STATISTICAL, HISTORICAL, AND POLITICAL
DESCRIPTION
OF
THE COLONY
OF
NEW SOUTH WALES,
AND
ITS DEPENDENT SETTLEMENTS
IN
VAN DIEMEN'S LAND:
WITH
A PARTICULAR ENUMERATION OF THE ADVANTAGES WHICH THESE
COLONIES OFFER FOR EMIGRATION, AND THEIR SUPERIORITY
IN MANY RESPECTS OVER THOSE POSSESSED BY
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY WILLIAM CHARLES WENTWORTH, ESQ.
A NATIVE OF THE COLONY
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR G. AND W. B. WHITTAKER
1819
CONTENTS
PART I. STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE SETTLEMENTSIN NEW HOLLAND.
PART II. OPERATION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM OFGOVERNMENT IN THE COLONY FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS.
PART III. VARIOUS ALTERATIONS SUGGESTED IN THEPRESENT POLICY OF THIS COLONY.
PART IV. VARIOUS CHANGES PROPOSED IN THE SYSTEMOF GOVERNMENT.
FOREWORD
There can be little doubt that when my great-grandfather beganto write this book, his thoughts were centred on the objectivewhich he describes in his own Preface--the diversion to Australiaof some part of the stream of emigration then running from theBritish Isles to North America. Perhaps, even more urgently, hemay have wanted to forestall any British tendency to withdrawfrom the colony and abandon New South Wales altogether.
But as he wrote, he found that he had to make some explanationfor the defects which he saw in the current life of the colony,and naturally he was led into propounding some way in which thesedefects could be overcome. Contemporary reviewers, then, were notso far wrong when theycommented that the book looked almost liketwo books written by separate hands.
The secondary theme became the most important part of thebook, because the remedies he then proposed for his country'sills became the guidelines for his own policies when he returnedto Australia. Through the influences which he and his friendsexerted over the next thirty years, these policies determinedmuch of the course of Australian history in those times. Most ofhis proposals were eventually accepted, though in some cases muchlater than he wanted, and in some cases with modifications whichhe himself made or which were forced on him by the pressure ofevents.
At the time he wrote this book he was in his middle twenties,having returned to England to complete his education soon afterparticipating in the first crossing of the Blue Mountains.Waterloo had just been won; Europe was settling down and tryingto forget Napoleon. The wounds of the American Revolution wereclosing; British merchants and industrialists were preparing tochange the face of the world in accordance with the precepts ofAdam Smith.
In his attempt to divert the migration stream he was no enemyof America, (indeed he had chosen the name "Vermont" for his ownfarm on the Nepean) but he was perhaps the first Australianreally to support Ma