Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/603

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VISIT OF QUAKERS. THEIR NARRATIVE.
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In his hands transportation became a philosophic torture to the obstinate. By regular gradations the offending assigned servant encountered flogging,—a road party,—the iron gang, and the penal settlement. Yet each step could be guarded against by a prisoner; it was his own choice, Arthur told him, which punished him. He discouraged change from one master to another. It destroyed the fate-like march of his system. Under his guidance it progressed as sternly as the car of Juggernaut, crushing only (he said) the victims of their own folly. Successive Secretaries of State recognized the fact that in him they had a strong man equal to any duty in a land where the fortunes of the community were controlled, under the constitution, by the personal qualities of the Governor. Lord Bathurst, Lord Goderich, Mr. Huskisson, Sir George Murray, Lord Goderich a second time, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Spring Rice, came like shadows and departed, and still Colonel Arthur was at his post. Lord Glenelg at last relieved him, but with honour, and he governed afterwards in Canada and in Bombay. Rigid as a rock in doing what he thought his duty, he was more than ordinarily resolute in labouring to ascertain what that duty was. He shrunk from no toil, and welcomed aid from every quarter. Two Quakers, Backhouse and Walker, visited Australia on a mission of benevolence. From hut to hut, from gang to gang of men in chains, from cell to cell they wandered. Backhouse published a narrative in 1843:[1]

"Our first interview (he said) with Colouel Arthur gave us a favourable impression of his character as a governor and a Christian, which further acquaintance with him strongly confirmed. He took great interest in the temporal and spiritual prosperity of the colonists, and in the reformation of the prisoner population, as well as in the welfare of the surviving remnants of the native black inhabitants. . . . It was gratifying to see the anxiety he exhibited to rule on Christian principles, and to prosecute the work of reformation among the prisoners according to the same unerring standard."[2]

  1. ↑ A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies." London: 1843.
  2. ↑ Colonel Arthur met and did not shrink from the redoubtable Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, who lenounced transportation in all its aspects, and wrote strongly in reply to Arthur's statements. In a "Defence of Transportation" (London, 1835), Arthur, in reply to a letter from Whately to Earl Grey, wound up a forcible pamphlet with the words-if education "be pursued as the grand vehicle of communicating religious knowledge.
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