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VOLUME V

AUSTRALASIA

1688-1911

BY

A. WYATT TILBY

STANFORD LIBRARY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1912
At

170701

PREFACE

THE present volume, like its predecessors in this work, deals with the foundation of new English settlements by the old British stock. Like the settlements in Canada, but unlike those in the tropics, the colonies in Australia and New Zealand grew into new English nations; the history and circumstances attending that growth and national development, with its divergence from the parent people, are the subject of the following pages.

It has been a task of no little difficulty to rescue from old newspaper files, from mildewed forgotten pamphlets, and the tedious records of too often stupid travellers, the original materials on which the present book is largely based. Prolonged research has frequently revealed nothing but literary rubbish; but occasionally I have found the crudely expressed letters of old travellers quite extraordinarily illuminating in their revelation of the forces that were moulding the new English society in Australasia. The letter from an emigrant to New Zealand, for instance, which is quoted at the opening of Book XXII., throws considerable light on the social jealousy and class hatred which existed in England, and which largely accounted for the determination to make and keep Australia a democratic country among the free settlers of the middle nineteenth century. We know what the literate and governing classes thought about the illiterate and governed; we have little to show what the governed thought about their governors. The letter in question helps to supply the gap.

I may point out here that this volume helps to correct two misconceptions, the one the consequence of the other, which have arisen about Australia. It is sometimes suggested that the present inhabitants of the Commonwealth are mainly descended from the convicts of early years; and indignant Australians, hard pushed to answer an accusation which hurts their pride, have advanced the theory that the convicts were the victims of British laws. Both statements contain a little truth and much falsehood.

As a fact, the average convict transported to Australia a century ago was no more reputable a person than the average criminal to-day, and the evidence which is cited in the following pages leaves little room for the pleasing theory of his apologists-that he was more sinned against than sinning. The English criminal law of the period was always harsh, and occasionally barbarously severe; but it seems generally to have succeeded in laying the right persons by the heels, if their subsequent record in Australia goes for anything.

The other theory, that the Australians of to-day are mainly descended from convicted felons, also vanishes on investigation. I have examined, not without trepidation, the records of as .many Australian families as have come in my way; the total making a not inconsiderable number, and including nearly all who have played a notable part in the exploration, industry, and politics of the antipodes. In no single case has the bar sinister of felony been found upon their origin—a fact which goes far to prove that the convicts had as little influence on the future of Australian society as the Pilgrim Fathers on the future of the United States; and that the present-day Australian is about as likely to be descended from the one as the modern American from the other.

A. WYATT TILBY.

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