A Commonwealth of Thieves Read Online Free
Tahiti. “Settlement could be a centre for trade with East Asia or a wartime base for attack on the Dutch colonies of Malaya…. And thus two objects of the most desirable and beautiful union will be permanently blended: economy to the public, and humanity to the individual.” Without mentioning convicts, Matra nonetheless brought attention to New South Wales as a potential destination for inconvenient people other than loyalists.
Though Sir Joseph Banks promoted Matra's proposal to the government, the Tories fell and the Whigs came to power, and Lord Sydney, a Kentish squire in his early fifties, inherited the Home Office, including responsibility for prisons and colonial affairs. Even he, though sympathetic, was not as much interested in the fate of loyalists as he was in the pressingly urgent matter of the prisons and hulks. On 9 December 1784, he wrote to the mayor of Hull, who had asked for the removal of his city's convicts to the hulks, saying that not a person more could be at present admitted to them. Sydney answered similarly to a request from Oxford.
Lord Sydney, later first Viscount Sydney, was a political operator whose real name was Thomas Townshend. He already had a solid political career, having been Secretary of War in a previous government and then Home Secretary under both Shelburne and Pitt. He was thought to be a good man who lived an orderly life in Chiselhurst and avoided the extremes of drinking and sexual adventure which characterised people like Sir Joseph Banks and James Boswell. Oliver Goldsmith depicted him as the sort of lesser talent with whom great spirits such as Edmund Burke had to deign to negotiate. But he shared with Burke a passionate dislike of Lord North, the British Tory prime minister, and applied himself to the settlement of the American Revolution which had begun under North's government. His sympathies lay in particular with those loyal subjects who would lose their American lands, savings, and standing, and he was involved in organising a new home for American loyalists in Nova Scotia, where there would grow a city named in his honour.
In 1779, the most significant witness to appear before the Commons Committee on colonies was Sir Joseph Banks, a great naturalist, commentator, sensualist, and society figure. On Cook's
Endeavour,
as leader of a number of distinguished artists and scientists, the young Banks became so famous from his Botany Bay discoveries of new species that Linnaeus, the famous Swedish scientist, suggested that if New South Wales were proven to be part of a continent, the continent should be called Banksia. Now a man in his early forties, the bloom of outrageous health and intellectual energy on his cheek, Banks was liberated from all want by the rent of small tenants and the agricultural income of family estates at Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. Even though, in the journal of his voyage as a young scientist with Cook, Sir Joseph described Botany Bay as barren, he urged the committee to consider that it might be suitable for transportation, and that there was sufficient fertile soil to sustain a European settlement. From there, too, escape would be difficult, he said. The climate was mild, there were no savage animals, and the “Indians” around Botany Bay, estimated at hardly more than fifty, were not hostile.
Sir Joseph Banks was asked whether he thought land for settlement might be acquired from the Aborigines “by Cession or Purchase.” Banks said he thought not, that there was nothing you could give the Aborigines, or Indians, in return for their soil. He told the committee that the blacks were of wandering habits and would “speedily abandon whatever land was needed.” The Aboriginals were blithely nomadic; New South Wales was
terra nullius,
no man's land.
In the end, this Commons Committee left the question of transportation destinations open, but also recommended the building of two penitentiaries, where the prisoners would be kept in solitary
Though Sir Joseph Banks promoted Matra's proposal to the government, the Tories fell and the Whigs came to power, and Lord Sydney, a Kentish squire in his early fifties, inherited the Home Office, including responsibility for prisons and colonial affairs. Even he, though sympathetic, was not as much interested in the fate of loyalists as he was in the pressingly urgent matter of the prisons and hulks. On 9 December 1784, he wrote to the mayor of Hull, who had asked for the removal of his city's convicts to the hulks, saying that not a person more could be at present admitted to them. Sydney answered similarly to a request from Oxford.
Lord Sydney, later first Viscount Sydney, was a political operator whose real name was Thomas Townshend. He already had a solid political career, having been Secretary of War in a previous government and then Home Secretary under both Shelburne and Pitt. He was thought to be a good man who lived an orderly life in Chiselhurst and avoided the extremes of drinking and sexual adventure which characterised people like Sir Joseph Banks and James Boswell. Oliver Goldsmith depicted him as the sort of lesser talent with whom great spirits such as Edmund Burke had to deign to negotiate. But he shared with Burke a passionate dislike of Lord North, the British Tory prime minister, and applied himself to the settlement of the American Revolution which had begun under North's government. His sympathies lay in particular with those loyal subjects who would lose their American lands, savings, and standing, and he was involved in organising a new home for American loyalists in Nova Scotia, where there would grow a city named in his honour.
In 1779, the most significant witness to appear before the Commons Committee on colonies was Sir Joseph Banks, a great naturalist, commentator, sensualist, and society figure. On Cook's
Endeavour,
as leader of a number of distinguished artists and scientists, the young Banks became so famous from his Botany Bay discoveries of new species that Linnaeus, the famous Swedish scientist, suggested that if New South Wales were proven to be part of a continent, the continent should be called Banksia. Now a man in his early forties, the bloom of outrageous health and intellectual energy on his cheek, Banks was liberated from all want by the rent of small tenants and the agricultural income of family estates at Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. Even though, in the journal of his voyage as a young scientist with Cook, Sir Joseph described Botany Bay as barren, he urged the committee to consider that it might be suitable for transportation, and that there was sufficient fertile soil to sustain a European settlement. From there, too, escape would be difficult, he said. The climate was mild, there were no savage animals, and the “Indians” around Botany Bay, estimated at hardly more than fifty, were not hostile.
Sir Joseph Banks was asked whether he thought land for settlement might be acquired from the Aborigines “by Cession or Purchase.” Banks said he thought not, that there was nothing you could give the Aborigines, or Indians, in return for their soil. He told the committee that the blacks were of wandering habits and would “speedily abandon whatever land was needed.” The Aboriginals were blithely nomadic; New South Wales was
terra nullius,
no man's land.
In the end, this Commons Committee left the question of transportation destinations open, but also recommended the building of two penitentiaries, where the prisoners would be kept in solitary
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