E31: Lachlan Macquarie Arrives with a Bang

There's the result. Australia is also at war. It is feared that the Prime Minister has drowned. He has misled the Parliament. Welcome to the Political History of Australia Podcast.

Any boss who sacks anyone who did not turn up the day of the bump. I will not be lectured by this man. Why won't you call an early election? Mate, because I want to do you slowly. With your host John Ruddick.

Welcome to the Political History of Australia, episode 31, Lachlan Macquarie arrives with a bang. The Liberal Party's victory in the 1949 federal election under Robert Menzies marked the start of a remarkable winning streak, nine election victories in a row. Over the last two centuries of Westminster democratic government in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, those 23 years of continuous Liberal Party rule hold the record for the longest winning streak in national elections. After that long Labor drought, it was finally time.

On the second day of December, 1972, Gough Whitlam led Labor to victory. Whitlam and his deputy, Lance Barnard, headed to Yarralumla, where Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck swore them in. But not just to the prime ministership and the deputy prime ministership, Whitlam and Barnard divided up between them all 27 ministries. This diumvirate ran the entire Commonwealth government for the next 14 days, making dozens of sweeping executive decisions. While unconventional, it was constitutionally sound. But more than anything, Gough was sending a message to Australia that he was not easing into office. He was seizing it.

So, what's Gough got to do with Lachlan Macquarie? Macquarie's first days in office, flamboyantly firing off sweeping decrees, reminds us of Whitlam's first days. Neither set up committees of inquiry or wasted months drafting a paper with abstract options on contentious matters. Since their teenage years, Macquarie and Whitlam had exuded a sense of destiny and supreme self-confidence. When those traits fused with political power, they did not muck around.

Arthur Phillip arrived on the 26th of January 1788, and he waited 12 days to be sworn in as the first governor. John Hunter had waited five days. Philip Gidley King had to wait four months, and William Bligh had waited a week. Being sworn in as a governor of the British Empire was serious business. After a long, draining voyage from England, a few days to recover, get your best uniform ready, and organize the formalities was only reasonable. Lachlan Macquarie had big plans for New South Wales, and he wanted his arrival to signal a new era. So, he aimed to be sworn in quickly to project energy and decisive leadership from day one.

There may have been another consideration at play that influenced the timing of Macquarie's arrival. When Macquarie's ship first sailed into Sydney Harbor on the 28th of December, 1809, they did not proceed straight up to Sydney Cove, but lingered in Watson's Bay just inside the heads for two days. Macquarie later explained that stormy conditions and adverse winds made it impossible to continue the short distance into the heart of the settlement. It's a convenient, but suspect explanation. These two large, state-of-the-art Royal Navy vessels had just battled through a particularly rough sea from Bass Strait up to Port Jackson. Yet, once inside the safety of one of the world's great harbors, they apparently couldn't manage the final 6 km for another two nights. My hunch is that Macquarie colluded in the short delay. By blaming the weather, he could time his swearing-in with a date redolent in symbolism. Today, the whole world celebrates New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, but the origin of this festival is Scottish, Hogmanay. So, 1st of January meant something special for Lachlan Macquarie.

Anyway, Macquarie's arrival in the harbor sent word racing around the colony. Finally, London's response to the Rum Rebellion had arrived, but arrived to do what? No one knew. What they could see was two large naval vessels carrying a full battalion of regular troops, men who looked like they'd seen the front line of battle. So, the colonists were on their very best behavior. Soon after anchoring in Watson's Bay, a local official rode out and came aboard to advise Macquarie that ex-governor Bligh was missing, but presumed to be in Van Diemen's Land. Macquarie sent a note in reply requesting to see acting Lieutenant Governor William Paterson, but Paterson was sick, probably hung over. So, the guy unofficially running the colony, Colonel Joseph Foveaux, came aboard. Over the next two to three days, while Macquarie's ship remained at anchor in Watson's Bay, a steady stream of colonial officials came aboard to pay their respects and to sort out the practical details of the handover. On the evening of the 30th of December, Macquarie's two ships were able to sail the short distance up the harbor to drop anchor at Governor's Wharf in Sydney Cove, right in the heart of the settlement. That night, the whole contingent stayed aboard and awoke next morning to New Year's Eve. It would have been beyond their imagination to know that two centuries later, perhaps a billion people would watch that very spot as each New Year is welcomed in.

At 10:00 a.m. on the morning of New Year's Eve, 1809, Lieutenant Colonel Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth came ashore to a warm greeting from Lieutenant Governor Patterson and Lieutenant Colonel Foveaux, who both immediately and graciously made way for the new boss of the colony. Crowds of well-wishers lined the wharf and cheered as the two new ships in the harbor fired a 15-gun salute. Surrounded by a happy throng, the Macquaries and the viceregal party then strolled up a couple of blocks to Government House through an unbroken avenue of soldiers in full dress uniform who formed an impressive guard of honor. VIPs bowed before the incoming representative of the king, while the hoi polloi clamored for a view. That evening, the Macquaries and leading officials dined at Government House. The following day at noon on New Year's Day, 1810, Lachlan Macquarie was sworn in as the fifth governor of New South Wales.

Last episode, we heard Macquarie's swearing-in speech proclaim the Rum Rebellion had caused His Majesty the utmost regret and displeasure. To hammer that point home, William Bligh would be restored to the governorship, but only for 24 hours and only if he was present, which he was not. At that point, we then pressed pause as we headed over for the court-martial of Major George Johnston in London. So, let's now return to Sydney in early January 1810 with the new governor and a new era.

First on the chopping block was the old New South Wales Corps. London had concluded that long service in this colony had made the regiment soft. The men had become traders more than soldiers, which was understandable with no foreign invasion to repel and only one notable domestic uprising which was dealt with in one day. The New South Wales Corps was officially renamed the 102nd Regiment of Foot, a deliberately plain title no longer tied to New South Wales, which was necessary because on his first day in office, Governor Macquarie issued a general order which stated, "The 102nd Regiment is to be held in readiness to embark for England on the shortest notice. An opportunity of sending them home will certainly occur in the course of a few weeks." So, bye-bye New South Wales Corps. With typical equanimity, Macquarie authorized an extra allowance of liquor from the government store that evening for the troops, the commiseration drinks. The old Corps was scattered across the colony, Sydney, Parramatta, the Hawkesbury, Newcastle, Norfolk Island, Hobart Town, and Port Dalrymple. The order went out, "Pack up, boys, you're going home."

Macquarie's assurance that they would certainly leave within a few weeks stretched into more than 4 months. In that time, Macquarie developed a better-informed and more pragmatic view of the situation. Most of the men did not want to leave. Was it really in the colony's interest to lose willing settlers? More than half ended up finding a way to stay. 265 regular soldiers were allowed to transfer into the new 73rd Regiment for a bounty of three guineas. While technically in breach of London's orders, Macquarie saw the advantage of keeping men in the colony who knew the colony. Another 111 long-serving soldiers, mostly older men with families and more than 20 years service in the colony, were permitted to form a veterans company to perform basic garrison duties. It was practical and humane. Others were simply discharged from the army and permitted to become a free settler and even get a grant of land. For many, that was a more attractive prospect than returning to Britain and possibly ending up face down in the mud at Waterloo.

But the officers enjoyed fewer options. Most were required to return to England. The army still needed experienced officers for the war against Napoleon, and it was soon there was a decent chance several would face charges in London over the Rum Rebellion. Now, in the end, only Major George Johnston was court-martialed. In a nice compliment to New South Wales, quite a few officers later resigned their commissions and returned to New South Wales as free settlers. Of the roughly 800 men who had been a part of the old New South Wales Corps, 447 remained. Nothing speaks more clearly to the colony's growing appeal than the fact that so many soldiers, given the chance to leave, chose to put down roots instead. And as we've seen in previous episodes, the same can be said for convicts. What remained of the regiment finally sailed for England in May 1810 aboard the HMS Dromedary and the HMS Hindostan. Back in Britain, the corps was rebuilt with fresh recruits, including some born in New South Wales, and a couple of years later was sent to fight in the War of 1812 in Canada before finally being disbanded in 1818. So, farewell to the legendary New South Wales Corps who did so much to build the early colony. May they never be disparaged again as the Rum Corps.

Now, let's review their replacement. Macquarie arrived as the commanding officer of the 73rd Regiment of Foot, a very different outfit from the old New South Wales Corps. These were professional, battle-hardened regulars. Raised in the Scottish Highlands in 1780, the 73rd spent the next quarter century in India. They fought in the brutal Anglo-Mysore Wars against Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. They captured the French settlement at Pondicherry and helped seize Dutch Ceylon. The regiment had earned its reputation for winning tough battles. In 1806, the 73rd returned to Britain and a long period of rest in their native Scotland. When news of the Rum Rebellion reached London, this distinguished regiment was selected to replace the tarnished New South Wales Corps. Arguably, the 73rd Regiment was wasted in New South Wales, where they were essentially babysitting convicts. But London's deliberate overreaction sent a clear message that A, the empire believed the colony held real potential, but B, the empire was sick and tired of its administrative chaos and resolved to restore the authority of the state.

Lachlan Macquarie had been the 73rd's lieutenant colonel since 1801. When the regiment's roughly 800 men arrived in early 1810, after years of imperial service, accompanied by about 500 wives and children, many were a bit older than the average British redcoat. The New South Wales Corps had been central to the politics of the early colonial period, but in this middle colonial period, the military begins to act as a good military should: apolitically.

Four days into his governorship, Governor Macquarie announced what we will call his nullification proclamation. It was a sweeping document that essentially declared everything the rebel administration had done since they arrested Governor Bligh was now invalid, Macquarie decreed. "Whereas it has pleased His Majesty to consider all appointments to offices of public trust made by persons who assumed to themselves the executive authority since the arrest of Governor Bligh. All persons who have since that time been appointed to such offices of public trust should be forthwith displaced. Those persons who held such offices at the time of the said arrest and removal should be restored to the exercise of the duties of the same. And whereas it has further pleased his majesty to consider all trials and investigations since Governor Bligh's arrest and removal as invalid in law. And to command his Excellency the Governor to declare in the most public manner all such appointments, pardons, grants, leases, trials, and investigations to be null and void. And whereas it has further pleased his majesty to consider all grants of land and of stock and all leases of houses made subsequent to the time of such arrest and removal, especially such as have been made to the officers of the 102nd Regiment, as invalid. And to command that the same should immediately be declared null and void subject, however, to such exceptions and restrictions as will be herein after mentioned. His Excellency, however, has much pleasure in signifying his majesty's royal will and pleasure that all such grants of lands, tenements, stock, and leases as are in other respects legal and are found to be made from motives of impartiality and justice may and will, upon proper application being made for that purpose, be renewed in the name of his Excellency the Governor. Given under my hand at Government House, Sydney, this 4th day of January, 1810. Lachlan Macquarie. God save the King."

So, in summary, every act of the rebel administration was to be reversed and time turned back to the pre-Rum Rebellion status quo. Just before we get to the land grants, we note a minor detail that would have meant everything to the directly affected. The nullification proclamation included reversing all convict pardons issued by the rebel administration. A pardoned convict had begun rebuilding their life. So, to then have politics yank that freedom away was a cruel and unusual punishment. It didn't take Macquarie long to open an appeal process and pretty much confirm every pardon.

But, the really contentious part of the nullification proclamation was that it canceled a huge swathe of land grants, perhaps as much as 67,000 acres issued during the rebel administration. Much of this land had received the benefit of cash and sweat to make it fertile on the assumption of valid ownership. The whole colony derived benefit. And what exactly was the point of canceling land grants? Who wins out of this policy? The administration wanted and needed the private investment happening before their own eyes, but with a stroke of a pen, that flow of effort and investment came to a grinding halt. But, while Governor Macquarie did in principle annul all the post-Bligh land grants, he did leave the wiggle room of an appeal process. These newly landless citizens sent an avalanche of petitions to Governor Macquarie, oh so politely begging their particular land grant reversal be reconsidered.

Governor Macquarie had quickly formed a high opinion of Colonel Joseph Foveaux's judgment and administrative ability. Four days after arriving, Macquarie asked Foveaux to stay on for a while to assist him, but Foveaux expected to be called as a witness, if not a defendant, in the coming Rum Rebellion court-martial. So, Foveaux assisted Macquarie as much as he could before sailing to London about 10 weeks later. Before he left, Foveaux wrote to Macquarie defending the land grants he had made. "In the grants of land which were made during my command, private friendship and personal regard was laid aside. I was influenced only by the justice of the claims and by the desire of effectually promoting the agricultural interests of the colony."

That Governor Bligh was the type of stubborn jerk who could never change his mind, but Governor Macquarie proceeded with a review process regarding the rescinded land grants and said he would honor land grants he deemed very deserving and meritorious. And it turned out more than half of the land grants of the rebel administration were found to be very deserving and meritorious. The general rule was that if land had been improved, the improver got to own it. To remove any uncertainty and to build goodwill, Governor Macquarie issued the confirmed landowners legal title deeds with their ownership backdated to his swearing-in, the 1st of January, 1810.

Aboard the ship to Sydney with the Macquaries was the colony's new judge advocate, Ellis Bent. For the first time, New South Wales' chief law officer actually had a law degree, and this one, Ellis Bent, had a master's in law from Cambridge and had then worked as a well-regarded barrister in London. Macquarie also helped make the large Irish population feel more at home by instituting an annual St. Patrick's Day celebratory dinner. He ordered all traffic on New South Wales roads should keep to the left-hand side. Like every other incoming governor, Macquarie issued decrees about Sabbath breaking, church attendance, and general morality. Macquarie was particularly concerned about the widespread practice of de facto relationships. In late February 1810, he issued a proclamation with a novel incentive to encourage marriage. In part, it stated, "His Excellency the Governor has seen with great regret the immorality and vice so prevalent among the lower classes of this colony. He feels himself called upon in particular to reprobate the scandalous and pernicious custom so generally and shamelessly adopted throughout this territory of persons of different sexes cohabiting and living together unsanctioned by the legal ties of matrimony. The consequences of this immoral and illicit intercourse have been found, as might have been expected, not only highly injurious to the interests of the society at large, but oftentimes also attended with grievous calamity to the parties themselves and the innocent offspring of their misconduct. Frequent applications have been made on the part of women to the court of civil jurisdiction for the grant of letters of administration of the goods and effects of persons dying intestate on the sole ground of having lived for a number of years with the deceased in a state of illegal and criminal intercourse. His Excellency the Governor feels it his duty hereby publicly to make known to the inhabitants of this colony that the mere circumstance of illegal cohabitation, for whatever length of time with any man, confers no valid title upon the woman to the goods and effects of such person in case he should die intestate. Lachlan Macquarie, God save the King."

Governor Macquarie was publicly warning women that long-term de facto cohabitation gave them no automatic inheritance rights. No doubt many domestic ultimatums were soon made. "Marry me or I'm out of here." Because this decree produced the intended behavioral shift with a noticeable and sustained uptick in weddings. And like every other incoming governor so far, Macquarie moved quickly to bring the alcohol trade under tighter control. He raised the annual license fee to 20 pounds, which forced the closure of many pubs. Macquarie increased taxes on imported spirits and cracked down on private stills. Pubs also faced earlier closing times.

But, in this middle colonial period, alcohol fades as a politically charged issue for two reasons. Firstly, the colony was maturing, and bigger questions soon divided the political class. Emancipist rights, trial by jury, calls for a legislature, a free press, expansion of the frontier, and later the polarizing debate over ending convict transportation altogether. The second reason was more practical. Alcohol had been so contentious in the early colony because it had become a kind of unofficial currency. With the chronic shortage of coinage, alcohol was valuable, portable, and widely accepted. Governors and officials in London hated this. They wanted the state to control the money supply, not private interests. This was not about what worked. This was about the self-serving state reasserting its supremacy.

Governor William Bligh had tried to stamp out the use of spirits as currency, but he lacked the resources to replace it with something better. Governor Macquarie took a more decisive approach. He largely broke the back of alcohol as a currency by introducing an official coinage that was quickly and widely adopted. Macquarie spent more than 10,000 British pounds in purchasing 40,000 Spanish dollars. They physically arrived in the colony in November 1812. Why Spanish dollars? As we saw in earlier episodes, from the early 1500s through to the early 1600s, Spain was the world's dominant power, and that period coincides with the rise of sophisticated global trade. Spanish dollars became the first true global currency, the equivalent of US dollars today. Unlike modern fiat currencies, Spanish dollars had intrinsic value. They were over 90% pure silver and carried built-in anti-counterfeiting features. Even as Spanish imperial power declined, the Spanish dollar powered on as the most trusted and widely accepted coin in the world well past the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie. It was only around the mid-19th century that British pound sterling overtook the Spanish dollar as the lingua franca of global finance.

So, Governor Macquarie had imported blue-chip currency, 40,000 individual Spanish dollar coins. The prized Spanish dollar had at times circulated a little in the colony, but they had a habit of leaving the colony when a colonist bought goods from a trading ship and paid for those goods in Spanish dollars. That's what the captain of the ship wanted. Macquarie had gone to a lot of effort and expense to bring all these Spanish dollars to New South Wales. He didn't want them now draining out of New South Wales. So, Governor Macquarie tracked down the convict with the best forgery skills. His name was William Henshall. The governor and the convict devised a system whereby the center of each Spanish dollar was carefully punched out, and that left the Spanish dollar with a big hole in it, which made them far less valuable and therefore less attractive to export outside the colony. These modified Spanish dollars became known as the holy dollar. It wasn't that they were piously holy, they just had a hole in it. The punched out center of the coin, known as the dump, was to be used for small change. 40,000 coins was now 80,000 coins. The holy dollars and the dumps were officially stamped New South Wales 1813, which appeared alongside the original Spanish inscription. It took several months to one by one punch out each of these 40,000 coins. All but 90 successfully made it through the modification process.

On the 1st of July, 1813, Governor Macquarie proclaimed the holy dollar was worth four times the value of the dump. They entered circulation in 1814, and while other forms of currency persisted for a period, including barter, the creation of the first bank in the antipodes, the Bank of New South Wales, what we know as Westpac, in 1817, institutionally strengthened the standing of the holy dollar. The state now had a state-controlled silver-backed domestic currency. It even boasted two-tier coinage. There was now little incentive to use alcohol as currency. So, alcohol became an apolitical matter until the arrival of the temperance movement a few decades later. The holy dollar was decommissioned for use in 1829 and replaced by British pound sterling. Most were melted down into silver. Today, only around 350 holy dollars survive in museums and private collections, and about four times as many dumps. A holy dollar in good condition today can sell for over half a million dollars. Now, there were initially 40,000 floating around. So, it is quite possible that under some inner-city floorboards in places like Surrey Hills and The Rocks, there's a fortune or two lying around. Australia's seventh largest publicly listed company today is Macquarie Bank, which has used the holy dollar as its logo since adopting its current name in 1985.

Macquarie's crusade against alcohol was confirmed as half-hearted when later in 1810, he granted D'Arcy Wentworth and two partners a contract. As mentioned in an earlier episode, these three agreed to personally fund and oversee the construction of a grand colonial hospital. At the time, it was known as the General Hospital, but we know it as the Rum Hospital because in exchange for their philanthropy in building a hospital, Governor Macquarie gave Wentworth and Co. the right to import around 15,000 gallons of spirits each year for the next three years, and they did such an impressive job with the hospital, they were even given a one-year extension.

Colonel Lachlan Macquarie had visited St. Petersburg for five days in 1807. Macquarie was in awe of the architecture of Imperial Russia. He described St. Petersburg as "a most elegant city, which is certainly by far the finest and most beautiful I have ever yet seen." Now, as Governor of New South Wales, Macquarie was keen to bring some of that grand European vision to Sydney. But before he could start building impressive public buildings, he first had to bring order to the streets themselves.

In 1810, Sydney's streets and those in the other settlements were a chaotic mess. In fact, referring to them as streets is an insult to streets. They had developed with almost no planning, no maintenance, no consistent names. What we know as the Sydney CBD was essentially a disorganized network of dirt tracks that turned into muddy slush whenever it rained. Many streets had informal or duplicated names, and the whole layout reflected the ad hoc nature of the early penal settlement rather than any grand civic design.

In early October 1810, Governor Macquarie announced the creation of a night watch police force and then laid out his blueprint for town planning. In the Sydney Gazette, he explained, "As a necessary preparatory step to the proposed arrangements, His Excellency deems it expedient to give regular and permanent names to all the streets and ways leading through the town." He then formally renamed the main thoroughfare. "The principal street in the town, hitherto known alternately by the names of High Street, Spring Row, and Sergeant Major's Row, is now named George Street in honor of our revered and gracious sovereign." He also renamed the large open ground near the town. "The whole of the open ground yet unoccupied in the vicinity of the town of Sydney hitherto known as the common, exercising ground, cricket ground, and racecourse, the Governor has thought proper to name the ground thus described Hyde Park."

A major public works program soon followed. Roads were straightened, widened, and in some cases given a hard surface. 15 months after his arrival, Macquarie officially opened the new Parramatta Road, which was paved all the way to Parramatta. Similar improvements were made to the road to South Head, and a toll road was constructed to the Hawkesbury. The streets around the original settlement were now given formal British names. Pitt Street honored the late Prime Minister. Phillip, Hunter, King, and Bligh Streets were named after the early governors. Castlereagh Street was named after Macquarie's patron, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Bent Street honored the new Judge Advocate, Ellis Bent. Lieutenant Governor Maurice O'Connell had his name affixed to a street, as did Joseph Foveaux in Surry Hills, a suburb he once owned. Notably, there is still no street or landmark in the Sydney CBD named after the colonial rebel with a cause, John Macarthur, an oversight needing rectification.

King George the III and his Queen Charlotte had 15 children. The six sons who survived infancy each had streets named after their royal titles: Clarence, Cumberland, Sussex, Cambridge, Kent, and York Streets. Elizabeth Street, a long and impressive thoroughfare that runs the full length of Hyde Park, was not named after the famous Tudor queen, as many assume, but after Mrs. Elizabeth Macquarie. And the grandest street of all was named after the governor himself, Macquarie Street. Now, it was a common practice for explorers of the British Empire to name newly discovered geographical features after themselves once they had already named plenty of other things after the king, their patrons, and their hometowns. Explorers were often risking their lives in remote and dangerous places, so if someone like John Oxley wanted to name a river after himself, that was considered acceptable. But some contemporaries felt it was poor form for a governor of a settled colony to name so many streets and places after himself. Macquarie showed little restraint in this regard, beginning with what he clearly regarded as Sydney's finest street. Macquarie Street sits atop the highest ridge in the Sydney CBD. It marks the eastern boundary of the CBD with the beautiful botanical gardens and the domain just lying to its east. The street runs roughly 2 km north to south from what is now the site of the Sydney Opera House down to Hyde Park. Governor Macquarie designed it as a grand ceremonial boulevard. Convict labor was used to improve and level the ridge, creating a wide, more formal thoroughfare suitable for the important public buildings he planned to line it with.

With the streets now properly named and organized, Governor Macquarie had the solid foundation he needed to begin his grand infrastructure program. He turned his attention to building fine buildings. The finest would be along Macquarie Street. One of the most celebrated emancipists was the architect Francis Greenway, the only emancipist to have a federal electorate named in his honor. Greenway was born in Bristol into a family in the building trade. He qualified as an architect and set up his own practice, but the business failed. In 1812, he was found guilty of forging a financial document, and he was sentenced to death. That sentence was later commuted to transportation to New South Wales for 14 years. Greenway arrived in Sydney in early 1814. His wife and children followed a few months later. He brought with him his architectural portfolio and somehow was able to bring a letter of introduction to Governor Macquarie written by none other than the first governor, Arthur Phillip.

Governor Macquarie had been unsuccessfully urging London to send him an architect. He wasn't expecting one to arrive in the form of a convict. It took several months before Greenway secured a meeting with Governor Macquarie. After that initial encounter in July 1814, Greenway followed up with a letter to the governor. In it, he addressed Macquarie's request that he copy a design for a town hall and courthouse from a pattern book. "To his Excellency Lachlan Macquarie, Esquire, Governor. I have sent to your Excellency, according to my promise, my portfolio. Among the designs, there is one for a market house and town hall, which would answer the purpose required with a little alteration. I will immediately copy the drawing your Excellency requested me to do, although it is rather painful to my mind as a professional man to copy a plan of a building that has no claim to classical proportion or character." So, that is confidence. A convict is telling the governor that it is beneath him to spend time working on such a poor design, but he's happy to oblige anyway. Greenway continues by quoting the king's own architect. "I must here take leave to quote the elegant treatise on architecture of Sir William Chambers. Let it not, however, be imagined that building merely considered as heaping stone upon stone can be of great consequence or reflect honor either on nations or individuals. Materials in architecture are like words in phraseology, having separately but little power, and they may be so arranged as to excite ridicule, disgust, or even contempt. Yet, when combined with skill and expressed with energy, they actuate the mind with unbounded sway. An able writer can move even in rustic language, and the masterly disposition of a skillful artist will dignify the meanest materials, while the weak efforts of the ignorant render the costliest enrichments despicable." So, this Francis Greenway fellow is well educated. He then cuts straight to the chase. "If your Excellency will grant me the power as an architect to design and conduct any public building or work, I will exert myself in every way to do your Excellency credit as a promoter and encourager of the most useful art to society, which will add to the comforts of the colony as well as the dignity of the mother country, whose real interest and glory I shall on all occasions readily exert myself to promote. I remain your Excellency's most obedient servant, July 27th, 1814, F. H. Greenway."

Greenway was effectively telling Governor Macquarie, "I know you've got grand architectural visions, but I know more about architecture than you. So, let's be a team, gov." And that's what happened. It's arguably the best decision Governor Macquarie made. Within 2 years of Francis Greenway's arrival, Governor Macquarie appointed the convict as the colony's civil architect and assistant engineer. Greenway became the driving force behind almost all of the major public buildings of the Macquarie era, with the notable exception of the Rum Hospital, which was already underway before he arrived. Along Macquarie Street, Greenway designed the impressive convict barracks that still stand today and remain a popular tourist attraction. What is now St. James' Anglican Church was originally intended to be a courthouse, but after Macquarie's departure, the project was scaled back and repurposed as a church. Further along the same street, the grand Government House stables were completed in 1820. Far too elaborate for mere horses, the building has served since 1915 as the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. At the very northern end of Macquarie Street, where it meets Sydney Harbor, stood Fort Macquarie, built between 1817 and 1821 to defend the colony against possible foreign attack. It was later demolished in 1901. The site is now occupied by the Sydney Opera House.

Over time, Macquarie's ambitious building program drew increasing criticism from London. Officials argued that convict labor should be used primarily to boost agricultural production rather than on grand civic projects that some viewed as self-aggrandizing. Macquarie defended all of his works, pointing out that many were at least partly privately funded and that a dignified looking capital of the colony would lift the horizons of all. When Macquarie was recalled to England in 1821, architect Greenway lost his most important patron. Without that support, his career declined, and he eventually fell into obscurity and poverty.

Education was one of the areas Governor Macquarie took a strong personal interest in. He was supportive of the expansion of a range of schools, including boys' schools, girls' schools, orphan schools, and the colony's first school for Aboriginal children. On the 13th of April, 1819, the Sydney Gazette reported that a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl was the dux of New South Wales. "On Tuesday, an anniversary school examination took place at Parramatta, at which the children of the native institution were introduced, their numbers not exceeding 20. Those of the schools of the children of Europeans amounting nearly to 100. Prizes were prepared for the children as should be found to excel in the early rudiments of education, moral and religious. It is not less strange than pleasing to remark, in answer to an erroneous opinion, that the Aborigines were insusceptible to any mental improvement. That a black girl of 14 years of age between 3 and 4 years in the school bore away the chief prize with much satisfaction to their worthier judges and auditors."

When Macquarie arrived in 1810, formal schooling in the colony was extremely limited, mostly a handful of small church-run or private schools. By the time he left in 1821, the number of schools had grown significantly. So, Governor Macquarie is a busy boy, active on multiple colony-transforming fronts. His sweeping reformer agenda has settled all the old political flashpoints, but politics abhors a vacuum. Governor Macquarie's most passionate political cause was emancipist rights. It made him powerful enemies and almost certainly contributed to his eventual recall, but he never wavered from it.

Macquarie would later reflect on his arrival in the colony and how his initial view of emancipists changed after he got to know them. "At my first entrance into this colony, I felt as you do, and I believe I may add everyone does. At that moment, I certainly did not anticipate any intercourse but that of control with men who were or had been convicts. A short experience showed me, however, that some of the most meritorious men of the few to be found and who were most capable and most willing to exert themselves in the public service were men who had been convicts." So, experience on the ground shifted Macquarie towards a view that believed in redemption and meritocracy. He was liberal in granting pardons, conditional pardons, and tickets of leave to well-behaved convicts, but the real question was what happened to an emancipist once they were free, once they became an emancipist. Legally, emancipists were free men, yet powerful social and professional barriers remained. No previous governor had appointed an emancipist to any public office of real authority.

By 1810, the population of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land combined was only around 11,000, yet emancipists and their families already formed a very large and rapidly growing proportion of the colonial society. They were almost certainly a majority of the entire colonial population when Macquarie arrived. Just a fortnight after being sworn in, Macquarie made a radical statement of intent. He appointed the emancipist Andrew Thompson as a magistrate in the Hawkesbury district. An ex-con was now a judge. Since Macquarie had only just arrived, this could not have been because of a personal friendship with Thompson. It was a deliberate political signal that emancipists would be treated as full citizens under his administration. He soon followed this by appointing another successful emancipist, Simeon Lord, as a magistrate as well. The appointments were immediately controversial. The wealthy landowners and the larger merchants, the group previously known as the trading faction and that will soon be called the exclusives, were outraged.

Macquarie went further. He appointed Thompson and Lord, along with the Reverend Samuel Marsden, as a trustee of the government-run Parramatta toll. Marsden refused to serve alongside emancipists. Macquarie also began giving emancipists paid government positions as superintendents, clerks, and trustees. But the move that truly shocked colonial society was when Governor Macquarie invited emancipists, including Thompson and Lord, to dine at Government House. No previous governor had extended such an invitation. Macquarie was sending an unmistakable message. Once a convict had served their time, they were an equal citizen. There was an immediate backlash. Wealthy free settlers refused to socialize with the new emancipist magistrates. Macquarie slightly moderated his approach by saying he would only appoint worthy emancipists, but the appointments continued. Those emancipists who were given public roles knew they were under intense scrutiny and often worked doubly hard to prove their critics wrong. By 1815, Macquarie was regularly inviting emancipists to Government House. He also became as generous with land grants to emancipists as he was to free settlers. The exclusives, however, remained implacably opposed. They believed that once a person had been a convict, the convict stain could never be erased. In their view, emancipists might be legally free, but they should never be treated as social or political equals.

Now, we were planning to cross the Blue Mountains in this episode, but that landmark moment cannot be rushed. In the next episode, we will get over the Blue Mountains in 1813 and then follow the early explorers who opened up the vast new tracks of farmland that would transform the colony's future. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Political History of Australia podcast with your host, John Ruddick. Click follow to receive episode notifications, and leaving a review helps others find the podcast.