Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/410
When a man's career has been blackened by one writer,
it is insufficient for another to assert that the first is
untrustworthy. History cannot be written negatively.
Those who know the vindicator of the truth will, of course,
believe him, but he writes for many who know him not.
Under these circumstances the government of King has
been chosen to illustrate the daily doings of the colonists;
to trace their household life and their excursions of discovery;
to follow them to the camp, the market-place, the reformatory; to describe the Courts, Civil and Criminal, and the
arbitrary edicts of the Governor; and the steps taken on
his recommendation to guard the shores of Australia from
the talons of the eagles of Napoleon. It would be tedious
to write all history at such length; but an air of
romance clings to the character of pilgrim fathers and
of expeditionary governors, and no period seemed fitter
for picturing the life of the colony than the one which
previous misrepresentations had made it necessary to
examine closely. The fibres of the transplanted tree
reward scrutiny better in the time of King than at any
other period. History is but the drama of the lives
of those who pass like waves over the ocean of time.
Many scenes must be unrepresented, but "the age and
body of the time, its form and pressure," ought to be made
known. Scenes which have been by others falsely exhibited
have now been shown in their true colours, under the light
obtained from contemporary records, not written to deceive,
but prompted by the exigencies of the hour; in a time
of war, of tumult, and of pressing needs.
To dispel falsehood and bring truth to light has been a labour which, though often toilsome in poring over musty manuscripts, has been lightened by the hope of communicating to others the sparks of long-lost truth which have gleamed upon the author in the course of his researches. He has aimed not to represent King as wiser than he was, but to show exactly how and why he acted. His was a discretionary government, often highly arbitrary. It was incompatible with any extant written law, and when he required new powers he wrote a fresh General Order, and enforced it. He was his own interpreter of it in the Appeal Court. Like the control of a man-of-war, the