The Turbulent Backdrop of Colonial New South Wales

When Lachlan Macquarie arrived in Port Jackson in December 1809 as the newly appointed Governor of New South Wales, he stepped into a colony teetering on the edge of anarchy. The recent Rum Rebellion against Governor William Bligh had exposed fatal flaws in Britain’s penal colony experiment. The New South Wales Corps, originally sent to maintain order, had become a law unto itself – its officers openly defying governors, monopolizing trade, and even orchestrating armed coups.

Britain’s response was strategic: appoint a military leader who could command respect through both rank and force of personality. Macquarie, a seasoned Highland officer with 30 years’ service, arrived with 700 men of the 73rd Regiment. His mandate was clear – restore imperial authority while maintaining the colony’s primary function as a receptacle for Britain’s convicted criminals. This delicate balancing act would define his controversial 12-year governorship, the longest of any colonial administrator to that point.

Military Consolidation and Political Resistance

Macquarie’s first challenge came from the entrenched New South Wales Corps. His solution was characteristically decisive: disband the rogue regiment entirely. Of its members, 300 were absorbed into the 73rd Regiment, 400 shipped back to England, and about 100 permitted to remain as settlers. This military reorganization gave Macquarie something his predecessors lacked – unquestioned control over colonial security forces.

Yet political challenges soon emerged. As early as 1812, the British House of Commons proposed establishing a legislative assembly – a suggestion Macquarie firmly opposed. His reasoning revealed his authoritarian leanings: “It would be highly inexpedient to constitute a Legislative Assembly in New South Wales.” He believed centralized control was essential for governing a population largely composed of convicts. Ironically, resistance to this stance would eventually galvanize Australia’s first political movements demanding representative government.

The Emancipist Controversy: Social Engineering in a Penal Colony

Macquarie’s most radical and contentious policies concerned emancipated convicts (“emancipists”). By 1810, New South Wales contained 16,428 convicts and ex-convicts compared to just 2,804 free settlers – yet the latter held most social and economic power. Macquarie challenged this hierarchy with a revolutionary principle: once a convict served their sentence, they should enjoy full social equality.

He appointed emancipists as magistrates, dined with them publicly, and even supported former convict lawyers practicing in colonial courts. This provoked furious opposition. Military officers refused to share meals with emancipists at Government House; free settlers protested that convict origins permanently tainted character. The conflict reached its zenith when Macquarie insisted on admitting emancipist lawyer George Crossley (convicted of forgery) to the colonial bar, leading to a two-year standoff with Chief Justice Jeffrey Bent that paralyzed the judicial system.

Judicial Reforms and Clashes with the Bench

Recognizing the colony’s primitive legal system needed reform, Macquarie welcomed the arrival of barrister Ellis Bent as Judge Advocate in 1810. However, when Ellis’s brother Jeffrey Hart Bent established the Supreme Court in 1814, conflict erupted over the role of emancipist lawyers. The Bents insisted only barristers with unsullied English credentials could practice, while Macquarie saw this as perpetuating an unjust caste system.

The impasse reflected deeper tensions about the colony’s identity: was it a permanent society requiring English legal standards, or a penal institution focused on rehabilitation? The controversy only resolved when both Bents were removed – Ellis by death in 1815, Jeffrey by recall in 1816. Their successor, Barron Field, brought literary pretensions but less obstinacy, though his correspondence with Charles Lamb revealed enduring British prejudices about the “thieves’ colony.”

The Architecture of Autocracy

Macquarie’s governance style blended military discipline with patriarchal benevolence. He:
– Personally inspected church sermons for seditious content
– Imposed punishments without trial (including flogging a settler for trespassing in his garden)
– Vetoed marriages he deemed inappropriate
– Openly preferred emancipists over free settlers in official appointments

Yet this autocracy yielded tangible progress. Under Macquarie’s direction:
– Sydney’s chaotic layout was regularized with straight streets
– Over 265 public works projects were completed, including hospitals, schools, and churches
– Australia’s first lighthouse was built at South Head by convict architect Francis Greenway
– The colony’s first banks were established (Bank of New South Wales in 1816, Savings Bank in 1817)

Legacy of a Contradictory Visionary

When Macquarie departed in 1821, New South Wales had tripled in population to over 40,000, with 350,000 acres under cultivation. His insistence on emancipist equality, though imperfectly realized, planted early seeds of Australian egalitarianism. The very resistance to his autocratic methods accelerated demands for representative government that would culminate in the Australian democracy movement.

Historians remain divided. Was Macquarie a progressive reformer challenging social prejudices, or a military autocrat blind to the need for institutional checks? Perhaps he was both – a man whose paternalistic vision outstripped his era’s limitations, leaving an indelible mark on Australia’s development from penal outpost to thriving colony. As John Macarthur grudgingly admitted, even Macquarie’s critics acknowledged him as “a gentleman of good sense and benevolent character” – qualities that ultimately made his authoritarianism palatable during a critical transitional period.

The streets, buildings, and institutions he established still shape modern Sydney, while his emancipist policies prefigured Australia’s later social mobility. In governing a society where most were either convicts or their descendants, Macquarie understood what his successors would take decades to accept: that Australia’s future depended on transforming prisoners into citizens.