I was expecting to receive a hearty pat on the back from him when he saw how I had handled the running of the Colony in his absence, but in this I was gravely disappointed.
Instead I received a hearty bollocking from him the which was not at all what I was expecting.
I had, he said, caused the Colony to be fairly well ungovernable and had split the Council into factions that could only result in my making enemies that would work against me to weaken my hold on whatever power I hoped to have.
He went so far as to suggest that the colony would, as a result of my actions, become the scene of anarchy and most frightful confusion and a prey to the most dreadful dissensions ere long.
He told me that Brown was the last man whose appointment I should have tampered with because of the nature of his appointment and that Fisher who was, he said, a wily attorney and without doubt, the worst class of person that could have been selected for his office, would waste no time in using my actions against me to put me into a false position to his advantage.
He informed me that my relying on Mann for legal opinion was ill advised since Mann had recently married Brown's sister (I was not aware of this) and could therefore only be relied upon to provide opinions of the most partial nature.
Of course, he said, all parties had appealed to him and, as soon as his courts sits he would be inundated with all the questions which had been agitating the place would come before him in the form of ex-officio informations, indictments, and actions for libel and defamation innumerable. This mass of misery he will have to encounter, he said, was disgusting and quite unsuited to his habits and feelings and he wished to God to be clear of them and back in Hobart Town.
He assured me that he had nothing but compassion for me because it was clear that I, as a bluff and straightforward sailor and not well equipped to deal with such politic players and Fisher and his party. He regretted that he had not been with me, because then I might not have got myself into such scrapes.
I was, you may be sure, set back on my heels by such a broadside and left speechless by it. But the truth of the matter was that I could see that there was much in what he said and so my first word was to ask what could be done?
His advice was for me to drop my actions against Fisher and Gouger and then leave the rest to him.
Well, I don't know what sort of miracles he worked or what promises he made, but within a day he had spoken to Fisher and Gouger and Gilles and the whole tangled web of threat and counter-threat dissolved and vanished.
The man is a magician. He even produced a solution to the Black Alick problem. He proposes to take the unfortunate native from McLaren's barrel and bring him to the mainland, then place him in room which, for the purpose, we can call a gaol cell, leave the door open and turn our backs for a while. His view is that a few weeks of David McLaren's hospitality is probably punishment enough and if the native "escapes" we have rid ourselves of a problem and can throw our hands up in horror and say "how can this have happened"?
But to other matters, in particular, regarding WIlliam Light. Now I have nothing but the warmest feelings for dear old Light and will not hear a word said against him.
But the whispers I have begun to hear about town of him being a man we owe all to and a visionary genius leave me more than somewhat bemused
Some five or six years ago a steam railway service began to run between the cities of Manchester and Liverpool with speeds attained of up to twenty-five miles an hour (yes, I know it seems difficult to believe, but I am assured that this is indeed the speed) over a distance of more than thirty miles. Imagine travelling thirty-five miles in a little over an hour!
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| The Manchester and Liverpool Railway |
Last week I spoke to Light and suggested to him that such a railway line might solve our problems with the distance from the township to the ports. A railway down to Port Adelaide or to Holdfast Bay would be undoubtedly a boon to trade and to the colonists. Should we not, I asked him, embrace with open arms this transportation of the future?
He, however, was hardly sanguine. He had heard that the steam locomotives were unreliable. The cost would be prohibitive. Land would need to be purchased. The railways could not transport goods to where they were needed, but only to where the rails were laid. He had been told by friends in England that the railways were nothing but a passing fashion and common sense would soon prevail, and those in need of transporting goods would soon return to ox carts and horse transport as the more effective and practical system.
Visionary genius my arse!
It seems perfectly apparent to me that a railway would be a boon to the Colony, but it will not appear I imagine, because of nitpicking objections. I trust that this will not be the pattern for the future, with good ideas for change and improvement being stymied by the objections of those resistant to things that are new.
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