial resistance to the cessation of transportation demands further attention as it reveals the priorities—both economic and social—of the elite who were attempting to shape the future of New South Wales. Secondly, while representative government and convict transportation were undeniably related, there was a third issue woven in between the two—immigration—an issue that has received less attention in political and economic histories than it deserves. In economic histories, immigration is usually seen as the natural corollary to the end of transportation; if no more convicts were to be sent, then immigrants would have to take their place in the labour force.7 In reality, the relationship between these two separate issues was more complicated as support for or opposition to one did not map onto the other in predictable ways. Similarly, though Terry Irving highlighted the importance of the working classes (many of whom were assisted immigrants) in the drive towards Australian democracy,8 more often in political histories of colonial self-government, immigration is merely mentioned as part of a social transformation that paved the way for responsible government.9 Rarely in these broader

5  Christopher Holdridge, ‘Liberty Unchained: Anti-Convict Lobbying, Popular Politics and Settler Self-Government in the Australian Colonies and Cape of Good Hope, 1846–1856’ (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2015); Jones, Republicanism and Responsible Government, chap. 8; Paul A. Pickering, ‘Loyalty and Rebellion in Colonial Politics: The Campaign against Convict Transportation in Australia’, in Rediscovering the British World, Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis, eds (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005). 6  Philip Harling, ‘The Trouble with Convicts: From Transportation to Penal Servitude, 1840–67’, Journal of British Studies 53, no. 1 (January 2014): 80–110. 7  N.  G. Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia, 1810–1850 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap 3; Andrew Wells, Constructing Capitalism: An Economic History of Eastern Australia, 1788–1901 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 42–5. 8  Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty. 9  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, 30–1.

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political histories is immigration examined as an important issue in its own right.10 This chapter asserts the interconnection of these three issues—immigration, representative government, and convict transportation—during a decade in which changes in these areas transformed New South Wales. Immigration was a major concern for the colonial elite and was central to arguments surrounding representative government and convict transportation. Immigration policy and the assisted immigrants themselves were both invoked in and impacted by debates surrounding both, debates through which traditional political groups shifted and multiplied as they fought over the social order that would prevail in the colony.

Charting the Political Landscape During the 1820s and early 1830s, the primary political and social dividing line in the colony lay between ‘Emancipists’ and ‘Exclusives’, respectively those who supported full civic participation for ex-convicts and those who wished to exclude them.11 This division arose due to the ability (at least in the early days of the colony) of some ex-convicts to become quite wealthy, thereby blurring social boundaries. Though in practice the term ‘emancipist’ encapsulated any former convict, it was the wealthy emancipists who offended and who were often condemned using coded language. For example, there were calls for single female immigrants to be placed in domestic service only with ‘respectable’ (i.e. non-emancipist) families.12 Likewise, ‘bad’ masters were condemned for sharing their dinner tables with (convict) servants under their employ, a failure to uphold social distinctions.13 In order to reinforce those boundaries, the Exclusives 10  Indeed, in his classic examination of early colonial politics, Roe did not include immigration in his five identified issues—political authority, land policy, transportation, religion, and education—that stirred political tensions. Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, 1835–1851 (Kingsgrove, NSW: Melbourne University Press, 1965). 11  Note on terminology: ‘Exclusives’ is the term that is used in the historiography; however, Exclusives did not refer to themselves as such. They called themselves ‘Emigrants’, to highlight the fact that they had come to the colony free. To avoid confusion here (where the focus is on an entirely different group of immigrants), the term ‘Exclusive’ will be used. 12  Senex [pseud.], ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 29 February 1832, 3; New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1835), Q304.894041/5, ML, 6. 13  A Hawkesbury Settler [pseud.], ‘Dungaree Settlers’, Herald, 4 June 1835, 2; John Jamison testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on

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fought for ‘English rights’ (i.e. trial by jury, representative government) for themselves alone.14 Here, I use the convention of capitalising these terms, because emancipists (the ex-convicts themselves) and Emancipists (their political advocates) were not equivalent groups. Free immigrants like Nathaniel Kentish and native-born men like William Charles Wentworth were key figures among the Emancipists, leading the charge for broad civic participation. Principles might trump personal background when it came to political allegiances, and men categorised here as ‘colonial elite’ belonged to both the Emancipist and Exclusive factions. Categorising individuals according to political faction is an imperfect exercise. The beliefs of an individual or otherwise prominent voice (i.e. a newspaper) may not map neatly onto any particular group. Presbyterian minister J. D. Lang, who founded two newspapers during this time period (the Colonist and the Colonial Observer), was socially conservative in his views on convicts and Irish assisted immigrants, but quite liberal—radical, even—in his views on representative government, making him (and his papers) hard to categorise politically.15 Similarly, the Sydney Herald generally championed conservative causes, but was also one of the earliest colonial voices to call for the end of transportation, a position counter to many of the wealthy pastoralists at the time. Prominent voices within a particular group could also change their stance. An Emancipist leader in the 1830s, Wentworth later advocated the ultraconservative idea of creating a colonial hereditary aristocracy.16 Likewise, if a newspaper changed editor or ownership, its entire political outlook might change. Over time, the factions themselves could shift; as the end of transportation drew near, the Emancipist cause lost its urgency, and new interests—for example, ‘squatters’ and ‘operatives’ (the working classes)—materialised, as we will see. The Emancipist-Exclusive divide did not evaporate overnight, but by the Immigration, 1835, 52; John Dunmore Lang, Transportation and Colonization: Or, the Causes of the Comparative Failure of the Transportation System in the Australian Colonies: With Suggestions for Ensuring Its Future Efficiency in Subserviency to Extensive Colonization (London: A. J. Valpy, 1837), chap. 10. 14  David Neal, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 18–21. 15  I choose to use the modern terms of ‘conservative’ (broadly defined as seeking to protect the status of the wealthy), ‘liberal’ (aiming for a wider distribution of power and inclusion in political structures), and ‘radical’ (advocating for the working classes), terms that were coming into use during our time period. 16  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, 23.

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end of the time period covered here, the political landscape was much more complicated. With these complexities acknowledged, this chapter will focus on the rhetoric itself, on political ideas rather than individuals. Even if historians disagree over the exact composition of various political factions, political rhetoric still had a palpable effect as it communicated contested visions for society. Exclusive/elite public discourse aimed to establish and solidify social dominance; emancipist and operative claims asserted agency and value to society. The debates over immigration, representative government, and convict transportation were sites of these discursive struggles.

Instigating and Controlling Immigration via Representative Government In the 1820s, representative government was not deemed necessary for Exclusive social dominance, and there was little support for a representative assembly.17 The elite exercised power through the local magistracy and a push for a representative assembly would only bring the thorny question of emancipists’ participation in civic institutions to a head. This began to change in the 1830s. At first, only the Herald devoted much space to the issue,18 but by the end of the decade, the colonial newspapers widely clamoured for a representative government of some sort (though they disagreed on what the franchise should be).19 Historian John Hirst attributed the shift to an eagerness among the Exclusives to be able to initiate legislation and appoint magistrates.20 However, it was more than mere coincidence that the shift in feeling developed along with the implementation of the Ripon Regulations. The rise in support for a representative government paralleled the growth in assisted immigration. Chapter 2 argued that the colonial elite incessantly complained about the manner in which assisted migration was conducted and the ‘quality’ of the assisted immigrants themselves because the elite wanted to control both assisted migration and the land fund.  Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, chap. 3.  Herald, 20 June 1831, 2; Herald, 15 April 1833, 2. 19  ‘The Land Fund. [Concluded.]’, The Colonist, 24 November 1838, 2; The Australian, 7 December 1839, 2; ‘Is New South Wales Ripe for a Representative Form of Government?’ Gazette, 29 April 1841, 2; ‘Our Rights  – and We Will Have Them’, Observer, 28 October 1841. 20  Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, 172. 17 18

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They believed that control would come with a representative assembly.21 In discussing the benefits of the desired assembly, the Australian asked, ‘Will any person contend that either the Home Government, or the Colonial Land Board, or any other party in England can manage our land sales and appropriate the fund arising from the same, so advantageously to the colony, as we could manage it ourselves?’22 Once again, paranoia over the land fund surfaced. Britain purportedly did not want the colony to have representative government because it had ‘a deep design upon our Land Fund’.23 And once again, in order to prove Colonial Office ineptitude, the colonial elite denigrated the assisted immigrants themselves. The fact that the Colonial Office was sending these depraved, lazy immigrants was proof of the mistreatment the colony received, mistreatment that would continue until the colony obtained representative government. In the meantime, the Sydney Gazette claimed, ‘while we are awaiting for the accomplishment of the desirable object which is our principle aim [representative government], we are suffering … immigration to be perverted to the moral as well as political injury of the Colony’.24 The colonial elite claimed the Colonial Office injured the colony by sending immoral emigrants and stealing the land fund. The remedy for such abuse was representative government. From the colonial point of view, not only would representative government allow the colony to control assisted migration, but it would also spur migration of a ‘better’ sort. As will be discussed in Chap. 5, in the early 1830s, the colonial elite were preoccupied with the immigration of ‘respectable’ immigrants, in other words, men of small capital. Exclusives used this terminology to differentiate such ‘respectable’ men from the ‘disreputable’ emancipists and their push for such immigration 21  ‘Australian Patriotic Meeting’, Gazette, 24 November 1835, 2; Herald, 4 February 1836, 2; ‘The “Colonist’s” Opinion of the Tory Association’, Monitor, 31 January 1838, 2; ‘The Treatment and Disposal of Immigrants’, The Colonist, 19 February 1840, 2. In reality, when the colony did achieve a partially elected legislative council in 1843, it did not receive this control. The Colonial Office retained control of the land fund, and as discussed in Chap. 2, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission took an even more active role in the logistics of assisted migration following the 1841–1842 overextension of the bounty system. 22  The Australian, 26 November 1840, 2. 23  Quotation from ‘Representation of the Colonies in Parliament’, The Colonist, 13 November 1839, 2. See also ‘Legislative Assembly in New South Wales’, Herald, 10 February 1840, 1; ‘Lord John Russell’s Proposed Measure for the Government of New South Wales’, Gazette, 19 November 1840, 2. 24  ‘Australian Patriotic Meeting’, Gazette, 24 November 1835, 2.

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undoubtedly aimed, at least in part, to bolster Exclusive numbers.25 This objective was thwarted by ‘the want of constitutional modes of government … [which] operates as a serious discouragement’ to emigration.26 Thus, one of the several reasons representative government was so important to the colonial elite was the disincentive its absence provided to prospective emigrants of small capital. Such men, some believed, would not willingly give up their civil liberties in order to emigrate to New South Wales. Paradoxically, according to the British point of view, immigration must come first. In the early part of the decade, one Colonial Office argument against granting New South Wales a representative assembly was the low proportion of the population free of the convict taint.27 It feared the emancipists with their superior numbers would hold too much political power. Moreover, were there even enough ‘gentlemen’ willing to run for office? Some in the colony saw these objections as bolstering the aforementioned rationale for an immediate representative assembly: with an elected government, the number of ‘gentlemen’ would increase as potential emigrants of capital would no longer be deterred by its absence and the influence of the emancipists would be lessened by the flood of assisted immigration that would surely transpire once the system was under colonial control. Other colonial voices accepted the Colonial Office’s stance and saw increasing immigration as a prerequisite to a representative government.28 In both argumentative strands, however, immigration was vitally important and intertwined with the issue of representative government. The issues of immigration and representative government were linked in another way: just as the Colonial Office’s perceived mismanagement of assisted migration served as proof of the colony’s mistreatment, so too did the colony’s lack of a representative assembly, the colonial elite’s  It was also related to a perceived need for more capital to enter the colony.  As asserted in an 1830 petition to Parliament reprinted in Peter McIntyre, ‘Petition to the House of Commons’, Gazette, 27 January 1830, 2. See also ‘Hints to Persons in England Desirous of Emigrating to New South Wales’, Monitor, 29 May 1830, 2; The Australian, 2 December 1831, 2; ‘Public Meeting To-morrow’, The Colonist, 28 May 1835, 4. 27  See the response of Viscount Howick, undersecretary in the Colonial Office, to the colony’s 1832 petition for free institutions, as reported in ‘Important Debate on New South Wales’, Herald, 19 November 1832, 2. 28  Gazette, 20 January 1831, 2; The Australian, 2 December 1831, 3; ‘The Present Crisis’, The Colonist, 28 May 1835, 1; Herald, 7 April 1836, 2. 25 26

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‘inalienable birth right’.29 Similar to what we saw in the context of immigration in Chap. 2, the colonial elite’s assertion of their rights often took on a defensive—even wounded—tone. It seemed Britain was not simply overlooking but rather intentionally shunning the colony. What alternative conclusion could be reached when other colonies were granted that which New South Wales was denied?30 At times, this deeply felt injustice and anger were expressed via threats of colonial independence, often with allusions to the American Revolution. In the early years of the Ripon Regulations, the land regulations were described as ‘taxation without representation’.31 When the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission planned major changes to the functioning of assisted emigration (discussed in Chap. 2), the Herald declared, ‘Any one of the oppressive measures proposed … would have severed America from the British dominions long before 1782’.32 These threats were primarily empty; historian Peter Cochrane categorised such defiant calls for representative government as ‘an insistence on inclusion, not rebellion’.33 Still, the use of such language was a powerful expression of indignation, of the deep tensions created by the colony’s lack of representative government, tensions that both incorporated and echoed those expressed in the debates over assisted immigration. As we can see, the issues of representative government and immigration were intertwined. The control over assisted immigration and the land fund that the elite so desperately wanted—the control argued for, in part, by denigrating the assisted immigrants themselves—would presumably be granted along with a representative assembly. As Britons, the elite felt they had the right to manage their own affairs. Instead, the Colonial Office denied the colonial elite their birth right allegedly in order to steal their land revenue. Moreover, denial of that right discouraged the emigration 29  The Australian, 7 December 1839, 2; Australian Patriotic Association, Letter from the Australian Patriotic Association, to C. Buller, Jun., Esq., M.P., in Reply to His Communication of July and August, 1840 (Sydney: James Tegg and Co., 1841), 5; ‘Our Rights – and We Will Have Them’, Observer, 28 October 1841; 1842 petition draft reprinted in ‘Colonists! Be Unanimous!’, Herald, 15 February 1842, 2. 30  Colonies in the West Indies and Canada were specifically cited. The Australian, 2 August 1830, 2; ‘The Petition of the Colony Now Before Parliament’, Monitor, 31 October 1835, 2. 31  Herald, 19 September 1831, 2; The Australian, 7 June 1833, 2; ‘Annoyances in Some Case Distress of Respectable Emigrants’, Monitor, 2 September 1835, 2. 32  ‘Sale in England of Land in New South Wales’, Herald, 15 July 1840, 2. See also The Australian, 7 December 1839, 2. 33  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, 8.

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of ‘respectable’ men of small capital. On multiple levels, dissatisfaction with land and immigration policy served as a rallying cry in the push for representative government.

Debating Priorities: Transportation or Representative Government? Colonial commentators may have suspected that Britain did not grant representative government because it coveted the land fund, but in reality, Britain’s primary espoused reason was convict transportation. ‘A Penal Settlement’, explained the colony’s Parliamentary advocate Charles Buller, ‘must … be administered on the principle of a jail’ and therefore could not be granted an elected assembly, according to the prevailing logic.34 And so, the third of the trio of key issues enters our story. Transportation continued until 1840, but British resistance was already strong a decade earlier. The practice became a target of a larger wave of humanitarianism that swept Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The greatest triumph of the movement was the abolition of slavery in the Empire, but humanitarians also turned their attention to diverse causes such as the treatment of the insane, the protection of Indigenous peoples across the Empire, and the broader British penal system.35 Himself an activist for the abolition of slavery, Secretary of State Goderich expressed his reservations about transportation at the same time he was working to launch assisted emigration, believing that transportation neither deterred crime in Britain nor provided enough labour for the colony.36 Goderich argued that the new scheme of assisted emigration was needed so that transportation could eventually end. From the British point of view, the three issues of emigration, transportation, and representative government formed an intricate web. In the colony, support for keeping transportation was strong and was often justified by pointing to deficiencies in immigration. As pastoralism depended on convict labour and the economy of the colony rested on the wool trade, liberal and conservative voices alike feared ending  Charles Buller, ‘Patriotic Association’, The Australian, 3 July 1838, 2.  David Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), chap. 10. 36  Goderich to Arthur, 27 January 1832, enclosure to Goderich to Bourke, 1 May 1832, Despatches to the Governor, A1269 CY 1399, ML. 34 35

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transportation would ‘strike the most direct blow ever aimed at our prosperity’.37 Yes, those voices conceded, immigration might one day fill the colony’s labour needs, but thanks to the Colonial Office’s mismanagement of assisted migration, that day had not yet arrived. ‘Convicts are necessary evils’, the Gazette stated matter-of-factly, ‘They cannot be spared as yet’.38 Proponents of transportation were willing to allow that transportation would eventually no longer be needed—the Sydney Monitor even specified a time period of 15 to 20 years in the future—but for now, the colony could not survive without it.39 The tone of the arguments defending transportation ranged from positive to extortive to paranoid. Transportation defenders cited how much Britain benefited from its existence. Various petitions and resolutions passed by the Legislative Council pointed out that transportation to the colony was cheaper than keeping the convicts at home.40 Colonial proponents of transportation also deftly tried to bolster their case by linking transportation to Britain’s pet project—emigration—via an argument that contained a touch of blackmail. According to colonial logic, proceeds from land sales funded migration, but the only reason elite colonists had enough money to purchase land was because they had benefited from cheap convict labour. Transportation had to remain so that they could continue to pay for Britain’s emigration.41 Finally, in suggesting transportation should end, some believed Britain was ignoring the colony’s magnanimous service to the Empire in supporting the convicts. How magnanimous? In a public meeting to debate and decry the use of the land fund, William Charles Wentworth claimed that the Crown had saved 30  million pounds by sending the convicts to New South Wales. As a result, the home government owed the colony ‘a debt of gratitude … a debt which is but ill requited by their now preying upon our vitals, and 37  Quotation from Gazette, 22 March 1831, 2. See also ‘The Cunning-ist’, Monitor, 17 June 1835, 2; ‘The Contemplated Changes in Our Condition – the New Constitution’, The Australian, 10 July 1838, 2. 38  ‘Emigration’, Gazette, 9 June 1835, 2. 39  ‘Convict Labour’, Monitor, 30 May 1838, 2. See also The Australian, 11 August 1835, 2; M. [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Colonist, 25 April 1838, 2. 40  See an 1834 petition reprinted in The Australian, 2 September 1834, 2; and an 1839 petition reprinted in ‘Transportation and Assignment’, The Australian, 24 January 1839, 4. 41  A point made in resolutions passed by the Legislative Council (New South Wales Legislative Council, ‘Transportation and Assignment’, 17 July 1838, enclosure to Gipps to Glenelg, 18 July 1838, Governor’s Despatches, A1219 CY 645, ML) and in an 1839 petition reprinted in ‘Transportation and Assignment’, The Australian, 24 January 1839, 4.

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plundering us in so shameful a manner’.42 Transportation and immigration policy were once again entangled. While most colonial factions widely agreed on the importance of representative government by the mid-1830s, there was more diversity of opinion about the continuance of transportation. The Colonist and the Herald advocated for transportation to end as did three works by elite colonists (James Macarthur, James Mudie, and J.  D. Lang) published in Britain mid-decade.43 The primary argument made within the colony for ending transportation was its relationship to representative government. The Herald, in particular, often argued pragmatically (and correctly) that transportation prevented the colony from receiving an elected assembly. For all the challenges the colony faced, the Herald claimed, ‘There is but one remedy. Render this a free colony’.44 In response to such arguments, defenders of transportation claimed that any problems Britain detected with transportation would be fixed once the colony controlled it, an argument very similar to calls for the colony to control immigration. ‘When we have a House of Assembly’, the Monitor proclaimed, ‘Our prison population shall have become restored to a proper state of subordination’.45 Such counterarguments aside, a portion of the colonial elite had accepted Britain’s stance. While convict labour was still widely believed to be indispensable to the growing colony, some were willing to give it up for the more important goal of representative government. Another key point of contention was transportation’s impact on immigration, both the immigration of labourers and of men with capital. Those who wished to keep transportation argued that cheap convict labour (much like land grants) attracted men with wealth to invest.46 On the contrary, those who wished to see transportation end claimed that forced labour was antithetical to capitalism and, therefore, the use of convicts  ‘Public Meeting’, Gazette, 30 August 1834.  Macarthur later changed his stance on transportation, after it ended. James Macarthur, New South Wales; Its Present State and Future Prospects: Being a Statement, with Documentary Evidence Submitted in Support of Petitions to His Majesty and Parliament (London: D. Walther, 1837); James Mudie, The Felonry of New South Wales, Being a Faithful Picture of the Real Romance of Life in Botany Bay: With Anecdotes of Botany Bay Society, and a Plan of Sydney (London: Whaley and Company, 1837); Lang, Transportation and Colonization. 44  Quotation from Herald, 19 March 1835, 2. See also ‘The Discontinuance of Transportation to the Colony Desirable’, The Colonist, 6 August 1835, 1. 45  ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 23 April 1834, 2. See also The Australian, 9 February 1838. 46  Thomas Potter Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be (London: J.  Cross, 1840), 16. 42 43

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‘check[ed] the voluntary emigration of capitalists’.47 While defenders of transportation claimed the system funded assisted immigration, opponents argued that transportation hurt such immigration. Since convict labour depressed wages, transportation was claimed to deter potential labouring emigrants.48 As with the connections made between i­ mmigration and representative government, immigration and transportation exhibited a chicken-and-egg relationship. Proponents of transportation claimed transportation could not be ended until immigration had reached a sufficient level to replace convict labour, and opponents of transportation claimed the needed immigration would not happen until transportation had ended.49 Both sides attacked the character of the assisted immigrants. In defending the system, proponents of transportation argued that the convicts were not the demoralising force those in Britain thought them to be. ‘What are the English people afraid of?’ a letter in the Gazette provocatively asked, ‘Do they think the convicts will eat them?’50 Defenders of transportation also attempted to deflect negative attention from the convicts onto the assisted immigrants, claiming free immigrants were even worse than convicts. The Monitor pronounced, ‘Our opinion of free imported labour is, that it will produce a class of labourers more insolent, turbulent, and ungovernable, than the prison population’.51 Interestingly, the voices in the public sphere that wished to see transportation end did not argue the converse; only rarely did they argue that free immigrants were morally superior to convicts. Instead, they claimed that the penal system depreciated the free immigrant pool because it deterred ‘virtuous’ labourers.52 Since virtuous labourers would not wish to live amongst 47  Quotation from Herald, 5 February 1835, 2. See also ‘The Present Crisis’, The Colonist, 28 May 1835; ‘The Transportation System’, Gazette, 25 September 1841, 2. 48  Herald, 5 February 1835, 2; ‘Immigrants’, Monitor, 28 December 1836, 4. 49  For the need for more immigration before transportation could end, see The Australian, 9 February 1838, 2; ‘The Transportation Committee’, Gazette, 2 March 1839, 3. For the need to end transportation first, see Herald, 5 May 1836, 2; ‘The Proposed Public Meeting’, The Colonist, 12 May 1838, 2. 50  Quotation from ‘On the Comfort and Happiness of the Labouring Classes in the Colony of New South Wales, Compared with the Same Class in Great Britain’, Gazette, 13 July 1830, 2. See also W [pseud.], ‘Prisoners Deter Emigration’, Gazette, 22 March 1831, 3; Wentworth’s comment at an 1836 public meeting, reported in ‘Public Meeting’, The Australian, 15 April 1836, 2; ‘Immigration’, The Colonist, 27 August 1840, 2. 51  ‘Free or Convict Labour’, Monitor, 19 July 1834, 2. 52  ‘The Proposed Public Meeting’, The Colonist, 12 May 1838, 2.

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convicts, the assisted immigrants already arrived were, by implication, not virtuous. Moreover, even if moral emigrants could be convinced to come to New South Wales, they might soon be contaminated. In one example, the Monitor salaciously reported that wives of immigrant farm labourers were sometimes seduced by convict servants who plied the women’s husbands into compliance with gifts of grog.53 In their attempts to denigrate the convicts, colonial opponents of transportation ironically denigrated their alternative labour source, as well.

Closing Ranks and Lashing Out in Response to the Molesworth Report Mid-decade, the colonial elite were split on transportation. The two sides moved closer together, however, in response to Parliament’s Select Committee on Transportation (commonly called the Molesworth Committee), convened in 1837. The Molesworth Committee concluded that assignment (whereby convicts worked for private settlers) was a lottery that treated convicts as slaves and did little to reform their habits. Furthermore, the Committee’s report asserted, transportation was ‘inconsistent’ with a policy of encouraging emigration, as convict workers degraded the labour market (thus discouraging the emigration of labourers) and as healthy emigration would dilute transportation’s reputation as a punishment best avoided.54 Accordingly, the Committee advised that transportation end, a recommendation Secretary of State Glenelg was seriously considering by the end of 1838.55 By August 1840, New South Wales no longer appeared on the list of approved destinations for transported convicts.56

53  ‘Emigrant Farm Labourers’, Monitor, 26 April 1839, 2. The idea of immigrant ‘contamination’ by convicts was also found in Alexander Berry’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee on Immigration, Indian and British, into New South Wales (Sydney: E.  H. Statham, 1837), DSM/Q325/Pa1, ML, 72; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1839, 9. 54  House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on Transportation, 1838, viii, xxxv. 55  Glenelg to Gipps, 16 November 1838, Despatches to the Governor, A1278 CY 1439, ML. 56   Richard Charles Mills, The Colonization of Australia (1829–42): The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building (1915; repr., London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1968), 283.

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Historians have largely concluded that the Molesworth Committee was a biased ‘show trial’,57 an opinion widely held in the colony at the time that spurred various colonial factions to defensive action. As Governor George Gipps understatedly reported to Glenelg, the Committee ‘produced a very considerable sensation in the colony’.58 The Legislative Council passed resolutions that defended the colony.59 Petitions drafted in 1838 and 1839 claimed the Committee had relied on carefully selected, prejudicial witnesses.60 Wealthy colonial landowner and former New South Wales resident Thomas Potter Macqueen published a book in Britain defending the colony.61 The colonial press picked apart and discredited the testimony heard by the Committee, most especially those provided by colonists Macarthur, Lang, and Mudie, the authors of the aforementioned anti-transportation books.62 Even the Herald, a long advocate of ending transportation, declared the Committee’s conclusions had been predetermined and asked why the Committee had bothered examining the abuses of the system if it had no intention of fixing them. The newspaper had not changed its stance on transportation, it said, but it disagreed with the report’s claims that transportation could never work well nor be useful to the colony.63 Transportation had been under attack in Britain for some time, but the Molesworth Committee raised colonial defences like nothing before because it attacked not only the system of transportation and the convicts themselves but also the character of the colonial elite.64 The report stressed the ‘progressive demoralization both of the bond and of the free inhabitants of that colony’ and claimed that ‘more immorality prevailed in Sydney 57  Quotation from Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2005), 147. See also Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2008), chap. 7; Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, 20. 58  Gipps to Glenelg, 18 July 1838, Governor’s Despatches, A1219 CY 645, ML. 59  Enclosure to ibid. 60  Text of the petitions respectively reprinted in ‘The Public Meeting’, Gazette, 26 May 1838, 2; ‘Transportation and Assignment’, The Australian, 24 January 1839, 4. 61  Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be. 62  ‘The Transportation Committee’, The Colonist, 10 January 1838, 2; The Australian, 9 February 1838, 2; ‘Immigration and Transportation’, Gazette, 31 May 1838, 2. 63  ‘The Transportation Committee’, Herald, 8 March 1839, 2. 64  Kirsten McKenzie, ‘Discourses of Scandal: Bourgeois Respectability and the End of Slavery and Transportation at the Cape and New South Wales’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003); Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, 200.

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than in any other town of the same size in the British dominions’.65 A focus on the punishment of flogging and abundant use of slavery language portrayed convict masters as no better than depraved slave owners, and oblique references to homosexual activities wreaked ‘psychological havoc’ on the colony.66 Already subjected to unfair land and immigration policies (in their view) and denied their right to representative government, the colonial elite now found their morality and honour directly questioned. The Molesworth Committee’s focus on morality changed the tenor of the debate. Prior to the Committee’s report, opponents of transportation had occasionally made the morality argument themselves, most often in a bid for more free immigration. Lang’s and Macarthur’s books both claimed an influx of immigrants would ‘neutralise’ the ‘evil influence’ of the convicts.67 Even the 1835 Legislative Council Committee on Immigration admitted that transportation had ‘brought with it a long train of moral evils, which can only be counteracted by an extensive introduction of free and virtuous inhabitants’.68 Some were willing to admit the colony had a morality problem, albeit a problem contained among the convict population. After the Molesworth report rejected that containment, this was a risky argument to make. According to the Herald, the report created the impression that ‘we are a community of slaves and slave-­ holders, of thieves and pickpockets, of whore-mongers and adulterers, of sabbath-breakers and blasphemers, of liars, and villains, and murderers!’69 The colony’s defensive hackles were raised. In 1840, the Legislative

65  House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on Transportation, 1838, xxviii and xxxi. 66  Respectively discussed in Isobelle Barrett Meyering, ‘Abolitionism, Settler Violence and the Case against Flogging: A Reassessment of Sir William Molesworth’s Contribution to the Transportation Debate’, History Australia 7, no. 1 (June 2010): 6.1–6.18; Smith, Australia’s Birthstain, 221. 67  Quotations from John Dunmore Lang, Emigration; Considered Chiefly in Reference to the Practicability and Expediency of Importing and of Settling Throughout the Territory of New South Wales, a Numerous, Industrious and Virtuous Agricultural Population; Being a Lecture Delivered in the Temporary Hall of the Australian College Sydney, 9th May 1833 (Sydney: E. S. Hall, 1833), 5. See also Lang, Transportation and Colonization, 66; Macarthur, New South Wales; Its Present State and Future Prospects, 200. 68  It should be noted that this was part of the Committee’s call for better ‘quality’ assisted immigrants. New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1835, 17. 69  ‘Moral State of the Colony’, Herald, 30 April 1841, 2.

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Council passed another series of resolutions, asserting that reports of immorality in the colony were unfounded: Unfavourable representations of the Moral condition of this Colony so extensively and industriously circulated in the Mother Country with a view to deter persons from emigrating hither, are altogether unfounded, as respect the Emigrant and Native Born Inhabitants, and greatly exaggerated as regards circumstances attributable to the Penal character of the Colony.70

Because several Committee members had ties to the rival colony of South Australia, ‘deter[ing] persons from emigrating hither’ (and redirecting them to South Australia) was seen as the ulterior motive of the insulting report.71 But in any case, the Molesworth report had denigrated the character of the colonial elite, a move that united the various factions in defence of their own virtue. That defence was an interesting mix of defending both the colony and the convicts as well impugning the character of the assisted immigrants. For some, it took the form of minimising transportation’s perceived negative effects on colonial morality, which, they claimed, had been blown out of proportion by the Committee and the British press. ‘TRANSPORTATION IS DEMORALIZATION is the bugbear with which the people of England are to be scared into any measures that it may suit the contending parliamentary factions’, the Australian complained.72 Defenders were quick to point out that most convicts worked in remote regions as agricultural labourers or shepherds. There was nothing more reformative for a man’s character than physical isolation from former bad influences with plenty of time for personal reflection

70  New South Wales Legislative Council, Resolutions of the Legislative Council on the Subject of Immigration to New South Wales: 23rd October, 1840, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML. 71  For example, Molesworth and committee member Charles Buller had close ties to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who was a key driving force behind the founding of South Australia, a colony based on his theory of colonisation. ‘The Transportation Committee’, The Colonist, 10 January 1838, 2; ‘Our Friend and Our Foes – Sir Richard Bourke, and the South Australian Commissioners  – An Authentic Account of Some of Their Operations, from Late English Intelligence’, The Australian, 8 January 1839, 2; ‘The Transportation Committee’, Gazette, 7 February 1839, 2. 72  ‘The “Transportation Committee”’, The Australian, 25 May 1838, 2 (emphasis in original).

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amidst the beauty of nature.73 Even the Colonist defended the system it had heretofore wished to see ended by arguing that assignment of convict workers to private employers was the cheapest and most effective means of behavioural reform.74 Defending the convicts was a tactical move to discredit the findings of the Committee. If the report had mischaracterised the convicts, then, by extension, it had mischaracterised the masters who supervised the convicts, as well. Perhaps in response to the Molesworth report’s claim that Sydney displayed ‘more immorality … than in any other town of the same size in the British Dominions’,75 the Colonist asserted that ‘society at home has a far greater proportion of bad men, whether they have been convicted or not, than we have in this colony’, a deft move that redirected the worst insults against the colony back towards Britain and implicated the assisted immigrants in the process.76 If officials in Britain thought the convicts were immoral, colonial commentators exclaimed, they should take a close look at the emigrants they were sending to the colony. Britain’s plans to improve morality in the colony by replacing convicts with migrants would not work. Because ‘a large proportion of our … immigrants are really no better than convicts, the improvement of our general population [will be] almost as questionable from the one importation as it is from another’, the Observer declared.77 To the Herald, it seemed ‘to be the intention of the authorities at home to inundate us with criminals, in every way’.78 Two long-standing elements of colonial rhetoric about assisted immigration— complaints about immigrant immorality and paranoia surrounding Britain’s treatment of the colony—seamlessly fed into the counteroffensive launched in response to the Molesworth Committee. In the aftermath of the Molesworth report and the cessation of transportation in 1840, antagonism between supporters and opponents of transportation lessened. Between the two events, those who wished to keep transportation came to admit begrudgingly that the Colonial Office was determined to end the system and therefore efforts to save it would 73  See an 1839 petition reprinted in ‘Transportation and Assignment’, The Australian, 24 January 1839, 4; Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be, 12. 74  ‘Mr. James Macarthur’s Resolutions’, The Colonist, 13 October 1840. 75  House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on Transportation, 1838, xxxii. 76  Using the classic ‘I’m rubber and you’re glue’ tactic often employed by schoolchildren. ‘Colonial Politics’, The Colonist, 11 March 1840, 2. 77  ‘Ourselves’, Observer, 6 January 1842 (emphasis in original). 78  ‘Immigration’, Herald, 2 September 1840, 2.

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prove futile.79 Those who had opposed transportation were quick to point out that there was now no reason for Britain to withhold representative government from the colony.80 Despite widespread aspersions directed at working-class immigrants, the impending cessation of transportation intensified the focus on assisted immigration for both sides of the transportation debate. The 1841 Legislative Council Committee on Immigration stressed that convicts had been ‘useful in every mode of employment’ and now ‘energetic measures’ were needed to obtain labour via immigration.81 A group of colonial social leaders founded the Australian Immigration Association to combat negative impressions created by the Molesworth report and advance a positive view of the colony among potential emigrants in Britain.82 The elite had failed in their battle to keep transportation; they now focused on ensuring adequate working-class immigration.

A Shifting Political Landscape The first decade of assisted immigration witnessed transformations in each of the critical issues discussed in this chapter: transportation ended, a partially elected Legislative Council was finally granted, and a non-convict, working-class population was built. Accordingly, the political landscape of the colony transformed, as well. By the end of the time period, the previously central divide between Exclusives and Emancipists had been rendered moot by the end of transportation and the belief that wealthy emancipists were decreasing in number and becoming increasingly invisible in society.83 At the same time, new interests emerged to represent the new class of ‘squatters’ and the growing working classes. The key questions in the public sphere now focused on wealth, its relation to the overall 79  The Australian, 19 November 1840, 2; Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be, 6. 80  ‘Is New South Wales Ripe for a Representative Form of Government?’ Gazette, 29 April 1841, 2; ‘Our Rights – and We Will Have Them’, Observer, 28 October 1841; 1842 petition draft reprinted in ‘Colonists! Be Unanimous!’, Herald, 15 February 1842, 2. 81  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1841. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, and Replies to the Circular Letter on the Aborigines (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 1. 82  ‘The Immigration Association’, The Colonist, 17 September 1840, 2. 83  See Buller’s memo to the Secretary of State, reprinted in The Australian, 27 February 1840, 2; ‘The Transportation System’, Gazette, 25 September 1841, 2; ‘The Emancipists’, Herald, 11 January 1842, 2.

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advancement of the colony, and the degree to which power should be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, all of which connected to or were impacted by immigration. As the much-desired ‘immigrants of small capital’—the unassisted immigrants—arrived and experienced greater challenges in obtaining their ‘fortunes’ than anticipated (see Chap. 4), complaints arose about the power and wealth amassed by the ‘old settlers’, the wealthy, long-time residents of the colony. The great landowners would purportedly use vacant land near their own and would not move to purchase that vacant land until someone else expressed interest in doing so.84 They stood accused of acting only in their own self-interest, of having ‘a most worldly thirst for wealth’.85 The old settlers had risen to prominence because of land grants and convict labour and now allegedly wanted to keep others from attaining such heights. Of the Macarthurs, the family who had pioneered the Australian wool industry, the Gazette bemoaned, ‘the ladder by which they had climbed to their pseudo aristocracy, has been by themselves knocked down’.86 In response to such criticisms came the argument that the interests of wealthy pastoralists must be protected: ‘Indirectly, the landholder and grazier assist and support all other classes of the community. Without them, merchants and traders could not live’.87 Many former Emancipists shifted towards the side of the Exclusives, including William Charles Wentworth and wealthy ex-convicts.88 Faced with increasing criticism and an economic depression, the ‘old settlers’ banded together. At the same time, old settlers suspected others of the same sins they stood accused. The Ripon Regulations—whereby land could be purchased by anyone with the money to do so—encouraged land speculation and opened the door for a new breed of wealthy men to enter the market. Under the old system, obtaining a land grant required government approval; hence, it involved patronage, a form of personal vetting. Not so under the Ripon Regulations. As a result, new, unknown speculators were treated with suspicion as they were assumed to have no long-term interest in the colony, viewing it merely as an avenue to quick profit.89 Such ‘spirit  Gipps to Glenelg, 2 June 1838, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/5 CY 695, ML.  ‘Catholic and Protestant Immigration’, Monitor, 24 November 1841, 2. 86  ‘Labour – Coolies’, Gazette, 13 July 1841, 2. 87  Herald, 25 November 1839, 2. 88  Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty, 23, 52. 89  Old settlers certainly also participated in land speculation, so the two groups were not as distinct as the rhetoric might imply. Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, chap. 2. 84 85

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of wild and reckless speculation’ received its share of blame for the economic depression.90 Furthermore, Colonial Office-mandated increases to the minimum price of land and the large amounts of property required to make a profit in wool combined to lead to ‘squatting’, the unauthorised running of flocks on unalienated Crown land. Faced with a labour shortage and largely unable to obtain convict workers, ‘squatters’—many of whom were the new unassisted immigrants91—vocally clamoured for the resumption of transportation, which opened them to charges of placing profit over the moral well-being of the colony. As the Herald lamented, those fighting to resume transportation ‘seek to multiply their flocks, to enhance their fleeces … at the heavier expense of our public peace, our public morals, our public character, our public happiness. Their system, in fine, attaches more consequences to the well-being of sheep, than to the well-being of souls’.92 In short, squatters and speculators represented unprincipled pursuit of wealth. The shamelessness of this pursuit was distasteful to some, generating tensions between old settlers and more economically aggressive men. Meanwhile, assisted immigration brought tens of thousands of new labourers to the colony, bolstering a working-class population previously comprised primarily of convicts. A large proportion of these labourers came from England where both working-class consciousness and activism had been building for decades, in response to the same economic forces that led many assisted emigrants to leave.93 Accordingly, to the colonial conservative and liberal perspectives, a ‘radical’ voice was added, advocating for the working man. Though radical agitation did not reach its peak until the late 1840s,94 a working-class interest was discernible from the 90  Quotation from Gazette, 4 January 1842, 2. Gipps also cited speculation as a cause of the depression. Gipps to Russell, 1 February 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1224 CY 657, ML.  For more press coverage, see The Australian, 17 May 1842, 2; ‘Extravaganzas’, Observer, 18 May 1842. 91  Along with the native-born and even some of the old settlers, who expanded their operations beyond the land they owned outright. Stephen H.  Roberts, The Squatting Age in Australia, 1835–1847 (1935; repr., Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), 303–4. But since the old settlers did own other land and therefore contributed to the land fund (presuming they purchased land beyond their land grants), they considered their wealth to be more legitimate. 92  ‘Is Revival of the Convict System Desirable? IV’, Herald, 26 January 1842, 2. 93  E.  P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). 94  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, chap. 11.

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earliest days of assisted immigration. In July 1833, immigrant mechanics called a public meeting to discuss low wages and competition from convict workers.95 In June 1835, carpenters met and passed resolutions that were reportedly similar to those made by trade unions in England, aiming to regulate wages and provide support to those who had lost employment.96 Such efforts were certainly not limited to assisted immigrants; ­emancipists— especially educated emancipists—were involved, as well.97 Nevertheless, the arrival of the assisted immigrants helped construct a political identity for labourers that moved beyond emancipist rights to encompass a broader group of ‘operatives’. The operatives held meetings to petition against a Masters and Servants Act (1840), against creating a national debt to fund immigration (1841), for a broad franchise (1842), against the introduction of coolie labourers from India (1843), and for a Legislative Council committee to address economic distress among mechanics and labourers (1843).98 After 1839, they were aided by a newspaper sympathetic to their interests: the Australasian Chronicle. As historian Terry Irving argued, since assisted immigrants were the objects of policy, they believed they could—and should—influence policy.99 Radical political activity was not limited to the labourers’ own meetings. At times, the political advocates of workers appeared at public meetings of the more ‘respectable’ classes and inserted working-class interests into the debate.100 In one particular example that received great coverage in the press and illustrated the state of colonial politics in the early 1840s,101  ‘Meeting of Mechanics’, Herald, 22 July 1833, 2.  This was seen by the Australian as an attempt at ‘unlawful combination’. The paper stressed the importance of ‘further and extensive Emigration’ in order to limit the power of small groups of tradesmen. The Australian, 19 June 1835, 2. 97  Stephen Nicholas and Peter R. Shergold, ‘A Labour Aristocracy in Chains’, in Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past, Stephen Nicholas, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 98–108. 98  See, respectively, ‘Meeting of the Operatives’, Chronicle, 29 September 1840, 2; ‘Meeting of the Operatives’, The Australian, 23 December 1841, 2; ‘Public Meeting of the Operatives’, Chronicle, 7 July 1842, 2; ‘Public Meeting of the Coolie Oppositionists’, Herald, 18 January 1843, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Select Committee, on the Petition from Distressed Mechanics and Labourers, with the Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1843), Q84/10, ML. 99  Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty, 37, 127. 100  Similar to the distinction between emancipists (ex-convicts) and Emancipists (their political allies), radical advocates were not always labourers themselves. 101  For other examples, see an 1835 public meeting to determine the requirements for the directing committee of the short-lived Australian Patriotic Association (The Australian, 13 95 96

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Henry Macdermott, an Irish Protestant sergeant major and later mayor of Sydney, ruffled feathers at an 1842 meeting to approve a petition for representative government.102 Before an audience of reportedly 2000 people, Macdermott objected to the opening wording of the petition—‘We, the undersigned magistrates, clergymen, and others’—which, in his view, summarily dismissed all colonists who were neither magistrates nor clergy. He wanted the wording changed to ‘the undersigned inhabitants’ to make it more inclusive. Upon his suggestion, the Herald reported, the meeting became a ‘scene of confusion’. Later, when Macdermott proclaimed that ‘he did not wish to see representation guided only by acres, and sheep and cattle’ (a direct rebuke of the elite), there was ‘another indescribable outburst of noise and riot’ expressing support for Macdermott. He was not the sole radical voice to speak. A mason, identified by the Herald only as ‘Mr. Lynch’, asked ‘why was he not to have a voice in the government of his country … He was one of the legitimate source of all power, the people, and he would be heard’. At this, the shouting reportedly became so great, the rest of Lynch’s remarks, ironically, could not be heard. The working classes and their allies had reached a level of confidence to voice their opinions at and even (from the Herald’s point of view) hijack a meeting called by the most (in their own minds) esteemed statesmen of the colony. For this, they were thoroughly condemned, especially Macdermott, who was dubbed the ‘would be Australian Dictator’.103 After thus anointing him, the Australian alleged a prearranged plot; when Macdermott made a signal, the crowd had supposedly been instructed to ‘riot’. Shamefully, such behaviour lacked decorum and respect. ‘Democrats’ like these certainly possessed a ‘a scornful disregard of what is due to the upper and middling classes’.104 Their views were dismissed; any working-­ class disaffection was due to manipulation by men like Macdermott and

October 1835, 2) and an 1841 meeting to petition against the Colonial Office’s proposal to divide New South Wales into three separate districts (‘Public Meeting’, The Australian, 9 January 1841, 2). 102  For a detailed play-by-play of the meeting, see ‘The Public Meeting’, Herald, 17 February 1842, 2. For more on Macdermott, see L.  J. Hume, ‘Macdermott, Henry (1798–1848)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ macdermott-henry-2394/text3159 (accessed 12 February 2018). 103  The Australian, 19 February 1842, 2. 104  Gazette, 12 March 1842, 2.

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the radical press (the Chronicle).105 The tenor of political debate had undeniably shifted. Assisted immigration had helped working-class voices grow numerous, loud, and antagonistic, to the dismay of the elite. The Herald and the Australian blamed the disturbance at the meeting on the new favourite colonial scapegoat: the Irish assisted immigrants.106 In some ways, Irish assisted immigrants came to replace emancipists as the despised enemies of the conservatives. The growing concern over the increasing number of Irish among the assisted immigrants (see Chap. 2) was about more than just perceived Colonial Office mistreatment. The anti-Irish camp—which included conservatives and otherwise liberal evangelicals like J. D. Lang—assumed that the Irish would want to take over politically.107 Because the Pope claimed political power as well as infallibility, Catholics would be directed politically as well as spiritually by Church leaders, or so the logic went.108 ‘Are the Protestant landholders of this country’, Lang asked, ‘willing that their offspring, perhaps in less than twenty years hence, should be under the political dictation of a Romish hierarchy?’109 If numbers continued to increase, ‘the Emigrant Protestant Landholders—the creators of the wealth of the Colony—will be left in the minority’, the Herald warned.110 Undoubtedly, such dominance would not be benevolent. Entirely missing the hypocrisy in their fears, the anti-­ Irish voices claimed a Catholic majority would be ‘intolerant’ towards Protestants. At its most hysterical, the rhetoric claimed the Irish would ‘build dungeons for an Australian Inquisition’.111 The 1842 meeting 105  The Australian, 21 May 1842, 2; ‘Revival of the Loan Question’, Herald, 26 May 1842, 2. For more on the dismissal of the concerns of assisted immigrants, see Chap. 7. 106  The Australian, 17 February 1842, 2; ‘It Works Well!’, Herald, 21 February 1842, 2. 107  See Bishop Broughton’s remarks before the Legislative Council, reprinted in ‘Legislative Council – Wednesday Aug. 25’, The Australian, 26 August 1841, 2; ‘The Roman Catholic Remonstrance’, Herald, 25 September 1841, 2. 108  ‘Roman Catholic Immigration’, Herald, 31 August 1840, 2; ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 2 October 1840, 2. 109  John Dunmore Lang, The Question of Questions! Or, Is This Colony to Be Transformed into a Province of Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New South Wales (Sydney: J. Tegg and Co., 1841), 15. 110  Herald, 24 February 1840, 2. 111  Quotation from ‘Job of Dismembering Our Territory’, Herald, 6 January 1841, 2. See also Macarthur’s statements in Australian Immigration Association, ed., Debate in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, and Other Documents on the Subject of Immigration to the Colony, October 1840 (Sydney: J.  Tegg and Co., 1840), 39–47; The Australian, 11 January 1842, 2; ‘The Catholic Petition’, Gazette, 2 October 1842, 2.

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seemed to vindicate these fears as the ‘rioters’ were presumed to be Irishmen blindly following their fellow countryman, Macdermott (though he was actually Protestant). After the meeting, the Australian called for the elite to regroup and revise the all-important petition for representative government: ‘Australians … will you … permit yourselves to be stabbed in a vital point by an organised clique of those very Irish low Immigrants, whom you have unhappily imported … who now, serpent-like, turn round to sting their benefactors?’,112 a question that aptly captured the belief in the superiority of the elite, the inferiority of the Irish, the need for control over the ‘importation’ of immigrants, and the supposed manipulation of the working classes. The influx of immigrants spurred by the Ripon Regulations—both assisted and unassisted—reconfigured the political landscape of the colony. The old settlers faced criticism from both groups at a crucial moment when social leadership was about to be formalised via a representative legislative council. Since they were ‘the creators of the wealth of the Colony’,113 the large landowners considered themselves the natural leaders and above criticism. In turn, they lashed out, questioning the honour of squatters and speculators and dismissing the views of the working classes. * * * At the end of the first decade of assisted immigration, transportation had ended, and New South Wales was preparing for its first Legislative Council elections in 1843. But this was not the end of either story. The new Legislative Council was not granted control of the land revenue, as the colonial elite had expected. The Governor retained considerable power as only he could initiate money bills and he could also veto any legislation.114 The fight for control would continue until full responsible government was obtained in 1856. On the transportation front, there was an immediate push to bring it back.115 The arguments for reinstating transportation included the usual—transportation was cheaper for Britain than any of the alternatives, it helped fund migration, and others—as well as the claim that  The Australian, 19 February 1842, 2.  Herald, 24 February 1840, 2. 114  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, 32–3. 115  Including a public petition, reprinted in The Australian, 22 March 1842, 2. See also ‘Transportation’, Gazette, 17 August 1841, 2; The Australian, 21 December 1841. 112 113

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the discontinuance of transportation had caused the economic depression.116 Eventually, the furore died down, only to be revived at the end of the 1840s by the Colonial Office’s actions. In attempting to deal with the repercussions of sending all convicts transported since 1840 to Van Diemen’s Land, Secretary of State Earl Grey briefly reopened New South Wales to transportation, a move the Legislative Council agreed to in exchange for an equal number of assisted immigrants.117 Thus, at the end of the 1840s, representative government, transportation, and immigration were again intimately connected. Immigration and the need for labour formed the basis of the Legislative Council’s acquiescence to Grey’s plan, while already arrived assisted immigrants and their radical allies formed a key component of the cross-colony resistance to transportation that developed in response.118 Despite the fears expressed just a few years earlier that ending transportation would end colonial economic expansion, by the end of the decade, public opinion held that the proper role of the colonies was as partners in free trade and free migration, not as ‘dumping grounds’ for convicts.119 The granting of self-­government would be a recognition of that partnership. As such, the anti-­transportation movement was increasingly associated with the ultimately successful fight for responsible government.120 By the end of 1849, Grey announced he would not send any more convicts to New South Wales. In 1852, Britain finally consented to responsible government. The Legislative Council spent 1853 fiercely debating and drafting a constitution, which Britain passed in 1855. The new colonial Parliament finally met in 1856. When examining this later period of transportation and responsible government agitation, historians often stress the primacy of moral arguments, whether those arguments are interpreted to be a condemnation of homosexual activity or an ideation of the virtuous society the colonists 116  ‘Catholic and Protestant Immigration’, Monitor, 24 November 1841, 2; The Australian, 1 August 1842, 2. 117  Following Gipps’s too-generous granting of bounties (see Chap. 2) and the economic depression in 1842, assisted migration was not fully and continuously revived until the end of the decade, explaining why the Council was willing to make that trade. Harling, ‘The Trouble with Convicts: From Transportation to Penal Servitude, 1840–67’. 118  Jones, Republicanism and Responsible Government, chap. 8; Pickering, ‘Loyalty and Rebellion in Colonial Politics’, in Buckner and Francis, eds, Rediscovering the British World. 119  Holdridge, ‘Liberty Unchained’, 121–4. 120  Cochrane, Colonial Ambition, chap. 7; Pickering, ‘Loyalty and Rebellion in Colonial Politics’, in Buckner and Francis, eds, Rediscovering the British World.

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wanted to create in New South Wales.121 However, in the earlier time period examined here (1832–1842), though ‘morality’ was certainly brandished as a weapon, the utilitarian and even paradoxical nature in which it was deployed revealed it to be a subsidiary concern.122 For example, some claimed a ‘flood of immigration’ was needed to improve the morality of the colony at the same time nearly all denigrated the character of the assisted immigrants. The failings of the immigrants were used by different camps to argue that convicts were both a scourge and a blessing to the colony. Some were willing to concede the immoral influence of the convicts and advocate for transportation to end, but, on the whole, their primary goal was not the overall moral improvement of society; rather, they wanted to trade transportation for representative government. In this dizzying mix of rhetorical reversals and contradictions, we cannot take moral critiques at face value. The rhetoric of immorality was deployed against any and all competing groups. Convicts were condemned until it seemed the elite might lose the benefit of their labour. There was great desire for the immigration of ‘men of small capital’, but even so, newly arrived men of capital were criticised for prioritising financial gain over the moral well-being of the colony. The morality and usefulness of assisted immigrants were repeatedly questioned to advance various political positions. Ultimately, this rhetoric worked to protect the interests of men who imagined themselves the natural leaders of the colony, men who were attempting to establish their hegemonic power.123 The specific men in the would-be hegemonic group and how they were categorised (Exclusive, conservative, etc.) might have changed, but the use of moral arguments to discredit those who might challenge them remained a constant. Given the low opinion of colonial morality held by those in Britain, this was a dangerous game to play, and indeed, the Molesworth Committee turned the colonial elite’s strategy directly against them. That rebuke by the Mother Country only worked to heighten their sense of injustice over the ways Britain had treated the colony in relation to migration and 121  Respectively, Smith, Australia’s Birthstain; Jones, Republicanism and Responsible Government. 122  This is not to say that there were no true believers. Some—most especially J. D. Lang and the Monitor—seemed genuinely concerned about the moral state of the colony, but even they used that concern to impugn the character of the assisted immigrants. 123  Furthermore, the elite advanced a very particular conception of ‘morality’ that protected their own status, as we’ll see in Chap. 5.

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representative government and to intensify assertions of their own superior morality. As the 1838 resolutions passed by the Legislative Council declared, ‘numerous Free Emigrants of character and capital … together with a rising generation of Native-born Subjects, constitute a body of Colonists, who … are not inferior to the Inhabitants of any other Dependency of the British Crown, and are sufficient to impress a character of respectability upon the Colony at large’.124 Conceptions of morality and ‘worthiness’ factored into political contests at multiple levels. Both historians John Hirst and Bill Rubinstein argued there was no ‘ruling class’ in the colony, as ‘Australia’s rich men were neither rich enough nor powerful enough to constitute a plausible “ruling class”’.125 However, based on the rhetoric surrounding immigration, transportation, and representative government, there is no doubt that colonial elite men— conservative and liberal alike—saw themselves as a ruling class. To them, their prosperity and the prosperity of the colony were one and the same; policies related to transportation and immigration needed to be crafted so as to protect that prosperity. Such beneficial policies could be achieved with an elected assembly that they naturally would lead. Driven by this vision, they resented both Britain’s denial of their right to manage their own affairs and any resistance to their intended hegemony from within the colony. For their part, the assisted immigrants were not content to yield quietly, an annoyance to the elite. And if the colonial elite were vexed by the hubris of the working classes/assisted immigrants in the political sphere, they were outright incensed by the ‘exorbitant’ demands and lack of deference displayed by their new workforce, as we will see in the next chapter.

124  New South Wales Legislative Council, ‘Transportation and Assignment’, 17 July 1838, enclosure to Gipps to Glenelg, 18 July 1838, Governor’s Despatches, A1219 CY 645, ML. 125  Quotation from Bill Rubinstein, ‘The Top Wealth-Holders of New South Wales in 1830–44’, Push from the Bush, no. 8 (December 1980): 38; Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, 170.

CHAPTER 4

Land, Labour, and the Economic Development of New South Wales

The New South Wales elite resented Colonial Office interference in immigration and transportation, and they also resisted the economic transformation that that interference was intended to achieve. The Ripon Regulations and the theories of E.  G. Wakefield upon which they were based aimed to establish capitalist relations through the commodification of both land and labour. While British officials believed this change was necessary for the long-term prosperity of the colony, both moves stood to cut into colonial profits in the short term. Not only did pastoralists face the added expense of purchasing land, but labour costs also rose as cheap, convict workers were replaced by more expensive free labour. Once again, the assisted immigrants—that source of more expensive free labour—bore the brunt of colonial frustrations with home government policies, as the elite both denigrated them as labourers and demanded structures to discipline them into a capitalist workforce. This intended transformation would touch more than just the colony’s economy. Since capitalism is not merely an economic system, but rather a system of ‘social relations between persons’,1 it required a social transformation, as well. These interwoven processes, however, are typically addressed in separate historiographies. Economic histories of the 1  Karl Marx, ‘The Modern Theory of Colonisation’, in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Friedrich Engels, ed. (1906; repr., London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972), 839.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_4

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nineteenth century trace the development of capitalist structures in the colony and question the moment at which New South Wales could be considered ‘capitalist’ even though it was pre-industrial.2 As they focus on such questions, these histories often frustratingly view working-class immigrants as mere ‘factors of production’, overlooking the fact that real people with real hopes and expectations were involved. Labour histories do a better job of acknowledging the perspective of the worker, but preFederation labour histories tend to target the latter part of the nineteenth century, when they argue working-class consciousness—as evidenced by the growth of trade unions and the eventual formation of the Labor Party—first arose.3 However, as we saw in Chap. 3 and will be demonstrated further here, there was evidence of a nascent working-class consciousness during the first decade of assisted immigration (an earlier moment than most labour histories allow) as assisted immigrants resisted both their commodification and their denigration. Largely overlooked in both traditions is the evolution of the elite into a more fully capitalist class.4 As we have seen, the ‘old settlers’ were hesitant to discard the system of forced labour and land grants that had generated their wealth. In important ways, these existing economic and social structures shaped the new. The old settlers’ experiences as convict masters informed their expectations for—and therefore their attempted disciplining of—the free immigrant workforce. Furthermore, the transformation required the unwilling abandonment of established paternalist practices and mentalities. In this imperially mandated economic transition, workers were not the only group who needed to be pushed into embracing capitalist relations. 2  Elizabeth Humphrys, ‘The Birth of Australia: Non-Capitalist Social Relations in a Capitalist Mode of Production?’ Journal of Australian Political Economy, no. 70 (Summer 2012): 110–29; Andrew Wells, Constructing Capitalism: An Economic History of Eastern Australia, 1788–1901 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989); Philip McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Capitalism in Colonial Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 3  Ken Buckley and Ted Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia, 1788–1901 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), 11. An exception is Irving, who identified an early ‘class war’ between Governor George Gipps and the working classes in the mid-1840s. Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2006), chap. 7. 4  A recent exception is Ben Huf, ‘The Capitalist in Colonial History: Investment, Accumulation and Credit-Money in New South Wales’, Australian Historical Studies 50, no. 4 (2019): 418–40.

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The implementation of the Ripon Regulations fundamentally altered the economic and social development of the colony as these economic manipulations had social consequences.5 First, by initiating the (unwelcome) transition from forced to free labour, the Colonial Office created a perceived labour crisis that, in turn, led to the further denigration of assisted immigrants. Secondly, the policies (unintentionally) led to the emergence of a new elite interest group—‘respectable’ squatters—setting the stage for clashes with large landowners, some of whom were resistant to more fully capitalist labour relations. Moreover, employers’ attempts to retain the same level of control they had had over their convict workforce created conditions for the strengthening of a working-class consciousness.

Unintended Consequences of the Ripon Regulations When New South Wales was founded in 1788, the primary economic goal was self-sufficiency; the colony needed to be able to feed itself.6 As such, the colonial government gave small land grants to emancipated convicts and bought much of the resultant crops to feed convicts still under sentence. Once a route through the Blue Mountains to the plains beyond was discovered in 1813, the door opened to large-scale pastoralism, giving the colony a lucrative export.7 New South Wales seemed better suited to raising sheep and cattle than to agriculture for a number of reasons including poor soil, the prevalence of drought, and the inaccessibility of markets.8 By its very nature, pastoralism was effectively limited to the wealthy as it required large capital outlays, connections with trading companies, and access to patronage (to receive large land grants) in order to enter the 5  In connecting the two, I am answering the call from Hannah Forsyth and Sophie LoyWilson for work connecting economic and cultural history. Hannah Forsyth and Sophie Loy-Wilson, ‘Seeking a New Materialism in Australian History’, Australian Historical Studies 48, no. 2 (2017): 169–88. 6  Broad strokes of early economic development are given here. For more in-depth analyses, see Wells, Constructing Capitalism; Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers; McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question. 7  Whaling and sealing also provided important exports and were not overtaken by wool until the mid-1830s. But our focus here is on the land, not the sea. N. G. Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia, 1810–1850 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 172, 90. 8  Peter Burroughs, Britain and Australia, 1831–1855: A Study in Imperial Relations and Crown Lands Administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 104–16.

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trade.9 The government facilitated this development via alterations in land and labour policy in the 1820s. It provided convict labour to private interests by increasing the number of convicts under ‘assignment’. Additionally, the character of land grants significantly changed; now, a grant was at least 320  acres and based on the amount of capital the recipient possessed. Small farms receded in importance against the imperative of commercial development. Socially, the policies of the 1820s created a land-based oligarchy: the ‘old settlers’. Status was determined by the amount of land owned, and small agriculture was associated with lower-status emancipists.10 Over the time period examined here, wool production grew impressively. Wool exports saw an 800 per cent increase by weight and a 1500 per cent increase in monetary value in the span of a decade.11 At the same time wool production expanded tremendously, the Colonial Office moved to shift the colony from forced to free labour, causing panic in the colony. By the mid-1830s, the ‘fearful scarcity of labour’ became a constant colonial concern, especially the scarcity of shepherds.12 Even as assisted immigration steadily increased, so too did the estimates of how many labourers would be annually required (see Table 4.1). The demand for labour was insatiable. According to the 1841 Committee on Immigration, the lack of shepherds amounted to a colonial existential crisis: ‘Either some adequate remedy must be applied, or else not only the fortunes of individuals, but the permanent continuance of the Colony in its present state and circumstances, will be endangered’.13 Perhaps their anxieties were not unwarranted. Economic historians Noel Butlin and Philip McMichael each pointed out that the availability of labour—both convict and immigrant—was orchestrated by the government rather than controlled by market forces.14 Thus, in addition to the lack of control keenly felt over the quality of labourers sent, colonial employers also had seemingly no control over the quantity. In any case,  Wells, Constructing Capitalism, 23.  Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, 3. 11  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1841. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, and Replies to the Circular Letter on the Aborigines (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, appendix A. 12  ‘Fearful Scarcity of Labour’, Monitor, 7 December 1836, 2. 13  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 1. 14  Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy, 126; McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question, 148. 9

10

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Table 4.1  Estimated labour needs compared to assisted immigrant arrivals Year

No. of assisted immigrants arriveda

Estimated no. of immigrants neededb

1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842

699 743 2360 6115 8339 6675 18,996 5354

3000/yr 7000–10,000/yr 12,500/yr 20,000/yr 10,000–12,000/yr

Return included in Gipps to Stanley, 23 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML Estimates taken from the various Legislative Council Committees on Immigration and represent total immigration required (men, women, and children) to obtain the number of labourers needed. There was no committee in 1836. The 1839 and 1841 committees did not give a specific number. New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration, (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1835), Q304.894041/5, ML, 11; New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration, Indian and British, into New South Wales, 1837, reprinted in Monitor, 6 September 1837, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Minutes of Evidence and Replies to the Circular Letter, Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1838, DSM/Q325.91/ Pa1, ML, 14; Colonial treasurer P.  Laurentz Campbell’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML, 5; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Report from the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), enclosure to Gipps to Stanley, 20 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML, 4 a

b

the perception of a dire labour shortage certainly existed, a perception coupled with a growing sense of entitlement to labour. Since landowners had created the immigration fund via their land purchases, they fully expected it to meet their labour needs, calling the fund ‘a sacred deposit for bringing out agricultural labourers and shepherds’.15 Aside from the inadequate labour supply, the elite felt that the Ripon Regulations endangered colonial prosperity in a second way: land sales were thought to be antithetical to pastoralism given the large acreage it required.16 To circumvent the regulations, an increasing number of wouldbe pastoralists turned to ‘squatting’: the unauthorised use of Crown land.  Herald, 15 June 1840, 2.  Indeed, Wakefield’s theories were developed with an agricultural—not pastoral—economy in mind. See James Macarthur’s testimony at a public meeting in 1841 reported in ‘Public Meeting’, The Australian, 9 January 1841, 2; Gipps to Russell, 19 December 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML. 15 16

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Squatting was not a wholly new phenomenon; after the shift in land grant policy in the 1820s, it was the only option for low-wealth men (i.e. emancipists) who were no longer eligible for land grants.17 These early squatters were scorned by wealthy landowners as ‘gangs of cattle stealers and other disorderly persons’.18 With the advent of the Ripon Regulations in the 1830s, however, squatting not only increased, but also changed in character. ‘Respectable’ men now engaged in squatting, including locally born sons of (wealthy) immigrants who had arrived in the colony’s early days (sons who had presumed they would benefit from the land grants the Ripon Regulations had ended) and even large landowners (who needed more land for their ever-increasing flocks). Another key group among the new squatters were the unassisted immigrants, those much desired ‘men of small capital’.19 Thus, the group of individuals who engaged in squatting was not uniform, and indeed, tensions quickly arose between those whose only access to land was through squatting and those who also owned other land (either through purchase or an earlier land grant). The unassisted immigrants were the intended beneficiaries of Wakefield’s theories, the ‘uneasy classes’ for whom Wakefield hoped to provide a productive outlet for their limited capital by establishing a dependable labour base through land sales (see Chap. 1). Unfortunately for the unassisted immigrants, translating theory into practice was not a smooth process. The procedure for buying land disadvantaged the newly arrived immigrant.20 First, he would travel great distances in unfamiliar territory to find a desirable plot of land. Then, he would give notice to the government surveyor, wait for the agent to survey the property, and wait another month for the requisite notice of the sale of public land. Finally, the 17  Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, 1835–1851 (Kingsgrove, NSW: Melbourne University Press, 1965), 49. For an overview of the various phases of squatting, see John C.  Weaver, ‘Beyond the Fatal Shore: Pastoral Squatting and the Occupation of Australia, 1826 to 1852’, American Historical Review 101, no. 4 (October 1996): 981–1007. 18  The Australian, 8 April 1836, 2. See also James Macarthur, New South Wales; Its Present State and Future Prospects: Being a Statement, with Documentary Evidence Submitted in Support of Petitions to His Majesty and Parliament (London: D. Walther, 1837), 44. 19  McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question, 125; Stephen H. Roberts, The Squatting Age in Australia, 1835–1847 (1935; repr., Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), 303–4. 20  For descriptions of the challenges, see Beginner [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Australian, 25 March 1835, 5; ‘Memorial to Viscount Glenelg, from the Immigrants of New South Wales, Arrived Since 1830’, December 1835, CO 384:39, PRO 1041, NLA; Gipps to Glenelg, 2 June 1838, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/5 CY 695, ML.

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immigrant would be able to bid for the land in competition with old settlers and speculators. James Maxwell’s father, a retired military officer, did his best to mitigate the delays, choosing land that had already been measured, a move he thought would speed up the process, but it did not. In a letter home, James described the anxiety of inaction, of not knowing whether the sale would ever go through, and repeated the impression that old settlers actively worked to keep newcomers away from their land.21 Wakefield’s theories aimed to raise up the British middle classes, but factors on the ground in the colony worked to frustrate the expectations of unassisted immigrants. As a result, many chose to avoid the annoyances of purchasing land altogether and turned to squatting. It was a move that seemed quite logical. Scottish immigrant David Waugh wrote home that he had gotten some ‘vacant government land’ and reported that ‘there is no necessity for buying land at all till I want someplace I can call my own’.22 Completely contrary to the commodification of land intended by the Ripon Regulations, squatting spread, and the government was powerless to stop it. As Colonial Office undersecretary George Grey explained, ‘Unpopular regulations unless supported by a force either of police or soldiery irresistible and overwhelming, must become little more than a dead letter’.23 In other words, Britain could not afford the security force that would be required to stamp out squatting. Rather than try to stop it, Governor Richard Bourke attempted to regulate it. In 1836, he introduced a system of depasturing licences. Ten pounds per year allowed squatters to use land for grazing, but did not allow the squatter to buy, sell, mortgage, or improve (to include growing crops on) the land.24 Despite the limitations, obtaining a squatter’s licence and commencing sheep farming was still seen as the ‘best business and the quickest way of making money’, as recently arrived unassisted immigrant Samuel Rawson reported to his father.25 Squatting undermined the very intentions of the  The Maxwells arrived in 1839. J. A. Maxwell, Letter, 1840 Sept. 21, MS 9344, NLA.  David Waugh arrived in 1834 via the Isabella and was later followed by his parents and several siblings. David Waugh to Eliza Waugh, 10 February 1835, Waugh Family, Correspondence, 1834–1859, A 827 CY 812, ML. 23  Grey to South Australia Committee, 27 October 1836, enclosure to Glenelg to Bourke, 15 February 1837, Despatches to the Governor, A1275 CY 1055, ML. 24  Weaver, ‘Beyond the Fatal Shore’, 992. 25  Samuel Rawson arrived in the colony in 1838 as a cabin passenger on the bounty ship, Florentia. He intended to be a surveyor, but found the salaries of government surveyors to be quite low compared to the cost of living and instead turned to squatting. Samuel Rawson 21 22

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Ripon Regulations, and attempts by the government to realise more fully Wakefield’s vision (e.g. raising the minimum price) only increased its attractiveness. Indeed, auctioneer William Jacques testified before the 1840 Committee on Immigration that after the minimum price was increased, prospective buyers would attend an auction, realise that no one else was interested in a particular plot of land, withdraw their bids, and then go squat on the same land.26 By the early 1840s, there were over 700 leaseholders, and by the end of the decade, more than 40 leaseholders held over 200,000 acres each.27 The Ripon Regulations aimed to transition the colony away from forced labour and towards more fully capitalist relations via the commodification of both land and labour. In practice, however, two problems arose. Squatting circumvented the commodification of land, and the volume of land sales did not perfectly correlate with the need for labour (as theorised by Wakefield), creating a perceived labour shortage.28 These two issues created tension among the elite as the former was in part blamed for the latter. Landowners complained that squatters did not contribute to the land fund and yet benefited from assisted immigration.29 In response, squatters retorted that ‘the land fund should be devoted to the importation of shepherds and laborers [sic] to lessen the dreadful expense attending the support of distant stations, and to give value to land now valueless’;30 in other words, the land they used could not be sold anyway, because it was too remote, but their enterprise, they claimed, was creating value. In both cases, employers felt entitled to labour, landowners because they had financed immigration and squatters because their activities laid to John Rawson, 18 August 1838, Samuel Rawson, Family Papers 1836–1877, MS 1029, NLA. 26  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML, 7. 27  Respectively, Peter Cochrane, Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Democratic Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006), 72; Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, 93. 28  Which Secretary of State Stanley admitted to Gipps. Stanley to Gipps, 29 July 1842, Despatches to the Governor, A1288 CY 994, ML. 29  Given that many landowners were squatters themselves, such criticisms were aimed specifically at the non-landowning squatters. ‘Emigration’, Herald, 15 January 1838, 2; A Flockmaster [pseud.], ‘Letter IV’, Herald, 22 September 1842, 3; The Australian, 28 September 1842, 2; Robert Scott testimony before New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Immigration Committee. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Australia in the Chair (Sydney: Government Printer, 1842), DSM/Q325/Pa1, ML, 38. 30  Herald, 15 June 1840, 2.

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the groundwork for future land sales. This was but one point of contention among the elite amidst the new paradigm. They also differed on their orientation towards labourers, viewing them as either a component of a moral hierarchy or as inputs of capitalist production.

Building Better Capitalists In order to move the colony towards more fully capitalist labour relations, the workforce had to shift from convict to free, and a corresponding change had to occur among employers: they had to be conditioned into capitalists, leaving behind earlier modes of social relations.31 The constitution of the capitalist subject proceeded gradually in Britain around the turn of the nineteenth century, as the accumulation of wealth by the bourgeoisie became socially acceptable and the paternalist ideal weakened.32 Under the English aristocratic social hierarchy, paternalism regarded property to be the most important source of authority over others, but that authority came with responsibilities. Property owners should not only rule over those beneath them, but also provide moral guidance and help those who were suffering.33 At the outset of the 1830s, large landowners in New South Wales very much saw themselves as a colonial aristocracy34 and, in several ways, held themselves to the English paternalist ideal. Some considered it their duty to reform their convict workers morally, to ‘curb an insubordinate spirit—and … in general, convert them into a faithful, industrious peasantry, looking up to [their master] as their lord and protector’, a statement that powerfully demonstrated the paternalist ethos.35 Some also established tenants on their land, free or emancipated families who would pay an annual rent in exchange for the privilege of farming a small plot.36 This practice created hierarchical relationships of mutual obligation in addition to developing the land and generating income for the landowner.

 An idea also examined in Huf, ‘The Capitalist in Colonial History’.  Ibid., 421–3. 33  David Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 4. 34   G.  C. Bolton, ‘The Idea of a Colonial Gentry’, Historical Studies 13, no. 51 (1968): 307–28. 35  Gazette, 22 March 1831, 2. 36  As on the Macarthur property in Camden, for example. Alan Atkinson, ‘Master and Servant at Camden Park, 1838, from the Estate Papers’, Push from the Bush, no. 6 (May 1980): 42–60. 31 32

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Just as paternalism faded in Britain, so too were such notions contested in the colony, accelerated by the larger economic changes brought by the Ripon Regulations. In some ways, tenantry was antithetical to capitalism, which relies on the separation of workers from non-market access to the means of subsistence. It also ran counter to the growing practice of squatting. As squatting licences neither afforded long-term rights to the land nor allowed improvements to the property, they precluded the establishment of tenants.37 Additionally, the transitory nature of employment on remote pastoral stations inhibited the formation of the type of masterservant bond imagined by paternalism. As we will see, rather than adopting paternalism, squatters embraced a more materialist outlook, viewing workers primarily as a drain on profit rather than as a group in need of mentorship. (Ironically, they embraced the commodification of labour at the same time they avoided the commodification of land.) Throughout our time period, the squatters’ materialist orientation became more prominent, largely displacing paternalism. This contested shift from a moral to a market mindset played out in the press, most especially in the debates over whether assisted immigrants should be settled on the land. For much of the decade, large landowners and the more moralistic newspapers supported the establishment of assisted immigrants as tenants.38 One argument for the practice was that it established ‘an honest, and sober, and industrious peasantry’.39 (The repeated references to a ‘virtuous’ tenantry/peasantry were slights directed at emancipists, who were the bulk of the small farmers in the colony, a legacy of pre-1820s land policy.) Squatters, on the other hand, were against settling assisted immigrants on the land.40 Their primary concern was obtaining labour. Not only would tenants presumably not enter the labour force themselves, but they would also possibly employ labourers of their own, thereby further  McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question, 143.  In general, the Monitor and Lang’s papers supported the practice. See the testimonies of James Atkinson and William Macarthur before the New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1835), Q304.894041/5, ML, 65–7, 83, as well as E.  S. Hall, ‘To Robert Gouger of London Esquire’, Monitor, 7 January 1832, 4; Gazette, 14 June 1832, 3; A Friend to Our Moral Welfare [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 27 August 1835, 3. 39  Gazette, 11 December 1832, 2. 40  Though McMichael noted that the opposition reversed in the late 1840s once squatters obtained longer leases and greater security in their tenure on their runs. Then, when they were more likely to reap the benefits of improvements made to the land itself, squatters favoured tenantry. McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question, 143. 37 38

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decreasing the squatters’ labour base.41 The landowners, squatters claimed, only wanted tenants to enrich their pockets and increase their political influence.42 The paternalist leanings of the landowners clashed with the squatters’ need for a reliable labour base. These public debates came to a head in 1838, when Scottish minister J. D. Lang effected a scheme (with Secretary of State Glenelg’s approval) to settle together as tenant farmers around 20 assisted immigrant families from the Highlands of Scotland who arrived by the Midlothian. Lang was the most vocal and consistent voice prioritising the moral development of the colony over the ultra-materialist mindset, and in this case, he misjudged his support.43 Landowners may have been willing to settle individual assisted immigrants as tenants, but an entire shipload was too much. Other than his own paper, the Colonist, the press was united in its opposition to the scheme.44 Even the Sydney Monitor, normally very much in favour of establishing ‘a virtuous tenantry’, called the scheme an ‘insidious, plausible fraud’.45 The land fund was intended to bring labour to the colony, and if assisted immigrants were not going to labour, they should be made to repay their passages, some argued.46 The Highland immigrants of the Midlothian were condemned as yet another ‘misuse’ of the immigration fund. Not only were the assisted immigrants denigrated, but the paternalist-minded elite were also chastened; after this controversy, calls for establishing a ‘virtuous tenantry’ largely evaporated from the public sphere. In the end, the discrediting of tenantry and the ascendancy of a more materialist mindset was ultimately enabled by the fact that more united landowners and squatters than divided them (indeed, some landowners 41  Herald, 26 March 1838, 2; ‘Coolie Labour’, Gazette, 22 October 1840, 2; The Australian, 21 October 1842, 2. 42  Squatter [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Sydney Herald’, Herald, 5 October 1838, 3; ‘Want of Labour’, Gazette, 24 September 1840, 2. 43  He also may have misrepresented his plans. In response to Gipps’s inquiry into why the immigrants were promised to be settled together as tenants, Glenelg claimed that Lang had only asked they be settled together because they spoke Gaelic. Lang apparently did not fully explain to Glenelg that the plan also involved the Highlanders’ occupying their own land. Glenelg to Gipps, 4 December 1838, Despatches to the Governor, A1278 CY 1439, ML. 44  ‘Highland Emigrants’, Herald, 22 February 1838, 2; The Australian, 27 February 1838, 2; ‘Highland Immigration’, Gazette, 1 March 1838, 2; ‘The Highland Emigrant Fraud’, Monitor, 5 March 1838, 3. 45  ‘Emigration Fraud’, Monitor, 26 February 1838, 3. 46  The Australian, 27 February 1838, 2; Herald, 8 March 1838, 2.

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were also squatters). Despite their differences of opinion over social ideology, both groups felt they suffered from the labour shortage and both engaged in pastoralism. Therefore, the two groups shared the primary objective of making the wool trade as profitable as possible. As so often happened in the midst of these political and economic debates, the assisted immigrants were caught in the middle. Tenants were thought to be more ‘virtuous’ benefitting as they did from the paternal guidance of their landlord, but assisted immigrants who settled on the land (like the Midlothian Highlanders) were deemed to have committed a fraud on the land fund. Moreover, the eventual triumph of the materialist mindset was decidedly detrimental to the assisted immigrants in other ways, as the rest of the chapter will show. Paternalism at least allowed them some access to land and the presumption of morality, but under more fully capitalist labour relations, colonial employers aimed to pay them as little as possible and control them to the same degree as convict servants all while denigrating assisted immigrants as intractable, lazy, disloyal, and greedy.

Attitudes Towards Labour: Control Another paradigm that had to give way in this turn to capitalist labour relations was the master-servant dynamic present during the era of convict labour. As we saw in Chap. 3, the end of convict transportation was resisted in the colony. Assisted immigration effected the transition from forced to free labour, and as such, the colonial elite directed their frustrations about the change at the assisted immigrants themselves. Accustomed to convict workers, colonial employers wanted cheap labour that they could control. The assisted immigrants disappointed on both fronts.47 Convict labour was not seen as perfect; convict workers were felt to be lazy, intractable, and unskilful.48 Still, when compared to free immigrant labour, convict labour was defended for a variety of reasons. Convicts knew the terrain better49; much like convicts, immigrants were

47  This chapter deals largely with male workers for obtaining male workers was the primary concern of the colonial elite. Women will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 6. 48  J. B. Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), chap. 2. 49  True, perhaps, but one would presume the immigrants were capable of learning the terrain over time. ‘Hints to Emigrants, &c.’, Monitor, 6 April 1833, 2.

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purportedly unskilled50; and, presumably, immigrants’ work ethic would suffer once they arrived, and their overly inflated expectations proved to be disappointed.51 But the overriding concern was control. Naval officer and son of a former New South Wales governor Phillip Parker King testified before the 1835 Committee on Immigration: ‘I think drunken and profligate free men are much worse than Convicts of a similar character. The fear of punishment keeps the last in subjection, but for the first there is no preventive’.52 Several forms of ‘punishment’ might be used against convicts. For example, unsatisfactory workers could be returned to the government.53 In the transition to free labour, however, if an employer discharged a free worker for ‘misbehaviour’, he likely would not be able to find a replacement due to the scarcity of workers.54 Additionally, a convict master could withhold or revoke a ticket of leave (an intermediate status between convict and free awarded to well-behaved convicts).55 No such artifice existed to secure the free labourer’s cooperation. Finally, masters could send disobedient convicts before the magistrate, who could sentence them to floggings.56 And while the Monitor did not necessarily want assisted immigrants subjected to the lash, it did advocate that the ‘paupers and prostitutes’ received via assisted immigration be ‘subjected to discipline and punishment … and solitary confinement (omitting the scourge) … then perhaps, the free rubbish of the Penitentiaries and work-­ houses of England might turn out as useful servants as convicts’.57 50  ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 12 September 1837, 2; petition from builders and tradesmen reprinted in Gazette, 18 April 1840, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report on Immigration for the Year 1841; by Francis L. S. Merewether, Esq., Agent for Immigration. With an Appendix (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 1. 51  ‘Fearful Scarcity of Labour’, Monitor, 7 December 1836, 2. For more on allegedly overblown immigrant expectations, see Chap. 7. 52  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1835, 72. 53  Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, 51. 54  See pastoralist Mathew Henry Marsh’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 41. 55  Macqueen’s preferred method of discipline. Thomas Potter Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be (London: J. Cross, 1840), 26. 56  Nicholas concluded that incentives and rewards were used to maintain control over the convict workforce more often than the lash. In any case, flogging was available as a deterrent. Stephen Nicholas, ‘The Care and Feeding of Convicts’, in Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past, Stephen Nicholas, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 195. 57  ‘Free or Convict Labour’, Monitor, 19 July 1834, 2.

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What exactly was the gross misbehaviour that these punishments corrected in convicts but left colonial employers powerless when engaged in by free workers? One complaint was that immigrant workers would not work or, in other words, would not work a full week. Because wages were so high, workers could reportedly earn enough to support themselves in only three or four days, thereby depriving employers of their labour for the rest of the week.58 Convicts, by contrast, not only were  ‘obliged to work’ but were also allowed—and were often quite willing—to work for themselves after the mandated work hours, making convicts seem eager to work.59 Contrary to the widespread impression, there is some evidence that immigrant workers did work consistent, long hours. Farm labourer Edward Smith described his daily routine to family at home: he worked ten hours a day, starting at 6:00 a.m. and finishing at 6:00 p.m. with hour breaks for breakfast and lunch.60 In his diary, carpenter George Hooper kept a detailed list of employers, wages, and hours worked. Most weeks, he worked six days.61 Nevertheless, the perception continued. Employers claimed the practice was problematic, because they assumed labourers would spend ‘the remainder [of the week], all the year round, in intemperance and idleness’.62 The rhetoric deemed work virtuous and ‘idleness’ depraved. Condemning such ‘idleness’ was part of the conditioning of the labour force required for capitalist relations to take hold. Another complaint against the immigrants was that they were reluctant to go where they were most needed: the interior.63 This perceived 58  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee on Immigration, Indian and British, into New South Wales (Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1837), DSM/Q325/Pa1, ML, 54–5; New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 17. 59  Quotation from ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 18 December 1833, 2. For more on convict labour practices, see Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy, 123. 60  Originally from Sussex, Smith arrived as a bounty emigrant on the Canton in 1841 at 29 years of age. He was a widower and brought his daughter, Hannah, with him as well as his 17-year-old sister, Sarah. Edward, Sarah, and Hannah Smith to Mrs. George Bates, 23 October 1841, Smith Family, Letters Received from James Smith, Sarah Monkhouse, Thomas Monkhouse and Others, MLMSS 5994, ML. 61  Hooper was a self-paying steerage passenger on the bounty ship Strathfieldsaye, arriving with his brother, William, in July 1839. He stayed in the colony less than a year, choosing to return home when William died shortly after arrival. George Hooper, Journal of George Hooper, 1839–1840, MS 8998, NLA. 62  The Australian, 29 April 1836, 2. 63  ‘Immigrants’, Herald, 11 December 1839, 2; remote pastoralist W. H. Dutton’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Report from the Committee on

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disinclination on the part of the assisted immigrants was used to explain away any unemployment experienced. ‘If at any time a difficulty of finding employment has occurred to the newly arrived emigrant’, the Sydney Gazette declared, ‘it has been from this one cause alone—that whole ship loads of people have determined to find occupation in Sydney, and there only’.64 By contrast, convicts had no choice in the location of their assignment; they had to go to remote stations if the government said so. There was some debate over whether the government should provide logistical support to get immigrants into the interior, but only philanthropist Caroline Chisholm took any positive steps to address the issue. Colonial commentators, meanwhile, seemed content to blame the ‘idle people … gaping for employment’ in Sydney.65 Occasionally, a glimpse of the frontier violence resulting from pastoral expansion snuck through. Remote landowner Robert Scott told the 1841 Committee on Immigration that newly arrived immigrants had ‘an unconquerable dread of the bush, black fellows, &c.’, and explorer and pastoralist William Lawson told an 1843 Select Committee that he had to pay shepherds high wages in order to overcome their fear of hostility with Aboriginal people.66 But on the whole, the unwillingness to go into the interior was used to prove the ‘uselessness’ of immigrants rather than to stimulate any reflection on the morality of the settler colonial project. Employers were also annoyed by the perceived frequency with which assisted immigrants would change jobs. To combat this problem, employers long clamoured for assisted immigrants to be subject to indenture.67 The Colonial Office, however, resisted this demand, arguing indentures

Immigration with the Minutes of Evidence and Replies to the Circular Letter (Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1838), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 43; Tourle to his uncle, 22 January 1842, Thomas Tourle, Letter Books, 1839–1845, MS 18, NLA; Gazette, 27 August 1842, 2. 64  ‘Emigration. [Continued]’, Gazette, 27 March 1841, 2. 65  Quotation from The Australian, 30 September 1841, 2. More on Chisholm in Chaps. 5 and 6. 66  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 25; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Select Committee, on the Petition from Distressed Mechanics and Labourers, with the Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1843), Q84/10, ML, 25. 67  ‘Society in N. S. Wales, for Promoting the Immigration of British Paupers and Others’, Monitor, 22 June 1831, 2; Observer [pseud.], ‘The New Colony’, Herald, 9 May 1836, 3; ‘Boarding Houses in Sydney’, Gazette, 27 August 1840, 2.

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created depressed wages and therefore would deter emigration.68 Without indenture, colonial employers did their best to limit the immigrants’ movement in other ways. Employers would bring charges against assisted immigrants for ‘absconding’ or leaving a position without sufficient notice.69 If an employer suspected a servant was about to leave his service, he might have the servant arrested for some fabricated offence for which there was no evidence. The immigrant worker would eventually go free, but in the meantime, he or she would spend a few nights in custody while awaiting a hearing.70 Immigrant workers could not be flogged like convict servants, but employers still found ways to use the power of the legal system against their workers. The most blatant attempt to gain control over the workforce via the legal system was the proposed 1840 Masters and Servants Act. As assisted immigration commenced, New South Wales was governed by an 1828 law that subjected employees to up to six months’ imprisonment for absenteeism or desertion, double the maximum penalty of most English statutes.71 Severe though the 1828 law was, the 1840 proposal aimed to go further, changing the sentence to up to three months’ hard labour for a much broader set of actions: ‘refusing or neglecting to serve the term of their engagements, or returning or leaving work uncompleted, or absenting themselves therefrom, or refusing to work during ordinary hours of work’.72 The implications of this proposal were not lost on the working classes. The Australasian Chronicle, the most steadfast advocate for the 68  Goderich to Commissioners for Emigration, 24 September 1831, CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML; Goderich to Bourke, 9 March 1832, Despatches to the Governor, A1269 CY 1399, ML; Goderich to Bourke, 29 March 1833, Despatches to the Governor, A1270 CY 1224, ML. 69  ‘Police Office’, Monitor, 2 November 1836, 2; ‘Another Caution to Free Hired Servants’, Gazette, 29 June 1837, 2; ‘Caution to Free Servants’, Gazette, 3 March 1838, 2; ‘Caution to Hired Servants’, Monitor, 23 October 1839, 2. 70  ‘A Common Trick on Newly-Arrived Emigrants’, Gazette, 4 January 1840, 2. For example, one mistress accused Sophia Baker from the David Scott of stealing, but then did not show up to the trial. In the meantime, Baker spent three days in gaol. Gazette, 6 June 1837, 2. In another case, two single female immigrants were charged with stealing, but then at trial, their employers couldn’t say whether the missing goods were actually missing (they may have been sold or given away as presents). ‘Court of Quarter Sessions’, Monitor, 29 July 1835, 2. 71   Michael Quinlan, ‘Australia, 1788–1902: A Workingman’s Paradise?’ in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, eds (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 236. 72  Text reprinted in ‘Abstract of an “Act for the Better Regulation of Servants, Labourers, and Work People”’, The Australian, 24 September 1840, 2.

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working classes in the press, feared that a man who had missed an hour of work or refused to doff his hat to his employer would be sent to the treadmill.73 In response, workers in Sydney called a public meeting attended by reportedly 1000 people that resulted in a successful petition against the bill, a petition that boasted 3000 signatures.74 The impetus behind the bill revealed the individual power immigrant workers wielded in employment relationships. The protest against the bill showed that workers were also capable of collective action.75 Ultimately, the proposed Masters and Servants Act came down to control. Employers were used to convict labour. They were used to having the power to compel convicts to work and to work on remote stations. That power was significantly weakened in the transition to free immigrant labour. Employers attempted to retain their power, at times, via the law and, at others, via cultural condemnation (i.e. branding workers ‘idle’ and ‘profligate’). Since labour was scarce, the assisted immigrants themselves had some choice. In exercising that choice, they encountered the disapproval of the elite.

Attitudes Towards Labour: Cost For all the rhetoric about control, the primary complaint about immigrant labour was cost. The transition from convict to free labour would inevitably increase labour costs, as generally, convicts received no wages; the master merely had to house and clothe them. Convicts could earn money for their own use after regular working hours, but even these wages were set artificially low by the government.76 As we saw in Chap. 3, supporters of 73  The treadmill was a particularly brutal form of punishment that was basically a giant hamster wheel for humans. ‘“Servants and Labourers” Act’, Chronicle, 24 September 1840, 2. 74  ‘Servants Bill – Power of the Unrepresented’, Chronicle, 1 October 1840, 2. For a thorough summary of the meeting, see ‘Meeting of the Operatives’, Chronicle, 29 September 1840, 2. 75  In the end, the eventual bill was mixed for workers. On the positive side, the ‘hard labour’ language was excised, and the maximum time of imprisonment was reduced from the six months of the 1828 Act to three. But on the negative, workers were now under the control of the master/employer as well as his agents, granting new legal powers to overseers acting on behalf of absentee squatters. For the text of the final bill that passed, see ‘Abstract of the New Master and Servants Act, Passed on October 20, 1840’, The Australian, 2 January 1841, 2. For more on the eventual act, see Martin Sullivan, ‘Master and Servant in New South Wales before 1850’, Push from the Bush, no. 3 (May 1979): 47, 55. 76  Nicholas, ‘The Convict Labour Market’, in Nicholas, ed., Convict Workers, 116.

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transportation feared the loss of cheap convict labour would lead the colony to ruin. Calculating the added expense of free labour was a favoured exercise in the public sphere. The Australian determined a free worker was five times more expensive than a convict, and after a lengthy calculation, large landowner Thomas Potter Macqueen arrived at a figure of £13.14.8 more per year.77 To make matters worse, assisted immigrants were reportedly demanding ‘exorbitant wages’ and refusing ‘reasonable’ pay.78 The ‘unreasonable’ wage expectations were blamed on the Colonial Office, which stood accused of disseminating incorrect information about wages in order to recruit emigrants, yet another example of Britain’s supposed mismanagement of the migration process.79 The actual data is scattered in a variety of sources, but when it is compiled (see Table 4.2), it becomes clear that advertised wages were not overly inflated compared to average wages in the colony. The biggest discrepancy occurred at the outset of assisted migration, but after Bourke complained, subsequent circulars included revised figures.80 Nevertheless, the perception of unreasonable expectations was pervasive. To the elite, it did not matter whether wages advertised in Britain were accurate; accurate wages were still too high for capitalists to achieve their desired profits. Free labour was always going to be more expensive than convict labour, and the price difference created yet another site of tension between the colonial elite and the assisted immigrants. Free labour was more expensive, but it was also true that convict labour drove down free wages, a fact both revealed by economic historian Stephen Nicholas’s computer models and (occasionally) acknowledged in the contemporary public sphere.81 Before convict assignment ended, masters  The Australian, 9 February 1838, 2; Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be, 26.  For a selection of the numerous examples, see The Australian, 2 August 1833, 2; ‘Unemployed Immigrants’, Monitor, 22 April 1839, 3; ‘Female Immigrants’, Gazette, 23 September 1841; A Householder [pseud.], ‘Female Immigrants’ Home’, Herald, 18 March 1842, 3. 79  The Colonial Office, however, most often used wage information provided by the colony. In the early years of assisted emigration, it used an 1830 advertisement from the Gazette. By the middle of the decade, it used a list compiled by immigrant mechanics in 1833. For references for Colonial Office advertisements, see Table 4.2. 80  Bourke to Goderich, 24 September 1832, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/4 CY 902, ML; Bourke to Stanley, 6 December 1833, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/5 CY 695, ML. 81  Nicholas, ‘Convict Workers’, in Nicholas, ed., Convict Workers, 111–26. See also E. S. Hall, ‘To H. L. Bulwer, Esq. M.P.’, Monitor, 18 February 1834, 2; A Sufferer by the Exchange of the Country [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Australian, 28 October 1834, 4; An 77 78

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Table 4.2  Comparing actual average wages to wages advertised in Britain Year

Agricultural labourersa

Shepherdsa

Mechanics

Female workersa £10–12/yr (dairy) £9–11/yr (domestic)

1831 1832

Advertisedb Actualc

£25–30/yr £12–14/yr

7s/day 5–7s/day

1835 1836

Advertisedd Actuale

£15–20/yr £15–20/yr

5–7s/day 6–8s/day

1837

Advertisedf

£12–15/yr

£15–20/yr

5–7s/day

1839

Actualg

£25/yr

£25/yr

6–8s/day

1843

Actualh

£12–17/yr

£14–26/yr

2s6d–4s/day

£10–12 (dairy) £7–15 (domestic) £12 (farm) £14 (domestic)

All but mechanics typically also received rations Colonial Office, ‘Information Respecting the Australian Colonies’, 18 July 1831, MLQ83.32, ML c Bourke to Goderich, 24 September 1832, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/4 CY 902, ML d William Bell, ‘Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales’, included in Lt. Low’s correspondence for 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA e The 1836 ‘actual’ number for mechanics was given in pounds per week and has been converted to make the comparison easy. Thomas Birkby, Letter: To His Father, 1836 May 31, MS 4216, NLA f Government Emigration Office, ‘Prices and Wages in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land’, 19 October 1837, included in T. F. Elliot’s correspondence for 1837, CO 384:42, PRO 1041, NLA g New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration: Extract from the Annual Report on Immigration, by James Denham Pinnock, Esq., (Sydney, 1840), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML h New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843 a

b

allegedly would get more convicts than needed and then hire them out, resulting in jobs going to ‘a batch of hungry looking assigned servants … and the poor man,—an Emigrant with a wife and family [–] was beat out of the field’.82 Tradespeople and women looking for laundry or needlework claimed they faced competition from cheap goods manufactured or Emigrant Labourer [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Colonist, 10 September 1835, 2. Providing further evidence of the impact of convict labour on free wages, the 1839 spike in wages for agricultural labourers and shepherds (Table 4.2) coincided with the impending end of convict assignment. Throughout 1839, Gipps—at Glenelg’s direction—worked to decrease assignment; no new assignments were made after 1 July 1841. Thus, at the same time the force keeping wages low was phased out, free wages rose. Glenelg to Gipps, 26 January 1839, Despatches to the Governor, A1279 CY1440, ML; Gipps to Russell, 21 July 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1225 CY658, ML. 82  Reformer [pseud.], ‘To the Editors of the “Australian”’, The Australian, 21 June 1833, 4.

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services performed by convicts at Hyde Park Barracks or the Female Factory.83 To protect themselves, immigrants might band together. Sometimes such cooperation was informal with groups of newly arrived immigrants all agreeing to refuse offers below a certain amount.84 At other times, the cooperation was more formal via strikes,85 the formation of benefit societies,86 or even public meetings (see Chap. 3), all lessons learned from the working-class movement back in England.87 Two public meetings in 1833 specifically debated whether the difficulty mechanics experienced in obtaining steady employment was due to over-immigration or competition with convict labour.88 If colonial employers condemned unreasonable wage expectations, they most certainly deplored all of the above efforts and anything that smacked of ‘combination’.89 Such actions were seen as unnecessary and even greedy in a place such as New South Wales where labour was so scarce. To combat rising labour costs, colonial employers turned to both rhetorical and structural strategies. Rhetorically, immigrants were condemned 83  For example, a shoemaker complained about competition from cheaper shoes made at the Barracks. A Shoemaker [pseud.], ‘The Shoe Trade’, Herald, 4 May 1835, 2. For the Female Factory, see blacksmith Henry Bremer’s testimony before New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 21. 84  Especially among immigrants at the Immigrant Barracks and, later, Caroline Chisholm’s Immigrants’ Home. J.  Denham Pinnock, Report from J.  Denham Pinnock, Esq., Colonial Agent for Immigration, to His Excellency Governor Sir George Gipps, on the Progress of Immigration Generally, for the Year 1838, reprinted as J. Denham Pinnock, ‘Immigration’, The Australian, 4 July 1839, 3; Chisholm’s testimony before New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 19. 85  In 1841, the Herald reported that compositors had struck in 1839 and shoemakers in 1840. ‘The Working Classes’, Herald, 21 December 1841, 2. In 1842, the Irish in Port Phillip went on strike, as well. ‘Immigration’, Observer, 11 May 1842. 86  Such societies provided support for unemployed or ill workers. In 1838, several existed in Sydney, including the Australian Union Benefit Society, the Oddfellows Lodge, and the Society of Compositors. They were usually quite small with 20 to 60 members. Alan Atkinson and Marian Aveling, eds, Australians 1838 (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 135; R. W. Connell and T. H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History: Poverty and Progress, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992), 63. 87  E.  P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). 88  For detailed accounts of both meetings, see ‘Meeting of Mechanics’, Herald, 22 July 1833, 2; ‘Public Meeting’, The Australian, 27 September 1833, 3; ‘Meeting of the Mechanics’, Herald, 30 September 1833, 2. 89  ‘Meeting of Mechanics at Sydney’, Herald, 15 July 1833, 2; ‘Combination’, The Australian, 17 March 1837, 2.

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as ‘greedy’ and blamed for their ‘unreasonable’ expectations. The primary structural tool in employers’ attempts to bring down wages was their unceasing calls for more immigration no matter how many workers arrived (see Table 4.1). Colonial employers did not just need workers; they needed a surplus of workers,90 a surplus large enough both to bring down wages and to give employers more control over the workforce. If there were more competition for jobs, workers would be less likely to leave their positions. Though employers were still not satisfied, the massive flood of bounty immigration that emptied the land fund in 1841 did help their cause. Charles La Trobe, then superintendent of the Port Phillip district, reported: ‘The late large importations of labour into the district has had the most beneficial effects; it has brought labour, or rather wages, down from that former oppressive price to a more equitable rate; it has made servants of every class more obedient to their employers, and more careful and diligent in their respective callings’.91 Continued immigration was so important to colonial employers because the resultant increased competition among workers would bring down wages and help discipline the free workforce.

Increasing the Labour Pool Dissatisfaction with immigrant labour became so great that some large pastoralists became convinced that Britain could not provide the right kind of labour. The colony needed shepherds, an occupation the assisted immigrants seemingly would not resort to unless lured by ‘exorbitant’ wages. Hypocritically, after so much rhetoric about the ‘laziness’ of the assisted immigrants, some even claimed that Britons would never embrace shepherding because ‘the isolation and the loitering and listless nature of its 90  Seed connected Marx’s concept of a ‘reserve army’ of labour to Malthus’s ‘surplus population’, the societal ‘problem’ (or was it a capitalist necessity?) Wakefield’s theories attempted to address via removal of the surplus to the colonies. The desire of colonial employers for their own surplus supported Marx’s argument that capitalism required the ‘reserve army’ to function. John Seed, ‘“Free Labour = Latent Pauperism”: Marx, Mayhew, and the “Reserve Army of Labour” in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London’, in The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, Simon Gunn and James Vernon, eds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 61. 91  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Report from the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), enclosure to Gipps to Stanley, 20 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML, appendix M.

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duties altogether opposed … the energetic character of the British people’.92 This about-face occurred amidst calls by some pastoralists to turn to other sources of labour. Though none of the proposed alternatives eventuated to any considerable degree, the arguments for and against other potential groups—Aboriginal people, ‘coolies’ from India, even the Irish—revealed much about developing elite attitudes towards labour. The most proximate alternative labour source was Aboriginal people. Some were employed on farms or stations, usually in odd jobs where they were most often paid only in rations or clothing.93 The 1841 Committee on Immigration investigated the possibility of increasing Aboriginal people in the workforce, but concluded that doing so on a scale large enough to alleviate the labour shortage would be impossible.94 Yes, the Committee concluded, Aboriginal workers were cheap (something very appealing to employers), but they were even more difficult to control than the assisted immigrants on account of their propensity to ‘wander’. They, too, were felt to be ‘indolent, lazy, and careless’.95 If employers were struggling to indoctrinate assisted immigrants into a set of labour relations that would be most advantageous to employers, effecting the same change in Aboriginal people provided an even more daunting challenge. In order to subsume Aboriginal people into capitalist labour relations, employers would first have to convince them of the value of money. But, once they accomplished that feat, Aboriginal workers would presumably demand wages and then would no longer be cheap. ‘These people have sufficient sagacity to perceive the footing upon which they are treated’, the Committee reported, ‘They can be made to acquire the steady habits of Europeans, only by being gradually put upon the same footing with them’.96 In essence, Aboriginal people would not let themselves be exploited, so therefore, they could not be used to ameliorate the labour shortage. A small faction of pastoralists had their sights set on a different alternative labour source, a group they felt they could sufficiently exploit: ‘coolies’ from India. The call to use the land fund for coolie labour was led by 92  Robert Scott testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 31. See also land grant recipient Terence Aubrey Murray’s testimony before the same Committee (p. 20). 93  For example, see ibid., 37; Atkinson, ‘Master and Servant at Camden Park’, 52. 94  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 5. 95  See various letters of testimony from pastoralists in ibid., 37 (quotation), 40–1, 45–6. 96  Ibid., 5.

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John Mackay, who had previously lived in Bengal and who brought a group of 43 coolies to New South Wales on his own in 1837.97 Mackay’s labourers were contracted to a five-year indenture, paid ten shillings a month, and given clothing, food, and a return passage to India at the end of their contracts.98 The proposal to expand this pilot project with government backing had the support of the Sydney Herald, the Gazette, and the 1837 Committee on Immigration.99 The 1841 Committee on Immigration, however, opposed the scheme on the grounds that it would be too difficult to remove the coolies from the colony at the end of the indenture.100 Furthermore, in an objection similar to that against Aboriginal workers, the Committee assumed that, as the coolies gained skills, they would expect more money. In any case, the scheme never came to large-scale fruition because of Colonial Office opposition.101 Historian Janet Doust argued that the failure of these efforts signalled the beginnings of an explicitly racist immigration policy,102 but what is most interesting here is the perceived advantages coolie workers held over 97  Evidence indicates that Mackay did, in fact, exploit his coolie labourers. Several tried to escape from his property, and when brought before the magistrate, they claimed they were starving and cold and had not been paid. Atkinson and Aveling, eds, Australians 1838, 120. 98  Pastoralist John Lord employed some of Mackay’s coolies. See his testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 8–11. 99  New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration, Indian and British, into New South Wales, 1837), reprinted in Monitor, 6 September 1837, 2; ‘Indian Immigration’, Gazette, 16 September 1837, 2; ‘Free Coolies Under Indenture’, Herald, 16 September 1840, 2; Herald three-part series entitled ‘Shall We Have Coolies?’ appearing on 2, 3, and 7 June 1841; Gazette, 29 September 1842, 2. 100  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 4. 101  The Colonial Office assumed the widespread employment of coolie workers would deter emigration from Britain (its top concern) by driving down wages and insisted that the land fund be used only to benefit the home country (conveniently ignoring that India was part of the Empire). Glenelg to Gipps, 14 December 1837, Despatches to the Governor, A1276 CY 1056, ML; Normanby to Gipps, 13 March 1839, Despatches to the Governor, A1279 CY 1440, ML; Russell to Gipps, 20 October 1840, Despatches to the Governor, A1283 CY 1941, ML; Stanley to Gipps, 4 August 1843, Despatches to the Governor, A1291 CY 1808, ML. 102  Janet L. Doust, ‘Setting up Boundaries in Colonial Eastern Australia: Race and Empire’, Australian Historical Studies 35, no. 123 (2004): 152–66. Opposition to coolies in the colonial press was overtly racist, expressing much anxiety over the creation of a ‘half-caste’ with ‘inferior blood’ and ‘deteriorated intellect’. Quotations from ‘Hill Coolies’, Monitor, 29 April 1839, 3. See also ‘Immigration from India’, The Colonist, 21 September 1837, 1; ‘Chinese Labourers’, The Australian, 7 May 1839, 2; ‘Coolie Immigration’, Chronicle, 23 February 1841, 2.

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assisted immigrants. Advocates for coolie labour believed coolies would accept lower wages and cheaper provisions.103 Because of the indenture, employers’ control over coolies would be greater than their control over immigrant workers. Furthermore, because of the caste system in India, Mackay claimed, ‘There is a feeling or disposition in individuals not to aspire beyond the condition in which they were born’,104 and therefore coolies avoided that pesky habit of seeking higher wages or better working conditions so prevalent in free immigrant labourers. Above all, coolies were presumed to be ‘more tractable, more obedient to command, less aspiring in their notions, more frugal in their habits, and infinitely less profligate in their moral conduct than the bulk of the Europeans imported into this Colony, as free emigrants’.105 Aside from employing the favourite rhetorical tactic of denigrating assisted immigrants, this quote revealed what employers truly desired: cheap, obedient labour. As the Colonial Office worked to replace convicts with free workers, the pro-coolie camp desperately tried to implement another form of semi-forced labour.106 At the same time labour was purportedly so scarce, opposition to Irish immigration paradoxically reached its peak.107 Colonial immigration agent James Denham Pinnock claimed he had difficulty finding employment for Irish immigrants, and the press reported that employers were unwilling to hire an Irishman if they could get an Englishman.108 This discrimination 103  An assumption grounded in racism. Thus, both sides of the debate held racist views. Opponents wanted to exclude an ‘inferior’ race that proponents assumed could be dominated and exploited precisely because they were (supposedly) inferior. 104  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1841, 6 (emphasis mine). 105  ‘Masters and Servants’, Gazette, 27 October 1840, 2. 106  Indeed, critics of the plan analogised it to slavery. ‘Hill Coolies’, Monitor, 29 April 1839, 3; ‘The Legislative Council’, Chronicle, 19 June 1841, 2. 107  The Chronicle was quick to point out the hypocrisy. ‘Immigration’, Chronicle, 19 September 1840, 2; ‘Coolie Immigration’, Chronicle, 23 February 1841, 2. 108  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: T. Trood, 1839), RB DQ 325.342/36, ML, 3; ‘Roman Catholic Immigration’, Herald, 31 August 1840, 2; The Australian, 21 May 1842, 2. They were also unwilling to pay for Irish immigration. Since so few Irish Catholics in the colony were wealthy enough to purchase land, the land fund should not be used to bring large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants, or so some felt. This line of argument held that the religion of the assisted immigrants should be in proportion to the religion of those who contributed to the land fund (largely Protestants), a view espoused by (Anglican) Bishop William Broughton before the Legislative Council (reported in ‘Legislative Council  – Wednesday Aug. 25’, The Australian, 26 August 1841, 2) as well as in ‘Papistical Loyalty’,

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stemmed from a number of prejudicial assumptions. First, the Irish were believed to be unskilled.109 Additionally, their religion was feared due to its hierarchical nature (see Chap. 3); coolies, by contrast, would not bring with them a ‘priesthood undermining our Protestant institutions’.110 Because of their more acute poverty, they presumably would not work as hard as those who had grown accustomed to the pleasures of consumer goods and therefore would be less valuable to merchants as potential consumers. The Gazette articulated this relationship between consumerism and labour: ‘Protestants live better, clothe better, and require more luxuries than Papists … [therefore] a Protestant mechanic or labourer is a more profitable servant than a Papist, because he must work harder, and more constantly to supply his artificial necessities’.111 All of these prejudices no doubt contributed to the marginalisation of the Irish and to the anxiety over the increasing proportion of the Irish among the assisted immigrants. But, another factor was at play. The same newspapers that were most supportive of bringing coolie labourers—the Herald and the Gazette—were also the loudest critics of the Irish.112 This was no coincidence. The existing labour source was denigrated to argue for a preferred (cheaper) potential labour source. When taken altogether, the parts of convict labour that employers preferred, their complaints about free immigrant labour, and the espoused advantages of coolie labour revealed the employers’ priorities: cheap labour that could be controlled. Free immigrant labour could not be exploited to the same degree as convict, leading some employers to consider seemingly more exploitable labour sources (Aboriginal people and coolies). In this transition period from forced to free labour, it was difficult for employers to embrace capitalist labour relations fully because not enough labour had yet arrived to create the sufficient labour surplus Gazette, 22 February 1840, 2; ‘The Irish Emigration Question’, Herald, 6 October 1840, 2; ‘The Crowning Mercy, Alias the Irish Host!’, Observer, 17 September 1842. 109  Monitor, 21 September 1833, 2; ‘Absurd and Impolitic Restriction on Emigration. – Hand-Loom Weavers – Coolies. – Irish’, Herald, 2 March 1841, 2; John Dunmore Lang, The Question of Questions! Or, Is This Colony to Be Transformed into a Province of Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New South Wales (Sydney: J. Tegg and Co., 1841), 30. 110  ‘Shall We Have Coolies? [Continued.]’, Herald, 3 June 1841, 2. See also ‘Coolie Labour’, Gazette, 7 January 1841, 2. 111  The capitalist mindset had certainly taken hold in the colony! ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 5 September 1840, 2. 112  J. D. Lang was also a vocal critic of the Irish, but he was more a moralist than an economic pragmatist and opposed coolie labour.

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needed to bring down wages. Even so, the press talked of ‘our supplies of Immigrants’ and ‘that great source of wealth to the settler—labour’.113 One capitalist mindset was fully embraced: labour was viewed as an important commodity.

Growth of a Vocal Working Class The assisted immigrants, however, were not content to be merely a ‘great source of wealth to the settler’; they had their own expectations for New South Wales. Assisted emigrants were lured by visions of ‘a better life’. For some, that meant access to a plot of land when such access for the working classes was disappearing from Britain. For others, it more simply meant regular employment at fair wages. Often, both were promised by recruitment circulars; shipper Edward Walkinshaw claimed in his advertisements, ‘The most destitute peasant that can be landed may, if industrious and provident, save enough out of his first year’s earnings to become the possessor of 50 acres of rich land’.114 Whether driven by the desire for land or wages, the immigrants’ aspirations were thwarted by both the desired outcomes of Wakefield’s theories and employer priorities. In response to their frustrations, they did not remain quiet, expressing a nascent working-class consciousness. As I have argued elsewhere,115 images of endlessly available land featured prominently in promotional literature about the Australian colonies. Indeed, according to Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney, the problem with Australia was that it had too much land. This contrasted sharply with the state of affairs in the British Isles where labourers had been gradually forced off the land since the mid-eighteenth century, a move justified by the capitalist class as necessary to enable new, more productive agricultural techniques in England (where the process was known as ‘enclosure’) or, in Scotland, to free up land for pastoralism (known as the ‘Highland clearances’). These practices significantly altered social relations as the poor were forced into more precarious employment, lost access to common land (on which they had previously hunted, gathered firewood, and kept  Respectively, ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 3 March 1838, 2; Herald, 21 December 1837, 2.  Edward Walkinshaw, ‘To Emigrants and Shippers’, enclosure to Low to Hay, 25 August 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA. 115  Melanie Burkett, ‘Clashing Goals: Government and Personal Objectives for Assisted Emigration to Early Nineteenth-Century New South Wales’, Melbourne Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2016): 57–73. 113 114

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a small amount of livestock), and saw paternal bonds with their landlords weaken.116 Some thought they could recover this lost world by emigrating; regaining access to land certainly seemed to be the motivation of the Highlanders of the Midlothian. Some immigrants did, in fact, gain access to land in New South Wales, though by renting or through employment agreements rather than by purchase. Bounty immigrant James Smith rented a piece of land on which he grew tobacco, corn, and potatoes.117 In an effort to attract shepherds, landowning pastoralist Charles Campbell advertised 16-pound wages (20 if the worker could shear) and rations for the shepherd and his wife under a two-year contract, plus two acres of land to cultivate and permission to keep a cow.118 Such arrangements resembled conditions becoming increasingly rare in Britain. As we have seen, this ability of some assisted immigrants to obtain access to land caused consternation among portions of the elite who felt the practice to be a fraud on the land fund. The very intention of Wakefield’s ‘sufficient price’ was to prevent labourers from obtaining land too quickly,119 but disagreement arose in the colony over whether that should be an option at all. Some felt the possibility needed to remain open in order to lure emigrants to the colony. ‘It cannot be supposed that the whole of these families would desire to remain for any long period in the situation of servants’, the Colonist pointed out, and therefore the colony must consider how it might eventually settle assisted immigrants on the land.120 The Australian, however, identified the downside of such an orientation: it would lead to an inexhaustible demand for labour, a ‘demand for Immigration … only limitable by the entire occupancy of the available 116  Eric Richards, The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil, new ed. (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016); K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chap. 4. 117  Smith arrived in 1838 via the bounty ship, Fairlie. Three years later, he was followed by his brother, Edward, whose work routine was described earlier in this chapter. James to his father, 2 July 1840, Smith Family, Letters Received. 118  ‘Immigration. II.  Agricultural Labourers and Shepherds. [The Subject Continued]’, The Colonist, 27 August 1835, 1. 119  See his testimony in House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on the Disposal of Land, 1836, 104. 120  ‘Colonization’, The Colonist, 3 September 1835, 1. See also ‘Emigration – The Subject Concluded’, The Colonist, 22 January 1835, 1; Australian Immigration Association, ed., Debate in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, and Other Documents on the Subject of Immigration to the Colony, October 1840 (Sydney: J. Tegg and Co., 1840), 12.

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lands in this vast country’.121 New immigrants would need to be brought in continually to replace those who left the workforce.122 An easier path would be to keep labourers labouring. In fact, the Gazette felt that plan would actually be in the labourers’ best interests; otherwise, they would lose their ambition: ‘Why seek by artificial means to raise a class of men from a state of honest and honorable [sic] dependence, to one of nominal independence, and thus, as it were, endeavour to curb the spirit of honorable [sic] ambition?’123 In essence, if workers were allowed to achieve the goal of obtaining land, they would have nothing left to strive for and thus become lazy. Writing on the subject of colonisation a few decades later, Karl Marx recognised the contradiction in Wakefield’s theories. The very problem Wakefield had identified in the colonies—the reason, in Marx’s words, that ‘capital accumulation and the capitalistic mode of production [were] impossible’—was the ability of the labourer to accumulate for himself.124 Capitalism could not take root until the ability of the labourer to accumulate had been blocked. Therefore, Marx recognised, Wakefield had unwittingly revealed the ‘secret’ about capitalism that capitalists sought to keep hidden: ‘the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation of the labourer’.125 Wakefield may have said he did not want to preclude the possibility of workers obtaining land—he only wanted to delay that outcome—but, in practice, his system (and capitalism, in general) dangled a possibility before the labourer—gave him something to aspire to, presented to him a reason to keep working, and kept him in a ‘state of honest and honourable dependence’—without a realistic chance of achieving it. Emigrants were lured to the colony by that which the system would never allow them to have. For their part, labourers wanted to hold onto the dream. The Chronicle dismissed the claim of the ‘oligarchs’ that immigrants’ settling on small farms was a fraud: ‘Are we to be told that the immigrant labourers of the  The Australian, 3 November 1840, 2.  And the dispossession of the Indigenous peoples would continue unabated until complete. Hence, the working classes, via their desire for land, were complicit in the settler colonial project. 123  ‘Dismemberment of New South Wales’, Gazette, 16 February 1841, 2. 124  Marx, ‘The Modern Theory of Colonisation’, in Engels, ed., Capital, 839. 125  Ibid., 848. 121 122

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colony are bond slaves—that they are to be compelled by pains and penalties to remain under assignment to this or that pretended “contributor to the land fund” till he may deem it convenient to present them with a “ticket of leave?”’126 As revealed in this provocative statement that used the imagery of both slavery and convictism, there was a palpable sense of injustice among the working classes, who resisted their exploitation by employers. They were not convicts under sentence, they could not be treated as such, and they would fight to retain at least the possibility of obtaining a small farm. They wanted large landowners to rent their land to small farmers and wanted the land itself to be sold in smaller blocks, creating a class of smallholders.127 They would continue to push for such access to land until ‘selection’—which allowed land to be purchased in small sections—was achieved in 1860.128 Some assisted immigrants had aims more modest than obtaining land. At home, wages were dropping, and employment was becoming more intermittent. In New South Wales, they hoped for steady employment at fair wages. This clashed with employers’ motivation to keep wages as low as possible, the enduring primary struggle of all capitalist societies. Employers were not satisfied with demands for what they saw as ‘exorbitant wages’, but workers were not satisfied either, and they made their disappointment known. They wrote to the newspapers to share their reality: poverty did exist in the colony; given the high prices tradesmen faced for raw materials, work could not be done more cheaply; there was unemployment and partial employment.129 In opposition to coolie labourers, ‘A Bounty Immigrant’ wrote to the Australian and revealed what was most likely the desire of many assisted immigrants: ‘Let it not be thought that I am an advocate for high wages … but I am an advocate for fair remunerative wages; wages that will enable a man to support his family as well as himself’.130 Employers increasingly viewed labour as a commodity, but in the eyes of the workers, that disposition made them slaves: ‘Here is not  ‘Colonial Society – the Labour Market’, Chronicle, 20 October 1842, 2.  ‘The Small Farm System’, Chronicle, 22 January 1842, 2; ‘Immigration  – A Loan  – Coolies’, Chronicle, 15 October 1842, 2. 128  Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, chap. 7. 129  Respectively, A Mechanic [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, Herald, 22 June 1835, 4; C [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 25 February 1836, 2; Patrick White, ‘Shoemaker’s Wages’, Herald, 5 October 1842, 3. 130  A Bounty Immigrant [pseud.], ‘Coolie Immigration’, The Australian, 14 December 1842, 2. 126 127

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one that recognises the slave-trade principle of buying the emigrant at the cheapest rate, to the exclusion of all consideration for him, his comforts or his wants, his health or his sufferings’.131 In defence of their comforts, wants, and health, immigrant workers mobilised via the aforementioned strikes, societies, and public protest meetings. While the old settlers and squatters fought over the economic and social development of the colony (with the materialist mindset gaining strength), the workers inserted their own voices. A vision of society more favourable for the worker materialised in the Chronicle. ‘The great question now’, the Chronicle put forth, ‘is whether our population shall consist of a species of mock nobility, with their serfs, or of a PEOPLE enjoying equal rights, with equal chances of success in their operations of industry’.132 In a typical conservative response, the Herald argued that what helped the wealthy would help the worker; what would the working people do if there were no capitalists to employ them?133 Working-class advocates were not fooled by this logic. ‘A Working Man’ wrote to the Chronicle and asked, ‘What would the great capitalists, the “moneyed classes,” do, if there were no labourers to work for them? Could they make their own shoes, build their own houses, shear their own sheep, plough their own land?’134 An ‘us versus them’ mentality—a class consciousness—was strengthening. The issues at hand—to give the worker fair wages, access to land, and a realistic opportunity for advancement—remained prominent in Australian political discourse for the rest of the century.135 Thus, the first decade of assisted immigration set the stage for the great battles of Australian labour history.

Heightened Class Tensions During the Depression Many of these developing class tensions crystallised during the economic downturn of the early 1840s. All classes were negatively impacted by the depression. Insolvencies among the wealthy were rampant. By the end of  X [pseud.], ‘Immigration’, Chronicle, 10 April 1840, 2 (emphasis in original).  ‘The New Land Regulations’, Chronicle, 21 January 1841, 2 (emphasis in original). 133  Prefiguring ‘trickle-down’ economics by at least fifty years! ‘The Working Classes and the Capitalists’, Herald, 14 January 1841, 2. 134  A Working Man [pseud.], ‘“Professor” Rennie and the Working Classes’, Chronicle, 21 January 1841, 2. See also One of the People [pseud.], ‘The Working Classes Versus the Proposed National Debt’, Chronicle, 7 December 1841, 2. 135  Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, chaps. 7 and 10, respectively. 131 132

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1843, only 16 large capitalists and fewer than a dozen companies remained afloat.136 Recently arrived squatters struggled to find a market for their stock. Samuel Rawson wrote to his father, ‘It is impossible to sell anything at present except at ruinous prices and if you do sell, the chances are, you are not paid’.137 And the working classes? Their distress was so bad a committee convened by the Legislative Council found that 1243 people in Sydney were unemployed with 2500 more wives and children dependent on them, representing around ten per cent of the entire population of Sydney.138 We shall leave it to the economic historians to debate the causes of the depression. Explanations put forward include excessive private capital inflow and consumer imports from Britain, a drop in both wool and livestock prices, and immature capitalist relations of production (which led to instability).139 What is more relevant for us is what the colonial elite thought caused the depression. Governor George Gipps attributed it to the same forces that occasionally struck England: an ‘excess of speculation’ and ‘undue extension of credit’.140 In short, the desire to make a quick fortune had led both people and banks to take unadvised risks. But, placing the blame for the depression on ‘speculation’ implicitly placed the blame at the feet of men of capital—landowners and squatters alike—who, it would appear, had imprudently invested that capital. These men, however, would not accept full blame. Instead, land and labour became scapegoats. Increases in the minimum price of land and in labour costs (due to the end  Connell and Irving, Class Structure in Australian History, 95.  Rawson to father, 3 August 1841, Rawson, Family Papers. Hugh Hamilton and Thomas Tourle also described the difficulty in selling stock. Both arrived as cabin passengers on John Marshall bounty ships (Hamilton in 1841 on the Earl Grey, Tourle in 1839 on the Lady Raffles). Hamilton had 3000 pounds in capital on arrival and acquired a squatting lease just before stock prices fell precipitously. Tourle wrote home complaining of the poor quality of the available land as well as the scarcity and cost of labour. Hugh Hamilton, Diaries and Memoirs 1841–ca. 1882, MS 956, NLA, entry for 5 November 1842; Tourle to Caroline, 24 July 1840, Tourle, Letter Books. 138  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 1; percentage reported in Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, 17. 139  Respectively, Butlin, Forming a Colonial Economy, 207; Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, 84; Wells, Constructing Capitalism, 63. Barrie Dyster provided an overview of the historiography. Barrie Dyster, ‘The 1840s Depression Revisited’, Australian Historical Studies 25, no. 101 (1993): 589–607. 140  Gipps Confidential Despatch to Russell, 1 February 1841, Governor’s Despatches, A1224 CY 657, ML. 136 137

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of transportation) had allegedly ‘crush[ed] the Settlers’.141 Struggling squatters claimed they were forced to spend ‘the proceeds of their wool … to pay thankless and unwilling servants, who will squander in one day in low dissipation, a sum that would keep a respectable family for a week’.142 Furthermore, these two all-important issues—land and labour—interacted in negatively reinforcing ways that had purportedly led the colony to ruin. Since the price of both land and labour were so high, capitalists claimed they could not afford to purchase land. Consequently, the immigration fund had been exhausted and immigration halted, extinguishing all hope that future immigration would help bring down wages.143 Wakefield’s tidy relationship between land sales and demand for labour had proven to be an illusion. In blaming wages, the elite in essence blamed the working classes for the depression, people themselves suffering mightily due to the economic downturn. Class animosity grew. When questioning out-of-work labourers, the 1843 Select Committee on the distress repeatedly asked if the suffering workers had been holding out for high wages.144 One witness before the Committee, upholsterer Benjamin Sutherland, fought back, saying that with the profits many employers made ‘they can afford to pay more than 18s. a week, which is not sufficient to keep a man with a wife and children’.145 It was the capitalists—not the workers—who were greedy, the witness declared. Workers were also keenly aware of the potential outcomes of the unending calls for more immigration. Henry Parkes wrote 141  Quotation from Gazette, 7 July 1842, 2. For blame placed on the minimum price, see New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Committee on the Debenture Bill. With the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: W.  J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 3; ‘Our Last Week’s Leader’, Observer, 25 May 1842. For blame placed on wages, see ‘Meeting of the Goulburn District Committee of the Australian Immigration Association’, The Australian, 19 October 1841, 3; ‘Catholic and Protestant Immigration’, Monitor, 24 November 1841, 2; Scott testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Minutes of the Committee on Immigration, 1842, 38. 142  Gazette, 8 February 1842, 2. 143  Gazette, 4 January 1842, 2; The Australian, 29 January 1842, 2; The Australian, 17 May 1842, 2. 144  See testimonies of Sutherland, Joseph McLeod, James Grimes, and Henry Bremer in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 3–10, 12–4, 21–2. For more on the implications of the mode of questioning by the Committee, see Chap. 5. 145  Ibid., 8.

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home, ‘The parties who are foremost in the endeavour to inundate us with workers look only to the depreciation of labour as the sure result. They have been accustomed to having the convict’s toil for nothing, and they cannot bring their minds to paying for that of the free man’.146 A public meeting was held to protest a plan to raise money for further immigration via debentures (in essence, bonds), a plan that would surely ‘plunge the operatives of the colony into the utmost wretchedness, making them the mere slaves of a few great landholders’.147 Speaking before the meeting, a Mr Pritchard responded to the Legislative Council’s observation that average wages for shepherds had only fallen by a paltry three pounds.148 That might not seem like much to the wealthy, Pritchard pointed out, but when a man loses three pounds out of 25, it has a dire effect.149 Labour and capital found themselves very much opposed. The economic downturn exacerbated tensions that had been growing with the arrival of the colony’s new immigrant labour base. * * * The first decade of assisted immigration coincided with and helped effect an economic transformation in New South Wales. Wakefield’s schemes and the policies they inspired aimed to establish more perfect capitalist relations in the colony through the commodification of land and labour. The transition to capitalist labour relations always requires the disciplining of the workforce, and in New South Wales, it required an ideological shift among the old settlers, as well. A sense of entitlement to land grants and notions of old-style English paternalism—particularly the establishment of a ‘virtuous tenantry’—had to be dislodged, as did expectations regarding the level of control employers would have over and the amount they would have to pay for workers, expectations set under the system of forced 146  Letter Twenty-Eight, 23 January 1842, Henry Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1896). 147  ‘The Loan Question  – The People Versus Their Representatives’, Chronicle, 23 December 1841, 2. 148  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Committee on the Debenture Bill, 1841, 3. 149  A detailed account of the meeting was printed in ‘Meeting of the Operatives’, The Australian, 23 December 1841, 2. The newspaper only identified the speakers by their surnames. For a sense of just how much wages had dropped, see Table 4.2.

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convict labour. The elite tried to hold on to what they had lost. Squatters circumvented the new system of land sales, and employers endeavoured to subordinate the new immigrant workforce. Towards the latter, their approach was twofold. Structurally, they attempted to use the law for greater control and clamoured for ever more immigration with the intention of building a labour surplus to drive down wages. Discursively, they continued their strategy of denigrating the assisted immigrants, claiming the immigrants were lazy, disloyal, greedy, and unwilling to go to the interior. Above all, they considered themselves entitled to labour, because they generated the colony’s wealth and (at least some of them) paid for assisted immigration via their land purchases. In their eyes, the new state of affairs under the Ripon Regulations failed to give them the labour they needed and deserved. The elite were not the only ones frustrated by the colony’s economic transformation, however. Many assisted immigrants had come to New South Wales seeking exactly what the new colonial economy slowly eliminated. In many ways, through emigration, they were trying to avoid the worst parts (from the labourer’s perspective) of the transition to capitalist labour relations as it was occurring in Britain. Unfortunately for them, the very intention of Wakefield’s system was to prevent labourers from obtaining land, and colonial employers wanted assisted immigrants to have neither access to land nor high wages as both worked against the interests of capital. Rather than obtaining fair wages and recapturing disappearing British traditions of land access, assisted immigrants found themselves upon arrival in New South Wales in the midst of the same transition to capitalist labour relations they had fled but with the added complications of harsh treatment characteristic of a forced labour system as well as competition from convict workers, competition the elite hoped to increase by importing more labour through increased immigration. In response, assisted immigrants resisted their commodification, their placement ‘upon the same footing with a bale of merchandize or a sack of corn’, and a working-class consciousness grew.150 In short, the immediate effects of the economic transition instigated by the Ripon Regulations were unsatisfactory to all. Immigrants—unassisted and assisted alike—had their hopes for wealth and land dashed and  The Australian, 19 March 1842, 2.

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employers—landowner and squatter alike—were frustrated with the amount and quality of labour delivered by the new system. These disappointments would shape Australian land, labour, and immigration policy for decades to come as squatters spent the late 1840s fighting for greater security in their leases,151 the working classes fought to ‘unlock the land’ and secure a fair wage,152 and employers and the government used immigration to manipulate the size of the workforce up through the mid-twentieth century (see Chap. 8). In their resistance to the transition forced upon them by the Colonial Office, the colonial elite condemned the assisted immigrants for economic reasons. But they didn’t stop there. As discussed in the next chapter, they constructed a standard of ‘respectability’ that allowed them to denigrate the assisted immigrants on moral grounds, as well, widening the gulf between the classes.

 Roberts, The Squatting Age in Australia, chaps. 8 and 9.  Buckley and Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers, chaps. 7 and 10.

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CHAPTER 5

When Wealth Equals Worth

As we have seen thus far, complaints about the morality and usefulness of the assisted emigrants to New South Wales should not be taken at face value. The resistance of the colonial elite to these new members of their community was much more reflective of the contested political and economic context into which they entered than of any character failings of the immigrants themselves. The denigration of the assisted immigrants was a tactic used in larger battles over land and migration policy, representative government, convict transportation, and control of the labour force. However, that does not mean the language deployed was mere empty rhetoric. Elite assessments of the immigrants’ morality and usefulness were coloured by cultural constructions of class and gender, constructions that were in the process of forming and were themselves undeniably shaped by the arrival of and reaction to the assisted immigrants. These cultural constructions will be the focus of the second half of Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants. The elite continuously alleged in the public sphere that the assisted immigrants were ‘immoral’, but what would have made a ‘good’, ‘moral’ immigrant? What types of immigrants might the elite have praised and welcomed? Wishful statements about the type of immigrant desired tended to lack specificity beyond a common trio of traits: sobriety,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_5

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industriousness, and frugality.1 Other determinants of character were harder to pinpoint, both because of the vague language used and because of the nebulous and shifting nature of constructs like ‘morality’. Historian Kirsten McKenzie proffered one method of investigation: she used public scandals in colonial settings to tease out both the norms and values transgressed in those scandals and the ways in which those norms and values were communicated and contested.2 Here, I use the public denigration of the assisted immigrants for the same purpose. The complaints about the assisted immigrants and the standard they were derided for not meeting revealed much about the conception of moral worth the elite attempted to impose on the colony. Australian migration historiography lacks such an analysis. The revisionist works of the 1990s argued that the colony received exactly the kinds of labourers it needed while overlooking the very real disconnect between what the colony needed and what the colonial elite would deem satisfactory. The social hierarchy that assisted immigrants entered was fluid. As in any battle for status, the New South Wales elite defined themselves in opposition to other groups with the end goal of monopolising political and social influence. As historian Penny Russell described such contests, those striving for social supremacy ‘attempted to assert a moral and cultural high ground, claiming that they were not engaged in life-and-death struggles for power, but simply asserting the right of the socially meritorious to govern in society’s best interests’.3 In 1820s New South Wales, the primary group from which the elite needed to distance themselves was the small number of wealthy emancipists, a distinction that formed the basis of the earliest political factions (see Chap. 3). In a legal sense, this was an easy distinction to make—one had either formerly been under sentence or not—a distinction further buttressed by aspersions about the morality of former convicts. But as large numbers of assisted immigrants entered the colony in the 1830s—a group that could not be conveniently scorned according to current or

1  For example, see The Australian, 5 October 1832, 2; ‘Meeting of Mechanics’, Herald, 22 July 1833, 2; Letter from Rev. J.  Wigney in Caroline Chisholm, Female Immigration Considered in a Brief Account of the Sydney Immigrants’ Home (Sydney: James Tegg, 1842), 91. 2  Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2005). 3  Penny Russell, A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 4–5.

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former legal status as prisoners of the crown—the boundaries between the ‘socially meritorious’ and not needed to be redrawn. To establish the ‘moral and cultural high ground’ (as Russell put it), the colonial elite borrowed/adapted several norms from Britain: respectability, manliness, and paternalism. ‘Respectability’ was crafted by the growing English middle class to differentiate themselves from the aristocracy, positioning themselves as society’s moral authority.4 Historian Linda Young defined this standard of comportment as ‘self-controlled action in three spheres of life: the body, the self in society, and the self in the material world’.5 This self-control manifested through dress and hygiene,6 through subjugating emotion and adhering to carefully proscribed standards of manners,7 and through conspicuous acquisition of consumer goods, especially home furnishings and carriages.8 In adhering to these standards, the English middle class demonstrated that they possessed wealth, but without succumbing to the decadence of the aristocracy. The gendered analogue to respectability was ‘manliness’ (the female standard will be discussed in Chap. 6). Manliness encompassed the self-­ control required by respectability as well as a respect for the dignity of labour, at least in the sense that middle-class, professional men worked rather than relied on existing fortunes.9 As a result of that hard work in business or the professions, the ideal man achieved both an independence from patronage and the ability to maintain a ‘household’ with servants and a wife who did not work. Manliness embodied traits such as energy, virility, strength, decisiveness, courage, endurance, assertiveness, independence, directness, and simplicity.10 The middle-class standards of respectability and manliness were indisputably present in New South Wales, as we will see. But, at times, the 4  Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 30; Mike Huggins, Vice and the Victorians (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 4. 5  Linda Young, Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 71. 6  Ibid., 82–91; Huggins, Vice and the Victorians, 178. 7  Penny Russell, Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010). 8  Linda Young, ‘“Extensive, Economical and Elegant”: The Habitus of Gentility in Early Nineteenth Century Sydney’, Australian Historical Studies 35, no. 124 (2004): 201–20. 9  Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 198. 10  John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family, and Empire (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005).

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colonial elite also turned to paternalism,11 an aristocratic ideology enjoying a resurgence among the English propertied classes in response to the challenge presented by the new bourgeoisie. Best encapsulated by the credo ‘property has its duties as well as its rights’, paternalism maintained that society was fundamentally hierarchical, with the possession of landed property signifying the highest rank. The various levels of the hierarchy were linked via ‘social bonds’. Each level had its specified duties: the lower orders to display ample deference to the propertied and the propertied to guide and help those below, either through charity or the moralising effects of authoritarian rule.12 Though the ‘old settlers’ of New South Wales who adhered to the paternalist ideal were not a hereditary aristocracy, they did control vast amounts of land and were not in competition (real or imagined) with any higher class. Therefore, they felt enabled to step into the paternal role. Even so, they most closely matched the English middle class in terms of the absolute amount and precarity of their wealth.13 Thus, as they strove to solidify their own social supremacy, the colonial elite utilised norms from multiple levels of the English hierarchy. So how did the working-class immigrants fare in this mixture of upperand middle-class standards? Not well. In their expectations for the immigrants, the colonial elite overwhelmingly conflated wealth—what the assisted immigrants did not possess—and moral worth. References to ‘virtuous’ immigrants invariably meant unassisted immigrants of small capital. Immigrants who had relied on government support for their passage lacked this important prerequisite. Furthermore, descriptions of the kinds of assisted immigrants that would be deemed acceptable deployed the inherently middle-class standards of respectability and manliness, standards that would be virtually impossible for working-class immigrants to attain. The fundamental paradox of cultural construction prevailed: the hegemonic group sought to set a standard for all of society (a standard based on the hegemon’s values), and yet, the power of the hegemonic group was based on exclusion, on maintaining an ‘other’.14 The paradox could not be resolved because the hegemon did not intend for the othered  An example of which—housing tenants on one’s land—was discussed in Chap. 4.  David Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), chaps. 1–3. 13  Bill Rubinstein, ‘The Top Wealth-Holders of New South Wales in 1830–44’, Push from the Bush, no. 8 (December 1980): 23–49. 14  Stuart Hall, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Stuart Hall, ed. (London: Sage, 1997), 248–51. 11 12

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group to achieve the standard; it merely wanted the outside group—and, indeed, all of society—to accept the standard. In 1830s’ New South Wales, the standard was middle class, and the assisted immigrants were working class. The colonial elite condemned the immigrants for not attaining a standard from which, by definition, they were excluded and which the elite never actually wanted them to achieve.

Asserting the Superiority of Wealth The clearest demonstration of the conflation of wealth and moral worth was the terminology deployed in the months following the announcement of the Ripon Regulations. Though the Colonial Office intended the regulations to spur emigration to the colony, the initial public response in the colony claimed the policies would end immigration,15 a contradiction arising due to the fact that the two groups were talking about two different types of migration. The Colonial Office envisioned the transfer of the labouring classes from destitution to opportunity, a type of migration that was derisively dubbed ‘pauper emigration’ in the colony.16 The use of the term ‘pauper’ was important for it conveyed not merely a lack of wealth; it also implied a lack of industry and pride.17 Governor Ralph Darling articulated the deeper moral meaning behind the term. In his initial response to the new regulations, he wrote to Secretary of State Goderich, ‘If [the emigrants] are industrious agricultural Labourers, they will be a great acquisition. If on the contrary, they are Paupers, whom from their idle and dissolute habits, the Parishes are anxious to get rid of … they will be not only a heavy burthen to the Government, but a very serious evil to the Community’.18 From the beginning, there was a sense in the colony that assisted migration would involve ‘paupers’ and a fear that New South Wales would receive immigrants unwilling to help themselves. By contrast, the most coveted type of immigration among the colonial elite at this early date was that of men possessing small capital, which the

15  Herald, 15 August 1831, 2; E. S. Hall, ‘To the Right Hon. Lord Goderich, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, &c. &c. &c.’, Monitor, 17 August 1831, 2; ‘Land’, The Australian, 23 December 1831, 2. 16  ‘Pauper Emigration’, The Australian, 23 March 1832, 3; Gazette, 29 December 1832. 17  Anne O’Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 67. 18  Darling to Goderich, 10 September 1831, Governor’s Despatches, A1209 CY 542, ML.

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press called ‘respectable immigration’.19 While Presbyterian minister J. D. Lang conceded the need for able-bodied labourers, he also stressed the need to encourage the ‘immigration of persons of a higher class in society, to afford employment to these labourers, and to form a class of respectable landholders’.20 Prior to the Ripon Regulations, land grants (along with cheap convict labour) had acted as a draw to such ‘respectable’ people. Under the new paradigm, small capitalists would have to pay for both the long, expensive journey to New South Wales and their land. The elite clamoured for either the return of land grants or a discount on the purchase price of land equal to the cost of the passage, at least for new arrivals to the colony.21 Without such inducements, the result of the new land regulations would presumably be to ‘encourage no new proprietors of land; no moral and intelligent men of education; no masters; we will only send the lower orders; broken-down and profligate mechanics, labourers, and women, who are too worthless to live at home, and who are a burden on our parishes’.22 This rhetoric revealed a fundamental presumption of the elite’s conception of social worth: ‘men of small capital’ were desirable and ‘the lower orders’ were ‘too worthless to live at home’. These ‘men of small capital’ were so desired for a number of reasons. The colonial elite were highly concerned with attracting capital to the colony in order to create new opportunities for investment and develop the economy.23 Furthermore, such immigration would increase the  The Australian, 2 December 1831, 2; Democritus [pseud], ‘To His Excellency MajorGen. Bourke, Governor in Chief, &c. &c. &c.’ Monitor, 8 February 1832, 3; Gazette, 14 June 1832, 3. 20  John Dunmore Lang, Emigration; Considered Chiefly in Reference to the Practicability and Expediency of Importing and of Settling Throughout the Territory of New South Wales, a Numerous, Industrious and Virtuous Agricultural Population; Being a Lecture Delivered in the Temporary Hall of the Australian College Sydney, 9th May 1833 (Sydney: E.  S. Hall, 1833), 8. 21  The examples of such calls are too numerous to list. For a small sampling, see an account of a public meeting discussing a potential petition against the land regulations in ‘Sheriff’s Meeting at Parramatta’, Monitor, 3 December 1831, 2; ‘Memorial to Viscount Glenelg, from the Immigrants of New South Wales, Arrived Since 1830’, December 1833, CO 384:39, PRO 1041, NLA; ‘Would the Mutual Interests of the Colony and the Mother Country Be Consulted by a Recurrence to the Granting of Land?’ Gazette, 2 October 1834, 4. 22  ‘Annoyances in Some Cases Distress of Respectable Emigrants’, Monitor, 2 September 1835, 2 (emphasis in original). 23  Recall that in Wakefield’s land-labour-capital triad, the colony was lacking both labour and capital. Cultor [pseud.], ‘The New Land Regulations’, Gazette, 13 September 1831, 3; Herald, 19 September 1831, 2; ‘Female Emigrants’, Gazette, 5 August 1834, 2. 19

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number of unquestionably ‘respectable’ men in the colony at a time when the home government used the social composition and alleged low moral state of New South Wales as justification for denying the colony an elected assembly (see Chap. 3). However, these larger goals did not alone explain the differing perception of the two categories of immigrants as the labour of the assisted immigrants was also sorely needed. Even when the capital started flowing and the convict/emancipist proportion of the population shrank, men with small capital remained the preferred type of immigrant because, culturally, wealth was conflated with moral worth. Despite the calls for financial inducements to lure men with capital, the assisted immigrants were held in contempt for accepting comparable financial assistance and even more so for failing to repay their passages after arrival. In the earliest days of the Ripon Regulations (before the land fund had had a chance to accrue), recipients of assisted passages were expected to repay, both the single female immigrants and the smattering of families who arrived via merchant ships. Almost immediately, Governor Richard Bourke recognised the logistical difficulty of enforcing repayment and claimed that collecting on the loans was not worth the bureaucratic effort it would require.24 He also argued that requiring repayment actually encouraged dishonest behaviour: ‘If the idle and drunken are allowed to evade repayment without suffering any bad consequences while the industrious are compelled to pay because they possess some little means, it will in fact be holding out a premium for idleness and drunkenness’.25 Eventually, Bourke’s repeated requests to make the assisted passage a gift rather than a loan succeeded, and in 1835—when the land fund had proven capable of supporting large-scale migration—secretaries of state Aberdeen and then Glenelg finally agreed to abandon the hope of repayment, a condition that was not retained in either of the government or bounty schemes that commenced in 1837.26 Notwithstanding such arguments by the colonial government, public rhetoric more generally condemned assisted immigrants for not repaying 24  Bourke to Goderich, 24 September 1832, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/4 CY 902, ML; Bourke to Stanley, 18 September 1834, Governor’s Despatches, A1212 CY 545, ML; Bourke to Rice, 13 February 1835, Governor’s Despatches, A1213 CY 607, ML. 25  Bourke to Stanley, 6 December 1833, Governor’s Missing Despatches, A1267/5 CY 695, ML. 26  Aberdeen to Bourke, 17 February 1835, Despatches to the Governor, A1272 CY 906, ML; Glenelg to Bourke, 20 June 1835, Despatches to the Governor, A1272 CY 906, ML.

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and used the lack of repayment as evidence of poor character. The Australian declared, ‘No doubt, from the class of people imported, little can be procured or expected in the shape of repayment’.27 By contrast, the mechanics from the Stirling Castle (a pilot project orchestrated by J. D. Lang in 1831 just as the Ripon Regulations were announced) were deemed model immigrants in part because they had repaid their passages.28 One assisted immigrant who was unable to repay attempted to defend himself in a letter to the Australian, signed with the pseudonym ‘A Sufferer by the Exchange of Country’.29 A mechanic with a family, he wrote, arrived in the colony only to face competition from convict labour as well as ‘a most extravagant and unreasonable rent’ for both a home and a workshop. In order to repay the passage in the specified two years, he claimed he would have had to live in the ‘meanest conditions’. Nevertheless, no consideration of economic realities in the colony was given; non-­ repayment was a result of poor character and nothing else. While the passage-as-loan arrangement was abandoned for assisted immigrants by mid-decade, repayment was never included in the proposals to spur unassisted migration, and calls to provide inducements to men of small capital continued. In 1838, when the Ripon Regulations were well entrenched, the Australian lamented that ‘respectable persons … are neither allowed a free passage to this Colony, nor any assistance towards defraying the expenses of so long a voyage, whilst PAUPERS are sent out at the cost of the Colonists!’30 According to this logic, government assistance should be awarded based on status, rather than merely on the inability to pay. This stance was the polar opposite of that expressed in the rare instances when an assisted immigrant was found to have arrived with a little bit of savings. Instead of accepting an assisted passage, colonial commentators determined, those immigrants should have paid their own way. Because they did not, they represented a ‘fraud’ on the land fund.31 In other words,

 The Australian, 2 September 1834, 2 (emphasis mine).  Herald, 14 November 1831, 2; The Australian, 22 November 1833, 2; ‘Emigration of the Right Sort’, Monitor, 27 August 1834, 3. 29  A Sufferer by the Exchange of Country [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Australian, 28 October 1834, 4. 30  ‘Proposed Memorial’, The Australian, 10 August 1838, 1 (emphasis in original). 31  Herald, 3 December 1838, 2; Gipps to Glenelg, 15 January 1839, Governor’s Despatches, A1220 CY 646, ML; ‘Coolie Labour  – Immigration Meeting’, Herald, 18 September 1840, 2. 27 28

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the working classes should spend every penny they had in order to emigrate, whereas the capital of wealthier men needed protection. The conflation of wealth and moral worth marginalised the beneficiaries of the assisted migration scheme: working-class labourers. According to those who inferred morality where they saw evidence of wealth, ‘good’ migrants would have enough money either to pay for their own passages upfront or to repay the cost of their passages after the fact. So, if an emigrant accepted a free passage because he had no money, he was unworthy. If he had some savings but still accepted an assisted passage, he was a fraud. Conversely, if an emigrant could pay for his first-class passage—if he had capital—he should receive some form of assistance, because his wealth had proved his worthiness. This class divide remained even when the criteria moved beyond absolute wealth and into the behavioural aspects of respectability and manliness.

Standards of Comportment and the Working Classes As important as wealth was to determining ‘respectability’, it was never enough. In a colony where a select few former convicts had amassed great fortunes, wealth was a necessary—not sufficient—component of elite social status. The ‘self-control’ and other standards of comportment demanded by ‘respectability’ and ‘manliness’ were vital. Some of these criteria were open to working-class men. For example, migration itself was a powerful assertion of manliness as it required resolution, courage, perseverance, and self-reliance in pursuit of financial ‘independence’ through honest labour.32 Other criteria—most notably the degree of financial independence required to maintain a household—were more difficult, if not impossible, for the working classes to achieve.33 Nevertheless, if the working-­class immigrants were to have been deemed ‘respectable’, this was the standard they would have had to reach. Assisted immigrants were fully expected to meet the ‘self-control’ portion of the social ideal. Officials made it clear that the migrants should conduct themselves with ‘propriety’. Governor George Gipps advised the Colonial Office, ‘It should be explained to them that they will forfeit all  Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 180–1.  Rose explored the ways in which middle-class standards related to the working classes in England. Sonya O.  Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 32 33

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claim to the care or protection of this Government on their arrival if they misconduct themselves in any respect during the voyage’.34 Similarly, James Stuart, the surgeon on the bounty ship, the Minerva, warned his charges on arrival of ‘the miseries which await you, should you swerve from that course of moral rectitude’ and assured them that ‘a well-directed resolution will enable you … to overcome any difficulties which may lie in your way’.35 The emigrants of the John Barry received much approbation for drawing up and administering their own code on conduct on board, a code that prohibited cursing and gambling and mandated observation of the Sabbath.36 Though statements like those by Gipps and Stuart implied an expectation that migrants would not ‘behave’, they also revealed a belief that migrants could. The manner in which the migrants conducted themselves would provide a measure of their character. Some behaviours of the upper classes could be viewed as problematic when exhibited by the lower classes, however; the ‘social bonds’ of paternalism required some boundaries not be crossed. Whereas unassisted immigrants of small capital were lauded because they were ‘too proud to accept extraneous assistance in their speculation of emigration’,37 assisted immigrants were condemned for expressing too much pride. David Thomson, the surgeon from the John Barry (the same ship with the emigrant-­ composed code of conduct), told the 1837 Committee on Immigration, ‘The circumstance of their being allowed a free passage, appears to create in [the assisted emigrants] a feeling of their own importance and consequent unwillingness to be directed or advised’.38 In the workforce, such ‘feeling of their own importance’ was branded ‘insolence’. Immigration advocate Caroline Chisholm highlighted the potential for  Gipps to Glenelg, 22 November 1838, Governor’s Despatches, A1219 CY 645, ML.  James Stuart, ‘To the Emigrants per Minerva, Convalescent from Typhus Fever, Who Were Delivered to Care of Dr. Rogers, from the Lazaretto, on the 8th March, 1838’, Gazette, 15 March 1838, 2. 36  The John Barry was one of the first ‘government’ ships under the major changes Bourke made in response to the 1835 Committee on Immigration. James Macarthur was so impressed by the code of conduct that he reprinted the regulations in his book. James Macarthur, New South Wales; Its Present State and Future Prospects: Being a Statement, with Documentary Evidence Submitted in Support of Petitions to His Majesty and Parliament (London: D. Walther, 1837), 175–6. 37  ‘Land’, Gazette, 4 May 1841, 2 (emphasis mine). 38  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee on Immigration, Indian and British, into New South Wales (Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1837), DSM/Q325/Pa1, ML, 51. 34 35

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conflict: ‘There is a proud bearing about the English peasantry which would, I fear, be mistaken for insolence, and cause great complaint’.39 Indeed, it did cause complaint. ‘It is notorious in all countries’, the Sydney Monitor lamented, ‘that the higher the wages you give your servants[,] the more independent, not to say saucy, they are’.40 The threat of such ‘sauciness’ to the social order was felt to be significant. Co-founder of the Monitor E.  S. Hall compared it to the threat posed by convicts: ‘The Emigrants may not commit murder nor highway robberies; but their insolence and pride, will produce greater evils; than the few violent crimes of the convicts’.41 Instead of ‘insolent and proud’, assisted immigrants should be thankful.42 The Stirling Castle passengers, so often held up as exemplars of the ideal labouring immigrant, passed this test. Not only had these early working-class immigrants paid back their passages, but they were also sufficiently grateful for the opportunity afforded them, so grateful they presented their patron, J. D. Lang, a written testimonial of their gratitude and built a monument in memory of Lang’s brother, George.43 This pride/gratitude dichotomy was one example of the fine behavioural line assisted immigrants had to walk. Given that the manliness ideal stressed courage, assertiveness, and decisiveness, one might think pride and independence would have been seen as desirable traits in the immigrants. Instead, the language revealed the danger of excessive pride/independence in the working classes: insufficient deference to their ‘betters’. Proud assisted immigrants were ‘insolent’ and ‘unwilling to be directed or advised’; they upset the paternal order by not allowing themselves to be guided by those above them. The pendulum of judgement could swing in the other direction, however. One group of assisted immigrants—the Irish—were felt to have too little pride, to be too directed by certain people above them. The small but influential faction of colonial leaders who were vocally anti-Irish portrayed Irish men as the very antithesis of manliness: ‘ignorant, indolent, vicious,  Chisholm, Female Immigration Considered, 65.  ‘Assigned Servants’, Monitor, 25 February 1835, 2. See also ‘Coolie Labour’, Gazette, 18 February 1841, 2; A Landholder [pseud.], ‘The Long Anticipated House of Assembly; or the Inhabitants of New South Wales Fast Asleep’, The Australian, 3 February 1842, 2. 41  E. S. Hall, ‘To the Right Honourable E. G. Stanley, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies’, Monitor, 17 September 1834, 2. 42  So wrote a self-paying steerage passenger in Truth [pseud.], ‘Mr. Marshall’s Bounty Emigrants’, Monitor, 27 December 1839, 2. 43  ‘Internal Intelligence’, Gazette, 1 September 1832, 2. 39 40

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and priest-ridden, of disorderly habits, unmanly tempers, and unskilful’.44 As implied in the quotation, this degraded state was in part attributed to Catholic priests,45 who allegedly worked to keep their laity ignorant in order to maintain the infallibility of the church.46 Such susceptibility to the influence of priests diametrically opposed the ‘manly’ values of independence, assertiveness, and rational thinking.47 The Colonial Observer asked, ‘Is it not the fact that the state of intellectual and physical degradation into which Popery has notoriously sunk the Romish population of Ireland has induced habits the most unfavourable to national intelligence, national enterprise, national industry and the acquisition of national wealth?’48 The social standards of ‘respectability’ and ‘manliness’ conveniently could be used to ‘other’ Irish Catholics for their religion was seen as counter to those ideals. If an assisted immigrant were able to walk the tightrope and successfully exhibit just the right among of pride, the ‘manliness’ ideal held another trap for him: whether he should have a family. Colonial administrators had long sought to encourage marriage both as a way to ‘civilise’ the convicts and to stamp out the objectionable practice by some elite men of forming long-term relationships with their female convict servants.49 In the age of assisted immigration, some voices—especially those who favoured a paternalist mode of social relations—continued to deify marriage, because they found ‘married servants [to be] far more steady, frugal, industrious, and well-behaved than single men’.50 Why? Because ‘the very fact of the man’s having a family to think of, [was] a strong guarantee for

 ‘Roman Catholic Immigration’, Herald, 31 August 1840, 2.  Occasionally, a distinction was made between Irish Protestants and Catholics, but most often in the rhetoric, ‘Irish’ assumed adherence to Catholicism. 46  ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 2 October 1840, 2; John Dunmore Lang, The Question of Questions! Or, Is This Colony to Be Transformed into a Province of Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New South Wales (Sydney: J.  Tegg and Co., 1841), 31; The Australian, 19 February 1842, 2. 47  Though perhaps the elite would have preferred the Irish be fully under the influence of the elite rather than Catholic priests. 48  ‘The Crowning Mercy, Alias the Irish Host! (Concluded)’, Observer, 21 September 1842. 49  Alan Atkinson and Marian Aveling, eds, Australians 1838 (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), chap. 3. 50  Another example of the commonly extolled traits mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Thomas Potter Macqueen, Australia as She Is and as She May Be (London: J. Cross, 1840), 24. 44 45

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his steadiness, industry, patience, and perseverance’,51 all characteristics of manliness. Without families, men would presumably spend their wages in ‘brothels, gaming-houses and vanity’.52 Despite the lip service paid to the importance of marriage, however, employers wanted to keep labour costs as low as possible, as we saw in Chap. 4. Since it was the practice to provide workers rations in addition to wages and since men with wives and/ or families would need more rations, married men cost more to employ, an expense employers claimed they could not afford. The preference for single workers was so strong that immigrants with large families had difficulty finding work even with the supposedly dire labour shortage in the colony.53 Employers wanted workers to possess the morality a family signified but did not want to provide compensation sufficient for a worker to support that family. The masculine ideal conflicted with economic reality. Another aspect of the social ideals that both came into conflict with economic reality and forced the immigrants to strike a delicate balance was appearance, a key component of ‘respectability’.54 On the one hand, the primary criterion on which immigrants were judged upon arrival was dress. Positive judgements of certain ships were reserved for those whose immigrants displayed a ‘cleanly appearance’, as opposed to those whose immigrants were ‘tawdrily or indecently’ dressed (a sign of immorality) or dressed only in a ‘bundle of rags and filth’ (a sign of poverty).55 On the other hand, immigrants could not be dressed too nicely lest they evoke scorn for their ‘foolish finery’—in other words, for their excessive pride.56 In one example, the Sydney Gazette described a woman from the David  ‘A Free Emigrant Colonial Tenantry’, The Colonist, 21 February 1838, 2.  ‘Fearful Scarcity of Labour’, Monitor, 7 December 1836, 2. 53  ‘The Emigrants, Residents in the Government Domain’, Monitor, 26 February 1838, 2; Pinnock’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML, 13; Gipps to Stanley, 14 May 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1228 CY 661, ML. 54  The single female immigrants were particularly susceptible to criticism on this point as were the Irish, who were believed to be not ‘so cleanly in their habits as the English’. Gazette, 6 October 1836, 2. 55  Quotations from ‘The Emigrants by the Ellen’, Gazette, 27 July 1841, 2 (about a bounty ship); ‘Female Emigrants’, Gazette, 5 March 1835, 2 (about the single female ship, the Duchess of Northumberland); and ‘Domestic Intelligence’, Gazette, 13 April 1841, 2 (about the bounty ship, the Bussorah Merchant), respectively. See also the official report on the arrival of the single female ship, the James Pattison, in Bourke to Glenelg, 3 March 1836, Governor’s Despatches, A1215 CY 651, ML. 56  A Householder [pseud.], ‘Female Immigrants’ Home’, Herald, 18 March 1842, 3. 51 52

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Scott who sported large earrings, an exposed neck, a chain necklace, hair in ringlets, and a ‘tawdry bonnet aping one of the newest modes de Paris’.57 A potential employer declined to hire her, reportedly saying, ‘I fear indeed you know too much to render it at all desirable for me to take you in to my house … as your appearance denotes you more of the mistress than the servant’. Dress was an important signifier of status. Appropriate ‘finery’ required not only financial but also cultural capital, the ‘inside’ knowledge of what was fashionable and dignified.58 Immigrants who dressed too nicely both failed to display the all-important quality of ‘frugality’ and transgressed an important social barrier, a transgression the elite could not allow. As he travelled through the colony, Quaker missionary James Backhouse wrote of a washwoman who bought herself a necklace and commented that she must have forgotten that ‘this foolish indulgence would not alter her station in society’.59 From Backhouse’s perspective, the necklace was both a waste of money and a misguided attempt to strive beyond her social status. Such attempts to strive beyond one’s status and, more critically, to aspire to achieve wealth were cardinal sins in the eyes of the elite. Immigrants were regularly condemned for overblown wage expectations (see Chap. 4). The 1841 Committee on Immigration warned, ‘Persons … whose minds are filled with expectations of a certain elevation to immediate wealth … ought … to be discouraged [from emigrating]’.60 Similarly, the single female immigrants presumably ‘expected to become rich at once without any exertion on their part; to … [marry] good husbands immediately on their arrival; to … become mistresses instead of servants’.61 Condemnations of such expectations seemed unfair given that recruitment circulars in Britain described New South Wales as: a Country where a day’s labour may purchase Provisions for a week … where the weighty consideration of daily subsistence is never obtruded on  Gazette, 6 November 1834, 2.  Huggins, Vice and the Victorians, 178; Young, Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century, 89. 59  James Backhouse, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1843), chap. XI. 60  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1841. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, and Replies to the Circular Letter on the Aborigines (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 7. 61  Gazette, 17 November 1835, 2. 57 58

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his thoughts, and where his savings in a short time may be adequate to place him beyond the necessity of manual labour at all; and the industrious and frugal may within a very limited period, rise to the rank of the respectable middle Classes of the Community.62

The immigrants were caught in a contradiction; they had been lured to the colony by expectations of a more secure financial existence and yet were condemned for desiring just that. Should they be seen as emigrating ‘with the intention of being ladies and gentlemen’,63 of becoming ‘mistresses instead of servants’, the ire commensurately increased. So what did the elite expect of the assisted immigrants? Above all, the elite wanted them to be productive, cheap workers (Chap. 4). This expectation irreconcilably clashed with certain elements of the middle-class standards of respectability and manliness, including possessing enough wealth to support a family. At the same time, they wanted the assisted immigrants to strive for the middle-class ideal but not too much. They should be hard-working and frugal, but they should not seek to acquire too much wealth. They should dress cleanly, but not too fine. They should express gratitude as opposed to too much ‘pride’; to do so would be to reject guidance from their ‘betters’. The elite wanted the immigrants to conduct themselves according to the moral standard the elite set for themselves without attempting to elevate their class status. To do so would be to challenge the exalted position of the elite. As historian Linda Young noted, the middle-class standard of morality ‘claimed to offer everyone the possibility of self-improvement, but in practice functioned as much to exclude as to improve’.64

Poverty Equated to Depravity In the eyes of the colonial elite, wealth certainly signalled superiority, but the inverse was also believed: poverty denoted degeneracy. Poverty was decidedly unmanly; it left a man weak and dependent. It compromised his self-respect.65 This conflation in many ways reflected the growing 62  William Bell, ‘Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales’, included in Lt. Low’s correspondence for 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA. 63  ‘Free Servants in Australia’, Gazette, 18 January 1840, 2. 64  Young, Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century, 93. 65  These attitudes were held both in the colony and in Britain. Anne O’Brien, ‘Pauperism Revisited’, Australian Historical Studies 42, no. 2 (2011): 213; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 42.

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tendency in Britain to blame the poor for their own poverty, an uneven and contested shift away from paternalism in both locations. In the colony, the assisted immigrants were the targets of this rationale; because they were poor, they must be dissolute. This fundamental assumption shaped perceptions of the assisted immigrants, attitudes towards charity, and responses to the economic depression of the early 1840s. In England, the same industrialisation-caused economic stressors that led to proposals for mass emigration also spurred calls for an overhaul of poor relief.66 Under the traditional poor relief system, able-bodied labourers who did not earn enough to support their families could receive supplementary wages according to a scale that took into account the price of bread (known as the ‘Speenhamland system’). Economically, this practice had the effect of depressing wages as employers could rely on the parish to supplement meagre pay.67 Culturally, it engendered the belief that such assistance degraded the poor. According to the reform-minded, this ‘baneful measure’ of relief to the able-bodied had ‘deteriorated the character of the poor, broken down their independent spirit, destroyed their habits of industry, and become a premium upon idleness and vice’.68 In New South Wales, the colonial elite used the presence of so much troublesome poverty back at ‘home’ to impugn the English for not achieving their own standard of paternalism and to argue for emigration to the colony. Both the systems of poor relief and the behaviour of the upper orders were much condemned by the colonial press.69 Britain, it was argued, had plenty of land to support its poor, but that land had been locked up in pleasure estates for the aristocracy or extensive farms that benefited landowners over those who worked the land.70 Such arguments highlighted the inability of English ‘property’ to do its ‘duty’ and positioned the colony as the Mother Country’s saviour, if only emigration to

66  The discussion of poor laws here is largely limited to England, as Scotland had its own poor laws (which did not provide relief to the able-bodied) and Ireland had none. 67  Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians, 110; Rose, Limited Livelihoods, 51. 68  George Pinckard, Suggestions for Restoring the Moral Character and the Industrious Habits of the Poor: Also, for Establishing District Work Farms in Place of Parish Work-Houses, and for Reducing the Poor-Rates (London: Roake and Varty, 1835), 1–2. 69  Most of the discussions focused on the system in England, though practices in Ireland and Scotland sometimes entered the mix, as well. See Gazette, 9 February 1833, 2; Herald, 6 February 1834, 1. 70  ‘From a Correspondent’, Gazette, 20 October 1832, 2.

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the colony could be implemented on a large scale.71 In advocating for emigration, colonial commentators presented the colony as a land of opportunity, pointedly asking, ‘why should these horrible privations be allowed to continue for a single year, or a single month, when the Australian Colonies offer so ready an asylum for the whole of the sufferers?’72 Railing against English systems and practices served the dual purpose of arguing for the immigration the colony so desperately needed and elevating (or at least attempting to elevate) the status of the colonial elite. According to the Gazette, the colony had an ‘opportunity of exercising the virtues of charity, justice, and human kindness’ in accepting immigrants, and if it did so, ‘the colonist will prove to the people “at home” that we are men and brethren’.73 If a colony could help rid Britain of its most vexing problem, surely it—and its wealthy residents—would be worthy of respect. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act (commonly called the ‘New Poor Law’) aimed to transform the English system.74 Though scholars disagree on the extent to which such a transformation transpired,75 a major change was the implementation of centralised guidelines for the form and level of relief. Instead of essentially ensuring a minimum wage, the law instituted a policy of ‘less eligibility’; relief given would keep the able-bodied pauper in a condition worse than the lowest class of independent labourer. Able-­ bodied men and women now could only receive relief if their whole household entered the workhouse. Not only were conditions in the workhouses spartan, but entering the workhouse also entailed a loss of liberty. Both realities were deliberate attempts to deter people from claiming relief. The aim was to confine assistance to the sick, disabled, or elderly. In effect, the law institutionalised a distinction between ‘worthy’/‘deserving’ and ‘unworthy’/‘undeserving’ poor.76 Able-bodied poor who could work 71  For remember, the colony desperately needed the immigrants’ labour, even as the elite condemned the immigrants themselves. Gazette, 19 August 1830, 2; The Australian, 22 April 1831, 2. 72  ‘The British Poor’, Herald, 15 April 1842, 2. See also The Australian, 27 February 1838, 2; Monitor, 15 June 1840, 3. 73  ‘From a Correspondent’, Gazette, 20 October 1832, 2. 74  Steven King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700–1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), chap. 8; Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), chap. 6. 75  King surveyed the debates. King, Poverty and Welfare in England, chap. 3. 76  Such a distinction was not a new invention; however, the New Poor Law calcified the distinction, reducing the poor to two categories rather than a continuum of need. Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty, chap. 6.

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and sought assistance were ‘unworthy’. The solution for poverty was ‘self-­ reliance’, not government support.77 Unemployment was not seen as endemic to capitalism;78 the able-bodied poor were to blame for their own poverty. As they related to New South Wales, the structures and attitudes embodied in the New Poor Law produced a paradox. On the one hand, the New Poor Law encouraged emigration, which was decidedly in the colony’s interests. Though sparingly used, a provision of the law allowed parishes to allocate a portion of their collected poor rates to aid residents who wished to emigrate.79 But even if the numbers formally assisted in this way were small, the law had the overall effect of encouraging emigration as the only other option for the desperate was incarceration in a workhouse. Indeed, as we have seen, the colonial press attempted to use the parlous state of the poor in England to encourage emigration. On the other hand, the deserving/undeserving distinction effectively condemned those faced with workhouse/emigration choice. Those deemed ‘worthy’ in England—the sick, disabled, or aged—were exactly whom the colony did not need or want. The colony needed able-bodied workers, and yet people matching that description who were distressed enough either to enter a workhouse or to emigrate were branded ‘unworthy’ in England, an attitude very much present in the colony, as well. Many colonial commentators presumed that ‘good’ workers would be unwilling to emigrate. ‘The moral and industrious class of British operatives do not emigrate’, the Gazette declared, ‘but the idle, the worthless, and in every respect the immoral portion of them’.80 In a sermon, J. D. Lang preached that few people who chose to emigrate had a ‘reasonable prospect of success … at home’ and therefore emigration implied a ‘want of success’.81 According to this logic, if the migrants had been truly  Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians, chap. 7.  Contrary to what Marx argued. He contended that capitalist production relied on a surplus of workers, a surplus that England, at this time, kept in its workhouses. Karl Marx, ‘The Modern Theory of Colonisation’, in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Friedrich Engels, ed. (1906; repr., London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972), 842. 79  Gary Howells, ‘Emigration and the New Poor Law: The Norfolk Emigration Fever of 1836’, Rural History 11, no. 2 (2000): 145–64. 80  ‘Want of Labour’, Gazette, 24 September 1840, 2. 81  Text of the sermon reprinted in J.  D. Lang, ‘View of the Origin and Causes of the Extraordinary Prevalence of Intemperance in New South Wales’, The Colonist, 25 June 1835, 2. 77 78

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industrious workers of good character, they would have had employment in the United Kingdom and not needed to emigrate. Ironically, the attitudes embedded in the New Poor Law created a bias against the emigrants it helped mobilise. The implicit attitudes in the New Poor Law hardened easily in New South Wales for a number of reasons, primarily the belief that there was no poverty in the colony, the land where wages were high and employers were in dire need of labour (at least according to the rhetoric). Often the colony was portrayed in this way in order to encourage emigration, whether it be in Governor Bourke’s assurances to the Colonial Office that ‘any Mechanic or Labourer, Male or Female of good character, and industrious habits will find upon arrival the means of speedy and profitable employment’82 or in published letters to Britain extolling the virtues of the colony where ‘we have no such class as paupers, or distressed persons of any description’.83 The corollary to this unfettered optimism was a lack of sympathy for those who could not succeed (we’ll return to this theme in Chap. 7). Immigration agent James Denham Pinnock admitted that some unemployment was the result of ‘circumstances’, but was quick to add that it was ‘more frequently caused by a moral apathy—a disinclination to labour’.84 Similarly, the 1840 Committee on Immigration declared, ‘Except on account of some unfitness or incapacity, no person in this Colony, willing to work, has ever been unable to procure advantageous employment, at all seasons of the year’.85 The elite saw no other explanation for poverty experienced in the colony other than the worker’s own shortcomings.86 Not only did the colony supposedly lack ‘distressed persons of any description’, but it also lacked the legacy of the centuries-old poor laws

 Bourke to Goderich, 7 February 1832, Governor’s Despatches, A1210 CY 543, ML.  ‘On the Comfort and Happiness of the Labouring Classes in the Colony of New South Wales, Compared with the Same Class in Great Britain’, Gazette, 13 July 1830, 3. 84  J.  Denham Pinnock, Report from J.  Denham Pinnock, Esq., Colonial Agent for Immigration, to His Excellency Governor Sir George Gipps, on the Progress of Immigration Generally, for the Year 1838, reprinted as J. Denham Pinnock, ‘Immigration’, The Australian, 4 July 1839, 3. 85  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1840. Report, 2. Similar ideas were expressed by the 1835, 1841, and 1842 Committees on Immigration. 86  This held even for the Irish, whom, as we have seen (Chap. 4), some employers were reluctant to hire due to prejudice. 82 83

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that embattled England, a legacy the colonial elite were loath to recreate.87 The Sydney Herald hoped that ‘the distress of the Mother Country, borne down as she has been by taxes, tythes, poor rates, &c. will deter the Colonists from allowing the importation of destructive systems’.88 The lack of a poor law was touted as a selling point for the colony as an immigrant with capital ‘really enjoys the fruit of his labour, for he has no collector of tythes, poor laws, church rates, or taxes, to take it from him’.89 In the early days of assisted immigration, some of the anxiety over the ‘quality’ of migrants stemmed from a fear that, if Britain sent its ‘refuse’, the need would arise for ‘the germ of a future system of destructive Poor Laws’.90 Some already considered the land regulations an unfair new expense, and the elite certainly did not want to incur the additional expense of a tax to fund a system of poor relief. Even though the colonial elite did not want anything like the English system, they did manage to embrace the ethos behind the New Poor Law.91 First, the ‘good’ poor would purportedly not require any support: ‘Useful mechanics will not require the aid of Societies, but pretended mechanics … deserve no sympathy’.92 Secondly, the able-bodied should receive no assistance: Every man or woman in good health, capable of herding cows on a common, or tending sheep on a down, of threshing or weeding, spinning or knotting, should in such a country as this be excluded from any fund set apart, either by Government or by private individuals, for the distressed and aged … Do not grant the benefit … to the lazy sluggard who imagines a generous public must support him in indolence, and perhaps in the indulgence of vice and villainy.93

Finally, this logic claimed that providing assistance would actually hurt the poor as it would make them dependent and lead them to expect support 87  Brian Dickey, ‘Why Were There No Poor Laws in Australia?’ Journal of Policy History 4, no. 2 (1992): 111–33. 88  Herald, 6 February 1834, 1. 89  ******* [pseud.], ‘Emigration to New South Wales’, Monitor, 8 August 1832, 4. 90  An Independent [pseud.], ‘No. I. Emigration and Its Consequences’, Gazette, 9 June 1832, 3. See also Herald, 6 February 1834, 1. 91  A point also made in Tanya Evans, Fractured Families: Life on the Margins in Colonial New South Wales (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2015), chap. 4. 92  Herald, 9 October 1832, 2. 93  Herald, 6 February 1834, 1.

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from the government or charity, a divergence from the ideal of independence and freedom from patronage. On the formation of a Ladies Committee to help the single female immigrants find placements, the Gazette warned, ‘It would be injurious to the interests of the Emigrants themselves … were the [Committee] to be formed with the view of giving pecuniary aid to the Emigrants, and thus leading the newly arrived strangers to suppose that they need look to any fund for their support, beyond that which arises out of the product of their individual labour’.94 These attitudes informed perceptions of other forms of charity that existed in the colony.95 Even the most popular charitable enterprise—Caroline Chisholm’s Immigrants’ Home—needed to tread lightly in providing public assistance. Founded in 1841 at the former Immigrants Barracks, the Home provided shelter for single women and an employment registry for all immigrants.96 Chisholm’s efforts received much praise mainly because she helped get workers out of Sydney and into the country, something employers had long complained was not happening, but took no positive steps to address.97 Still, the Herald did not like that immigrants could return to the Home if they were not satisfied with their employment placements. Due to this provision, the Home ran the risk of becoming a mere refuge for the destitute, the newspaper argued, and, if that happened, the Home should lose all claims for public support.98 One of the paper’s readers decried the Home as a place for ‘impertinence and idleness’. He felt residents of the Home should be compelled to accept employment offers or be forced to leave, and furthermore, they should be made to work while at the Home.99 This proposal more closely described a workhouse in England than temporary accommodation for newly arrived immigrants. This presumption of ‘intemperance and idleness’ extended to other forms of support available to assisted immigrants. The Benevolent Society, 94  Gazette, 25 September 1832, 2. The Ladies Committee proved to be short-lived (see Chap. 7). 95  For a full account of philanthropy in Australia, see O’Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism. 96  The Immigrants Barracks was discontinued in 1840. For Chisholm’s own description of her enterprise, see Chisholm, Female Immigration Considered. 97  For praise of Chisholm’s efforts, see ‘Female Immigrants’, Herald, 2 December 1841, 2; ‘The Female Immigrants’ Home’, Observer, 11 December 1841, 2; ‘Immigrants Home’, The Australian, 31 October 1842, 2. 98  ‘Home for Immigrants’, Herald, 4 February 1842, 2; ‘Immigration’, Herald, 16 March 1842, 2. 99  A Householder [pseud.], ‘Female Immigrants’ Home’, Herald, 18 March 1842, 3.

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established in 1813 to provide relief for the ‘deserving’ poor, initially served primarily ex-convicts and their children.100 As assisted immigration commenced, newspapers reported how many assisted immigrants were housed in the asylum run by the Society, condemning those immigrants as ‘a sorry sample … of the sort of people sent out by Lord Goderich’.101 The Immigrants Barracks, where government ship immigrants were allowed to stay for up to a month after arrival (at least until 1840), was portrayed as a place where immigrants could be supported on government rations while they simultaneously declined employment offers ‘unless [those offers] suit their exorbitant demands’.102 In both cases, immigrants’ use of available assistance resulted in condemnation. In short, the colonial elite took a decidedly negative stance against any type of support for immigrants they deemed able to work and insisted that those unable to work should never have been granted assisted passages. This tendency to blame the poor for their poverty—the spirit of the New Poor Law—was easily embraced in New South Wales for it was the only real option. The colonial elite possessed neither the absolute wealth needed to fund a full support system nor the desire to pay for one;103 not paying poor rates was an advertised benefit of settling in the colony, after all. Furthermore, the elite saw no reason to provide support other than for the aged, ill, and infirm—people who were ineligible for assisted passages—as they believed there to be no poverty in the colony. When the perceived need for labour was so high, self-reliance was the answer to any temporary distress felt by the able-bodied. Such were the attitudes and lack of structural support faced by the assisted immigrants when they arrived, people who left Britain precisely because they were poor. These attitudes not only blamed the assisted immigrants for their poverty but also vilified public welfare, leaving a lasting social legacy.  Evans, Fractured Families, prologue.  ‘The Benevolent Society’, Monitor, 5 June 1833, 2. See also An Emigrant [pseud.], ‘Benevolent Society’, Herald, 14 February 1833, 4. 102  A Lately Arrived Gentleman, and a Subscriber to Your Paper [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of The Australian’, The Australian, 29 January 1839, 3 (emphasis in original). See also ‘The Emigrants’, Monitor, 12 March 1838, 2; An Old Hawkesbury Settler [pseud.], ‘Sydney Benevolent Society’, Herald, 7 August 1839, 2. J.  D. Pinnock, the Immigration Agent, shared this view and lobbied successfully to have the Barracks closed. See Pinnock’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: T.  Trood, 1839), RB DQ 325.342/36, ML, 10. 103  Dickey, ‘Why Were There No Poor Laws in Australia?’, 121–2. 100 101

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Attitudes Towards Poverty Resisted During the Depression Once economic depression gripped New South Wales in the early 1840s, the colonial elite could no longer claim there was no poverty in the colony. They could, however, selectively explain the hardships experienced, a powerful demonstration of the conflation of wealth and worth. From their own point of view, the depression—and the financial losses the elite had personally suffered—had been caused by the Colonial Office’s increase in the price of land, the cessation of immigration, and ‘unreasonable’ wage demands by the working classes (see Chap. 4). Distress among the working classes, however, was attributed to the workers’ own improvidence and immorality. Those workers—many among them recently arrived assisted immigrants—vocally challenged such derogatory explanations for their plight and, in so doing, attempted to redefine the relationship between the government and the poor. Nowhere was this tendency to blame the poor for their poverty more obvious than the testimony before the 1843 Legislative Council Select Committee investigating distress among mechanics and labourers, a committee formed in response to a petition from 4000 workers.104 The rare committee that actually questioned the working classes (the seven committees on immigration prior to 1843 together examined only a single assisted immigrant),105 the questioners nevertheless tried their best to uncover some behaviour on the part of the poor to explain the distress experienced.106 As men like upholsterer Benjamin Sutherland, blacksmith Henry 104  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Select Committee, on the Petition from Distressed Mechanics and Labourers, with the Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1843), Q84/10, ML. Petition reprinted in ‘The Working Classes’, Herald, 25 October 1843, 3. 105  The 1839 Committee interviewed David Taylor, a Scottish stone mason who arrived in 1832 in the very earliest days of assisted immigration. By 1839, his occupation was given as ‘building contractor’, and he indicated in his testimony that he himself employed several immigrant mechanics. New South Wales Legislative Council, Emigration: Appendix to Reports and Correspondence Respecting Emigration: Appendix to the Report of a Committee of Council on New South Wales, 1839), Q325.1901/4, ML, 62–4. Biographical data from Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828–1896’, https://search.ancestrylibrary.com.au/search/db.aspx?dbid=1204 (accessed 30 August 2018). 106  The questioners were usually Colonial Secretary Edward Deas Thomson or Attorney General John Plunkett. J. D. Lang was the chair of the committee.

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Bremer, and carpenter William Crosby reported stories of abject poverty, the line of questioning inevitably focused on the subject’s character, sobriety, or willingness to work.107 Crosby relayed the story of David Driscoll, who had been out of work for a year, was sick, and had seven children to support. The committee asked if Driscoll was sober. Crosby shared that Driscoll was a teetotaller. The committee wanted to know if he had always been a teetotaller and asked Crosby, ‘Do you think any industrious man could be twelve months out of employment?’108 Similarly, when Sutherland told of a cabinetmaker whose family had had no bread for two days or a quarryman whose five children were eating potato peelings he had found in the street, the committee routinely asked if Sutherland knew the character of the man in question. Sutherland repeatedly answered ‘no’, leading the committee to ask why he had not inquired into their character because ‘you are aware that, at the best of times, there were some in distress or poverty owing to their dissolute habits?’ In achieving the formation of the Committee in the first place, workers had managed to attain acknowledgement of the hardships they faced. Eliciting sympathy for those hardships proved to be a more difficult task, however.109 The testimony before the 1843 Select Committee revealed the prejudices held by the elite, but it also revealed resistance to those prejudices by assisted immigrants. The petition that prompted the Committee’s formation insisted that labourers had ‘an undoubted claim upon the Local Government for maintenance and support, in consequence of the promises that were made to induce them to come here, by agents acting under the sanction of the Government’ and even asserted that the government had a duty to provide temporary employment on public works.110 In other words, because the government sanctioned and oversaw assisted migration, it could not simply leave those who received passages to perish in their new home. In its final report, the Select Committee unequivocally 107  Benjamin Sutherland arrived in 1833 on the Ellen and appears to have paid his own passage (though records from this early period of assisted migration are sketchy). Both Henry Bremer and William Crosby were government ship immigrants; Bremer came by the James Pattison in 1840 and Crosby by the Magistrate in 1838. Bremer was from Middlesex and 41 when he arrived. Crosby was an Irish Catholic from Kerry who emigrated when he was 27. Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 108  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 17 (emphasis mine). 109  More on this theme in Chap. 7. 110  Petition reprinted in ‘The Working Classes’, Herald, 25 October 1843, 3.

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disavowed the immigrants’ claim to government employment, but it did recommend that already planned public works commence immediately and expressed some sympathy for the immigrants given the ‘unprecedented’ state of the colony.111 The sympathy, however, was not strong enough to overcome existing attitudes towards public welfare. Beyond accelerating the public works and providing additional funds for conveying immigrants into the interior (a move that served pastoralists’ interests just as much as labourers’), the Committee merely encouraged further use of the Benevolent Society and Chisholm’s services. The government might not have been willing to provide support, but some workers helped each other. In the same year as the Select Committee, the Mutual Protection Association (MPA) was formed to combine the efforts of smaller trade societies that provided both assistance in finding employment and an early form of short-term disability insurance in the event of illness or injury. MPA leaders (including its secretary Ben Sutherland) were among the group that canvassed neighbourhoods and reported back to the Select Committee. Historian Terry Irving charted the importance of the work of the MPA during the mid-1840s in redefining the relationship between the government and the poor, effectively shifting responsibility for poverty from personal failings to government action/inaction.112 This chapter, by contrast, demonstrates the pervasiveness of the very attitudes the MPA had to work to uproot. The magnitude of the distress amidst the depression of the early 1840s galvanised the poor to its own defence. Poor workers would not sit idly by, while the elite claimed poverty was caused by laziness and intemperance. The depression of the early 1840s ironically created an environment in which attitudes that blamed the poor for their own poverty could be both deployed and challenged. The status of the elite was based primarily on wealth, a wealth they saw evaporate in a short period of time. They needed a scapegoat, and for many, that scapegoat was the assisted immigrants and the ‘exorbitant’ wages they demanded. Laziness, immorality, and greed not only caused poverty for the working classes, they charged, but those personal failings also led to distress for the ‘higher’ classes. In his book examining the shift in attitudes towards poverty, historian David Roberts 111  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 2, 4. 112  Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2006), chap. 8.

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provocatively asked, ‘Did the moralists really believe that economic depressions and mass unemployment came because of … sudden increases in laziness and improvidence?’113 In New South Wales, the answer was decidedly ‘yes’. An increase in ‘laziness and improvidence’ accompanied the increase in ‘unsuitable’ immigrants, which together allegedly brought down the entire economy. The working classes, however, would not passively accept such vilification. Towards the end of his excruciating questioning before the Select Committee, Sutherland defiantly proclaimed, ‘We are not to blame for the condition we are in’.114 * * * As they positioned themselves atop the colony’s social hierarchy, the elite of New South Wales adopted and adapted English standards of paternalism, respectability, and manliness. To protect their status, they closely guarded who was accepted into the club of ‘respectability’ within their own community. As historian John Hirst put it, ‘The gentlemanly order made sense only if not all could belong’.115 They achieved this by constructing an inherently classed standard of morality—a standard that was impossible for the working classes to achieve—and then condemning the assistant immigrants for immorality. In a rare moment of brutal truth, the Monitor said the quiet part out loud: ‘“Good character” means any thing. It always means men like yourselves’.116 The conflation of wealth and moral worth revealed itself via the strong preference for unassisted immigrants. The ‘best’ immigrants were men of small capital who could pay their own way and contribute to the wealth of the colony. As for the lower classes, the elite wanted hard-working, ‘successful’ immigrants; but if such labourers had been successful at home, they would have not needed to emigrate. The colonial elite wanted a ‘respectable’ working class, but seemed to maintain that only the upper classes could be respectable. Nevertheless, immigrants were still expected to comport themselves as ‘gentlemen’ even though they were not afforded  Roberts, The Social Conscience of the Early Victorians, 464.  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 8. 115  J.  B. Hirst, The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy: New South Wales, 1848–1884 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 113. 116  ‘Assignment of Prisoners’, Monitor, 4 April 1834, 2. 113 114

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any of the respect given to those who considered themselves gentlemen. Furthermore, not only did the elite hold the assisted immigrants to a standard that they could not achieve, but the elite also held them to a standard that the elite did not actually want them to achieve. The standard deified the maintenance of a ‘household’ at the same time employers resisted hiring workers with large families. Assisted immigrants were expected to be frugal, but not to accumulate wealth. They were expected to dress neatly and cleanly, but not too fine. Ideal immigrants were too proud to accept an assisted passage (at least without paying it back), but working-class immigrants could not be so proud that they challenged the elite’s authority. That respectability and manliness were middle-class ideals mattered not; the contradictions contained within the expectations for assisted immigrants went unacknowledged. Instead, any failure to succeed in the colony was blamed on character failings of the immigrants themselves. No poverty was believed to exist in the colony, and consequently, any person in distress must have been lazy or must have held out for ‘exorbitant’ wages. This steadfast belief in self-reliance shaped attitudes towards social support structures. Since there was purportedly no poor in the colony, the colony was spared the need for a system of poor laws the likes of which had (according to colonial commentators) proven so detrimental to England. Charities like the Benevolent Society or Chisholm’s Immigrants’ Home should suffice, because able-bodied assisted immigrants should not need any help beyond finding employment. If immigrants did need aid, they must have been improperly selected and should have never been sent in the first place. The widespread distress of the economic depression in the early 1840s challenged but did not dislodge this tendency to blame the poor for their own poverty. Poverty was now widespread enough it could not be ignored, but the men in power still sought to attribute destitution to character failings and still cited high wages as the major cause of the economic distress. The working classes, however, refused to accept the premises of the condemnation they received. In a letter to the Australasian Chronicle, ‘A Working Man’ wrote: Hear that, ye labourers of New South Wales! Because you have no money you are fools; and you ought not therefore to oppose these wool-headed flockmasters, whose every thought and every measure is to keep you poor

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and enrich themselves. With these sages money is all and everything. If a man is destitute of money, he has, in their mind, no right to enjoy any privilege; if he is destitute of money, in their language he is destitute of common sense. Money and wisdom are in their vocabulary synonimous [sic] terms.117

Such defiant statements aside, the wealthy elite of New South Wales attempted—rather successfully—to impose a standard of morality on colonial society that would cleverly protect their status from challenge, an aim they replicated in the construction of gender norms, as the next chapter will show. And though migration historiography long accepted the characterisation of assisted immigrants as ‘immoral’, those negatively affected by the conflation of wealth and moral worth recognised the inconsistencies in the standard they were expected to pursue, but not quite achieve.

117  A Working Man [pseud.], ‘The Landholder Versus the Labourers’, Chronicle, 9 February 1841, 2.

CHAPTER 6

Impossible Standards: Gender Norms and the Rejection of Single Female Immigrants

At the beginning of the 1830s, New South Wales had a problem: a highly lopsided sex ratio. In 1833, men over the age of 12 outnumbered women of the same age by three-and-a-half to one.1 A problem in most contemporary colonies (due to differential migration rates) that was exacerbated by convict transportation (which saw significantly higher numbers of men than women exiled to New South Wales), the sex imbalance was widely thought to form ‘the principal barrier to the advancement of this colony in wealth, morals, and population’.2 The Colonial Office agreed, and Secretary of State Goderich seized on the opportunity afforded by the

A version of this chapter was previously published as Melanie Burkett, ‘Why Single Female Emigration to New South Wales (1832–1837) Was Doomed to Disappoint’, in Australia, Migration and Empire: Immigrants in a Globalised World, Philip Payton and Andrekos Varnava, eds (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 69–91. 1  Calculated based on data available at Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014, Australian Historical Population Statistics, ‘Table 2.2: Population, Age and Sex, NSW, 1833–1846’, data cube: Excel spreadsheet, cat. No. 3105.0.65.001, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/ [email protected]/mf/3105.0.65.001 (accessed 30 September 2016). 2  Gazette, 2 June 1832, 2.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_6

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launch of assisted emigration to address the issue.3 He initiated a scheme of chartering ships dedicated to conveying single women to New South Wales, an effort that would ultimately bring nine total ships carrying more than 1900 immigrants over the course of five years.4 Given the alliance between British government and colonial views on the sex imbalance, one might think that the colonial elite would have welcomed the Colonial Office’s efforts to send more women. However, according to colonial commentators, the women who arrived were ‘in most cases absolute curses—increasing the stream of depravity almost beyond the power of control’.5 As discussed in Chap. 2, the single female immigrant ships became a scapegoat for colonial frustrations over the new land policies, the relative paucity of male labour obtained through assisted immigration in its early days, and the lack of colonial control over the selection of migrants. This chapter, however, focuses not on that political posturing, but rather on the impact of the negative rhetoric on the construction of gender and the establishment of social hierarchy in New South Wales. Historians have examined the ways in which gender was central to the imperial project as well as the ways in which the imperial project shaped understandings of gender.6 In the settler colonies, immigrants and immigration policy played key roles in the ways evolving gender norms were exchanged.7 Even so, though the single female immigrants of the early 1830s have received much attention in Australian migration 3  Howick to Stewart, 16 July 1831, enclosure 1 to No. 7 in House of Commons, Return to an Address to His Majesty, Dated 14 September 1831; – Copies of the Royal Instructions to the Governors of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Western Australia, as to the Mode to Be Adopted in Disposing of Crown Lands; Together with Such Parts of Any Despatches Addressed to Them as Relate to the Same Subject, or to the Means by Which Emigration May Be Facilitated, 13 October 1831, in CO 384:27, PRO 4099, ML. 4  Seven other ships went to Van Diemen’s Land. Number of individuals compiled using Jim Hammerton’s appendix along with Elizabeth Rushen and Perry McIntyre’s number for the Red Rover. A. J. Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors”: Female Immigration to Australia, 1832–36’, Historical Studies 16, no. 65 (1975): 562–5; Elizabeth A. Rushen and Perry McIntyre, Fair Game: Australia’s First Immigrant Women (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2010), 42. 5  ‘American and Australian Female Emigrants’, Gazette, 3 March 1835, 2. 6  Angela Woollacott, Gender and Empire (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 7  A. James Hammerton, ‘Gender and Migration’, in Gender and Empire, Philippa Levine, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 156–80; Rita S.  Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

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historiography, the impact of the scheme on understandings of gender lacks a full analysis. Much of the research on the single female immigrants paralleled the approach of the post-1980s historiography on the assisted immigrants in general, working to rescue the women’s reputations and portray them in a more positive light.8 Such histories showed that some women disappointed, but a majority of them fulfilled their intended purpose: to work as domestic servants, get married, and help populate the continent. However, this revisionist approach still judged (albeit positively) female immigrants against a socially constructed standard—that of English middle-­class virtue—without interrogating the standard. Given the intention of the scheme to transform the morality of the colony, we must question the new paradigm sought, whom it served, and whom it harmed. We must uncover the cultural context in which accusations against the women could be made, believed, and sustained. This chapter provides the missing analysis of the ways in which single female migration shaped understandings of gender. Migration policy deliberately aimed to transmit particular gender norms, norms that were then weaponised against the immigrants to construct gender and hierarchy in the colonial context. The elite were able to condemn the morality of the single female immigrants so easily due to a combination of factors: classed and sometimes inherently contradictory ideals of femininity, a disconnect between the expectations for the women held by policymakers in Britain and those held by colonial commentators, and rhetorical tactics that linked the immigrants to convicts. These factors overlapped and created contradictions that proved impossible to resolve, leaving the women near the bottom of the social hierarchy. Once again, as in Chap. 5, morality was conflated with the English middle-class ideal, only in this case, ideal femininity. These women were derided for failing to meet this standard even though it was fundamentally at odds with their class backgrounds and the roles they were expected to fill. The single female immigrants were judged against an impossible standard and, not surprisingly, found wanting.

8  Elizabeth A. Rushen and Perry McIntyre, The Merchant’s Women (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2008); Elizabeth A. Rushen, Single and Free: Female Migration to Australia, 1833–1837 (Kew, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003); Rushen and McIntyre, Fair Game; Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors”’, 539–66.

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The Tension Between Emigration and Ideal Femininity The early nineteenth century was a time when English gender norms shifted as the bourgeoisie solidified, a time when complementary constructs for men and women evolved. Men were to occupy the competitive world of commerce, engage in politics, and support their families financially. A balance to their husbands’ highly public lives, women were to concern themselves with domesticity, maintaining a safe space to which men could retreat from the competition of the working world and the public sphere. They were to devote themselves to motherhood and the home and to support their families morally. They were not to work, but to remain dependent, passive, fragile, and pure.9 Though this ideal of ‘separate spheres’ would be nigh impossible for working-class families (and even some lower middle-class families) to attain,10 the ideal nevertheless existed, creating real constraints on the actions of both men and women.11 This differential standard for women permeated colonial migration critiques. The single female immigrants were denounced on the familiar grounds of morality and ‘usefulness’ as workers, rhetoric common in the complaints about assisted immigrants more broadly. However, when discussing male immigrants, suitability for work was the primary concern; for the women, on the other hand, questions of morality predominated.12 This difference in rhetoric aligned with the notion of separate spheres for men and women, which placed greater emphasis on the virtue of women. Moreover, while single men were highly valued as workers, single women were thoroughly condemned even as complaints about married female 9  Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2002); G. R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), chap. 7. 10  Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 1. 11  Anne Summers, Female Lives, Moral States: Women, Religion and Public Life in Britain, 1800–1930 (Newbury, UK: Threshold Press, 2000), 6–7; Rose, Limited Livelihoods, introduction. 12  Though the rhetoric occasionally called for ‘honest’ and ‘virtuous’ men, the language surrounding male immigrants was much more focused on their potential economic productivity, bolstering Alford’s argument that colonial women of all classes were judged primarily on moral criteria while men were given ‘additional praise’ should they live according societal standards for morality. Katrina Alford, Production or Reproduction? An Economic History of Women in Australia, 1788–1850 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984), 9, 47.

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assisted immigrants were notably very rare in the public sphere.13 Single women defied societal expectations because they were not (yet) married. Married women, by contrast, had assumed their proper position, according to the ideal. Contemporary models of ‘respectable’ masculinity and femininity also connected to the process of emigration in very different ways. In the complementary conceptions of gender, men were praised for independence, hard work, courage, assertiveness, and tenacity, all attributes required by the act of emigration.14 Thus, emigration was itself a masculine activity. According to the criteria for respectable femininity, women were expected to be at once the guardians of morality within the family and susceptible to corruption. The solution for this contradiction was to argue that their moral status depended on ‘separation from disorder in the public world’.15 As the separate spheres ideology became more entrenched, the physical movement of women outside the home was increasingly constrained. In public, they struggled to find ‘respectable’ accommodation and were expected to be accompanied, even when travelling within the British Isles.16 Emigration, naturally, multiplied these hurdles for women. Colonial rhetoric exploited this contradiction between the feminine ideal and the realities of emigration by arguing that the respectability of female migrants was endangered at every step in the process, danger multiplied for single women because they were not ‘protected’ by a male relative (i.e. a husband or father). According to the public sphere, these women committed their first unforgiveable mistake when they relied on a philanthropic institution before they left Britain or Ireland, a critique linked to the growing perception in both Britain and New South Wales that the able-bodied poor who sought assistance were ‘unworthy’ (see Chap. 5). The Sydney Monitor claimed, ‘Women of lewd habits and immoral bringing up … cast out of the Magdalens & Refuges for the Destitute of London and other towns, are the sort of people which

13  The one exception was the stories of the seduction of immigrant wives by convict workers discussed in Chap. 3. 14  John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family, and Empire (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005), 177. See Chap. 5 for further discussion of ‘manliness’. 15  Penny Russell, A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 60. 16  Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 404.

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England is vomiting on our ill-fated shores’.17 This complaint had some basis in fact, as many of the initial volunteers on the London Emigration Committee (which organised all but the first ship) were on the board of the Refuge for the Destitute. Despite this connection, however, just under seven per cent of the women on the first two Committee-organised ships were Refuge residents18—arguably, not a large enough proportion to count as ‘vomiting’ inappropriate women onto the colony even if we accept the assumption that such women were indeed ‘inappropriate’. Nevertheless, according to colonial commentators, a stay in such an institute equated to poor character. The second mistake—per colonial opinion—was emigrating on a ship where ‘unblushing debauchery’ occurred or was rumoured to have occurred.19 According to traditional working-class sexual mores, such amorous activity would not necessarily spell the complete destruction of a woman’s reputation.20 According to the middle-class standard by which they were judged, however, chastity was paramount. Consequently, colonial condemnation was relentless. Press coverage painted a picture of floating brothels, expressed shock over single women arriving pregnant, and offered estimates of the proportion of ‘acceptable’ women on board any given ship.21 Though such estimates affirmed that at least some of the women were ‘good’, in practice, the entire ship was condemned. ‘The names of Red Rover, Bussorah Merchant, and Layton, are in a majority of cases equivalent to those of rogue, vagabond, and worse’, declared the Sydney Gazette.22 Whether an individual woman participated in the

 Monitor, 21 September 1833, 2.  Rushen, Single and Free, 11. 19  Gazette, 30 October 1834, 2. 20  Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), chap. 4. 21  See, respectively, Amicus [pseud.], ‘Queries Addressed to a Member of the Emigration Committee in London’, The Colonist, 15 January 1835, 2; ‘Female Emigration. More Work for Mr. Marshall!’, The Colonist, 19 February 1835, 1; ‘The Female Emigrants by the “David Scott”’, Monitor, 5 November 1834, 2. The last was often given to great numerical specificity yet without detailing the criteria used to determine such claims. For example, the Monitor estimated that seven-eighths of the Red Rover women, three-quarters of the Bussorah Merchant, three-quarters of the Layton, and seven-eighths of the David Scott were ‘good’, but complained that that still left the colony with 150 women ‘of loose habits on the town’. 22  Gazette, 30 October 1834, 2. 17 18

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objectionable activities or not, the name of the ship became a derisive shorthand for the entire group.23 If an individual woman managed to make it to the colony without succumbing to the bad influence of her shipmates, she would likely be corrupted by the ‘vicious society’ into which she had arrived, one reportedly replete with crime, drunkenness, and lasciviousness.24 One example of society’s ‘viciousness’ that linked to the expectation of chastity was ‘seduction’. A man would make a promise of marriage, tarnish the woman’s ‘virtue’, and then abandon the trusting woman.25 Alternatively, the man might follow through on the promise and ‘marry’ his beau, only for it later to be discovered that he already had a wife (often back in Britain).26 In either case, the woman’s reputation was irreparably damaged.27 In one example, the seduced’s brother, Andrew Wyllie, publicly retaliated against 23  Interestingly, I found first-hand accounts written by male travellers on three of the nine ships, none of which expressed any kind of shock or concern over indecorous activity on board. Assisted immigrant and David Scott passenger Thomas Birkby mentioned that the women uttered ‘shocking … oaths and curses’ during a storm, but did not describe any other objectionable conduct. Fifteen-year-old John Dawson received an assisted passage along with his parents and seven siblings on the Canton. He mentioned that a female cabin passenger was caught alone with the steward, but said nothing about any sexual impropriety by assisted single women. Henry Wren was the third officer on the second sailing of the Duchess of Northumberland. He described emotional and belligerent behaviour, but nothing of a sexual nature. Thomas Birkby, Letter: To His Father, 1836 May 31, MS 4216, NLA; John Dawson, Journal of the Ship ‘Canton’ Passage from London to Sydney, April-September 1835, Z A456, ML, 26 August 1835; Henry Wren, Henry Wren Journal, 5 May–8 November 1836, MLMSS 763 CY 963, ML. 24  Quotation from Gazette, 3 March 1835, 2. See also ‘Emigrant Females’, Gazette, 7 May 1833, 2; ‘Emigration – and No Job’, The Colonist, 14 January 1835, 1. As discussed in Chap. 3, the elite were quick to disparage the morality of the colony’s lower orders (the convicts and emancipists), at least until the Molesworth Committee used the convict system to impugn the morality of the elite themselves. 25  Philanthropist Caroline Chisholm helped one such woman, whose would-be husband had sent her to a cottage seven miles from Sydney with a little bit of money. Chisholm reportedly contacted the seducer and threatened to publish a letter he had sent to the woman, should he ever try to contact her again. Morus [pseud.], ‘Base Attempt at Seduction’, Chronicle, 21 December 1841, 2. 26  In the case of Duchess of Northumberland immigrant Marie Kellabar, her ‘spouse’, William Kelly, was charged with perjury and bigamy. Herald, 20 November 1837, 6. 27  Chisholm helped 19-year-old Mary Thornton obtain a situation after falling victim to ‘seduction’ by the surgeon on her ship (the Agricola). He promised to marry her and lived with her in Melbourne for a short time (while introducing her as his niece) before he abandoned her. Once her employer learned of her past, however, she was dismissed from service. ‘Seduction’, Gazette, 22 January 1842, 2.

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his sister’s suitor, John Thomas Wilson (who may or may not have had a wife back in England). In response to his sister’s humiliation, Wyllie called for the end of the single female migration scheme in a letter to the Colonist that contained a touch of guilt: ‘Who will now advocate female emigration when one has fallen who had the protection of a brother willing to advise, and ready to take vengeance too’?28 Even with her brother to watch after her, Miss Wyllie had fallen victim to the debased society in which she found herself. Seemingly, no single woman was safe. Some took that logic a step further and concluded that a truly virtuous woman would never have emigrated in the first place. A virtuous woman would never consider travelling alone, she would never willingly leave her family behind, and she would never place her purity in such jeopardy. Hence, the fact that a woman came at all proved that she was unacceptable. In a public speech lauded by the press, Presbyterian minister J. D. Lang noted, ‘For although the spirit of adventure may be as strong in some females as it is in most men, we cannot suppose … that it is the most virtuous of their sex who would undertake a voyage of 16,000 miles’.29 Those who did leave must have possessed an unfeminine ‘spirit of adventure’. Once again, emigration was considered an inherently masculine activity. The incongruity between the bourgeois feminine ideal and the process of emigration was used in the colony to condemn the character of the single female migrants at every stage of the journey. If a woman had been under the care of an institution for the poor in Britain, that woman was presumed immoral. If a woman had emigrated on a ship in which some of the women were deemed ‘disreputable’, she became guilty by association. 28  A cabinet maker, Wyllie was one of Lang’s immigrants from the Stirling Castle (see Chap. 5). It is unclear which of Wyllie’s sisters who migrated with him—Elizabeth or Helen—was Wilson’s victim. Andrew Wyllie, ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 7 April 1836, 3. 29  This statement mirrored the logic described in Chap. 5 (also espoused by Lang) that said ‘industrious, virtuous’ workers would have had employment at home and not needed to emigrate. John Dunmore Lang, Emigration; Considered Chiefly in Reference to the Practicability and Expediency of Importing and of Settling Throughout the Territory of New South Wales, a Numerous, Industrious and Virtuous Agricultural Population; Being a Lecture Delivered in the Temporary Hall of the Australian College Sydney, 9th May 1833 (Sydney: E. S. Hall, 1833), 14. For further expressions of the idea that virtuous women would never emigrate, see A Subscriber [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, Gazette, 11 November 1834, 1; ‘Female Emigration’, Monitor, 28 March 1835, 2; Charles Beilby, ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 28 January 1836, 3; ‘Female Emigration’, Herald, 27 March 1837, 2.

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The single female migrants, because they had come alone and were ‘unprotected’, were considered susceptible to the temptations presented by the colony (including ‘seduction’) and, therefore, would most likely lose their virtue. If a woman was not already immoral when she left, she almost certainly soon would be. All of those points, however, were rendered moot by the claim that moral women would never have come in the first place! The way in which colonial rhetoric applied the English middle-­ class standard of femininity made it impossible for these women to be deemed acceptable.

The (Im)possibility of Redemption Not only were single female immigrants disadvantaged by gender norms, but they were also caught in the fundamental disconnect between imperial and colonial goals in this first stage of assisted migration. As we saw in Chap. 2, the Colonial Office prioritised the gender imbalance and hence sent a female-predominant population, whereas the colony increasingly sought immigrants for labour, thereby requiring a male-predominant population.30 This was but the first of several incongruities between the views of the policymakers and of the colonial elite. The two groups also disagreed on the possibility of redemption. From the colonial point of view, ‘morality’—meaning the moral standard adhered to and constructed by the elite—could not be regained once it had been lost. Women who had given into temptation during the voyage or allowed themselves to be ‘seduced’ after arrival were ‘now beyond the possibility of correction’.31 An advice pamphlet addressed to the new arrivals made this assumption explicit: ‘Remember that while you behave well, you will be able to support yourself, and if you once fall, the Government which has been so kind to you … will then cast you off as unworthy of further countenance’.32 Since the women were supposedly irredeemable, the colony was absolved of responsibility; highlighting the bad influences present during the journey allowed the colonial elite to ‘cast them off’. 30  To use the terminology of Katharine M.  Donato and Donna Gabaccia, Gender and International Migration: From the Slavery Era to the Global Age (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), 58. 31  Gazette, 1 November 1834, 2. 32  The pamphlet was published anonymously, but it was attributed to Eliza Darling, wife of the former governor Ralph Darling. Reprinted as ‘Advice to Free Females Arriving in the Colony under the Auspices of His Majesty’s Government’, Gazette, 25 August 1832, 3.

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Officials in London held a different view. The London Emigration Committee was comprised of philanthropists,33 at a time when philanthropic involvement was a key component of the English middle-class identity.34 In response to colonial complaints that not enough care had been taken in the selection of the women, the Committee defended themselves by saying, ‘They owed the utmost care and caution in sanctioning and aiding the transit of such Females only as were likely to become really useful … and they have anxiously endeavoured to guard against the admission of improper subjects’.35 These men fully trusted their own abilities to discern the ‘deserving’ from the ‘undeserving’ poor. Furthermore, the Committee disagreed that reliance on a philanthropic institution precluded women from ‘moral’ status. The mission of the Refuge for the Destitute (the charity that would later volunteer to assemble the London Emigration Committee) was to provide ‘an Asylum & to reclaim women … of whose Reformation there is a reasonable prospect’.36 The Refuge’s organisers believed that the women they served were not beyond hope of redemption. Likewise, an 1834 circular that reported the results of the first Committee-organised ship stated, ‘The Committee can truly affirm the change from [the women’s] condition in England’.37 They felt—or at the very least promoted—that emigration would offer these women a second chance. Herein lies the crux of the problem. Though perhaps naively, the London Emigration Committee saw relocation to New South Wales as an opportunity for better lives for these women, as a chance at redemption for those who had fallen on hard times. In the colony, however, those in need of redemption were not wanted. Furthermore, even if they were ‘respectable’ when they left the British Isles, the process of emigration itself provided too many chances for them to become debased. Any transgression irrevocably tarnished virtue. The rhetoric used allowed for no middle ground. A woman was moral or else she was depraved.  Rushen, Single and Free, 20.  Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, chap. 10; Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain, chap. 8. 35  London Emigration Committee annual report to the Colonial Office, Forster to Hay, 31 December 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA. See also Forster to Hay, 10 March, 1 July, and 5 December 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA. 36  Forster to Elliot, 13 February 1832, CO 384:30, PRO 4101, ML. 37  Printed circular included as an enclosure to Forster to Hay, 24 February 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA. 33 34

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Linking Immigrants to Convicts Policymakers and the colonial elite also differed on their opinions on the women’s fitness for their intended roles in the colony: production and reproduction. Recruitment circulars explicitly named these opportunities for women. For example, the 1833 ‘Notice to Young Women’ proclaimed, ‘In New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land there are very few Women compared with the whole number of People, so that it is impossible to get Women enough as Female Servants or for other Female Employments’.38 Likewise, an 1834 circular told prospective emigrants that they ‘may look forward in a Country where the disparity between the sexes is so great, to marry under circumstances of respectability and comfort far beyond what they can hope for in the crowded population of Great Britain’.39 The policymakers and, presumably, the women themselves expected the immigrants to enter into domestic service for a time before marrying and starting a family. However, public rhetoric in the colony impugned the women on both of these fronts by tactically linking the female immigrants to the much-despised convicts. Convict women were seen as the most debased group in colonial society.40 They were believed to be not only ‘nearly irreclaimable’ but also morally contagious.41 The immigrants themselves were clearly told that convict women were the ‘other’ against which they would be judged. The advice pamphlet for new arrivals warned, ‘The difference between you and them, does not so much lie in the names emigrant (that is, free) and convict, as in the difference of your conduct as compared with theirs’.42 Historian Joy Damousi argued that convict women were so despised because they were not submissive and not content to be dependent, two 38  Edward Forster, ‘Notice to Young Women Desirous of Bettering Their Condition by an Emigration to New South Wales’, 26 February 1833, SAFE/D 356/17, ML. 39  Printed circular included as an enclosure to Forster to Hay, 24 February 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA. 40  Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia, new ed. (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2016), chap. 8; Babette Smith, A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal, rev. ed. (Dural, NSW: Rosenberg, 2005). 41  Quotation from E.  S. Hall, ‘To Robert Gouger, Esq., Secretary to the National Colonization Society’, Monitor, 11 December 1830, 2. See also ‘The Latest News’, The Australian, 17 August 1832, 2. 42  Reprinted as ‘Advice to Free Females Arriving in the Colony under the Auspices of His Majesty’s Government’, Gazette, 25 August 1832, 3.

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rejections of the English feminine ideal.43 The immigrant women—who showed more than a little gumption in undertaking the voyage in the first place—inherently made the same error. The desired level of passivity would most likely be found neither in women bold enough to commit crimes nor in women bold enough to voyage to the other side of the world. Beyond presumed temperament, structural factors also impeded the immigrants’ ability to follow the pamphlet’s advice to differentiate themselves from convict women. First, convicts and free immigrants had similar backgrounds,44 most especially in terms of occupation45 and age.46 Secondly, the free immigrants were, in many respects, treated similarly to convicts during the emigration process. Charters for emigrant ships were based off the template provided by female convict ships,47 and the emigrant women’s freedom of movement on board was greatly curtailed, to what could best be termed a ‘virtual imprisonment’.48 On arrival, the prison-like atmosphere continued, as efforts were made—including the use of a watchman—to prevent women from ‘absconding’ from the

43  Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 38. 44  Oxley and Richards reached this conclusion in a data-driven analysis that compared female immigrants who arrived in 1841 to all convict women who arrived from 1826 to 1840. While a similar analysis has not yet been done on the single female immigrants of the 1830s, it stands to reason that those women—who, in contrast to the 1841 women, were selected without any colonial control and, therefore, would have been presumed by the elite to be ‘worse’—would also share similarities with the convict women. Deborah Oxley and Eric Richards, ‘Convict Women and Assisted Female Immigrants Compared: 1841—a Turning Point?’ in Visible Women: Female Immigrants in Colonial Australia, Eric Richards, ed. (Canberra: Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1995), 1–58. 45  Two-thirds of the convict women had been domestic servants before transportation, the very occupation single female immigrants were recruited to fill. Raelene Frances, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 10. 46  Both groups were overwhelmingly in the 15–30 age range—prime working and childbearing years. Single female emigrants of the 1830s were, in fact, required to be within this age range. Convict data from Oxley and Richards, ‘Convict Women and Assisted Female Immigrants Compared’, in Richards, ed., Visible Women, 45. 47  Conveying large numbers of emigrants was a new endeavour for British officials. Accordingly, they relied on tried-and-true processes. Burnett to Dawson, 28 March 1835, CO 384:39, PRO 1040, NLA. 48  Hammerton, ‘Gender and Migration’, in Levine, ed., Gender and Empire, 164. For a fuller discussion of this, see Chap. 7.

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temporary accommodation provided.49 The women were paraded off ships before large, sometimes jeering crowds50 and, as has already been described, often became indelibly associated with their ship of arrival, a practice begun with convicts of both sexes. The conflation of immigrant women and convicts was complete when the David Scott arrived. A disagreement erupted over what signal the ship should make, as no signal existed for ‘female immigrants’. The pilot sent from shore to guide the ship into the harbour instructed the captain to make the signal for ‘female convicts’. The ship’s superintendent objected that such a signal would be an insult to the free women on board. A fist fight ensued.51 All these seemingly small linkages with convicts were nevertheless significant as they revealed an underlying preconception of the women as no better than convicts. The women were told to differentiate themselves from the convicts, yet the logistical arrangements for their travel and reception did little to create any distinction. Efforts to differentiate themselves were further hampered by the fact that immigrant women’s main economic role—domestic service—had heretofore been performed primarily by convict women. A common complaint against convict domestic servants was the lack of skill they brought to the job.52 The same complaint arose about the immigrants, who reportedly possessed ‘a perfect ignorance of domestic and household work’.53 The female immigrants were also expected to be more obedient than ­convict women.54 Here, too, they failed. Dissatisfaction with the 49  The absurdity of which Rushen and McIntyre rightly pointed out. If these women were free, how could they ‘abscond’ from anywhere? Rushen and McIntyre, The Merchant’s Women, 47. 50  For descriptions of various arrivals, see ‘The Free Females by the Red Rover’, Monitor, 15 August 1832, 2; Herald, 19 December 1833, 2; Gazette, 8 November 1834, 2. 51  It is important to note that the David Scott was the fourth female immigrant ship to arrive, and still, no signal had been determined. ‘Ship “David Scott”’, Monitor, 17 January 1835, 2. 52  Deborah Oxley, ‘Female Convicts’, in Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past, Stephen Nicholas, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 85–97. 53  Gazette, 1 November 1834, 2. This doesn’t seem terribly surprising. These were young women—some as young as 15—many of whom were having trouble finding work at home (their reason for emigrating in the first place). And while they would have helped with the domestic duties in their own homes, they may not have had much experience in middle- or upper-class homes. 54  Gazette, 30 October 1834, 2; ‘Female Convict Servants’, The Colonist, 31 December 1835, 5.

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obedience of workers is a pervasive theme in the history of domestic service. The intimate nature of the relationship between the servant and the family she attended paired with the mistress’s need to assert authority over her servants created tension.55 Thus, the complaints about domestic servants—immigrant and convict—could be seen as more reflective of workplace dynamics than of any character failings of the women themselves.56 Moreover, similar to what we saw in Chap. 4, convict women were actually seen to be better than immigrant women in one way: employers held more control over convicts than they did over immigrants.57 If an employer was dissatisfied with a female convict servant, the employer could send the convict back to the Female Factory (where unassigned female convicts were housed) and receive a replacement. However, with free immigrants, this power dynamic was reversed; the servant might leave the mistress for a better position. Immigration advocate Caroline Chisholm acknowledged the difference: ‘The assignment system has a little spoilt the ladies—it will take them some time to forget they have lost a little power’.58

Single Female Immigrants as Wives Of course, one reason a woman might leave her service would be to get married, and indeed, this outcome was both intended and advertised as a real possibility. It was an outcome that would presumably benefit not only the women but also the colony; by providing marriage partners, the single female migration scheme would improve the morality of the colony. This link between marriage and morality reflected the developing English middle-­ class model of respectability. Marriage was the ‘economic and social building block for the middle class’, a key component of how the middle class conceived of themselves and of the superior morality to which they aspired.59 Through single female migration, the Colonial Office 55  A task complicated by the fact that the mistress herself was a woman and was therefore, according to gender norms, supposed to be submissive. Victoria K.  Haskins and Claire Lowrie, eds, Colonization and Domestic Service: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2014), 42. 56  As argued by Oxley and Richards, ‘Convict Women and Assisted Female Immigrants Compared’, in Richards, ed., Visible Women, 35. 57  Gazette, 30 October 1834, 2. 58  Caroline Chisholm, Female Immigration Considered in a Brief Account of the Sydney Immigrants’ Home (Sydney: James Tegg, 1842), 65. 59  Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 322.

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essentially attempted to bequeath the benefits of middle-class marriage to the lower classes in the colony. By giving a labouring man a wife (and eventually children) who would be dependent on him, ‘marriage [acted as] a restraint from evil, and an incitement to frugality and perseverance’.60 Marriage, in and of itself, would improve the habits and character of those joined in matrimony. In the colony, the inherently contradictory nature of the separate spheres ideal once again caused unresolvable conflict as the ‘susceptible to corruption’ dimension ultimately outweighed women’s ‘moralising’ function. The advice pamphlet addressed to the new arrivals stressed that, though they were expected to marry, not just any marriage would be deemed acceptable: Beware how you enter the married state … when any one proposes marriage to you, enquire if he be a sober man, and a man of good repute; and if you learn that he is given to drinking, or keeps company with men of loose and desolute [sic] habits, refuse his offer, however plausible and engaging he may be in his manners, and however many fine promises he may make to you.61

The pamphlet did not acknowledge in any way the civilising influence the policymakers in Britain expected the women to exert. Rather, it warned women to choose their husbands carefully. The women were expected to marry, but only certain men would be suitable. The women were expected to improve the morality of the colony, somehow without associating with the immoral people. The power of marriage to improve virtue seemed in doubt. Once again, the policymakers and the colonial elite held different opinions on the possibility of redemption. The types of men the immigrants were supposed to avoid—the ‘drunkards’ and ‘thieves’—were allusions to convicts and freed convicts, the very men cited as in need of both wives and moral improvement. In many cases, those were precisely the men the single female immigrants chose to marry. Of the women on the pilot ship, the Red Rover, 60 per cent of the women who married, married freed convicts.62 Such matches were vocally  Gazette, 18 August 1831, 2.  Reprinted as ‘Advice to Free Females Arriving in the Colony under the Auspices of His Majesty’s Government’, Gazette, 25 August 1832, 3. 62  Rushen and McIntyre were able to find marriage records for two-thirds of the women on the Red Rover, and of the two-thirds they confirmed, 60 per cent married freed convicts. Rushen and McIntyre, Fair Game, chap. 7. 60 61

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disdained.63 In testimony before the Legislative Council’s 1835 Committee on Immigration, wealthy landowner Robert Scott proclaimed, ‘The disproportion of the sexes exists only among the Convict class, and it would be worse than a waste of the fund to import women fit to consort with them, and propagate a race it was policy to get rid of’.64 According to this logic, providing wives for the convicts was a waste of money. Carried a step further, this method of reasoning denied that the sex imbalance was worthy of concern, for it only existed among the convicts.65 Thus, the women were deemed unsatisfactory by the colonial elite even when they fulfilled the role intended for them by policymakers in Britain. Furthermore, those perceived failures had the effect of tying them to the convict class in terms of social status. Ironically, though the colonial elite initially welcomed Britain’s intended outcome for the scheme (the improvement of colonial morality),66 it was their negative rhetoric that ensured its failure. Since the separate spheres ideology deemed women the site of morality within the family, the single female immigrants—the intended wives—bore the bulk of the responsibility for the moral improvement of the colony. The colonists were the objects in need of improvement, the women the instrument through which that would occur. When the colonial elite branded the single female immigrants as a group immoral, however, it rendered them unsuitable for the task. The colonial elite longed for the colony’s lower orders to be more ‘moral’, but in discrediting the moralising agent, they made that impossible. Colonial rhetoric had precluded the possibility of the single female immigrants’ redemption and, in so doing, confined working-class men to the same fate. Why would the elite work against their own interests in such a way? Part of the problem with the single female immigrants’ two intended roles—production and reproduction—was the paradox between the two in relation to class distinctions. Domestic servitude was for the working classes, and the ‘virtuous wife’ was a middle-class exemplar. The  For example, see Herald, 13 October 1836, 2.  Robert Scott testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Final Report of the Committee on Immigration (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1835), Q304.894041/5, ML, 55. 65  Philalethes [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Colonist’, The Colonist, 26 February 1835, 4; The Australian, 9 October 1835, 2; ‘Female Emigration’, Herald, 6 April 1837, 2. 66  At least until the women themselves arrived. ‘A Pill for Mr. Malthus’, The Australian, 24 February 1832, 2; ‘Emigration of Females’, Gazette, 1 March 1832, 2; ‘Emigration to New South Wales’, Monitor, 23 April 1832, 2. 63 64

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intractability of this difference was unrecognised by authorities in Britain. In essence, the Colonial Office attempted to ‘market a commodity that did not exist in the conceptual framework of … England—the morally virtuous working-class woman’.67 The imagined outcome of the scheme would have created a gendered society in which upper and working classes alike would reap the civilising benefits of marriage anchored by the virtue of the wife. But in the colony, permitting the working classes to access an upper-­class standard would destabilise an already shaky social hierarchy. Instead of allowing the single female immigrants to carve out their own space in that hierarchy—certainly not achieving the ‘respectability’ of the wealthier classes but also not as disreputable as the much-despised convicts—the rhetoric worked to group the women with the ‘damned whores’ side of Anne Summers’s dichotomy.68 From the colonial point of view, respectable marriages had to be reserved for unquestionably ‘respectable’ people. Class distinctions had to be maintained.

‘Damned Whores’? Single female immigrants provoked such condemnation even when they performed the roles they were expected to fill. When they were thought to be entering a more unseemly occupation, colonial ire grew proportionately. Engaging in prostitution was a complaint often levied against the single female immigrants.69 The ‘streets of Sydney’ were allegedly ‘swarming with free emigrant prostitutes!’70 It may be impossible to know exactly how many of the immigrants turned to prostitution, but the newspapers were not shy about offering estimates. According to the Monitor, onethird of the Red Rover women were ‘living in concubinage and prostitution’, and the Colonist claimed that 40 of the Canton women resided in 67  Kranidis wrote these words to describe a scheme later in the century that, interestingly, was the inverse of the single female migration scheme of the 1830s. Instead of expecting working-class women to meet the middle-class ideal, the scheme Kranidis examined brought unmarried, middle-class ‘spinsters’ to the colonies to work as domestic servants. This scheme was not any more successful in resolving the class-based contradictions inherent in the separate spheres ideology. Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration, 172. 68  Summers argued that the conception of women as ‘God’s police’ did not take hold in the colony until the 1840s. The reception of this early group of single female immigrants certainly supports that contention. Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, chap. 9. 69  Here, I’m using ‘prostitution’ in the sense of commercial sex while acknowledging that the word itself was often used to describe any kind of extramarital sex. 70  ‘Mr. Marshall’s Pamphlet’, The Colonist, 21 January 1836, 3.

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‘houses of bad fame’.71 Whether these complaints of widespread prostitution were hyperbole, accurate, or—what is most likely—somewhere in between, they were used to condemn not just the actions of individuals, but the single female migration scheme, as a whole. The complaints had the net effect of reinforcing what was and was not acceptable sexuality. Feminist historians have approached the study of prostitution in a variety of ways. One strategy is to reveal the structural forces that left women with few choices besides prostitution.72 Here again, the single female immigrants had more in common with female convicts—long denounced as irredeemable prostitutes73—than with the elite women they were expected to emulate. First, both groups had to contend with a disproportionately male population that rendered sexual services in high demand.74 Indeed, the sex imbalance was the impetus behind the entire single female migration scheme. Furthermore, women of all statuses lacked access to more ‘respectable’ forms of employment; under the gender norms of the day, there were not many jobs that were acceptable for women to do at all. Women were condemned for turning to prostitution when they were unemployed, while at the same time, gender conventions made them largely unemployable.75 Domestic servitude was the only widespread choice, and even that option sometimes left women open to sexual exploitation by their employers.76 The unique nature of domestic servitude created an additional challenge for immigrant women should they leave or lose their employment: sudden homelessness. Early on, convict women faced this same challenge, but eventually, the government built the Female Factory to house unassigned convicts.77 If an immigrant woman left her

71  ‘State of the Female Factory’, Monitor, 8 May 1833, 2; ‘Mr. Marshall’s Pamphlet’, The Colonist, 21 January 1836, 3. 72  Judith R. Walkowitz, ‘The Politics of Prostitution and Sexual Labour’, History Workshop Journal 82, no. 1 (2016): 191–2. 73  Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, chap. 8; Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly, chap. 2. 74  Frances, Selling Sex, chap. 2. 75  Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration, 6. 76  Frances described the entitlement convict masters sometimes felt towards their servants’ bodies, and Rushen and McIntyre found that some of the emigrants from the Refuge for the Destitute had entered the Refuge after succumbing to pressure to ‘oblige’ their masters. Frances, Selling Sex, chap. 6; entries for Sarah Coleman and Maria Golding in Rushen and McIntyre, The Merchant’s Women, chap. 6. 77  Frances, Selling Sex, 13.

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service placement, however, she had no place to go.78 Even if she had enough money to stay at an inn, doing so unaccompanied would be unacceptable according to the separate spheres ideal. Both convict and immigrant prostitutes were vilified without any serious consideration of the structural issues that might lead women to turn to prostitution. Instead, those failures were attributed to poor character. Even seemingly virtuous immigrants might be at risk of succumbing to the allure of prostitution. The Monitor assessed, ‘Females disposed to chastity would be less under temptation than they are at present, when they see prostitutes dressed in the best apparel, and faring sumptuously every day. To support the chastity of weak females, they must first see squalid misery and disease attendant on prostitution’.79 According to this logic, women who turned to prostitution were ‘weak’; they were unable to withstand temptation. Even an example that was more sympathetic towards the immigrants than most ultimately placed responsibility on the immigrants themselves for their ‘downfall’. The Gazette reported that two young girls from the Red Rover (the elder of whom was only 17) were brought before the court.80 They claimed to be dressmakers for ‘an old, unmarried man residing in one of the back streets of Sydney’. This man, the newspaper claimed, was known to keep a ‘notorious, though sly, disorderly house’. The magistrate, Captain Rossi, had no legal basis to detain the girls, so he discharged them, but not without first warning them to flee this ‘infamous association’.81 In its reporting on this story, the Monitor seemed to blame the girls themselves: ‘To obviate the oppression of little girls by cruel masters, is difficult; such oppression will not be borne by the courageous, but the timid cannot make their wants known’.82 Essentially, a ‘courageous’ woman would not stay in such a situation; she would save herself. A ‘timid’

78  Makeshift accommodation for the immigrants upon arrival was only available until all the women on a particular ship had obtained employment. Later, in the early 1840s, a woman could return to Chisholm’s Immigrants’ Home, but the establishment received public criticism for this practice (see Chap. 5). 79  ‘Female Immigrants’, Monitor, 15 June 1836, 2. 80  Gazette, 10 January 1833, 2. 81  Where he expected them to go instead is anyone’s guess. 82  ‘The “Red Rovers”’, Monitor, 4 May 1833, 2.

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person, on the other hand, would neither save herself nor ask for help, making it difficult for concerned colonists to intervene.83 Contrast this with slights directed at the single female immigrants’ ‘spirit of adventure’ or complaints about disobedient domestic servants. Should a woman be assertive or not? This conundrum was emblematic of the ways in which the amorphous concept of ‘respectability’ was used by the upper classes in the colony. They got to determine what was ‘respectable’ and what was ‘moral’, but they also made that standard a moving target.84 The women were expected to be obedient and meek—obedient and meek, that is, until their timidity placed them in a situation that might compromise their virtue. Then, they had only themselves to blame if they did not overcome structural impediments and brazenly extricate themselves from the situation. Beyond the structural issues that might drive women to prostitution, other feminist historians insist upon agency. They examine prostitution not necessarily as an act of pure desperation, but rather as a viable economic choice.85 Descriptions of ‘prostitutes dressed in the best apparel, and faring sumptuously every day’ suggested that it, in fact, was. Though difficult to prove, it was very likely, given the disproportion of the sexes in New South Wales, that there were at least some unapologetic prostitutes in Britain who saw the colony as a fertile market for their services and therefore chose to emigrate. After all, the sex imbalance was highlighted in advertisements directed at single women. Furthermore, the women themselves may not have felt the expected shame at their occupation given different attitudes towards sexuality among the lower classes.86 Among the ‘respectable’ classes, however, such entrepreneurship would have never been deemed acceptable. The Gazette was indignant over a supposed agreement made among several women on the second sailing of the Duchess of Northumberland to open a brothel upon arrival.87 In the middle-­class feminine ideal, respectability inextricably linked to sexual 83  Though in this case, the girls’ trouble was known and no assistance was provided beyond some unhelpful advice and some pontificating in the press. 84  As Russell has shown in her work. Russell, A Wish of Distinction, 3–5. 85  Walkowitz, ‘The Politics of Prostitution and Sexual Labour’, 188–98. 86  In Britain, it was not unknown for working-class women to turn to prostitution temporarily during economically precarious times. Frances, Selling Sex, 26–7; Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches, 50. 87  A salacious accusation that was puzzlingly not mentioned at all in third officer Henry Wren’s diary from the voyage even though he was not overly fond of the ‘haybags’ under his

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virtue. Immigrant prostitutes were neither chaste nor economically dependent on husbands—the only acceptable alternatives for ‘respectable’ women. Occasionally, though, a voice in the public sphere took a more pragmatic stance. Some—most often, the Monitor88—were willing to concede that, even if the incoming women were not ‘reputable’, they were still better than no additional women at all. This rationale was linked to the laws of supply and demand: That a good deal of dissoluteness should be the effect of the several importations of females already had, was but a natural consequence of the great sexual disparity in respect of numbers, which still distinguishes this Colony above any other—but still there was a likelihood when the supply had adjusted itself in some measure to the demand, that profligacy would have attained a sort of equilibrium.89

Such statements acknowledged that there was a market for sex. According to this logic, an influx of prostitutes—while still morally repugnant— would help equalise the market, making that line of work less lucrative and therefore less attractive.90 In essence, the colony needed some sacrificial lambs to stabilise the sex trade.91 As we saw in Chap. 4, there was a ­growing care. ‘Emigration’, Gazette, 10 November 1836, 2; ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 8 April 1837, 2; Wren, Journal. 88  C. Lushington, ‘Emigration to New South Wales’, Monitor, 8 December 1832, 2; ‘State of the Female Factory’, Monitor, 8 May 1833, 2; ‘The Female Emigrants by the “David Scott”’, Monitor, 5 November 1834, 2; ‘Female Immigrants’, Monitor, 15 June 1836, 2. 89  The Australian, 13 December 1836, 2. 90  Alford argued that the prevalence of prostitution was not linked to the sex imbalance as often assumed, but rather related more to the lack of economic opportunities for women. As evidence, she cited continued demand for prostitutes after the sex imbalance had been largely equalised. Public rhetoric at this time, however, connected prostitution and the disproportion of the sexes. Alford, Production or Reproduction?, 44. 91  There has been much ink spilled in Australian convict historiography debating whether female convicts were sent specifically to serve as sexual outlets for men. Although the transportation of convict women and the emigration of single women both stemmed from concerns over the unbalanced sex ratio, the more nefarious motivations attributed to the government do not seem to apply here. The scheme does not appear to have been a secret project to increase the number of prostitutes in the colony, especially given the emphasis on ‘moral improvement’ and on only granting passages to women of ‘good character’. Though historians are less willing to draw the same conclusion about the convict women sent in the early days of the colony, it seems clear that marriage was the long-term intention for the single female migrants, as opposed to serving merely as sexual partners (as prostitutes or otherwise). For the debate about convict women, see Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, chap. 8; Frances, Selling Sex, chap. 2.

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tendency among the elite to view immigrant labour as a commodity and to desire a surplus of labour. In this strand of discussion, a surplus was once again needed, only this time the commodity was female sexuality. Though women were condemned for selling sex, men were not likewise held to account. The sex imbalance was used as an excuse for drunkenness, visiting brothels, and ‘being intimate with neighbours’ wives’.92 The rhetoric seemed to say that such behaviour in men was to be expected given the sex imbalance; the use of prostitutes was understandable. As the Monitor rhetorically asked, Until the free and freed people of this Colony can get virtuous and industrious free wives, what would you have them to do, so long as they retain their sex? Would you convert them into pious men? … But if you cannot do this, had you not better tolerate concubinage than grosser immorality? Is not prostitution a less evil than crimes of another dye?93

Less obvious, but still hidden within this assessment and other statements in the public sphere, was the condemnation of homosexual practices via veiled references to ‘moral pestilences’ and ‘worse crimes even than rape and adultery’ that had arisen due to the disparity of the sexes.94 In the colony’s current state, even prostitution was ‘a less evil than crimes of another dye’. According to this rationale, female sexual propriety could be sacrificed for men’s. Even with these occasional admissions of the necessity of commercial sex, the fact that some of the single female immigrants turned to prostitution further linked them to the supposedly irredeemable convicts and was still used to condemn the group as a whole. The net effect of these criticisms and cautious concessions was to cement the social standard for respectable sexuality. The motivation for and marketing behind the single female migration scheme situated acceptable feminine sexuality within the

 ‘Wisdom of the “Of-No-Sect”’, Monitor, 31 October 1832, 2.  ‘Fearful Scarcity of Labour’, Monitor, 7 December 1836, 2. 94  Respectively, ibid.; C.  Lushington, ‘Emigration to New South Wales’, Monitor, 8 December 1832, 2. For more on veiled condemnations of homosexual practices, specifically as used in the anti-transportation movement of the late 1840s, see Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2008). 92 93

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institution of marriage. Even though some voices in the colony were willing to concede that prostitution was somewhat necessary, marriage was laudable and prostitution was not (though it was still better than male homosexual activity). Thus, an effective way to condemn the women— and, therefore, the scheme—was to brand the women prostitutes.

The Scheme’s End and Its Aftermath The complaints against the single female immigrants were loud, relentless, and seemingly unresolvable. The clash between the feminine ideal and the nature of emigration along with the disconnect between British and colonial expectations for the women rendered their situation hopeless. The 1835 Committee on Immigration devoted great attention to the single female migration scheme and ultimately concluded there was ‘a difficulty bordering upon impossibility of procuring the emigration of single females, combining all the requisite qualities of moral character and useful requirements’.95 Ironically, when the London Emigration Committee attempted to defend itself against the complaints, it used the same argument.96 From the London Committee’s point of view, it was nearly impossible to find suitable women, but not because they did not exist. Rather, the negative press had made acceptable candidates unwilling to go. The Committee reported, ‘The unwarranted imputations cast on them by the Colonial press, (which are copied & circulated in this hemisphere) render it impossible for the Committee to select a number of young women of unexceptionable character from any particular class’.97 One side argued that suitable women did not exist, the other that suitable women were scared off by bad press. In either case, women who did arrive were unsuitable. Both sides disparaged the women themselves. Eventually, the London Emigration Committee gave up. In July 1836, the Committee informed the Colonial Office that it would no longer send single women to New South Wales.98 The last ship, the Lady Macnaghten, set sail in November, after which the Committee officially disbanded. The practice of emigrating single women on dedicated ships was over—for now. There would be no more dedicated ships, but the sex imbalance was  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of the Committee on Immigration, 1835, 8.  Forster to Hay, 5 December 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA. 97  Forster to Hay, 1 July 1835, CO 384:38, PRO 1040, NLA. 98  Forster to Grey, 22 July 1836, CO384:41, PRO 1041, NLA. 95 96

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still a concern, and single women remained a priority. Under the new concurrent systems of government and bounty ships, single women continued to migrate. Under the bounty system, single men (the class of immigrant colonial employers so desperately wanted) only qualified for the bounty if an equal number of single women were brought on the same ship.99 To address the morality concerns so prevalent during the dedicated ship era, the new regulations for an assisted passage mandated that ‘single Women, not with their Parents, can only be taken if they are Relatives or Friends of some of the Married People on board’.100 In other words, they had to be ‘protected’. It seems unlikely that either the ‘quality’ of the single women selected changed significantly in this second phase of assisted migration or that the protection afforded them was actually effective. On the latter, Lieutenant James Lean, the emigration agent stationed in London, had his doubts. He expressed concern at a practice engaged in by bounty agents of putting single women under the protection of emigrating married couples the single women did not know, calling it a ‘farce’ to put them under the protection of ‘perfect strangers’.101 Even so, the new arrangements seemed to placate the most vocal colonial opponents, as overwrought rhetoric about the morality of single female immigrants vanished from the public sphere. The likely explanation for the lessening complaints resided in the change in migrant stream composition. The negative rhetoric about the early single female immigrants had been made possible by their preponderance in the first phase of assisted migration (as well as by the paradoxical gender norms in operation). Once the colonial elite received what it wanted— enlarged immigration of labourers—it no longer needed to condemn the single women so thoroughly. Nevertheless, those condemnations had a lasting effect: the construction of an ideal femininity. It was an ideal working-class immigrants could not achieve but also could not escape. Even sympathetic efforts to improve conditions for the immigrants reinforced the standard. Arriving in New South Wales in 1838 (after the scheme had ended), philanthropist Caroline Chisholm was struck by the lack of ‘propriety’ with which single female 99  Alexander McLeay, ‘Immigration’, 28 October 1835, in SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS 906, Special Bundles 1826+ [4-2324, 36-8461], Miscellaneous Bundle, 1836. 100  T. Frederick Elliot, ‘Nature and Conditions of Assistance by Government to Emigrants to New South Wales’, 27 July 1838, CO 384:47, PRO 1051, NLA. 101  Lean to Walcott, 8 June 1841, enclosure to Elliot and Villiers to Stephen, 21 June 1841, CO 384:64, PRO 855, NLA.

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immigrants conducted themselves. She soon turned her attention to advocating for the government to provide greater protection to newly arrived women for, as she argued, ‘the expense attending ten bad women (who every year get worse) would more than pay for the protection of four hundred’.102 While her advocacy intended to—and did103—help immigrant women, Chisholm still adhered to the paradigm of respectable femininity.104 She implied that the earlier immigrants were ‘bad’, potentially expensive women. She believed the complaints about the single female immigrants; she was merely more forgiving about the circumstances. She believed that ‘good’ women had the power to civilise society, yet they themselves needed protection. If the immigrants of the 1830s were the ‘damned whores’, Chisholm worked to create the social space for well-­ protected, well-behaved immigrant women to become ‘God’s police’.105 Both the critical attention of the public sphere and the supportive attention of Chisholm created definite criteria for respectable femininity. For their part, the single female immigrants did not always aspire to the standard set for them. Immigrants subverted the norms in a variety of ways. The very act of emigration defied notions of acceptable femininity, as did engaging in prostitution. Sometimes, women quietly followed their own, nonconforming paths. An immigrant via the Layton, Isabella Gibson eschewed the tendency of some of her shipmates to marry quickly, choosing instead to focus on her trade (needlework) and entertaining the goal of becoming an independent businesswoman.106 At other times, women  Chisholm, Female Immigration Considered, vi.  Her Immigrants’ Home provided assistance in finding employment as well as accommodation until women had obtained a situation. 104  Though she walked a very fine line. In undertaking such public work, she herself was in danger of violating the separate spheres principle. 105  For more on Chisholm’s part in constructing a gendered role for female immigrants, see Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, chap. 9; Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath, and Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation (Ringwood, VIC: McPhee Gribble, 1994), chap. 4. 106  In a letter, Gibson told her sister, Helen, that her friend, Miss Veich, was marrying a farmer who lived 150 miles from Sydney even though Veich had never met him and had merely exchanged two letters with him. Gibson said she herself would never consent to such an arrangement. Other women from her ship had married convicts, and though she had had an offer from a soldier, she was considering renting a room and working for herself instead of marriage. Isabella Gibson, Letter: Sydney, to Helen Gibson, London 1834 June 19, MS 2654, NLA. For examples of colonial women who did go into business for themselves, see Catherine Bishop, Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015). 102 103

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vocally defended themselves. A woman from the Red Rover wrote to the Gazette in response to a report that employers no longer wanted to hire women from that ship on account of their ‘general dissoluteness’.107 She reversed the blame, claiming several Red Rover women had left their positions because the employers themselves were ‘of the most abandoned and basest character’ and lamented that ‘a more libelled set of strangers never landed on the shores of Australia than the females who arrived here by the “Red Rover”’. This woman did not stoically endure an insult; she did not epitomise the fragile, passive gender norms. Assisted migration largely ceased for most of the 1840s and, accordingly, so did the vexing problem of protecting single women. The gold rushes of the 1850s, however, once again worsened the sex ratio, and throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, various schemes to bring large numbers of single women materialised.108 Such schemes were made possible by slowly changing attitudes in Britain towards women and emigration, altered attitudes that made the emigration of middle-class women more socially acceptable and even, by the end of the century, held ‘respectable’ women to have an important role to play in the peopling of the Empire.109 Nevertheless, in Australia, the familiar complaints resurfaced: it was nearly impossible to provide female migrants adequate protection; selection by British agents could not be trusted; women who came were either bad, undependable workers, or else they were prostitutes.110 Colonial criticisms of the first scheme were not forgotten and, in fact, created a confirmation bias against future schemes. The colonial standard for respectable femininity constructed in the midst of the 1830s single female migration scheme persisted. * * * 107  A Red Rover [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, Gazette, 20 November 1834, 2. For the accusation she was arguing against, see ‘Public Meeting’, Gazette, 30 August 1834, 2. 108  Including schemes to bring Irish orphan girls (see Harling), distressed needlewomen (see Hammerton), and middle-class spinsters (see Hammerton and Kranidis). Philip Harling, ‘Assisted Emigration and the Moral Dilemmas of the Mid-Victorian Imperial State’, The Historical Journal 59, no. 4 (2016): 1027–49; A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration, 1830–1914 (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration. Jan Gothard provided a thorough examination of the schemes after 1860. Janice Gothard, Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 109  Lisa Chilton, Agents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860s–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), chap. 1; Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration, chap. 1; Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen, chap. 4. 110  Gothard, Blue China, especially chaps. 2 and 7.

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As Chap. 2 argued, the vehemence with which the single female immigrants were attacked was politically motivated. The colonial elite were unhappy with the loss of land grants and wanted the colony—not Britain— to control migration. At the same time, the rhetoric used was not invented solely for political purposes; it reflected and heightened cultural assumptions about class and, especially, gender. Assisted immigrants were criticised regardless of sex, but disparate conceptions of acceptable roles and behaviour for men and women enabled colonial commentators to demonise the single female immigrants. Male immigrants were also criticised for their utility as workers (or lack thereof), but no one questioned the propriety of men making the journey alone. Licentiousness on single female immigrant ships was blamed on the superintendent’s failure to control the women,111 yet no one criticised the captain for failing to control the crew. Prostitutes were condemned, but not the men who patronised them. As they protested the Ripon Regulations, the colonial elite could easily use these perilous gender norms to discredit the immigrants. This was possible because the separate spheres ideology was self-­ contradictory. Those contradictions, in turn, helped explain the disconnect between the expectations held by British officials and by the colonial elite. Women were thought to be both the moral centre of the family and susceptible to corruption. Relying on the first part of the ideal, policymakers in Britain intended the women to redeem the colony morally. However, the second part of the ideal clashed with the nature of emigration itself. From the colonial perspective, the women’s own virtue was under threat at every stage in the emigration process. Paradoxically, the women were simultaneously expected (by the policymakers) to raise the morality of the colony and expected (by the colonial elite) to be unable to withstand temptation. The policymakers and the colonial elite actually deployed the same standard of middle-class femininity, but to opposite effect. There was virtually no way for these women to win. The classed nature of the separate spheres ideal provided another opportunity for the colonial elite to condemn the immigrant women, this time by linking them to the existing working-class group in the colony: the convicts. In order to be judged ‘reputable’ in the eyes of the elite, the single female immigrants had to be the opposite of convict women.  Forster to Hay, 25 July 1834, CO 384:35, PRO 1039, NLA.

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However, the free immigrants often came from similar backgrounds to convicts, and the procedures used to convey the women to the colony mirrored those used on convict ships. Once again, British intentions and colonial expectations clashed. The policymakers intended the immigrant women to work in the same jobs as convict women and become wives to convict and freed men. In those roles, according to British logic, the women might provide models of virtue for the colony’s debased population. According to colonial logic, however, association with convicts irredeemably corrupted. This association with convicts was only strengthened by the presence of some immigrant women in the sex trade. To the colonial elite, this proved the immigrant women were no better than convicts and was used to condemn the group of single female immigrants, as a whole. All of these factors grouped the assisted immigrants with the convicts according to social class and prevented them from achieving the middle-­class ideal. The qualities these women were expected to possess—and were derided for not having—constituted an impossible standard. Impossible, because the standard was not only class-based but also deployed in order to maintain class distinctions. The middle-class separate spheres ideal equated femininity with morality. As working-class women who chose to emigrate, single female immigrants failed to meet both the class component of the ideal and the moral standard of the woman whose virtue was constantly protected and never questioned. Simultaneously, the structure and intended outcomes of the policy linked the immigrants to the unquestionably depraved (at least in the colonial elite’s estimation), lower-class female convicts. Not surprisingly, the colonial elite judged the immigrants to be immoral. The connection between class and morality (or, in this case, immorality) strengthened. As it mobilised large numbers of ‘unprotected’ women, the single female migration scheme provided the social moment for this reinforcement of the link between class and gender/morality. In that moment, gender norms worked in concert with the twin motivations to maintain class distinctions and to resist the new policies. As a result, the single female immigrants found themselves the unlucky subjects of the ensuing flurry of condemnation and mudslinging. Caught in the middle of the paradoxical gender norms of the day and disagreements between Britain and New South Wales, these women were doomed to disappoint.

CHAPTER 7

Adversity Absent Compassion: The Migrant Experience

William Jones, his wife, and six children arrived in New South Wales in October 1834, 1 of 16 families on the single female ship, the David Scott. His eldest son—also named William, aged 14—received an offer of apprenticeship to Timothy Nowlan of the Hunter River region (over 150 kilometres from Sydney). Jones was hesitant to allow his son to go so far away, but consented to a months’ trial. At the end of that month, he wrote to inquire about his son and received no response. Repeated letters went unanswered. He was not to see or hear from his son for more than two years, reunited only when Nowlan assigned young William to accompany a load of wool on a steamer to Sydney. Jones then learned that during the elapsed time, Nowlan had made William sign an apprenticeship agreement, telling William that his father had approved it. During the apprenticeship, William claimed he was treated worse than the other workers. He was only given clothing after the assigned convicts and often went barefoot as he travelled long distances to deliver rations to shepherds. When William reappeared in Sydney, his father ordered him not to return.1 The family’s problems did not end at reunification. William was arrested as a runaway apprentice and held in gaol for ten days as he awaited trial. At his hearing, the Attorney General decided the apprenticeship 1

 William Jones, ‘Warning to Scotch Emigrants’, Monitor, 23 June 1837, 3.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_7

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agreement was valid, even though his father had not signed. William, now 17 years old, was sentenced to 21 days hard labour on the treadmill, essentially a giant hamster wheel for humans used for no other purpose than to inflict punishment. William was made to climb the treadmill for 12 hours per day, an experience that left him almost a cripple; ‘he could not walk upright, was reduced to skin and bone, and his face wore the same cadaverous appearance, as if he had recovered from a raging fever’. Jones described all of this in a letter to the Sydney Monitor, concluding: Mr. Editor, I write this narrative to warn my countrymen in Scotland how they emigrate to a country where their children can first be kidnapped from them, and kept in convict slavery during two years and four months, and then run the risk of impotency or death being inflicted on them by the degrading and severe labour of the Treadmill, for attempting to escape from such slavery, even though it be at the command of their parents. I am a poor Scotch emigrant, without friends, except such as I, by my conduct, and the good conduct of my daughters, all in respectable service, may have made since I have been in this colony. Mr. Nowlan is a rich landed Proprietor, surrounded with friends of twenty years standing. Yet I challenge him, thus openly, to deny the truth of any one of the statements mentioned.2

The story of the Jones family illustrates the type of challenges immigrants faced. Expecting better lives, immigrants might find themselves instead separated from their children and powerless against a new legal system and social hierarchies. The story of the Jones family also illustrates the disposition of the elite towards assisted immigrants. Nowlan defended himself in a letter to the Monitor by asserting that the apprenticeship agreement was valid because it had magistrate approval and by reminding readers of ‘the impunity with which Emigrants are in the habit of breaking through their contracts’.3 Furthermore, he dismissed Jones’s claims as ‘falsehoods’ and Jones’s letter as ‘calculated … to do infinite mischief to the cause of emigration’. Whether the agreement was legal and whether Jones’s account of William’s ill-treatment was accurate are both immaterial for our purposes. Instead, the significance of this anecdote lies in the difference it reveals in these men’s mentalities. Jones sought 2  Ibid. See also his follow-up letter: William Jones, ‘Warning to Scotch Emigrants’, Monitor, 2 August 1837, 2. 3  Timothy Nowlan, ‘Original Correspondence’, Monitor, 7 July 1837, 3.

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acknowledgment of his son’s ordeal and asserted his right to be treated with dignity, a right earned ‘by [his] conduct, and the good conduct of [his] daughters’. Nowlan, by contrast, wanted a disciplined workforce and a continuing flow of immigration that would serve to augment that workforce.4 His ability to see immigrants as faceless labour inputs for his pastoral enterprise allowed him to dismiss complaints of maltreatment. Such attitudes were merely among the last in a long line of hurdles migrants had to overcome during the exchange of life in the British Isles for life in New South Wales. Thus far, we have focused on the point of view of the social elite. It is, after all, their negative opinion of the assisted immigrants that this book interrogates. But to ignore the trials experienced by immigrants is to commit the same mistake made both by those who condemned them and by the long tradition of historiography that uncritically accepted those condemnations. The immigrant-centred research that flourished from the 1990s did much to reveal immigrant experience as well as immigrant agency (see Chap. 1). However, this research failed to explain the persistence of the negative impressions of the immigrants. How, in light of the adversity experienced by immigrants, were the social elite able to so thoroughly denounce them? It was not that the elite did not know of the travails faced by immigrants; William Jones made sure they knew his son’s tale of woe. And yet, the elite were able to ignore these challenges and persist in their negative characterisations of the immigrants. This chapter reads immigrants’ accounts of their experiences—as found in immigrant journals and letters (both letters home and letters to local newspapers, such as Jones’s letters)—against the complaints made about them in the public sphere to explain how the elite were able to overlook, dismiss, and discredit the hardships experienced by assisted immigrants. The history of emotions provides a useful framework for this examination.5 Within this emerging field, two approaches are most commonly applied: exploring what people felt and interrogating what certain cultures allowed people to feel.6 While emotions undoubtedly played a key role in the experience of migration—a time of great upheaval—direct evidence of  As discussed in Chap. 4.  For overviews of the field, see Jan Plamper, History of Emotions: An Introduction, Keith Tribe, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Barbara Rosenwein, ‘Worrying About Emotions in History’, American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (June 2002): 821–45. 6  For examples of the latter, see Jane Lydon, Imperial Emotions: The Politics of Empathy across the British Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Susan 4 5

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emotional states is scarce in working-class sources, sources that are themselves rare.7 However, the latter approach is useful here as public assessments of assisted immigrants—especially responses to immigrant struggles—shaped the ‘emotional community’ of the colony (to use Barbara Rosenwein’s concept).8 This rhetoric invalidated the immigrants’ experiences at the same time it regulated the social elite by disallowing compassion for the working classes. In this way, emotional norms were a tool to solidify the social hierarchy. Recent work in cultural studies has critiqued the uncomplicated benevolence of three related emotions that build off each other and are relevant here: sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Whereas sympathy involves feeling pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune, empathy moves beyond an emotion elicited by someone else’s experience to the ‘affective act of seeing from another’s perspective and imaginatively experiencing her or his thoughts, emotions and predicaments’, as Carolyn Pedwell defined it.9 According to Pedwell’s definition, empathy would seem to be a prerequisite for Lauren Berlant’s conception of compassion: ‘individual and collective obligation to read a sense of distress not as a judgment against the distress but as a claim on the spectator to become an ameliorative actor’.10 In short, one needs to be able to ‘imaginatively experience’ another’s ‘predicament’ or ‘misfortune’ in order to feel an obligation to become ‘an ameliorative actor’. The three terms all involve concern for another, but they build from a mere feeling to an intellectual process to a behavioural act. All three were largely absent among the colonial elite, at least in the ways they expressed their views of the assisted immigrants in the public sphere, as this chapter will show.11

Broomhall, ed., Spaces for Feeling: Emotions and Sociabilities in Britain, 1650–1850 (London: Routledge, 2015). 7  Notwithstanding a few examples like Fitzpatrick’s exploration of the ‘consolatory function’ of immigrant letters. David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1995). 8  Rosenwein, ‘Worrying About Emotions in History’. 9  Carolyn Pedwell, Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6. 10  Lauren Berlant, Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1. 11  In this chapter, elite views expressed in the public sphere are supplemented by letters and diaries of 20 unassisted migrants and crew members who arrived in this time period via assisted emigrant ships.

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Though sympathy, empathy, and compassion would seem to be ‘positive’ emotions, Pedwell argued that empathy, specifically (though the critique would appear to apply to sympathy and compassion, as well), has long been used to construct racialised and gendered social differences as it creates a division between who is experiencing distress and who is in a position of power to alleviate that distress.12 A provocative point, to be sure. However, in New South Wales, it was the lack of sympathy, empathy, and compassion that facilitated the construction of social difference. To return to Berlant’s definition of compassion, the social elite did not ‘read’ the distress of the immigrants without ‘judgment against the distress’. Instead, the elite used the distress of the immigrants to condemn them further. The condemnation and lack of action were expressions of the elite’s social power. In sum, this chapter serves as a counterpoint to the rest of the book as it focuses on immigrants’ experiences. It does so not to repeat the revelatory work of the post-1980s migration historians who painted so vivid a picture of the challenges inherent in migration. Rather, it does so because the elite themselves failed to consider seriously the hurdles immigrants faced. Many of the immigrant behaviours so thoroughly disliked by the elite become intelligible if an effort is made to empathise with the difficulties experienced. The elite did not do this, and that omission was critical to the elite’s project of discrediting the immigrants, a project that was itself crucial to maintaining the social supremacy of the elite. Moreover, the elite’s negative assessments of the assisted immigrants persisted despite the immigrants’ vocal communication of the challenges they faced. This constancy in the face of an alternate reality demonstrated the elite’s belief in their own superiority as well as the strength of the negative rhetoric, rhetoric the previous five chapters have sought to discredit. The net effect of the rhetoric was to create an ‘emotional community’ in which sympathy, empathy, and compassion were reserved for the wealthier classes, whereas the working classes were blamed for their own misfortunes.

A ‘Spirit of Insubordination’ En Route Negative impressions of the migrants formed before they even arrived in New South Wales. Most cabin passengers’ diaries dripped with condescension for the steerage passengers who, according to the cabin passengers,  Pedwell, Affective Relations, 12.

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were characterised by ‘blasphemy, thieving & all uncleanliness’.13 This disposition was often shared by the crew. After the bounty ship, the Argyle, experienced some bad weather, Captain Gatenby reportedly said, ‘If ever we are compelled to take to the boats, only cuddy [cabin]-passengers will be allowed to embark. The emigrants must stay behind’.14 At times, the disdain for emigrants was expressed via deeds, not words. Cabin passenger Eliza Darvall described the ‘crossing the line’ festivities aboard the bounty ship, the Alfred, a common nautical rite of passage for those who had never before crossed the equator. Darvall reported that the ritual shaving and dunking in water was all fun for the cabin and intermediate passengers, but ‘when they came to the emigrants, they treated some of them very badly, beating those who came unwillingly, covering their faces and hands with tar and pouring large quantities of salt water down their throats, in short it became a scene of great brutality’.15 What were the specific emigrant behaviours that led to such scorn and even ‘brutality’? One was ‘insolence’ or creating a ‘spirit of insubordination’ on board,16 which might materialise as full-blown arguments or merely complaining about conditions. When Robert Benn bounty immigrant Robert Barr protested the manner in which his three-year-old son had been buried at sea, he was consequently punished by having the meat withheld from his rations for three weeks.17 Donald McKinnon described several arguments between passengers (himself included) and the crew. In one instance, McKinnon argued with the first mate over where McKinnon was supposed to wash his clothes. ‘He told me he was in the habit of being 13  W. B. Clarke, A Diary of Occurrences, Facts and Thoughts from Jan 1 to June 1 1839 Written on My Voyage to Sydney in the Barque Roxburgh Castle, MLMSS 139/7 CY 3383, ML, 26 February 1839. 14  As reported in cabin passenger Georgiana McCrae’s journal. Hugh McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal: Melbourne a Hundred Years Ago (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Limited, 1934), 17 November 1840 (emphasis in the original). 15  Eliza Charlotte Darvall, Eliza Charlotte Darvall Diary, 8 September–29 December 1839, with Biographical Note, 1968, MLMSS 1547 CY 2978, ML, 29 October 1839. 16  Gipps to Glenelg, 15 January 1839, Governor’s Despatches, A1220 CY 646, ML. 17  Robert and his wife, Martha, were both 39 and from Renfrewshire, Scotland. He was a labourer, she a housekeeper. Their 12-year-old daughter, Martha, survived the trip. James McAlister, ‘Inquiry into Complaint Against Surgeon of the Robert Benn’, in Papers Collected by Sir William Dixson Relating to the Administration, Treatment and Behaviour of Emigrants on Board Emigrant Ships, 1840–1845, DLADD 125, ML. Biographical data from Ancestry. com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’, https://search. ancestrylibrary.com.au/search/db.aspx?dbid=1204.

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obeyed without being spoken back to’, McKinnon wrote, ‘to which I answered that I was not in the habit of suffering unreasonable talk when I was not deserving of it … tyrants always wishes [sic] to have all their own way whether right or wrong’.18 Neither complaining about conditions nor defending oneself from perceived slights demonstrated the expected level of deference. A palpable mutual antagonism existed between steerage and crew. A big point of contention was time spent on deck. Surgeons complained when emigrants both refused to go on deck and resisted going back below. John Mehan’s wife was ill during the voyage and refused to leave her bunk, so she had her rations stopped for nine days.19 On this issue, Arthur Manning, a cabin passenger on the bounty ship, the Earl Grey, was decidedly unsympathetic to ‘the sad lazy set we have. They lie in bed all day, and make each other ill … [instead of] get[ting] up and breath[ing] a little of God’s air’.20 Once emigrants were brought on deck, it was often difficult to get them to go back below due to a lack of ventilation and cramped conditions.21 Henry Wren, third officer on the single female ship, the Duchess of Northumberland, hated his duty to shepherd the emigrants off the deck at night, but he was at least able to feel some empathy for the women he otherwise scornfully called ‘haybags’. It was ‘like an oven between decks’, he wrote, ‘Would not sleep there for a trifle. They [the emigrants] are always glad to come on deck in the morning to get a little fresh air’.22 Wren was unusual, however; most often, the

18  A blacksmith by trade, McKinnon and his wife, Janet, came from the Isle of Skye in Scotland on the government ship, the Duncan. They brought their three sons with them. Donald McKinnon, Journal of a Voyage from Greenock to Sydney in the ‘Duncan’ 11 January 1838–30 June 1838, transcribed by C. H. McNeil and F. L. McKenzie-Edmonds, Q910.45/72, ML, 16 March 1838. See also entries for 19 March and 25 April. 19  It’s hard to see how not eating would improve her health. McAlister, ‘Inquiry into Complaint’ in Sir William Dixson Papers. 20  Today, we might interpret ‘lying in bed all day’ as a sign of depression. Arthur Wilcox Manning, Journal of a Voyage from Plymouth to Sydney on the Earl Grey, 1839–1840, MLMSS 7390, ML, 22 January 1840. 21  Diary of an Unidentified Male Passenger on a Voyage on the Ship ‘China’, 1839–1840, A 310 CY 740, ML, 9 January 1840; John Mackenzie, Journal of a Voyage to Port Phillip 1841 Sept.–Nov., MS 685, NLA, 27 September 1841; George Wise, Journal of George F. Wise, 1838–1839, MS 6300, NLA, 8 October 1838. 22  Henry Wren, Henry Wren Journal, 5 May–8 November 1836, MLMSS 763 CY 963, ML, 18 June 1836.

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unwillingness of emigrants to go below deck was seen not as an understandable response to conditions, but as another example of their insolence. Deck time was so important because fresh air was thought to be a critical component of maintaining health. When a ship had to be quarantined upon arrival, surgeons claimed they were not to blame. They had been able neither to compel emigrants to go on deck nor to enforce standards of cleanliness, because they lacked sufficient authority.23 The press was quick to repeat such claims; the Sydney Gazette blamed illness on the government ship, the William Roger, on ‘a stubborn obstinacy, miscalled independence, inducing passengers to resist being treated as convicts, or, in other words, being required to keep themselves clean’.24 Immigrants might try to defend themselves publicly; the passengers of the John Barry wrote to the Monitor to explain that cramped conditions on board had made it virtually impossible to maintain cleanliness.25 Nonetheless, migrants were still blamed for their own disease.26 Beneath the surface, this condemnation was less about disease than about control. As J. Sullivan, surgeon on two single female ships, testified before the 1838 Committee on Immigration, ‘There is much more difficulty in managing Emigrants than Convicts, the former are less under control … I think it would be advisable to have some legal power to control them’.27 As we saw in Chap. 5, ‘respectable’ people were expected to maintain ‘self-control’, and the working classes were expected to be 23  D.  Thomson, ‘To the Editor of the Sydney Gazette’, Gazette, 5 September 1837, 3; Alick Osborne, Journal of Occurrences Connected with Emigration, 8 July 1836–17 July 1837, DLMS 248, ML, 4 April 1837; testimonies of justice of the peace John Coghill and surgeon Arthur Savage in New South Wales Legislative Council, Emigration: Appendix to Reports and Correspondence Respecting Emigration: Appendix to the Report of a Committee of Council on New South Wales, 1839), Q325.1901/4, ML, 22, 53–4. 24  ‘The Quarantine Station’, Gazette, 30 October 1838, 2. See also ‘Typhus Fever’, The Colonist, 2 March 1837, 4; Herald, 2 January 1839, 2. 25  The John Barry was the ship on which the emigrants drafted their own code of conduct (see Chap. 5). ‘Immigration’, Monitor, 28 August 1837, 2. For more comments on the crowded conditions, see Diary of China Passenger, 26 November 1839; Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 3 November 1839; McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 30 October 1840. 26  Foxhall also argued this point and gave further detail on the 15 ships that were quarantined upon arrival. Katherine Foxhall, ‘Fever, Immigration and Quarantine in New South Wales, 1837–1840’, Social History of Medicine 24, no. 3 (2011): 624–42. 27  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Minutes of Evidence and Replies to the Circular Letter (Sydney: E. H. Statham, 1838), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 81.

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deferential to their ‘betters’. Yet, emigrants violated both of those precepts when they defended themselves or refused to be ‘treated as convicts’. Many of the emigrants’ most egregious offences—resisting perceived disrespect, refusing to go below deck, and not maintaining an adequate state of cleanliness—were attributable to attitudes and conditions on board. Nevertheless, sympathy and empathy were rare. The emigrants themselves were blamed, and their ‘insubordinate’ behaviour was taken as proof of their ‘low’ character.

A Behavioural Double Standard Many of the behaviours for which assisted emigrants were negatively judged were hypocritically engaged in by the cabin passengers, as well. However, in that context, those behaviours were much more easily overlooked. For example, assisted emigrants were denounced for insubordination and expected to be obedient to the surgeon, but cabin passengers considered themselves above supervision. Manning was quite annoyed that Dr Lunn ‘fancies he has the governance of the Cabin passengers as well as of the Emigrants’ and pointedly told Lunn he should only concern himself with the cabin passengers if any of them became ill.28 Similarly, cabin passengers asserted their superiority via territorial battles on deck, jealously guarding the poop deck (the highest deck of the ship) as their space.29 Steerage passengers were not allowed, even if the main deck was swarming with emigrants ‘thick as bees’.30 No connections were made between this strict segregation and the occasional reluctance of steerage passengers to come on deck. An emigrant ship was a classed space whose social divisions were actively policed by cabin passengers. In addition to space, provisions signalled difference between the classes. Though they complained about the provisions,31 cabin passengers appeared to eat quite well. In a letter home, Thomas Tourle wrote, ‘You will think we do nothing but eat and drink’, and Darvall was concerned  Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 20 January 1840.  The poop deck was actually atop the roof of the cabins, positioning the cabin passengers literally above the assisted emigrants. Ibid., 18 November 1839; Mackenzie, Journal of a Voyage to Port Phillip, 20 October 1841. 30  Wren, Journal, 22 June 1836. 31  John Henderson, John Henderson Log Book of a Voyage Towards New Holland in the Florentia March–August 1838, B740 CY 3089, ML, 15 July 1838; Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 20 November 1839, 7 January 1840. 28 29

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she would become ‘quite fat’ if she stayed on board any longer.32 Assisted emigrants, however, often had to deal with subpar and insufficient provisions. A letter to the Australasian Chronicle complained that provisions on the bounty ship, the Clyde, were full of sand and maggots.33 McKinnon wrote that the water was so bad, they had to mix it with vinegar.34 Stealing food was a common offence punished on board, a testament to the inadequate amount provided.35 In extreme cases, there were complaints of starvation. The Chronicle reported that 16 children on the Clyde ‘literally starved to death’.36 Bounty migrant George Kershaw recorded his daughter’s death thusly: ‘Emma Kershaw Daughter of George and Selina Kershaw Died Dec 26 1841 at Sydney New South Wales (after a lingering illness broughten [sic] by hunger and starvation on bord [sic] the ship Columbine on her Passage out from England) aged 1  Year 3  Weeks & 3  Days’.37 Neither the cabin passengers nor the colonial public sphere expressed much sympathy for the hungry emigrants. After the Earl Grey stopped in Cape Town and the steerage passengers were able to obtain fresh produce, Manning sneered, ‘Several of our greedy emigrants are very ill; from eating too largely and of unripe fruit’.38 One reader of the Australian dismissed assisted emigrants as freeloaders who ‘have done nothing to pay for the foreign provisions and luxuries they have so unreasonably required and consumed [during the voyage]’.39 Starvation levels of food infested with maggots were seen by some as ‘luxury’. Meanwhile, Reverend W. B. Clarke, cabin passenger on the bounty ship, the Roxburgh Castle, was incensed when his ship ran out of champagne.40 32  After arrival, Tourle became a squatter. Tourle to ‘my dear girls’, 27 May 1839, Thomas Tourle, Letter Books, 1839–1845, MS 18, NLA; Darvall, Diary, 14 December 1839. 33  An Emigrant [pseud.], ‘Emigration’, Chronicle, 1 May 1840, 2. 34  McKinnon, Journal on the Duncan, 8 May 1838. 35  Darvall, Diary, 9 October 1839; Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 20 December 1839; Scrapbook Containing Diary on Board Royal Consort from Plymouth to Sydney 30 June–9 November 1840, with Miscellaneous Papers, 1866, MLMSS 983 CY 2220, ML, 1 August 1840. 36  ‘Bounty Emigration’, Chronicle, 28 April 1840, 2. 37  George Kershaw, Notebook, 1840–1855, M 435, NLA. The Columbine was a bounty ship. George was a plasterer and bricklayer. He and wife, Selina, were both 30 years old and brought four children with them. Emma was the youngest. Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 38  Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 15 January 1840. 39  G [pseud.], ‘Immigration’, The Australian, 18 June 1842, 2. 40  Clarke, Diary on the Roxburgh Castle, 1 February 1839.

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Provisions were not the only matter for which a double standard was set. In regard to gender norms, male crew members and female cabin passengers both escaped the castigation heaped upon steerage women even when engaging in related behaviours. Indeed, officers and crew members were the most likely partners in alleged amorous activities, widely decried in the colonial press. Cases of ‘seduction’ (see Chap. 6) sometimes began en route and involved the ship’s crew.41 Even women who travelled ‘protected’ were not exempt from the attentions of the officers. On the bounty ship, the China, a male steerage passenger was found drunk in the hold, wrapped in a sail, and ‘wallowing in spew and filth’ after finding his wife ‘lay[ing] in [an officer’s] arms in a manner no prudent woman let alone a wife should have done’.42 The diarist who recorded the incident placed the blame squarely on the woman: ‘The officer I do not blame in the least, for when a woman gives a man encouragement as in this case[,] especially to a sailor, all must be aware of the consequences that will ensue’. His assignation of blame notwithstanding, the women on the ship were ‘locked up’ at nine o’clock every night, ostensibly to protect them. This did not stop an unidentified man from trying to break down the door. After that incident, the door was secured by a chain and padlock ‘large enough to fasten a strong horse in the field’.43 These examples beg the question: were women who were condemned for licentious activities immoral or were they abused? To public opinion, however, that question mattered not. In fact, the Gazette asserted that ‘decent’ women could not be abused. ‘Surely, if the 150 women are tolerably decent persons’, the paper reasoned, ‘they can protect themselves against a score of sailors, unless the committee have selected a crew ten times as desperate as Don Juan’.44 This assessment implied that sympathy would be reserved for ‘tolerably decent’ women, but in the absence of any attempt to understand the perilous power dynamic in which they found themselves (in other words, absent any attempt to empathise), they would inevitably be judged ‘indecent’. Whether they were willing or forced participants of profligate activities, steerage women were held responsible. 41  With, for example, the purser of the Elizabeth and the surgeon of the Agricola. Respectively, ‘Police Court’, Monitor, 19 November 1841, 2; ‘Seduction’, Gazette, 22 January 1842, 2. 42  Diary of China Passenger, 30 December 1839. 43  When one woman complained about such treatment, she was reportedly laughed at. Ibid., 24 January 1840. 44  ‘Emigration to Van Diemen’s Land’, Gazette, 16 February 1837, 4.

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This disparagement of steerage women contrasted sharply with the treatment of female cabin passengers who also engaged in behaviours that were considered indiscreet by the standards of the day. For instance, on the single female ship, the Canton, a female cabin passenger was caught with the steward in the pantry.45 Manning was quite scandalised by the behaviour of G. R. Young and Miss Davies. They travelled together to join Young’s brother who was already in Sydney and whom Miss Davies was supposed to marry. Manning recorded that the two often sat ‘on deck with their arms round each other’ and that Young was frequently in Miss Davies’s cabin.46 All this is not to imply that the specific behaviours involving upper-class women were equivalent to those that earned steerage women so much censure or that those behaviours were uncritically accepted by other cabin passengers. On the contrary, the diaries that recorded these incidents were full of judgement. Those judgements, however, remained discreetly in the pages of private documents rather than appearing in the public sphere as did the incriminations of the working-­ class women. Cabin passengers regularly denounced the behaviour of the assisted emigrants despite the fact that they, too, resisted the authority of the surgeon, complained about provisions, and engaged in morally questionable interactions with members of the opposite sex. So convinced of their superiority and the emigrants’ inferiority were they that sympathy and empathy for emigrant hardships were replaced with derision and scorn. Not only did the cabin passengers hold themselves to a different standard of behaviour, but the expression of compassion was also (quite literally) policed on board. On the bounty ship, the Woodbridge, intermediate passenger John Morris gave his own milk to a steerage passenger for the man’s child. In response, the surgeon stopped giving Morris his allotment of milk. Later, Morris complained about the neglect of the steerage passengers and was placed under arrest.47 Compassion for steerage passengers was clearly disallowed.

45  John Dawson, Journal of the Ship ‘Canton’ Passage from London to Sydney, April– September 1835, Z A456, ML, 26 August 1835. 46  Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 18 December 1839. At times, such flirtations led to marriage, as in the cases of the second mate on the China and the daughter of a cabin passenger as well as George Wise and Frances Marsh, the niece of New South Wales Chief Justice Francis Forbes. Diary of China Passenger, 30 April 1840; Wise, Journal. 47  John Morris, ‘Complaint on the Woodbridge’, in Sir William Dixson Papers.

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Lacking Sympathy and Support on Arrival Migrant hardships did not end upon arrival in the colony and neither did the elite’s tendency to judge and condemn them for their struggles. As discussed in Chap. 5, the immigrants’ appearance on arrival was taken as an indication of their moral worth. However, this criterion overlooked the likelihood that the immigrants’ clothing had been destroyed on board. Emigrants were instructed to take a lengthy list of clothing to plan for both the variety of climates traversed and the inability to wash clothing (except perhaps in collected rainwater).48 Due to tight quarters in steerage, most clothing was stored in the hold. Emigrants were allowed to access their boxes only at certain times during the voyage, and oftentimes they found their clothes had become wet and mouldy.49 That the emigrants had gone to great lengths to accumulate more clothing than they perhaps had ever owned only to see it destroyed meant nothing to cabin passenger George Wise, who found it ‘a most amusing sight … to see the people in the steerage turn over their Boxes and observe the wry faces that some of them showed on examining the contents to see the mildew had spoilt some of their clothes’.50 Wise did not feel any sympathy, empathy, or compassion for his shipmates; on the contrary, he seemed to delight in their misfortune. Clothing was not all that many were lacking; the destitution experienced by some immigrants on arrival was dire. Emigrants often spent everything they had in order to leave the British Isles. McKinnon had to sell one of his wife’s rings and accept a loan from a fellow passenger to meet expenses incurred while waiting for the ship to depart.51 Expenses only multiplied if the ship were delayed. In the case of the Ward Chapman, emigrants had to support themselves in Bristol for more than 20 days.52 On arrival, immigrants were often a sad lot. Thomas Birkby told his father, 48  For examples of circulars listing the required clothing, see Edward Forster, ‘A Free Passage to Such Single Women and Widows’, 20 April 1835, Q325.2423A1, ML; Stephen Walcott, ‘Regulations for Free Passages Granted in the Country to Persons Named by Purchasers of Land’, August 1840, CO 384:59, PRO 5121, ML. 49  McKinnon, Journal on the Duncan, 7 May 1838; Diary of China Passenger, 17 December 1839. 50  Wise, Journal, 1 November 1838. 51  At one point, McKinnon changed his mind, deciding not to emigrate, and then spent more money trying to get his chest off the ship. The loan from his fellow passenger convinced him to go ahead with the voyage. McKinnon, Journal on the Duncan. 52  Gipps to Stanley, 13 March 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1227 CY 660, ML.

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‘I have seen many that came on our ship going through the streets of Sydney without a cap to their heads or shoe to their foot, and not a place as it were to lay their heads, they are a great deal wors [sic] off than convict females, for [the convicts] must be provided for by Government’.53 Instead of demonstrating compassion towards destitute immigrants, authorities might presume the worst. The day after she came ashore, Mary Teague was picked up by a constable on a drunkenness charge. Teague claimed she was not drunk; rather, she was feeling faint because she had had no food and no place to sleep since leaving the ship. Her excuse fell on deaf ears and she was placed in the stocks for an hour.54 Bounty immigrant and future New South Wales premier Henry Parkes sympathetically described Teague’s case in a letter home, exclaiming, ‘What encouragement for a person to come to Australia!’55 There was very little structural support for new arrivals, which in and of itself amounted to a denial of compassion. A short-lived Ladies Committee was formed to help the arrivals from the single female ships, but it disbanded on the excuse that ‘the description and conduct of some of the women … had rendered it hardly possible to expect the presence and assistance of Ladies of delicacy’.56 Hence, in the case of the Ladies Committee, rather than the immigrants’ plight leading to the ‘ameliorative action’ inherent in compassion, elite judgements of the immigrants led to the opposite: withdrawal of support. Moreover, as we saw in Chap. 5, immigrants were in an impossible position should they attempt to access more permanent charitable structures in the colony, such as the Benevolent Society. According to public rhetoric, ‘able-bodied’ immigrants—the only kind who should benefit from the emigration fund—should have no need for such services given the high demand for labour. If uncontrollable circumstance had led an immigrant to rely on charity, approval might be 53  Thomas and his wife, Mary, were among the few families on the single female ship, the David Scott. He was a gardener, and they hailed from Yorkshire. They brought with them their two-year-old son and infant baby. Thomas Birkby, Letter: To His Father, 1836 May 31, MS 4216, NLA. Biographical data from Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 54  Since she could not pay the fine. A 20-year-old house servant, Teague was a single female immigrant who came on the Forth under the ‘protection’ of Edward Moran. Humanitas [pseud.], ‘Lately Arrived Immigrants’, Chronicle, 11 September 1841, 2. Biographical data from Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 55  Letter Twenty-Seven, 15 September 1841, Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, 116. 56  Bourke to Secretary of State, 8 May 1835, Governor’s Despatches, A1213 CY 607, ML.

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more forthcoming, but it was not unlimited. For example, on the Earl Grey, Arthur Blakeley died en route, and cabin passengers collected money for his widow, Letilia, who had two children to care for with a third on the way. This display of generosity was not without caveats, however. Manning wrote, ‘The best place for her will be the Benevolent Asylum; and if she turns out to be a woman of good character and industrious habits, I shall endeavour to get her admitted to it’.57 Even when it actually existed, compassion had to be earned. If destitute, immigrants could possibly turn to a charity, but all immigrants faced the challenge of finding accommodation on arrival, and here again, support was lacking. High rents in Sydney forced immigrants into either homelessness or else sharing ‘hovels scarcely fit for dogs’ with six to ten other people.58 John Turnbull reported to the Chronicle that some of his shipmates ‘were compelled night after night to spread their beds and blankets among the casks on Campbell’s wharf, and the rocks and stones on the shore, and sleep in the open air’.59 During brief periods, the government did provide housing to certain groups of immigrants, but even that was temporary and meagre. Arrivals from the single female ships were housed first at the Lumber Yard—which two women from the Layton described as ‘just like a stable, only not so clean’60—and then in the ballroom at Government House.61 The complaints from the Layton women were ridiculed in the press, which claimed that the Lumber Yard was ‘better than the Workhouses from which [the women] were principally gathered’ and a ‘far more comfortable, clean, and respectable place than many into which they have thrown themselves of their own free will, since their arrival’.62 At least single female immigrants were given some place to stay; until the Immigrants Barracks was established in 1838, labourers and families had no place to go. Even then, the Barracks housed only those who arrived on government ships (bounty immigrants were on their own), and as we saw in Chap. 5, many critics felt it provided the cover for immigrants  Manning, Journal of a Voyage on the Earl Grey, 11 January 1840.  Gazette, 16 November 1841, 2. 59  John Turnbull, ‘Immigrants and Debt’, Chronicle, 11 December 1841, 2. Turnbull was a 24-year-old farm servant from Glasgow. He and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived via the United Kingdom. Biographical data from Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 60  Monitor, 4 February 1835, 4. 61  ‘The Ball’, The Australian, 9 May 1837, 2. 62  The Australian, 6 February 1835, 2. 57 58

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to refuse ‘reasonable’ offers of employment. Calls for officials to expel any inhabitant who did so led to the closure of the Barracks in 1840 in favour of the cheaper option of housing immigrants on their ships for up to ten days after arrival.63 The Chronicle (most often the lone sympathetic voice among the press) vividly and empathetically described the injustice of the new policy: Weary of their lives after a voyage half round the world; disgusted with their salt meat and unwholesome bread and water; covered with scurvy, perhaps with vermin, the Emigrants come in sight of land. The anchor is cast; their hearts beat with joy; they hope to enjoy fresh bread, and fresh meat, and fresh water. But no, there they must remain on the same miserable ration till they are hired.64

From the elite point of view, however, the solution to hardships on arrival was simple: immigrants simply had to accept one of the abundant, ‘reasonable’ offers of employment and get to work.65 In contrast to the lack of sympathy, empathy, or compassion for the adversities faced by assisted immigrants, there was much concern for the difficulties faced by the unassisted immigrants who arrived with hopes of purchasing land. The procedures in place for buying land required new arrivals to spend months searching for available, appropriate land (all the while spending down their capital), only then most likely to be outbid at auction by ‘old settlers’ or land speculators (see Chap. 4). ‘What inducement has a man to emigrate’, the Sydney Herald asked, ‘[and] spend half a year in selection at ruinous expense, and who then, by their own agency finds himself worse than a pauper, stripped and pennyless?’66 That assisted immigrants also often ended up (literally) ‘stripped and pennyless’ due to hurdles erected by colonial structures went unacknowledged. The colonial elite repeatedly called for some form of assistance to newly arrived men of small capital as they attempted to obtain land.67 Meanwhile, assisted 63  J.  Denham Pinnock, Report from J.  Denham Pinnock, Esq., Colonial Agent for Immigration, to His Excellency Governor Sir George Gipps, on the Progress of Immigration Generally, for the Year 1838, reprinted as J. Denham Pinnock, ‘Immigration’, The Australian, 4 July 1839, 3. 64  ‘Sydney’, Chronicle, 21 February 1840, 2. 65  The Australian, 30 September 1841, 2. 66  Herald, 24 March 1836, 2. See also The Australian, 26 December 1839, 2. 67  See Chap. 5, footnote 21.

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immigrants were scorned for their poor clothing, punished for their destitution, and derided for using support services. Sympathy, empathy, and compassion were reserved for the wealthier classes.

Lazy, Insolent Workers or Horrible Bosses? Upon arrival, a pressing concern for immigrants was finding a job. Even if this was achieved quickly, an immigrant’s challenges were not necessarily over. Employer/employee dynamics were often tense and were negotiated amidst widespread public complaint about the immigrants as labourers. In Chap. 4, employers’ complaints about workers—frequent job changes, ‘exorbitant’ wages demanded, the lack of control they possessed over workers, worker ‘laziness’, and workers’ reluctance to go into the interior—were covered in depth. Here, we will view those complaints from the immigrants’ point of view, thereby revealing the challenging conditions that immigrants faced but that employers were unwilling to acknowledge or ameliorate. Employers complained that workers too frequently left jobs, sometimes without sufficient notice, but those complaints hardly ever took into consideration the fact that, fundamentally, free workers assumed they had the right to leave. The Monitor reported on a female immigrant who was sent to gaol because she had left her position without written notice. However, in this case, there was no written employment agreement that mandated such notice.68 When a written agreement did exist, its provisions might be disputed. Before he left Scotland, carpenter Thomas McGarvie signed an agreement with George Rankin of Bathurst. Rankin transferred the agreement to General Stewart, with whom McGarvie quarrelled soon after he arrived at Stewart’s property. Deciding that Stewart was ‘o’er hot in temper’, McGarvie applied to the court for the agreement to be terminated on the grounds that its original terms (the designated employer) had been altered. But since McGarvie did not himself possess a copy of the agreement, the court deferred judgement until Rankin produced one.69 Some workers were shrewd enough to demand a copy of their agreements, but even here, the court might rule against them. In 1840, 21 workers hired by the Australian Agricultural Company (AAC) refused to go to the  ‘Female Emigrants’, Monitor, 31 May 1837, 2.  Monitor, 22 November 1837, 2. I could find no later account of the resolution to this case. 68 69

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company’s estate until each had been given a copy of the agreement. The court ruled that one copy was enough for the whole group and warned them ‘to be cautious, as the laws in this colony were very severe’.70 The paradox here was that the AAC workers were trying to be careful; they were trying to safeguard their rights. But as in the case of the Masters and Servants Act (see Chap. 4), the legal system often sided with employers. Workers might also leave because their employers had not paid them. Upon arrival, gardener Thomas Birkby took a position as a farm overseer for 50 pounds annually, but left after five weeks when it became clear that his employer could not actually pay him the agreed upon amount.71 When brought up on charges of absconding by his employer,72 19-year-old Henry Bateman defiantly told the court he ‘had not absconded, but left’ because his employer had not paid him his full wages.73 This his employer, Mr Simpson, did not deny, claiming he had given Bateman only seven shillings of the ten owed in order to prevent Bateman from leaving. Despite this admission, Bateman’s defence failed, and he was sentenced to 14 days at the treadmill and forfeiture of wages due. Perhaps one reason workers demanded such ‘exorbitant’ wages was an awareness that they may never receive the full amount. An obvious reason for a worker to leave a position was poor treatment at the hands of the employer. We have already read the tale of William Jones’s son that opened this chapter. In another story of a father defending his child, George Betts’s ten-year-old son was to be a shepherd on the property where his father worked. The son was scared of the bush and so took dogs with him to the pasture when he had been told not to. For this, the employer beat him, and for that, Betts confronted the employer and threatened to leave. But since the property was remote, he stayed and continued to work for six more weeks, at which point the commissioner came to arrest him for breaching his agreement. Betts was made to walk  ‘Hired Servants’, Chronicle, 22 December 1840, 3.  Birkby, Letter: To His Father. For other accounts of workers not receiving their wages, see Emigrant [pseud.], ‘To the Editors of the Sydney Herald’, Herald, 5 October 1835, 2; George Hooper, Journal of George Hooper, 1839–1840, MS 8998, NLA; Edward Mullens’s testimony in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Select Committee, on the Petition from Distressed Mechanics and Labourers, with the Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1843), Q84/10, ML, 15. 72  Recall from Chap. 4 that employers frequently brought charges of ‘absconding’ against workers who left. 73  ‘“Emigrant” Discipline’, Monitor, 25 February 1839, 3 (emphasis in original). 70 71

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the more than 200 kilometres to Port Macquarie for his trial, at which he was sentenced to six weeks in gaol or a ten-pound fine and forfeiture of his entire family’s wages. Since the employer refused to pay the fine out of the wages owed to (and now forfeited by) Betts, he was gaoled.74 All of these stories of conflict with the employer—be they disputes over written agreements, unpaid wages, or personal treatment—revealed not only a decided lack of concern over fairness in the employment relationship but also the immense privileges held by employers within the legal system. Another point of contention was workers’ alleged unwillingness to go into the interior. Employers demonstrated no compassion for this disclination, even though some discouraging forces could possibly have been addressed. For example, while colonial commentators often called for subsidised transport into the interior (a necessity given that many assisted immigrants had very little funds available on arrival),75 no systematised actions were taken until Caroline Chisholm’s efforts in the early 1840s. The remoteness of the bush also created financial challenges. Though wages almost always included rations, any supplementary provisions or goods an immigrant desired had to be purchased from the property’s store as there were no other suppliers in these remote locations. Employers used their monopoly of the stores to recoup some of the ‘exorbitant wages’ they felt they were paying.76 It was an effective strategy. Squatter Thomas Tourle told his father that he had sold £185 in goods to his 12 employees in 1842. That came to an average of over 15 pounds per person, at a time when he paid his shepherds 18–20 pounds annually.77 Furthermore, in order to receive their wages, workers often had to travel to where the

74  Thirty-four-year-old farm labourer George Betts arrived by the bounty ship, the Champion, in 1840 accompanied by wife Sarah (33), also a farm servant, and their children Anne (11), Robert (9 at the time), and Charles (5). They were Protestants from Nottinghamshire. ‘Free Servants’, Gazette, 25 December 1841, 4. Biographical data from Ancestry.com, ‘New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists’. 75  ‘Assignment of Prisoners’, Monitor, 4 April 1834, 2; ‘Female Immigrants’, Chronicle, 21 September 1841, 2. 76  Philip McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Capitalism in Colonial Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 131. For complaints about the prices of provisions and other goods in the country, see The Australian, 3 November 1840, 2; testimonies of carpenter James Grimes and painter Edward Mullens in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 13, 15. 77  Tourle to his father, 28 July 1843, Tourle, Letter Books.

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banks were—namely, Sydney—with no guarantee that the order for payment would be honoured.78 Beyond these logistical and financial hurdles, immigrants hesitated to go to the bush for another reason: fear for their safety. Bushrangers—outlaws who supported themselves through theft and crime—provided a menacing threat, a threat covered in the press and therefore easily known to newly arrived immigrants. According to one news story, an immigrant family en route to Maneroo were approached by bushrangers as they camped for the night. Even though the wife reportedly begged the bushrangers not to shoot her husband, they killed him and stole goods from the dray.79 Fear of Aboriginal people also played a role. Such fear might have been out of ignorance—one woman from the Layton refused to go into the country for ‘fear of being eaten up by the natives’80—but it also might have been a testament to real and effective resistance to colonisation by Indigenous peoples. In any case, this fear impacted employers’ ability to obtain labour. Pastoralist and explorer William Lawson admitted he had to pay shepherds more to overcome workers’ fear of hostilities with Aboriginal people.81 From bushrangers to Aboriginal resistance, the bush was a frightening place for many immigrants. What lured emigrants to New South Wales in the first place was the promise of regular, remunerative employment. After they arrived, however, they found themselves at the mercy of a system set up to benefit employers and facing public condemnation for attempting to protect themselves. In many ways, employers’ dissatisfaction with workers was caused by either employers’ own actions (ill-treatment, withholding wages, fleecing workers at the store) or inaction (establishing infrastructure, attending to workers’ safety). None of this mattered to employers, however, who failed to take responsibility and placed the blame solely on the immigrants.

78  See testimony from land and stock agent Robert Graham and blacksmith Henry Bremer in New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 2, 21. 79  ‘Bush Robbery and Murder’, The Colonist, 18 May 1839, 2. See also An Inhabitant [pseud.], ‘Bushrangers’, Monitor, 17 June 1839, 2. 80  Pastor [pseud.], ‘Original Correspondence’, The Australian, 10 July 1835, 2. 81  New South Wales Legislative Council, Report of Distressed Labourers Committee, 1843, 25. See also blacksmith Henry Bremer’s testimony in the same report (p. 22).

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Dismissing Assisted Immigrant Disappointment In light of the numerous obstacles the immigrants had to endure as they made a new life in New South Wales, it should be no surprise that some deeply regretted their decision to emigrate. As historian David Fitzpatrick found in his examination of Irish immigrant letters,82 immigrants often expressed a desire to go back to their families.83 Elizabeth Sellers told her brother that if she were not married, she would return home: ‘I am neither illused [sic] nor abused, I have every thing in moderation which I can desire … but all is of no manner of use, the thought of home always uppermost where I hope to be … until that day comes there will be but little happiness for your loving though far separated sister’.84 For some immigrants, the disappointment ran so deep they could not cope. The newspapers were peppered with reports of newly arrived immigrants committing or attempting to commit suicide.85 These reports were not limited to the worst days of the economic depression; they could be found even in the earliest phase of assisted immigration. A blacksmith wrote to the Australian in 1833, alluding to a ‘number of individuals that during the last sixteen months have arrived on these shores, disappointed in their expectations, bereft of friends and a home, many of them ruined without a prospect of redress … suicide in several instances has closed the last act of their earthly career’.86 Given the state of the outbound shipping records, it is impossible to calculate the rate of return migration, though it was probably quite low, given the expense of a return passage and the lack of general outcry in the  Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 532–3.  For example, see James to Ellen, 7 September 1840, James B.  Atkins, Letters, 1840–1847, MS 767, NLA; Letter Twenty-Two, 1 May 1840, Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, 91. 84  Elizabeth and her husband, Thomas, were among the earliest assisted immigrants, arriving on the Sarah in 1832. Elizabeth Sellers to Josiah Evans, 9 March 1836, Papers Relating to Josiah Evans and Joshua Hart, 1794, 1836, 1839, 1924, Including Details of the Ship Eveline, 15 February 1836, Ae 13 CY 2220, ML. 85  ‘Coroner’s Inquest’, The Australian, 20 February 1838, 3; ‘Original Correspondence’, Herald, 5 April 1838, 2; ‘Local News’, The Australian, 9 February 1839, 2; ‘Inquest’, Observer, 2 December 1841; ‘Summary of Public Intelligence’, Gazette, 4 December 1841, 3. 86  Son of Vulcan [pseud.], ‘Blacksmith’s Wages’, The Australian, 2 August 1833, 2. For other early reports, see ‘Emigration’, Monitor, 18 December 1833, 2; Herald, 11 August 1834, 3. 82 83

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press; if immigrants who had been ‘paid for’ by the land fund had left en masse, the press would not have let that proceed without comment.87 Still, some immigrants did make attempts to go home. Isabella Gibson told her sister that she had placed an ad in the newspaper seeking a governess position with any wealthy family who was about to return to England.88 As the depression set in, the Colonial Observer reported that the captain of the Honduras had received applications from 50 immigrants seeking to work for their passage home.89 In both of these examples, the immigrants needed to work for their return passages; they could not afford to pay outright. Others may not have made the move to return, but they did write letters advising their friends and family to remain at home.90 Such warnings had an effect on perceptions of the colony in the British Isles. By the mid-1840s, the radical press in Britain portrayed the Australian ­colonies as sources of wealth and power for the rich—not for the ordinary working man.91 Even in the face of the deep disappointment felt by some immigrants, very little sympathy was expressed in the public sphere. In fact, according to colonial commentators, immigrants needed to be more grateful. ‘Emigrants who are brought out by the liberality of the Colony’, the 87  Eric Richards, ‘Return Migration and Migrant Strategies in Colonial Australia’, in Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia, David Fitzpatrick, ed. (Canberra: Division of Historical Studies and Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1992), 64. I found a few complaints in the press about immigrants going to other colonies, but none about immigrants returning to the British Isles. See Herald, 10 December 1838, 2; ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 11 December 1838, 2; A Lover of Justice [pseud.], ‘Robbery on the Emigration Fund’, Herald, 10 June 1840, 7. The only press reports of large numbers of assisted immigrants leaving the colony occurred in 1843, during the depths of the depression, when anywhere from a few 100 to 700 immigrants moved on to Chile, the next closest (and therefore cheapest) destination outside of Australia and New Zealand. They possibly had an eye towards completing the journey back to the British Isles at a later date. G. J. Abbott, ‘The Emigration to Valparaiso in 1843’, Labour History, no. 19 (November 1970): 1–16. 88  Gibson arrived in 1833 on the single female ship, the Layton. We also met Gibson in Chap. 6. Isabella Gibson, Letter: Sydney, to Helen Gibson, London 1834 June 19, MS 2654, NLA. 89  ‘The Immigration Report’, Observer, 10 September 1842. 90  Including William Jones’s letter that opened the chapter as well as Letter Twenty-Two, 1 May 1840, Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, 92. 91  Alan Beever, ‘From a Place of “Horrible Destitution” to a Paradise of the Working Class. The Transformation of British Working Class Attitudes to Australia, 1841–1851’, Labour History, no. 40 (1981): 1–15.

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Gazette proclaimed, ‘in many instances … show a poor return for the generosity which plucked them from a life of indigence in their own country and brought them to a land where their labour is light, and where they have every necessary of life in plenty’.92 Such ‘ingratitude’ was often ascribed to overblown expectations. Emigrants ‘must not entertain the foolish idea, that the streets are paved with gold’93; if they did allow themselves to be misled by ‘phantoms of their own creation’, then they would have only ‘themselves to blame’.94 The 1841 Committee on Immigration claimed that truly good emigrants would not be fooled by overly positive portrayals of the colony: ‘It is scarcely possible to impose a false representation upon skilful and industrious individuals’.95 This rebuke completely ignored the fact that, only a year earlier, the Legislative Council had actively represented the colony as a place where ‘able-bodied, sober, industrious, and careful emigrants may, within a few years after their arrival, rise from the condition of labourers to be themselves employers of labour’.96 In short, overly positive portrayals of New South Wales were potentially detrimental to the colony (because they set unrealistic expectations for emigrants), unless those positive portrayals came from the colony itself. But regardless of the origins of such positive portrayals, the immigrants were belittled for believing them. One group that was not disparaged for its own disappointment was the unassisted immigrants. As the depression set in, the Gazette argued for measures to help alleviate the worst effects on ‘families … of education and refinement, and who [had] brought means with them to improve our country, now living in the greatest poverty, and enduring hardships which it would touch every feeling heart to perceive’,97 a sentiment that sharply contrasted with the hardened attitudes towards the working-class poor. Often, the economic loss experienced by unassisted immigrants was blamed on the bureaucratic processes accompanying the purchase of land  Gazette, 8 February 1842, 2.  Herald, 20 November 1834, 2. 94  The Australian, 5 October 1832, 2. 95  New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration, 1841. Report from the Committee on Immigration with the Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, and Replies to the Circular Letter on the Aborigines (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, 7. 96  New South Wales Legislative Council, Resolutions of the Legislative Council on the Subject of Immigration to New South Wales: 23rd October, 1840, enclosure to Gipps to Russell, 25 October 1840, Governor’s Despatches, A1223 CY 655, ML. 97  Gazette, 8 February 1842, 2. 92 93

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or, most especially, on the unreasonably high wages assisted immigrants allegedly demanded (see Chap. 4). In other words, governmental structures and the cost of labour—not personal improvidence—caused their economic misfortunes. Hence, the working classes were to blame not only for their own hardships but also for those of the elite. Furthermore, even though assisted immigrants in distress were presumed to be the cause of their own misfortune by not living ‘frugally’ (wasting money on alcohol or ‘finery’—see Chap. 5), unassisted immigrants rationalised their monetary struggles. Squatter Thomas Tourle wrote home, commenting on the ‘Ruinous Price’ and scarcity of labour and claiming, ‘I have not spent a shilling more than I have been obliged to and whether I get money or lose it is quite a lottery’.98 The upper classes expressed ample sympathy for their own misfortunes, a courtesy they were unwilling to extend to the working classes. The motivation for this denial of sympathy was more than mere cruelty. Immigrant complaints had to be discredited lest they negatively impact further immigration, which was itself absolutely necessary to bring down the ‘exorbitant’ wages. Indeed, this was one of the grounds on which Timothy Nowlan tried to dismiss William Jones’s complaints. A similar motivation was behind the stream of articles and Legislative Council statements claiming there was no unemployment in the colony even as the depression commenced.99 According to colonial commentators, reports of distress were false; any actual distress felt was but temporary, the result of several ships arriving at once or of the lack of infrastructure to transport workers into the interior.100 The Gazette went so far as to claim that negative letters sent home by immigrants usually came from ‘men whose habits and qualifications render them incapable of success in any country’.101 In other words, the complaints were either false or came from ‘unworthy’ 98  Respectively, Tourle to Emma, 5 May 1840; Tourle to his mother, 15 June 1840; in Tourle, Letter Books. 99  ‘Immigrants at Port Phillip’, Herald, 19 August 1841, 2; The Australian, 30 September 1841, 2; New South Wales Legislative Council, Report from the Committee on the Debenture Bill. With the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: W. J. Row, 1841), DSM/Q325.91/ Pa1, ML, 3; New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Report from the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), enclosure to Gipps to Stanley, 20 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML, 4; Gazette, 4 October 1842, 2. 100  Respectively, ‘Immigration’, Gazette, 21 September 1841, 2; The Australian, 30 September 1841, 2. 101  Gazette, 14 April 1842, 2.

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men. On the few occasions when the elite argued for immigrants’ hardships to be addressed, the motivation was almost never a genuine concern for the immigrants’ well-being; rather, the situation in question needed to be rectified because, if circulated in Britain, reports of those hardships would hurt future emigration. That the John Barry was placed in quarantine was concerning not because nine migrants had already died, but because the survivors would send negative reports home.102 That the Robertson family had been kicked out of the barracks before they had found employment was troubling not because they had no place else to go, but because treating people that way would make it ‘difficult in the future to induce shepherds and labourers to quit their native land’.103 That immigrant workers charged with crimes were treated the same as convicts was problematic not because the arrested immigrants had not yet been convicted, but because such treatment would deter other workers from coming to New South Wales.104 Even apparent expressions of sympathy, empathy, or compassion directed towards the immigrants arose from an ulterior motive: protecting the stream of immigration. * * * All of this is not to say that all assisted immigrants were disappointed in New South Wales. Thomas Birkby told his father, ‘I am contented where I am and have no fear but doing well and there is certainly better prospects of bringing up a family here than at home’.105 Similarly, Edward and Sarah Smith wrote, ‘We have never repented that we left Englin [sic] for we get a plenty to eat and a plenty to drink thank God’.106 Even so, migrating was not easy. At every step in their risky endeavour—from the journey itself to arrival in the colony to the search for fair employment—the migrants had to overcome obstacles, some of which were happenstance and some of which were created by inadequate systems or the prejudicial attitudes of the elite. When viewed from this perspective, many of the complaints the  ‘The John Barry’, Gazette, 16 September 1837, 2.  Timothy Tod, ‘The Lady Kennaway’, The Colonist, 5 September 1838, 2. 104  ‘Masters and Servants’, Gazette, 27 October 1840, 2. 105  Birkby, Letter: To His Father. 106  Edward, Sarah, and Hannah Smith to Mrs. George Bates, 23 October 1841, Smith Family, Letters Received from James Smith, Sarah Monkhouse, Thomas Monkhouse and Others, MLMSS 5994, ML. 102 103

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colonial elite had of the immigrants—for example, their uncleanly appearance, their willingness to change employers, and their unwillingness to go into the bush—could be explained. Allowing for such explanations, however, would have required some degree of sympathy, empathy, and/or compassion. In the public sphere, expressions of sympathy were rare, the dismissal of the challenges experienced by migrants indicated a lack of empathy, and the resistance to the establishment of support structures for immigrants reflected an absence of compassion. From a history of emotions perspective, the colonial elite were attempting to craft an ‘emotional community’ in which sympathy, empathy, and compassion would be expressed in very specific ways and directed at specific groups: the wealthier classes. Within their self-­ established value system, they assessed the struggles faced by assisted migrants and found them worthy of neither sympathy nor empathy. They furthermore determined that legitimising those hardships through ameliorative action (in other words, by demonstrating compassion) would be detrimental to the elite’s own best interests: to encourage continued immigration in order to obtain the much desired cheap, pliable workforce. Returning to Carolyn Pedwell’s critique of empathy, we see that empathy itself can be used as an exercise of power. According to Pedwell, when a group decides that another is worthy of empathy, that group is constructing social difference.107 Naturally, deciding that another group is unworthy of empathy—the case in New South Wales—is also an exercise of power. Why did the elite choose to exercise their power in this way? They could have chosen to display their social superiority through their munificence. To understand why they chose a different path, we turn to Lauren Berlant’s theorising of compassion. ‘To feel compassion for people who struggle or fail’, she reasoned, ‘is at best to take the first step towards ­forging a personal relation to a politics of the practice of equality’.108 This is exactly what the colonial elite did not want. They did not want to foster a sense of equality among the assisted immigrants; they wanted obedient workers, subordinate and deferential to their employers. They did not want a society in which upward social mobility was a real possibility for the working classes; they only wanted to advance that idea in order to attract more immigrants. As shown in Chap. 4, employers viewed immigrants as  Pedwell, Affective Relations, 11–2.  Berlant, Compassion, 8.

107 108

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a commodity, an expensive commodity that cut into their profit margins. To the elite, the working classes did not possess any inherent humanity; their worth was predicated on the value they offered to colonial employers.109 The withholding of sympathy, empathy, and compassion helped construct the boundary of social belonging by denying the humanity of the assisted immigrants. This was not uncontested. The immigrants themselves loudly communicated their struggles, and occasionally allies spoke up. In response to a story about the imprisonment of an immigrant shoemaker for ‘insolence’ directed at his employer, a reader of the Monitor snidely wrote, ‘The atrocious villain … had probably dared to entertain the pestilent notion, that he had a soul of his own’.110 Such rare statements of support aside, the overwhelmingly negative and unsympathetic response to the assisted immigrants in the public sphere must be read through the lens of the colonial elite’s overriding project: to establish a hierarchical society with themselves at the top.

109  Here, I am indebted to a thought-provoking blog on race relations in today’s United States written by my former classmate. Femi Omoni, ‘The Worth of Black People’, Omagus blog, entry posted on 11 October 2017, https://medium.com/@Omagus/the-worth-of-­ black-people-c735af678abd (accessed 12 October 2017). 110  A. B. C. [pseud.], ‘To the Editor of the Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser’, Monitor, 27 January 1840, 2.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion

The ‘vicious pauper rubbish’ of the 1830s are today more often remembered for their ‘fundamental optimism’ that drove them to ‘travel to this country in the hope of a better life’.1 Much like the convicts, the early assisted immigrants have been reclaimed in public memory, no longer portrayed as lazy and immoral, but rather as bold adventurers who were willing to take on great challenges to advance their lot. This reclamation has occurred both in public spaces and in the historiography. When addressing the early nineteenth century, Australia’s migration museums now focus with pride on the hardships overcome and with sympathy on the arduous lived experience of the assisted immigrants, including the ‘dreadful conditions’ on emigrant ships and the poor treatment of workers after arrival.2 In the historiography, the shift is evident not only in migration-focused works but also in general histories. The first three editions of Stuart Macintyre’s A Concise History of Australia characterised the assisted immigrants as follows: ‘This process of “shovelling out the paupers” produced an immigrant cohort that was hardly different in background and 1  Respectively, ‘Improvement of the Town’, Monitor, 30 March 1833, 2; Roslyn Russell, High Seas and High Teas: Voyaging to Australia (Canberra: NLA Publishing, 2016), 2. 2  Respectively, the Immigration Museum in Melbourne (visited September 2016) and the Migration Museum in Adelaide (February 2017). Henrich charted the changing representation of migration in Australian museums over three decades. Eureka Henrich, ‘Museums, History and Migration in Australia’, History Compass 11, no. 10 (2013): 783–800.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7_8

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circumstances from the convicts—it is no exaggeration to regard them as quasi-­transportees’. In the 2016 edition, however, this section was omitted.3 Yet, the reclamation of the first assisted immigrants in historical memory has been almost too complete; there exists a much greater awareness among the public that Australia’s convict past—although a source of pride now—used to be held as a shameful legacy best forgotten. That the earliest assisted immigrants were subjected to vociferous criticism long repeated in the history books is less widely known. This amnesia needs to be cured, because doing so problematises Australia’s conception of itself as an egalitarian nation and shows that, from the very earliest days of (unforced) mass immigration, Australia has held paradoxical attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. No single factor explains the resistance to the assisted immigrants of the 1830s, and no single analytical perspective can encapsulate the complex effects the implementation of assisted immigration had on a young, rapidly developing colony. Fundamentally, the overarching research question of this book—why were the assisted immigrants so maligned?—comes from a cultural perspective. It seeks to understand how a particular group was marginalised and a social hierarchy constructed. And yes, while the negative reception of the earliest assisted immigrants owed much to cultural constructions of class, gender, and emotional practices, social and cultural approaches alone cannot provide a complete answer to the question. We cannot understand the colonial elite’s resistance to these immigrants outside the political contexts of imperial relations, the fight for representative government, and the contentious end of convict transportation. Nor can the resistance be adequately examined without an analysis of the economic transformation underway in the colony. Cultural constructions explain how the elite were able to condemn the immigrants; the political and economic contexts explain why they did so. The explanation for the condemnation of the assisted immigrants lies not only in these individual pieces but also in the ways in which the pieces interacted. Migrant experience was very much shaped by government policy; assisted migration itself was, after all, a government initiative. Those policies were informed by political and economic forces as well as particular

3  On page 77 in the 1999 edition, page 75 in 2004, and 76 in 2009. The altered paragraph is on page 78 in the most recent edition. Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, 4th ed. (Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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understandings of class, gender, and who was worthy of compassion. The policies then, in turn, institutionalised those understandings. Such a comprehensive explanation is essential because this first experiment in (unforced) mass immigration laid the groundwork for the nearly two centuries of immigration that followed. From the launch of assisted immigration, certain issues became entrenched in Australia’s political landscape, including immigration itself, management of the labour force, and control of who was/is allowed to enter the colony/nation. Certain cultural dispositions that were present in this early phase of working-class immigration have stubbornly remained in the Australian psyche including a resistance to immigrants (at least certain immigrants), flexible and shifting modes for constructing social prejudice, and a context-specific determination of who is deserving of compassion. Because of these legacies, understanding the negative disposition towards the earliest assisted immigrants is necessary for understanding the very nature of Australian society today.

Weaving Together the Political, Economic, and Cultural The political, economic, and cultural forces behind the condemnation of the assisted immigrants were woven together by collective mentalities related to power, status, class, and morality. These mentalities at times pitted the various groups involved in assisted migration (i.e. British policymakers, colonial elite, and the migrants themselves) against each other and, at others, were deployed (most especially by the colonial elite) in contradictory and unprincipled ways. These mentalities and the persistent negative rhetoric become intelligible when viewed as part of a larger effort by the colonial elite to establish themselves at the top of a social and economic (and, eventually, political) hierarchy. The first decade of assisted immigration coincided with—indeed, escalated—elite demands for political power via a representative assembly (Chap. 3) as well as elite resistance to Colonial Office authority. When the Ripon Regulations were first announced, the elite baulked at the principle of land sales (Chap. 2). The practice of squatting was a method of both circumventing and protesting the new policies (Chap. 4). Though a few voices in the colony supported the cessation of transportation, most of the elite strongly opposed this British-instigated move (Chap. 3). Denigrating

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the character of the immigrants who were to replace convict workers and who were brought to the colony by the hated policies was a further method of resistance (Chaps. 2 and 3). That tactic was easily applied to the first appreciable group of assisted immigrants: the single women. Though the British government intended the women to redeem the morality of the convict population, association with convicts proved the women’s unworthiness in the eyes of the colonial elite (Chap. 6). Taken altogether, at the same time the colonial elite asserted claims to the ‘full rights’ of Englishmen, the British government extended its authority over New South Wales, fundamentally changing land policy and attempting to improve the morality of the colony. Caught in the middle of these imperial power struggles were the immigrants themselves. As they engaged in these power struggles, the elite exhibited great defensiveness. These men with their newly obtained and comparatively small fortunes would have been relegated to the middling ranks of British society, at best, which perhaps explains why they perceived any possible slight as a personal insult or direct challenge. They saw the implementation of assisted migration as an attempt by the Colonial Office to use the colony as a ‘dumping ground’ for Britain’s unwanted subjects (Chap. 2), especially the efforts to send single women (Chap. 6). They pointed to this supposed aim of assisted migration to imply that the British elite had failed in their duty to their own poor (Chap. 5) and used the perceived ‘poor quality’ of immigrants to impugn the character of the officials implementing the scheme (Chap. 2). They saw the Molesworth Committee as a deliberate attack against them (Chap. 3) and believed themselves to be the victims of the assisted immigrants’ unreasonable demands for ‘exorbitant’ wages (Chap. 4). They publicly declared the challenges faced by unassisted immigrants—those new arrivals most similar to themselves—to be worthy of concern, but held working-class immigrants to be responsible for their own hardships (Chap. 7). Overall, their precarious status prevented them from welcoming another group—the assisted immigrants— into their community, no matter how badly needed the immigrants’ labour was. They could not be welcomed because the interests of immigrant workers and elite employers were fundamentally at odds, a classic class conflict (Chap. 4). Assisted emigrants undertook the immense risks inherent in relocation because they sought ‘better lives’, whether that meant to them having a small plot of land to work or simply regular employment at fair wages. However, in the transition from forced convict labour to more

8  CONCLUSION 215

expensive free immigrant labour, ‘fair’ wages seemed ‘exorbitant’ to employers. Employers castigated the immigrants for their greed and gradually discredited the practice of settling immigrants on the land as tenants (Chap. 4). They pushed for ever-increasing immigration in order to create a sufficiently large labour pool to drive down wages (Chaps. 2 and 4) and crafted (or attempted to craft) policies that would discipline the workforce (Chap. 4). For their part, the assisted immigrants did not endure their disappointment and denigration quietly. They wrote letters to the local press both to defend themselves and to critique the elite. They organised public meetings, wrote petitions (Chap. 3), and successfully lobbied for a Select Committee to investigate their distress during the economic depression (Chaps. 4 and 5). Though some place the growth of working-class consciousness in Australia in the latter part of the nineteenth century,4 the assisted immigrants in this time thought of themselves as an aggrieved group and acted both individually and collectively to protect their interests. Class is not merely an economic relationship, however; it is also a tool of ‘cultural exclusion’.5 To that end, the elite often couched their critiques of the assisted immigrants in moral terms, constructing morality in very particular and capricious ways. Respectability, manliness, and femininity were inherently classed and therefore unattainable for the working-class immigrants (Chaps. 5 and 6). Not only were these standards classed, but those who did not meet them were also deemed undeserving of sympathy, empathy, or compassion. Any hardships faced by assisted immigrants were attributed to their own shortcomings (Chap. 7). Frustratingly, the elite condemned the immigrants for not meeting a classed standard that they did not actually want the immigrants to attain. Though marriage was seen as a stabilising, moralising force, employers preferred the cheaper single male workers (Chap. 5). Manliness celebrated decisiveness, assertiveness, and independence, all of which were negative qualities in a labourer who was expected to be compliant and deferential (Chaps. 4 and 5). Nevertheless, despite these inconsistencies, the alleged ‘poor character’ of the immigrants was a powerful indictment of the assisted migration scheme overall (Chap. 2).

4  Ken Buckley and Ted Wheelwright, No Paradise for Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia, 1788–1901 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), 11. 5  R.  W. Connell and T.  H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History: Poverty and Progress, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992), 2.

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One further example illustrated the ways in which the political, economic, and cultural wove together. Though assisted immigrants as an undifferentiated group were denigrated by the colonial elite, one subset was particularly reviled: the Irish.6 In some ways, long-standing prejudice against the Irish in both the colony and in England allowed for an intensification of the usual, broad-based complaints against immigrants. For example, since the Irish were likely to be even poorer than the other assisted immigrants, they could be more easily found deficient according to the classed standards of morality (Chap. 5). However, this special contempt for the Irish did not always surface in predictable ways; it might advance or alternatively hinder political and economic arguments. For instance, anti-Irish prejudice facilitated critiques of immigration as a system. At the end of the 1830s, anti-Irish sentiment and dissatisfaction with assisted immigration grew simultaneously, as the proportion of Irish among the assisted immigrants increased at the same time the Colonial Office tightened control over the process of assisted migration (Chap. 2). Dissatisfaction with one reinforced dissatisfaction with the other. The economic implications of anti-Irish sentiment were similarly complex. Even when the need for labour in the colony was purportedly desperate, the elite still complained about the increasing proportion of Irish exactly when one might have expected them to be grateful for whatever labour they could obtain. Some vocal critics of the Irish—those who supported the use of coolie labour—used this prejudice against the Irish opportunistically to argue for a cheaper labour source (Chap. 4). Others (like J. D. Lang), who were more principled in their belief in the inferiority of the Irish, actually worked against the colony’s economic interests. They were torn between the need for labour and their deep-seated animosity towards the Irish, between their economic needs and the marginalisation of a despised group. The thread that connects these mentalities is control. The elite had long sought political, economic, and social dominance, a complicated ambition in a colony that had historically allowed for upward mobility; many of the elite themselves were the beneficiaries of that. Prior to the 1830s, the Exclusives had sought to discredit socially and diminish politically the few emancipists who had attained economic success (Chap. 3). 6  Hamilton took an in-depth look at prejudice towards Irish immigrants in Paula Hamilton, ‘“No Irish Need Apply”: Prejudice as a Factor in the Development of Immigration Policy in New South Wales and Victoria, 1840–1870’ (PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 1979).

8  CONCLUSION 217

With the launch of assisted immigration, the influx of not only free labourers but also men of small capital destabilised the colony’s tenuous hierarchy. Accordingly, the elite lashed out. They wanted to control their own affairs, including immigration. This desire for control explained why efforts by the Colonial Office to improve the system did nothing to lessen colonial complaints (Chap. 2). Furthermore, because the elite financed assisted immigration via their land purchases, they felt entitled to that control as well as to a cheap, obedient workforce (Chap. 4). In order to discipline that workforce and subordinate it socially, the elite used—even constructed—contradictory and impossible social standards, which allowed them to continuously denigrate the assisted immigrants (Chaps. 5, 6, and 7). Elite reactions to the assisted immigrants themselves functioned to reassert the elite’s political, economic, and social supremacy. These overarching themes—power struggles, elite defensiveness, the reinforcement of class boundaries, mutable conceptions of ‘morality’, and the desire for social supremacy—demonstrate the importance of using a multifaceted analytical approach. Viewing assisted immigration from a purely political, economic, or cultural standpoint obscures the high-stakes battle to determine the form of and influence in a young society. When we dissect the underlying rhetoric, we expose the inherent contradictions and impossibilities contained therein, an exposure necessary to discern the ulterior motives of the elite and to move beyond the mere parroting of elite perspectives so common in early migration historiography (Chap. 1). It is an approach that stands to illuminate much about Britain’s other settler colonies, as well. Working-class emigration from the British Isles exploded in the early nineteenth century,7 as the labouring poor—some with government assistance, most without—fled Britain’s shifting economy to try their luck in the pastures of Australia, the woodlands of Canada, and other settler societies. Though each location boasted its own unique set of circumstances, the framework used here—the deconstruction of elite rhetoric across multiple analytical perspectives—can show the ways in which working-class immigrants were incorporated into their new homes and how social hierarchies were constructed.

7  Eric Richards, The Genesis of International Mass Migration: The British Case, 1750–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).

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M. BURKETT

Enduring Effects In Australia, this first wave of sizable, non-convict immigration established patterns that have carried through the next nearly 200  years. Time and again, Australian migration history has centred on the importance of immigration policy, control of migrant selection, immigration’s relationship to the labour force, and the construction of social prejudice and acceptable compassion in response to immigrant groups. This is not to say that every immigration issue today originated in the 1830s nor is it to argue causation; I am not asserting that a resistance to this group of immigrants directly led to prejudice against all future groups of immigrants. However, tracing the long history of Australian immigration reveals the persistence of certain attitudes, policies, and responses even as the circumstances creating those conditions changed. Ensuring adequate immigration was an important political priority in early nineteenth-century New South Wales, and so it remained until the 1970s. Disparate governments across time and party saw immigration as an important tool; the flow of immigrants could be increased or decreased according to the needs of the colony/nation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the various colonies turned to immigration whenever labour was needed, a trend that continued in the twentieth century.8 For federated Australia, immigration addressed an additional concern: the emptiness of the continent. Successive governments—most especially after World War II—feared that Australia’s low population relative to land mass left the country vulnerable to invasion and accordingly attempted to address the imperative of ‘populate or perish’ through immigration.9 It was not until the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that a more negative view towards immigration—a view of immigration causing more problems than it solved—emerged,10 a shift that coincided with the waning of post-­ war prosperity, the advent of neoliberalism, and a growing fear of terrorism. Likewise, control over the class of people brought by specific immigration policies remained a primary concern. Following responsible government, colonies appointed their own agents to select the emigrants, limiting the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission’s role to chartering ships. 8  For longitudinal overviews of Australian migration, see Eric Richards, Destination Australia: Migration to Australia since 1901 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008); James Jupp, Immigration, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998). 9  Jupp, Immigration, chap. 7. 10  Richards, Destination Australia, chap. 11.

8  CONCLUSION 219

By 1869, the CLEC had been cut out of the process entirely, a realisation of a goal of the 1830s.11 But even under complete colonial control, complaints about ‘quality’ did not entirely abate. Calls for improved selection persisted, both throughout the late nineteenth century and even after World War II.12 The clearest demonstration of the importance placed on immigration control was, of course, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, the first major piece of legislation passed by the new Commonwealth and the cornerstone of the group of acts that would come to be known as the ‘White Australia policy’.13 Even though White Australia died a slow, gradual death, the objective of control still guides national immigration policy today with annual targets set for skilled, family, and humanitarian streams.14 Unauthorised arrivals by boat undermine that control and accordingly have been subjected to the punitive policy of offshore detention.15 The primacy of control was famously expressed by then prime minister John Howard in a 2001 campaign speech, when he declared, ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.16 The desire for control of immigration has almost always been linked to a desire to control the labour force,17 though notions of the ideal 11  Fred H.  Hitchins, The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931), 204–5. 12  For a discussion of selection complaints in 1870s Queensland, see Helen R. Woolcock, Rights of Passage: Emigration to Australia in the Nineteenth Century (London: Tavistock Publications, 1986), 290–5. For Australian requests that the British government conduct more extensive screening of the post-war ‘ten-pound Poms’, see Mark Finnane and Andy Kaladelfos, ‘British Migrants, Criminality and Deportation: Shaping the Australian Post-War Approach’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45, no. 2 (2017): 339–63. 13  Richards, Destination Australia, 31; Jupp, Immigration, 73. 14  Richards, Destination Australia, 275. 15  Peter Mares, Borderline: Australia’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa, 2nd ed. (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002). 16  John Howard, ‘Speech Delivered on October 28, 2001’, Australian Federal Election Speeches, https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/2001-john-howard (accessed 7 June 2018). A sentiment echoed over a decade later by then prime minister Tony Abbott: ‘The essential point is, this is our country and we determine who comes here’. Bianca Hall and Judith Ireland, ‘Tony Abbott Evokes John Howard in Slamming Doors on Asylum Seekers’, Herald, 15 August 2013, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/ tony-abbott-evokes-john-howard-in-slamming-doors-on-asylum-seekers-20130815-2rzzy. html (accessed 7 February 2019). 17  As Jupp pointed out, for 200 years of Australian history, the only time mass immigration was suspended was when it was felt there were not enough jobs. Jupp, Immigration, 152.

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composition of the labour force were contested and shifted over time. From the employer point of the view, the aim has primarily been a cheap, pliable workforce. In order to obtain exploitable labour, some employers argued for ‘coolie’ labour throughout the 1840s (Chap. 4) and eventually expanded their sights to include Pacific Islanders.18 In the 1860s, around 62,000 Pacific Islanders—so-called kanakas—worked in near-slavery conditions in the tropics.19 Despite these examples, racial imperatives and imperial ties ensured that British (or at least European) immigration was preferred,20 but even among this preferred group, complaints about the ‘poor quality’ of labour persisted. The late nineteenth-century single women brought to Australia to address the once again worsening sex imbalance (after the gold rushes led to an influx of single men) were said to lack work experience, be ‘less tractable, [and] less deferential’ than employers liked, change work positions too frequently, and be unwilling to go to rural locations.21 British soldiers who settled on the land in between the world wars were derided for their lack of farm experience and were allegedly of ‘poor quality’.22 European immigrants displaced by World War II faced complaints, too, for breaking work contracts and exhibiting ‘idleness’.23 All of this language mirrored complaints made about the assisted immigrants of the 1830s. The persistence of and continuity in employers’ critiques of immigrant labour make it harder to accept unreservedly the criticisms of any particular group. Given the importance placed on a cheap, exploitable labour force, working-class resistance to ongoing immigration was perhaps unavoidable, another recurrent trend that began in the first decade of assisted immigration. In the midst of the economic depression of the early 1840s, the working classes—many of whom were assisted immigrants 18  Charles A.  Price, The Great White Walls Are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia, 1836–1888 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974), 40–5. 19   Tracey Banivanua Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007). 20  Matthew Jordan, ‘Rewriting Australia’s Racist Past: How Historians (Mis)Interpret the “White Australia” Policy’, History Compass 3, no. 1 (2005): 1–32; Jupp, Immigration, chaps. 2 and 6. 21  Janice Gothard, Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (Carlton South, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 40, 47, 187. 22  Richards, Destination Australia, 98, 101. 23  Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017), 105.

8  CONCLUSION 221

themselves—held a public meeting against the Debenture Bill (which would have funded additional immigration) and sent a petition to the Colonial Office opposing the introduction of coolie workers.24 In the late nineteenth century, trade unions opposed kanaka and other forms of non-­ white labour and supported colonial legislation that served as the foundation for the White Australia policy.25 The Australian Labor Party was strongly against immigration until its concerns over wages and working conditions were superseded by a booming post-war economy and the ‘populate or perish’ mindset.26 In the battles between labour and capital, the latest batch of immigrants—whoever they were—was consistently stuck in the middle. Though the labour movement’s resistance to immigration ostensibly aimed to protect conditions for (white) workers, the resistance was also inherently racist.27 In addition to class, race was another—quite powerful—means through which social prejudice was constructed, another tool the elite could use to ‘other’ particular groups. As early as the 1830s, employers held the racist belief that non-white labourers—be they coolies or, later, kanakas—were more exploitable (Chap. 4). Though historians debate the moment when overt racism became a powerful force,28 that resistance to immigration became increasingly racialised over time is unmistakable. In the end, employers’ thirst for racial exploitation succumbed to the racial exclusion of the White Australia policy. The racism inherent in White Australia was cloaked behind the language of ‘homogeneity’, the belief that only a homogenous society could achieve a national unity that, in turn, was needed for national prosperity.29 This continued a long tradition of claiming that particular immigrant groups threatened stability. The Chinese of the mid-nineteenth century were said to be too culturally different to assimilate.30 Similarly, the elite of the 1830s assumed 24  Respectively, ‘Meeting of the Operatives’, The Australian, 23 December 1841, 2; Stanley to Gipps, 4 August 1843, Despatches to the Governor, A1291 CY 1808, ML. 25  Jupp, Immigration, 72. 26   Carolyn Holbrook, ‘The Transformation of Labor Party Immigration Policy, 1901–1945’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 4 (2016): 403–17. 27  Richards, Destination Australia, 35–6; Jupp, Immigration, 79–80. 28  Jordan provided an overview of the debates in Jordan, ‘Rewriting Australia’s Racist Past’, 1–32. 29  Phil Griffiths, ‘The “Necessity” of a Socially Homogenous Population: The Ruling Class Embraces Racial Exclusion’, Labour History, no. 108 (May 2015): 123–44. 30  Price, The Great White Walls Are Built, chap. 5.

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Irish Catholics would subvert the much desired representative institutions because Catholics were thought to be completely controlled by their priests (Chap. 3). The perceived threats posed by such groups necessitated their marginalisation. Though the groups ‘othered’ and the justifications for that ‘othering’ have shifted over time, a long view of immigration history brings into sharp relief the degree to which Australia has sought to control who would be accepted into its society via constructed prejudices. Another powerful means of constructing social difference/acceptance was the dissemination of compassion, which could be withheld selectively and punitively. In the early days of assisted immigration, the hardships experienced by arriving labourers were largely ignored (Chap. 7). Despite their status as the ‘most desirable’ immigrants, Britons arriving after World War II faced backlash by the government and the press if they dared complain about their living or working conditions.31 In the 1970s, language used by the press and some politicians painted Vietnamese refugees who arrived by boat—people fleeing a war in which Australia was a ­participant— as ‘illegitimate’, ‘queue jumpers’, criminals, and vectors of disease.32 These prejudicial attitudes against so-called boat people catalysed the 2001 establishment of the ‘Pacific Solution’, the practice of sending asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by sea to offshore detention centres.33 This ongoing policy has drawn much criticism from the international community and requires impressive rhetorical gymnastics by the government and the press to legitimise it.34 Key to that legitimisation is the categorisation of boat people as lawbreakers or not genuine asylum seekers; in other words, their hardships are dismissed in order to justify the denial of compassion and its attendant moral obligation to become an

31  Andrew Hassam, ‘From Heroes to Whingers: Changing Attitudes to British Migrants, 1947 to 1977’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 1 (2005): 79–93. 32  Michelle Peterie, ‘“These Few Small Boats”: Representations of Asylum Seekers During Australia’s 1977 and 2001 Elections’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 4 (2016): 433–47; Rachel Stevens, ‘Political Debates on Asylum Seekers During the Fraser Government, 1977–1982’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 58, no. 4 (2012): 526–41. 33  Mares, Borderline. 34  Michelle Peterie, ‘Docility and Desert: Government Discourses of Compassion in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Debate’, Journal of Sociology 53, no. 2 (2017): 351–66; Sally Muytjens and Matthew Ball, ‘Neutralising Punitive Asylum Seeker Policies: An Analysis of Australian News Media During the 2013 Federal Election Campaign’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 4 (2016): 448–63.

8  CONCLUSION 223

ameliorative actor,35 in this case, the United Nations-mandated obligation to provide a safe haven for refugees. Those who oppose the Pacific Solution often structure their critiques of offshore detention by appealing to a higher moral standard supposedly once possessed by Australian society but since lost. Historian Francesco Ricatti correctly characterises that ‘lost morality’ as a myth,36 a claim bolstered by Chap. 7’s revelations of the extent to which the hardships of the first assisted immigrants were ignored, overlooked, or dismissed. As the long history of Australian immigration demonstrates, compassion has repeatedly been withheld by the dominant social and/or political classes. Denial of compassion—as opposed to a mythologised morality—has more often been the norm. Though the preceding discussion has been by no means exhaustive, my aim of this quick sketch has been to highlight recurring themes in Australian immigration history. The great political importance placed on immigration policy, the efforts to control both the labour force and who would be allowed to enter the colonies/country, and the selective inclusion/exclusion of immigrant groups justified by arbitrary cultural constructions were all present at this earliest moment of (unforced) mass immigration. Moreover, at the same time government and employers have long placed great importance on immigration, immigrants themselves have been repeatedly denigrated as lazy, immoral, unskilled, indolent, too different, unworthy, not grateful enough, and even dangerous (to democracy, rights obtained by the labour movement, national security, etc.). Perhaps the most persistent pattern established by the assisted immigration of the 1830s and early 1840s was a deep-seated hostility towards immigrants. * * * This uneasy paradox—the desire for immigration, but not immigrants— has problematic implications for the ways in which Australia tends to view itself. Today, the remembrance of early nineteenth-century immigrants as pioneering adventurers and the exaltation of the multicultural nation both belie this uncomfortable truth. When we go back to the very beginnings 35  To return to Berlant’s definition discussed in Chap. 7. Lauren Berlant, Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1. 36  Francesco Ricatti, ‘A Country Once Great? Asylum Seekers, Historical Imagination, and the Moral Privilege of Whiteness’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 4 (2016): 478–93.

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of mass emigration to Australia, we see familiar themes: immigration as a theatre of political battles, preoccupation with immigration’s effects on the labour force, and constructed boundaries of social inclusion and hierarchies of belonging. These centuries-old orientations towards immigration cannot be explained simply as deriving from national security issues or from the need to protect Australian jobs, the justifications so often made today. Nor can they be fully explained by simply claiming Australia is an inherently racist nation (though that may very well be a valid claim to make),37 as race—though an important tool—has not been the only tool used to marginalise particular groups. Under multiculturalism, the conception of who might be accepted socially has expanded considerably; however, Australia still deems some immigrants desirable and others not. As we have seen throughout this book, no one factor is adequate to explain selective ‘othering’. Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants has deconstructed the motivations behind the ‘othering’ of one immigrant group, and the flourishing and diversified work of other Australian migration historians is continuously adding to our knowledge of other, later groups (Chap. 1). The methodology employed here—of connecting the political, economic, and cultural factors at play—holds promise for future research. I have argued that the overarching force behind the various modes of denigration was control or, to put it in another way, power. Understanding the lengths to which hegemonic groups have gone to obtain that control/power is vital to understanding social dynamics in society, and immigration history provides one lens through which those lengths can be revealed. From the early nineteenth century on, immigration has been deemed acceptable/ necessary/desirable so long as it served the needs of those who held the political, economic, and social power. But once the abstract rhetoric about immigration transformed into living, breathing immigrants—once those people had expectations of their own, once they struggled and needed support, and once they dared question the hegemonic group—the immigrants were shunned socially and deemed a potential threat politically all while they continued to be exploited economically. This pattern runs counter to Australia’s conception of itself as an egalitarian nation. Despite individual success stories (e.g. Henry Parkes), the working-class immigrants of the 1830s—and many other immigrant groups since then—were collectively not afforded a ‘fair go’, but were nevertheless denigrated for  Ibid.; Jordan, ‘Rewriting Australia’s Racist Past’.

37

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their lack of ‘success’. (Though perhaps this harsh reality helps explain the persistence of a longed-for, yet unrealised national myth.) In order to identify and address the gap between societal ideal and reality, the full extent of this long history of resistance to immigrants needs to be restored to the public consciousness, a goal of this book. While a partial awareness of a problematic immigration history does exist, it is too easy to reduce that past to one shameful policy—White Australia—that has since been denounced.38 Such rationalisations of the past and creative justifications of ongoing controversial policies (i.e. offshore detention) allow the Australian public to avoid difficult comparisons of what their cultural values have been versus what they think they are. The failure to address its complete immigration history allows Australian society to avoid seeing and confronting a long-standing pattern: hostility towards immigrants. If Australia truly is the ‘most successful multicultural nation in the world’, as former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull so declared,39 that distinction has been achieved in spite of an entrenched tradition of denigrating the very people who make it both multicultural and economically successful, a tradition extending back to the first significant group of free, working-­ class immigrants to arrive at its shores.

38  Although not by all. In August 2018, Queensland senator Fraser Anning proposed a plebiscite to revive the White Australia policy. The bill was defeated. ‘Senators Have Shot Down a Proposed Plebiscite on Ending Non-White Immigration’, SBS News, 19 October 2018, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/senate-sinks-plebiscite-calling-for-return-to-whiteaustralia-policy (accessed 22 October 2018). 39  Michael Gordon and Nicole Hasham, ‘Multicultural Success at Risk under Labor: Malcolm Turnbull’, Herald, 20 May 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/multicultural-success-at-risk-under-labor-turnbull-20160519-goz9p1. html (accessed 15 August 2017).

 Appendix: Number of Immigrants Arrived in New South Wales by Year

Year Assisted Total 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 Total

792 1253 484 545 743 2360 6115 8339 6675 18,996 5354 51,656

Unassisted Men

140 177 52 33 63 664 1692 2862 2548 7124 2068 17,423

Women

455 728 299 426 564 811 1673 2779 2761 7692 2180 20,368

Children Total

Men

Women

Children

564 309 457 1214 1432 1080 883

306 166 185 679 661 519 518

113 70 98 251 418 297 218

145 73 174 284 353 264 147

1478 2952 1840 3677

851

362

265

2061

1042

574

(2869)

(2279)

197 348 133 86 116 885 2750 2698 1366 4180 1106 13,865

(15,886) (5946)

Grand total

Source

564 309 457 2006 2685 1564 1428 (743) (2360) 7593 11,291 8515 22,673 (5354) (67,542)

a a a a a a a b b b, c b, d b, d b, d b

(Total based on incomplete data) Notes: Data includes arrivals to Sydney and, from 1839, Port Phillip. I have drawn this data from returns compiled by agents of the colonial government. This is not without its challenges. Data on unassisted immigrants is spotty. At times in these reports, data is presented not by year, but rather by a nonstandard period of time (1 January 1838 to 30 September 1839, for example). Here, I have used only reports reporting data by year. At other times, the reports are unclear as to whether the data indicates intended assisted migrants or only migrants for whom bounties were eventually granted. Finally, cumulative reports from different years might contain different numbers. For example, the 1842 Committee on Immigration

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7

227

228 

Appendix: Number of Immigrants Arrived in New South Wales by Year

report (the source used here for 1836–1842) has slightly different numbers than those for the years 1832–1835 included above. For all of these reasons, the data given here are intended to provide a sense of general immigration trends rather than a fully accurate account a Alexander McLeay, ‘Return of Free Persons Who Have Arrived in New South Wales from the 1st of January, 1829, to the 31st of December, 1835; Distinguishing Those Who Have Received Assistance Under the Arrangements Sanctioned by His Majesty’s Government for the Promotion of Emigration from Those for Whom No Advance Has Been Paid’, SANSW: Colonial Secretary, NRS5258 [4/4705], Reports by Various Select Committees on Immigration Policy with Original Instructions of First Immigration Agent, 1834–1838

New South Wales Legislative Council, Immigration. 1842. Report from the Committee on Immigration, with the Appendix and Minutes of Evidence (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), enclosure to Gipps to Stanley, 20 September 1842, Governor’s Despatches, A1229 CY 662, ML, appendix H. d. (2.) b

c Unassisted number from New South Wales Legislative Council, Emigration: Appendix to Reports and Correspondence Respecting Emigration: Appendix to the Report of a Committee of Council on New South Wales, 1839), Q325.1901/4, ML, appendix A

Unassisted number from New South Wales Legislative Council, Report on Immigration for the Year 1841; by Francis L. S. Merewether, Esq., Agent for Immigration. With an Appendix (Sydney: William John Row, 1842), DSM/Q325.91/Pa1, ML, appendices F and G d

Newspapers

Full name

In text and footnotes as

Australasian Chronicle

Chronicle

The Australian

The Australian

Colonial Observer

Observer

The Colonist

The Colonist

Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser

Gazette

Sydney Herald Sydney Morning Herald (from July 1842)

Herald

Sydney Monitor Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser (from October 1838)

Monitor

All newspapers accessed via: National Library of Australia. ‘Trove’. https://trove.nla.gov.au

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7

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Index1

A Aberdeen, Earl (George Hamilton-­ Gordon), 133 Aboriginal people, 7–8, 105, 112, 202 Advertisements, 21, 116, 140, 164, 165 Alfred (bounty ship), 188 American Revolution, 71 Appearance/dress, 139, 195 Argyle (bounty ship), 188 Assignment, convict, 76, 94, 108 Assisted migrants agency, 19, 174 Baker, Sophia, 106n70 Barr, Robert, 188 Betts, George, 200 Birkby, Thomas, 161n23, 195, 200, 207 Blakeley, Letilia, 197 Bremer, Henry, 150

compared to convicts, 75, 80, 102, 137, 157, 165, 166, 172, 181, 190 Crosby, William, 150 Dawson, John, 161n23 demographic profile, 17, 19 destitution on arrival, 195 disappointments of, 124, 203–204 Gibson, Isabella, 179, 204 Jones, William (father and son), 183–185 Kellabar, Marie, 161n26 Kershaw, George, 192 McGarvie, Thomas, 199 McKinnon, Donald, 188, 192, 195 Mehan, John, 189 motivations and aspirations, 20, 116–120, 141, 165, 214 Parkes, Clarinda, 1–3 Parkes, Henry, 1–3, 122, 196, 224

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Burkett, Opposing Australia’s First Assisted Immigrants, 1832–42, Palgrave Studies in Migration History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84920-7

247

248 

INDEX

Assisted migrants (cont.) perceived desire for wealth, 140, 205 perceived unreasonable wage expectations of, 108, 111, 119, 148, 151, 153, 198, 206, 214, 215 perceived unwillingness of ‘virtuous’ to migrate, 75, 144, 162 Sellers, Elizabeth, 203 Smith, Edward, 104, 207 Smith, James, 117 Smith, Sarah, 207 Taylor, David, 149n105 Teague, Mary, 196 as tenants, 100–102, 117 Thornton, Mary, 161n27 Turnbull, John, 197 voices in primary sources, 25 Assisted migration Australian reliance on, 9 defined, 2 elite calls for more, 39, 78, 81, 89, 94, 95, 111, 122, 124, 185, 206, 208, 215, 221 lack of support on arrival, 147, 196–198 Assisted passage criteria to receive, 19, 34, 43, 44 process to obtain, 15, 195 repayment of, 133–134 Atkinson, James, 32 Australasian Chronicle, 84 Australian Agricultural Company (AAC), 199 Australian Immigration Association, 81 Australian Labor Party, 92, 221 Australian Land Sales Act, 52n109 Australian Patriotic Association, 84n101

B Backhouse, James, 140 Baker, Sophia (assisted immigrant), 106n70 Barr, Robert (assisted immigrant), 188 Bateman, Henry, 200 Benefit societies, 110, 151 Benevolent Society, 147, 151, 196 Berlant, Lauren (cultural studies scholar), 186, 208 Betts, George (assisted immigrant), 200 Birkby, Thomas (assisted immigrant), 161n23, 195, 200, 207 Blakeley, Letilia (assisted immigrant), 197 Bounty system abuses in, 52, 54 defined, 40 denials of bounty, 56 expansion of, 53–58 perceived attacks on, 52, 58, 61 perceived benefits of, 43, 48, 49, 56 relaunch of (1844), 58 suspension of, 58 Bourke, Governor Richard, 34, 40–41, 97, 133, 145 Bremer, Henry (assisted immigrant), 150 British immigrants (20th century), 220, 222 Buller, Charles, 72 Bushrangers, 202 Bussorah Merchant (single female migrant ship), 160 Butlin, Noel (historian), 94 C Cabin passengers (on emigrant ships), 49, 187, 189, 191–192, 194, 195, 197 Callaghan, Thomas, 12n39

 INDEX 

Campbell, Charles, 117 Canada, emigration to, 50, 217 Canton (single female migrant ship), 171, 194 Carter and Bonus (shipping firm), 45n74, 54 Charity, attitudes towards, 146–148, 159, 196 Chile, emigration to, 204n87 China (bounty ship), 193 Chinese immigrants, 221 Chisholm, Caroline, 105, 136, 147, 168, 178, 201 Clarke, Rev. W. B., 192 Clyde (bounty ship), 192 Cochrane, Peter (historian), 71 Colonial elite defined, 10–13 as paternalists, 99 status in Britain, 11, 30, 89, 130, 142, 214 transformation into capitalist class, 92, 99 Colonial independence, calls for, 71 Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (CLEC) duties, 50, 218 policy changes made, 51–53 resistance to, 50, 71 role in ending government ship system, 54 role in suspending and relaunching bounty system, 58 Colonial Office attempts to address colonial concerns, 18, 30, 35, 37, 41, 48, 60, 217 intentions/priorities of, 35, 42, 80, 81, 131, 155, 157, 163, 168, 170, 171, 214 policy decisions by, 2, 7, 16, 39, 42, 50, 58, 59, 83, 88, 93, 94, 216

249

resistance to/complaints about, 30, 36, 38, 39, 47, 52, 58, 61, 69–71, 108, 213, 214 stance on coolies, 113 stance on indentures, 105 stance on representative government, 70 Columbine (bounty ship), 192 Commissioners for Emigration, 33 Committees on Immigration, 43 1835, 40, 78, 103, 170, 177 1837, 113, 136 1838, 53, 190 1839, 9, 45, 49, 53 1840, 98, 145 1841, 45, 81, 94, 105, 112, 113, 140, 205 1842, 55 Compassion, 186, 194–196, 199, 201, 207–209, 215, 222 Convicts defence of, 75, 79, 81, 89 female, 165, 167, 172, 176, 182, 196 as husbands, 169 impact on wages, 108 methods to control, 103, 168 perceived benefits of over assisted immigrants, 75, 102, 104, 105, 107, 168 perceived immorality of, 78, 80, 89, 138, 165, 169, 171, 176, 182, 214 Convict transportation opposition in Britain, 64, 72 opposition in NSW, 74 relationship to assisted migration, 72, 73, 75, 76, 81 relationship to representative government, 64, 70, 72, 74 relationship to unassisted migration, 74

250 

INDEX

Convicts (cont.) resumption of, 65, 88 support for in NSW, 72–76, 79, 213 suspension of, 64, 76 Coolies from India, 112–114, 216, 221 perceived benefits of over assisted immigrants, 114 Cooper, Robert, 13 Crosby, William (assisted immigrant), 150 Crossing the line, 188

Emancipists (ex-convicts), 13, 66, 68–70, 81, 84, 86, 93, 96, 100, 128, 133, 135, 169, 216 Emancipists (political faction), 66–68, 81, 82 Empathy, 186, 189, 191, 193–195, 198, 199, 207, 208, 215 Employers, complaints about, 119, 122, 200–201 Enclosure (in England), 116 Erickson, Charlotte (historian), 19 Exclusives, 66, 68, 69, 81, 82, 216 Executive Council of NSW, 63

D Damousi, Joy (historian), 165 Darling, Eliza, 163n32 Darling, Governor Ralph, 7, 131 Darvall, Eliza, 188, 191 David Scott (single female migrant ship), 140, 167, 183 Davies, Miss, 194 Dawson, John (assisted immigrant), 161n23 Debenture Bill, 221 Displaced people (World War II), 220 Domestic servants, 167, 172 Doust, Janet (historian), 113 Driscoll, David, 150 Duchess of Northumberland (single female migrant ship), 174, 189

F Female Factory, 110, 168, 172 Fitzpatrick, David (historian), 203 Frontier violence, 105, 202

E Earl Grey (bounty ship), 189, 192, 197 Economic depression (1840s), 57, 82, 88, 120–123, 149–152, 203–206, 215, 220 Egalitarianism, 224 Elliot, T. Frederick, 14, 42, 44, 48, 51, 55

G Gatenby, Captain, 188 Gender classed standard (see Separate spheres ideal) relationship to migration, 159, 162, 166, 181 relationship to morality, 36, 157, 158, 181, 182 standard for men (see Manliness) Gibson, Isabella (assisted immigrant), 179, 204 Gipps, Governor George, 49, 53, 54, 57, 77, 121, 135 Glenelg, Baron (Charles Grant), 41, 51, 76, 101, 133 Goderich, Viscount (F. J. Robinson), 2, 7, 29, 31, 33, 35, 39, 72, 155 Government ship system, 42 calls to resume, 56 complaints about, 42–50 end of, 54, 60

 INDEX 

251

Gratitude, 137, 204 Grey, Earl (Henry George Grey), 88 Grey, Sir George, 97

prejudice against, 46, 86, 114, 137, 216, 222 Irving, Terry (historian), 65, 84, 151

H Haines, Robin (historian), 19, 20 Hall, E. S., 137 Hamilton, Hugh, 12 Hammerton, A. James (historian), 15 Harling, Philip (historian), 65 Highland clearances, 116 Highlanders of the Midlothian, 101 Hirst, John (historian), 68, 90, 152 Historiography, 14–21, 64–66, 91, 211 revisionist (1990s-2000s), 15–20, 128, 157, 185 History of emotions, 185, 208 Homelessness, 172, 197 Hooper, George, 104 Howard, John, 219 Humanitarianism (in Britain), 72 Hyde Park Barracks, 110

J Jacques, William, 98 Jamison, Sir John, 10, 32 John Barry (government ship), 136, 190, 207 Jones, Richard, 51 Jones, William (father and son, assisted immigrants), 183–185

I Immigrants Barracks, 48, 147, 148, 197 Immigrants Home, 147 Immigration (post-1840s), 218–223 Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, 22, 219, 221, 225 Indenture, 105 Indigenous peoples, see Aboriginal people Industrialisation (in Britain), 4, 21 Insolence, 136, 188, 190, 209 Interior (of the colony), immigrant aversion to, 104, 201–202 Irish immigrants, 203 numbers, 17, 46, 56, 115, 216

K Kanakas, see Pacific Islanders Kellabar, Marie (assisted immigrant), 161n26 Kentish, Nathaniel, 67 Kershaw, George (assisted immigrant), 192 King, Phillip Parker, 103 King, Steven (historian), 21 L La Trobe, Charles, 111 Labour colonial need for, 31, 35, 64, 94, 95, 111 colonial need for surplus of, 111, 115, 176 commodification of, 91, 116, 208 cost of, 107–111, 121 efforts to increase (post-1840s), 219 entitlement to, 95, 98, 217 transition from forced to free, 65, 93, 102, 107, 114, 115, 214 written employment agreements, 199

252 

INDEX

Labourers Aboriginal, 112 charges brought against, 106, 173, 199, 209 complaints about assisted immigrants as, 75, 104–106, 167, 199–202 convict, 79, 94, 102–105, 107, 108, 167, 183 coolies (see Coolies from India) resistance to immigration, 220 Ladies Committee, 147, 196 Lady Macnaghten (migrant ship), 41, 177 Land and immigration policies, see Ripon Regulations Land fund accusations of Britain’s desire to steal, 52, 69, 71 complaints about use of, 35, 38 desire to use for coolies, 112 Land grants, 6n21 beneficiaries of, 10, 82, 93 calls to reinstate, 132 as inducement to emigration, 2, 32, 33, 132 in Wakefield’s theories, 6 Land sales auctions, 51, 98, 198 decline in, 57 increase in minimum price, 51, 83, 98, 121 process for, 96 relationship to pastoralism, 95 in Wakefield’s theories, 6 Land speculation, 82, 83, 87, 97, 121, 198 Lang, Rev. John Dunmore, 8, 56, 67, 74, 77, 86, 101, 132, 134, 137, 144, 162, 216 Lawson, William, 105, 202

Layton (single female migrant ship), 160, 179, 197, 202 Lean, Lt James, 178 Legislative Council of NSW, 63 resolutions passed by, 73, 77, 79, 90, 205 role in resumption of transportation, 88 shift to partially elected council, 87 Letter from Sydney, A, 6, 116 London Emigration Committee, 36, 37, 160, 164, 177 Lord, Simeon, 13 Lunn, Dr (surgeon), 191 Lynch, Mr, 85 M Macarthur, James, 74, 77, 136n36 Macarthur, John, 10, 33 Macarthur family, 82 Macdermott, Henry, 85 Macintyre, Stuart (historian), 211 Mackay, John, 113 Macmillan, David (historian), 15 Macqueen, Thomas Potter, 77, 108 Madgwick, R. B. (historian), 14 Magistrates, 68, 103 Manliness, 130, 137, 138, 141, 152, 153, 215 defined, 129 relationship to migration, 135 Manning, Arthur, 189, 191, 192, 194, 197 Marriage employer preference for single workers, 139, 215 perceived benefits of, 138, 169 single female migrant expectations of, 140 Marshall, John, 37, 45, 49, 54 Marx, Karl, 118

 INDEX 

Masters and Servants Act, proposed (1840), 106 Maxwell, James, 12, 97 McDonald, John (economist), 47 McGarvie, Thomas (assisted immigrant), 199 McKenzie, Kirsten (historian), 128 McKinnon, Donald (assisted immigrant), 188, 192, 195 McLeay, Alexander, 32, 39 McMichael, Philip (historian), 94 Mehan, John (assisted immigrant), 189 Men of small capital, see Unassisted immigrants Merewether, Francis, 55, 56 Migrant/emigrant/immigrant terminology, 3n7 Migration museums, 211 Minerva (bounty ship), 136 Molesworth, Sir William, 64 Molesworth Report, see Select Committee on Transportation Morality conflated with wealth, 132, 135, 149, 152 gender difference in, 158, 181 improvement of, 35, 80, 89, 157, 168–170, 214 link to class, 26, 127–154, 157, 181–182, 216 link to marriage, 138, 168 in Molesworth Report, 77–80, 89 national myth of, 223 possibility of redemption, 163–164, 169, 170 rhetorical use of, 10, 33, 36, 60, 61, 88, 89, 178, 215 Morris, John, 194 Mudie, James, 74, 77 Multiculturalism, 22, 224, 225 Mutual Protection Association, 151

253

N New Poor Law, see Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) New South Wales, division of into three districts, 51 Nicholas, Stephen (historian), 108 Nowlan, Timothy, 183–185, 206 O Offshore detention, 219, 222, 225 Old settlers, 10, 11, 82, 92, 94, 97, 130 Operatives, 67, 84 P Pacific Islanders, 220, 221 Pacific Solution, see Offshore detention Parkes, Clarinda (assisted immigrant), 1–3 Parkes, Henry (assisted immigrant), 1–3, 122, 196, 224 Pastoralism, 72, 93 Pastoralists, 10, 82, 111 Paternalism, 92, 99–101, 136, 152 defined, 99, 130 Pauper immigration, 31 resistance to, 32, 131 welcomed by elite, 31, 142 Pedwell, Carolyn (cultural studies scholar), 186, 208 Petitions about use of the land fund, 39 against the Ripon Regulations, 33 for representative government, 85 supporting transportation, 73, 77 working-class, 84, 107, 150, 221 Pinnock, James Denham, 114, 145, 148n102 Poop deck, 191

254 

INDEX

Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), 143–144 Poor laws in England, 142 lack of in NSW, 145 Populate or perish, 22, 218, 221 Port Phillip, 51 Poverty in Britain, 21, 142–144 condemnation of, 20, 115, 139, 141–153 perceived absence of in NSW, 119, 145, 153 Pride, 131, 136, 139 Pritchard, Mr, 123 Promotional literature, see Advertisements Prostitution, 171–176 need for, 175 Protection (of female migrants), 159, 178, 179 Public memory, 22, 211, 225 Q Quarantine, 190, 207 R Race, 221, 224 Rankin, George, 199 Rawson, Samuel, 12n39, 97, 121 Red Rover (single female migrant ship), 34, 160, 169, 171, 173, 180 Refuge for the Destitute, 160, 164 Representative government calls for, 68–72, 213 as inducement to unassisted emigration, 69, 70 relationship to assisted migration, 68 views of in 1820s, 68

Respectability defined, 129 link to marriage, 138, 168 link to sexuality, 174, 176 link to status, 26, 135, 152, 171 rhetorical use of, 40, 138, 159 as standard for assisted immigrants, 26, 130, 135, 139, 141, 153, 174, 215 Respectable immigration, see Unassisted immigrants Responsible government defined, 64n1 granting of, 88 Ricatti, Francesco (historian), 223 Richards, Eric (historian), 47 Ripon Regulations explained, 2, 7 impact on Aboriginal people, 8 resistance to, 29, 31–33, 40, 71, 97, 131, 213 unintended consequences of, 98 Robert Benn (bounty ship), 188 Roberts, David (historian), 151 Robinson, James, 12 Rosenwein, Barbara (historian), 186 Rossi, Captain, 173 Roxburgh Castle (bounty ship), 192 Rubinstein, Bill (historian), 11, 90 Rushen, Elizabeth (historian), 19 Russell, Penny (historian), 13, 128 S Scott, Robert, 105, 170 Seduction of assisted migrant wives, 76, 193 of single female migrants, 161, 163, 193 Select Committee on Distressed Labourers, NSW (1843), 105, 121, 122, 149–151, 215

 INDEX 

Select Committee on Emigration (1826–1827), 5, 18, 31 Select Committee on the Disposal of Land (1836), 50 Select Committee on Transportation (1837-38), 64, 76, 77 colonial elite response to, 77–81, 214 Selection (of land), 119 Selection of emigrants, 30, 36–38, 218 efforts to improve, 37, 46 Sellers, Elizabeth (assisted immigrant), 203 Separate spheres ideal, 158, 160, 169, 170, 173, 174, 181, 215 Sex imbalance in NSW, 34, 35, 56, 155, 165, 170, 172, 174, 176 Sexuality as commodity, 175 gender difference in, 176 homosexual practices, 176 respectable standard of, 176 working-class, 160, 174 Shepherds, 45, 79, 111, 201, 202 Shovelling out the paupers, 18–20, 31, 211 Shultz, Robert (historian), 14, 43 Simpson, Mr, 200 Single female migrants, 155–182 arrival, 166 compared to convicts, 165, 166, 172, 176, 181 as domestic servants, 66, 167, 170 as moralising agents, 168–170, 179, 181 perceived immorality of, 35, 36, 157, 162, 170, 171, 178, 179 resistance to gender norms, 179 as wives, 169–170 Single female migration, 17, 34–36, 155–182 accommodation on arrival, 166, 197

255

behaviour on board ships, 37, 160, 181, 193 calls to end, 40, 162, 177 end of, 41, 60, 177–178 on government and bounty ships, 178 in historiography, 15, 156 lack of support on arrival, 147, 196 post-1840s, 180, 220 process for, 133, 166 Smith, Edward (assisted immigrant), 104, 207 Smith, James (assisted immigrant), 117 Smith, Sarah (assisted immigrant), 207 Social hierarchy in NSW, 12, 26, 30, 89–90, 94, 128, 171, 208–209, 213, 216, 224 South Australia, 50, 51, 79 Spark, A. B., 11 Speenhamland system, 142 Squatters, 67, 81, 83, 87, 93, 96, 100, 101, 121, 122, 124, 125 Squatting, 12, 83, 95, 97, 213 licenses, 97, 125 relationship to land fund, 98 relationship to tenantry, 100 Stirling Castle (pilot migrant ship), 134, 137 Stuart, James (surgeon), 136 Suicide, 203 Sullivan, J. (surgeon), 190 Summers, Anne (journalist, historian), 171 Surgeons (on emigrant ships), 19, 37, 41, 55, 189–191, 194 Sutherland, Benjamin, 122, 149, 151, 152 Sympathy, 145, 146, 150, 151, 186, 191–195, 198, 199, 204, 206–208, 211, 215

256 

INDEX

T Taylor, David (assisted immigrant), 149n105 Teague, Mary (assisted immigrant), 196 Tenantry, 99–102, 117, 118, 215 Thomson, David (surgeon), 136 Thornton, Mary (assisted immigrant), 161n27 Ticket of leave, 103 Torrens, Robert, 51 Tourle, Thomas, 12, 191, 201, 206 Treadmill, 107, 184, 200 Turnbull, John (assisted immigrant), 197 Turnbull, Malcolm, 225 U Unassisted immigrants, 7, 12, 13 calls for support for, 134, 198, 205, 214 difficulties faced by, 82, 96, 124, 198, 205 preference for, 130–133, 136, 152 as squatters, 83, 96, 97 V Vietnamese refugees, 222 Villiers, Edward Ernest, 51 Voyage, 16, 160, 187–194 cleanliness during, 190 provisions, 191

time spent on deck during, 189, 191 treatment of women during, 166, 193 W Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 6–8, 18, 96, 117–118, 122 Walkinshaw, Edward, 116 Ward Chapman (bounty ship), 195 Waugh, David, 97 Wentworth, William Charles, 35, 67, 73, 82 White Australia policy, see Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 William Roger (government ship), 190 Wilmot Horton, Robert, 5 Wilson, John Thomas, 162 Wise, George, 195 Woodbridge (bounty ship), 194 Wool, 72, 94 Workhouses (in England), 143, 147 Working-class consciousness, 83–86, 92, 110, 119–120, 122, 151, 215 Wren, Henry (third officer), 161n23, 174n87, 189 Wyllie, Andrew, 161 Wyllie, Miss, 161 Y Young, G. R., 194 Young, Linda (historian), 129, 141