Leviathan (32 page)

This would not have been a problem had Sydney remained a prison camp as intended. But Bentham was right. As soon as the first free citizen set foot there, or simply materialised once their term of punishment expired, neither the officers of the corps nor the governor had any more legitimate claim to control their lives than Bentham himself. Of course this was a legal philosopher's problem. From the first days the governors were less concerned about legal niceties than ensuring that the colony didn't starve. Legitimacy was assumed and power – or, at the very least, submission – was guaranteed not simply by the law but more immediately by the bayonet, the whip and the musket. Sydney was almost a laboratory experiment for political scientists wishing to examine the evolution of a polity, although in this case it seemed to evolve backwards, from Hobbes's
Leviathan
to a state where all were ceaselessly at war with each other.

So, returning to an earlier question, where lay power in the Sydney of Bligh and Macarthur? In the knotted leather teeth of the cat-o'-nine-tails? In the barrels of the corps' artillery pieces? In the officers' mess? Government House? The courts? Unfortunately rock-solid answers, when grasped at, reveal themselves to be chimeras. To begin with, as Hannah Arendt wisely counsels us, power should not be confused with violence. Governmental power arises from people acting in unison. It rests on opinion and consent. Violence, on the other hand, is instrumental. It requires tools, be they clenched fists or loaded guns, and in its pure form it can sweep away the most powerful institution in a twinkling. Sergeant Whittle, with one thrust of his bayonet, could have terminated Bligh's command no matter how many settlers supported him, and no matter how great the power conferred on Bligh by their sovereign. Such force, writes Arendt, does not depend on numbers but on implements; those who oppose violence with mere power will soon discover that they are confronted not with men but with men's artifacts. ‘Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command … What can never grow out of it is power.'

But didn't the penal settlement of Sydney rest on a foundation of ferocious violence? On the scaffold and the sword? On whippings which flayed the victim's meat from their bodies so that bones and spinal cords and jellied flesh were exposed to the air and the shocking impact of the next blow? The precautions of the First Fleet marines, training cannon loaded with grapeshot into the holds where the prisoners lay, do not convey an impression of much confidence in the ‘consent' of their cargo to the journey ahead. The constant alarms raised by early governors over the revolutionary potential of the Irish prisoners betray a dread of increasing numbers of inhabitants with no respect for their authority.

Here was the crux of the problem which so vexed Bentham. The whole structure of governance in New South Wales rested on the consent of the governed, who far outnumbered their captors. But there was no formal means, such as through an elected council, by which this consent could be given. The citizens, settlers and transportees might well support the administration, but other than by signing memorials there was no formal channel for this support. More importantly, for those who did not support the administration, there was no forum in which to oppose it. Inevitably, they sought other forms of resistance. This often took place in the courts, a natural outlet for conflict in a society lacking a parliament, a free press or civil rights. As Bruce Kercher explains in his history of the civil law in New South Wales, the courts provided more than just a location of these political conflicts, and the law itself was more than an expression of ruling-class power.

As the town slouched through the fierce summer daze of 1807–8 and John Macarthur manoeuvred to frustrate a governor he had long perceived as a threat to his economic interests, he resorted to the rhetoric of English liberty and, unknowingly, with some po-faced, unintentional humour, to the arguments of Jeremy Bentham. Chronically restless and testy, tortured by painful dyspepsia, Macarthur was afflicted by the fear of losing status and wealth which gnaws at all members of the bourgeoisie lucky enough to scratch and claw and cheat their way to prominence. There is some evidence he had already set a collision course with Bligh. Charles Walker, commander of a ship belonging to Macarthur, recalled talking to his boss after a minor disagreement with the Governor, Macarthur supposedly threatening that if Bligh did not look after his interests and those of ‘some of the other respectable gentlemen of the colony … he [would] perhaps get another voyage in his launch again'. (Referring to the small boat he was set adrift in by the crew of the
Bounty
.) Walker also claimed that when he returned from sea in November 1807, Macarthur told him ‘that the colony had suffered Governor Bligh to reign long enough, [and] there would soon be an alteration'. As you might expect, Macarthur flatly denied these allegations at the court martial. Were they true, he could have swung for treason.

It was another of Macarthur's ships which proved the catalyst for rebellion. On 15 November 1807 his 102 tonne schooner
Parramatta
eased up the harbour, returning from the Society Islands with over 75 000 pounds of pork in her belly. Macarthur was not able to land the cargo, however, because Robert Campbell, acting as naval officer (a sort of customs inspector), impounded the ship for having carried a stowaway convict out of Sydney in June. Macarthur and his partner Garnham Blaxcell lost both the ship and an £800 bond. An incensed Macarthur claimed Campbell had ‘virtually dispossessed' him of his vessel. He refused to take any responsibility for the crew, who were trapped on board without pay or provisions as port regulations banned them from disembarking. The captain and crew ignored this, of course, and on 14 December they landed and sought out Judge-Advocate Atkins, who had been ordered to investigate the matter by Bligh. Atkins listened to their story then wrote to Macarthur, saying that his abandoning the men was the cause of their breaking regulations by coming ashore without permission. The judge requested Macarthur's presence in town at ten the next morning ‘to show cause for your conduct'. Macarthur simply flicked aside his old enemy's sword thrust, denying any responsibility and directing Atkins's enquiries to Campbell. Atkins's counterstrike was a warrant for Macarthur's arrest, delivered to the family's property at midnight on 15 December by the chief constable of Parramatta, Francis Oakes. Oakes had ridden out to the farm and, finding the homestead in darkness, tapped on a window. A sleepy, crumpled Macarthur appeared in his bedclothes to let the constable in. On reading the warrant he flew into a rage, finally calming down enough to write Oakes a note to take back to his masters.

For good measure Macarthur told the Oakes that if he came back, ‘to come well armed' because he would not submit ‘till blood was shed'. He was fibbing, as it turned out. Atkins quickly, probably drunkenly, and no doubt gleefully, fired off another warrant and Macarthur was arrested and hauled before the magistrates a day later, without spilling a drop of his increasingly blue blood. The bench, which included George Johnston, committed him for trial in the next criminal court in January 1808.

John Macarthur celebrated Christmas 1807 by laying plans to counterattack on a number of fronts. The criminal court consisted almost entirely of officers from his former regiment, whom he knew he could rely on. Unfortunately the presiding judge was Richard Atkins, who could also be relied on, but not in a good way. Macarthur had to neutralise his old foe, rally the troops and somehow craft a defence with a semblance of credibility to a possible charge of high treason. Atkins was easily dealt with. The rum-sodden old joke had run up a mountain of bad debts in the colony, circulating worthless promissory notes and creating a legion of enemies besides Macarthur. One of these creditors sold Macarthur a fifteen year old note for £82, including interest, which Macarthur then took around to the judge's house on Bridge Street. There, banging on the door and dancing around the garden, noisily but fruitlessly demanding satisfaction of this debt, he established grounds for challenging Atkins's place on the bench due to his bias. (Of course everyone already knew Atkins was biased against him – this was a guy who had once said Macarthur was ‘a Toad in a Hole feeding on his own Poison' and accused him of stalking around ‘like Sin and Death seeking whom he may devour' – but it's the form of these things that is important.)

Knowing only too well that the trial was to be as much a political struggle as a legal dispute, Macarthur tended to his allies as well his enemies. This meant not only the officers who were to sit in judgment on his case, but also the members of the mercantile class who felt themselves hard done by under Bligh's administration. The Governor made no secret of his preference for the small landholders; ‘plain sensible farming men' he called them, ‘of moderate expectation'. Just as he made no secret of his disdain for the wealthy traders and merchants who sought unfair advantage over these landholders, telling Sir Joseph Banks that, given a chance, ‘those who consider themselves of the superior class' would have made the modest settlers their vassals in no time. In this he was correct. Macarthur had written to the Duke of Portland as far back as 1796, complaining that the only reason colonial farming was not well advanced was because most small holders were idle drunkards who should be ‘obliged to employ themselves in the service of an industrious and vigilant master'. His alleged remarks to Captain Walker that the small farmers were all rascals, and that Bligh would be much better off servicing the needs of the principal landholders, sit comfortably alongside this opinion.

Of course Bligh, inherently paternalistic, had not simply favoured the small landholders over the big end of the village with his opinions. More importantly, he had advantaged them through policy. For someone like Robert Campbell, who had been raised to competition and risk, this was not such a problem. For the officers who had built their fortunes on lazy, monopolistic indulgences, it was intolerable. Unfortunately for the Governor, he was also his own worst enemy, uniting his foes and dividing his friends. The emancipist traders, those convicts made good, were not natural allies of the officers. In fact when you got down to it, they were implacable class enemies. No former hoodlums were ever going to make it onto a gentleman's Christmas list. But Bligh, unreflective, bombastic and reckless as ever, put no effort into securing the loyalty of men like Lord, Kable and Underwood. Far from it. He had them arrested in August 1807 and banged up in the town gaol ‘for having written to the governor in improper terms'. So when Macarthur was skulking around town during the ten days of Christmas in 1807, claiming Bligh was close to establishing a tyranny, who were they to disagree? They, like the officers, had done very well out of Sydney. They had all risen far above their stations and they were all terrified of suffering any reverse. Bligh's actions, such as gaoling the traders and ordering the demolition of houses in the government domain, raised the prospect of greatly diminishing or even destroying what many had built up.

An operator like Macarthur knew the main chance when he saw it. Bligh's determination to return the anarchic sprawl of Sydney to its virgin state as government turf was a gift. Many of the soldiers who would soon march on Bligh did not bunk in the regimental barracks, preferring to live with their convict mistresses in cottages about the town. These were some of the same cottages which so enraged Bligh when he stared across his gardens at grounds which should have been his reserve but which were instead run through with muddy tracks and blighted by illegally built huts and shanties with their unkempt gardens, stray dogs and itinerant, rutting pigs. Shortly before his trial, with many of the soldiers deeply worried about their leases and homes, Macarthur, who also had a lease on the ground claimed by Bligh, arrived with a large body of troops to fence in his land. It was a stunt, but Bligh couldn't help himself. He took one look at that glistening steel bear trap and jumped in with both feet, dispatching the superintendent of public works, Nicholas Divine, and a party of convicts to tear down the fence a few days later. They arrived to be confronted by Macarthur, flanked by Captains Edward Abbott and the odious Anthony Fenn Kemp. Macarthur ignored the superintendent and, taking one of the heavy fence posts himself, defiantly fixed it in a hole. Divine swung down from his horse and wrenched the post out of the ground, declaring that he did so on the order of the Governor and adding a little melodramatically, ‘When the axe is laid to the root, the tree must fall'. If Macarthur was hoping for a demonstration of the soldiers' precarious hold on their homes and property, he could not have scripted the moment better himself. The soldiers, witnessing or hearing of this encounter, could have been in no doubt about where their interests lay in the conflict which was fast drawing near. Sydney, wrote surveyor Charles Grimes to Captain John Piper at Norfolk Island, was a hell.

And through this vale of fears and uncertainty strode Macarthur, whispering, beguiling, insinuating. Sowing a vintage crop of malice. Plying his former troops with lashings of cheap grog. Stalking about the parade ground of the barracks the night before his trial, while inside his son and nephew lavishly entertained the corps' officers, his judges, at the riotous debauch which occasioned George Johnston's drunken road accident. This was their last supper, whether they knew it or not. History lay in front of them, their best days behind. Their domination of Sydney was drawing to a close, a domination which was not necessarily ‘a question of rum monopoly or gangsterism', as Fitzgerald and Hearn put it. ‘It was the milieu of military influence over all aspects of colonial life and administration, for it was the corps, not the Governors, who represented the continuous and familiar form of authority in New South Wales.' And by their actions on the morrow they would lay waste to that authority even as it reached its zenith.