A Puritan in a Penal Colony
In 1831, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur presided over Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania) with an air of austere authority. To some, he was a man of deep religious conviction, offering prayers and tea at Government House with an earnest devotion. To others, he was a sanctimonious hypocrite, enriching himself with vast tracts of land while preaching humility. Arthur saw himself as an instrument of divine providence, tasked with reforming both convicts and Indigenous Tasmanians—whom he viewed as lost souls in need of salvation. His rule was marked by a relentless drive to impose order, morality, and Christian discipline upon a society forged in the crucible of exile and punishment.
The Fate of the Tasmanian Aborigines
One of Arthur’s most controversial policies was the forced removal of the remaining Indigenous Tasmanians from their ancestral lands. By 1831, decades of violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal groups had decimated the native population. Arthur, influenced by the missionary George Augustus Robinson, believed relocation to Flinders Island in Bass Strait would “protect” them from further violence while allowing for their “civilization.”
In February 1831, thirty-four Aboriginal people were uprooted and transported under Robinson’s supervision. Though Arthur framed this as an act of Christian mercy, the reality was grim. Stripped of their land and culture, the Indigenous detainees suffered from disease, malnutrition, and despair. When settlers demanded harsher reprisals after Aboriginal retaliatory killings, Arthur wavered between moral idealism and pragmatic brutality. By 1832, Robinson had persuaded more than forty Indigenous Tasmanians to surrender, presenting them to Arthur as a triumph of conciliation. Yet this “benevolent” removal amounted to cultural erasure, sealing the tragic fate of Tasmania’s First Nations people.
The Convict System: Discipline and Desperation
Arthur’s vision for Van Diemen’s Land was that of a reformatory—a place where convicts could be redeemed through hard labor and strict discipline. Upon arrival, convicts were subjected to sermons on their moral degradation before being assigned to settlers or government work gangs. Arthur believed that removing temptation—alcohol, idleness, and bad company—would lead to repentance.
Yet the system bred cruelty. Convicts faced floggings, chain gangs, and penal settlements like Port Arthur, where labor was relentless and punishments severe. Some, like the infamous cannibal Edward Broughton, descended into madness. Others, like the agricultural rioters transported from England, endured their sentences quietly, hoping for eventual pardons. Women convicts, often punished for drunkenness or disobedience, were confined to factories or assigned as servants, their lives tightly controlled by moral reformers.
Rebellion and Resentment Among the Free
Arthur’s authoritarian rule extended beyond convicts. Free settlers, particularly landholders, chafed under his policies. Quitrents—taxes on land grants—sparked outrage, with colonists accusing Arthur of favoring his allies while oppressing dissenters. In May 1831, a public meeting in Hobart Town denounced his administration, demanding trial by jury and representative government.
Arthur dismissed these demands as the complaints of drunkards and malcontents. His disdain for democratic reforms alienated even moderate settlers, who saw him as out of touch with colonial aspirations. When London ordered convict labor to be contracted to private employers, Arthur resisted, fearing it would undermine moral discipline. His inflexibility deepened divisions, fueling calls for self-rule.
Legacy of a Divided Rule
By 1833, Arthur’s regime was both admired and reviled. His penal system was efficient, but its brutality left scars. His treatment of Indigenous Tasmanians, though framed as protection, hastened their dispossession. And his refusal to accommodate free settlers’ demands sowed the seeds of future political strife.
Arthur’s legacy is one of paradox: a man of sincere faith who wielded power with cold pragmatism, a reformer who believed in redemption yet presided over a system of relentless punishment. Van Diemen’s Land under his rule was a place of contradictions—piety and cruelty, order and oppression—a microcosm of the tensions that shaped colonial Australia.
Today, his name remains etched in Tasmania’s history, a reminder of how moral certainty, when unchecked by empathy, can become its own kind of tyranny.