matical sense of the Articles, as to vigorous understanding, which his new merit rapid and ignominious ejectment and arduous situation so manifestly from the bosom of the Church. requires. Now we have done with the Bishop. We give him all he asks as to his legal right; and only contend, that he is acting a very indiscreet and injudicious part fatal to his quiet-fatal to his reputation as a man of sense- blamed by Ministers-blamed by all the Bench of Bishops-vexatious to the Clergy, and highly injurious to the Church. We mean no personal disrespect to the Bishop; we are as ignorant of him as of his victims. We should have been heartily glad if the debate in Parliament had put an end to these blamable excesses; and our only object, in meddling with the question, is to restrain the arm of Power within the limits of moderation and justice-one of the great objects which first led to the establishment of this Journal, and which, we hope, will always continue to characterise its efforts. BOTANY BAY. (E. REVIEW, 1823.) 1. Letter to Earl Bathurst. By the Honourable H. Grey Bennet, M.P. Ornamental architecture in Botany Bay! How it could enter into the head of any human being to adorn public buildings at the Bay, or to aim at any other architectural purpose but the exclusion of wind and rain, we are utterly at a loss to conceive. Such an expense is not only lamentable for the waste of property it makes in the particular instance, but because it destroys that guarantee of sound sense which the Government at home must require in those who preside over distant colonies. A man who thinks of pillars and pilasters, when half the colony are wet through for want of any covering at all, cannot be a wise or prudent person. He seems to be ignorant, that the prevention of rheumatism in all young colonies is a much more important object than the gratification of taste, or the display of skill. "I suggested to Governor Macquarrie the expediency of stopping all work then in progress that was merely of an ornamental nature, and of postponing its execution till other more important buildings were finished. With this view it was, that I recommended to the Governor to stop the progress of a large church, the foundation 2. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry of which had been laid previous to my into the State of the Colony of New South arrival, and which, by the estimate of Mr. Wales. Ordered by the House of Com-Greenway the architect, would have remons to be printed, 19th June, 1822. MR. BIGGE'S Report is somewhat long, vernor adopted, in the destination of the and a little clumsy; but it is altogether new Court-house at Sydney, the accommothe production of an honest, sensible, dation of a new church is probably by this and respectable man, who has done his time secured. As I conceived that considuty to the public, and justified the ex-derable advantage had been gained by inpense of his mission to the fifth or pickpocket quarter of the globe. What manner of man is Governor Macquarrie ? Is all that Mr. Bennet says of him in the House of Commons true? These are the questions which Lord Bathurst sent Mr. Bigge, and very properly sent him, 28,000 miles to answer. The answer is, that Governor Macquarrie is not a dishonest man, nor a jobber; but arbitrary, in many things scandalously negligent, very often wrong-headed, and, upon the whole, very deficient in that good sense and quired six years to complete. By a change that I recommended, and which the Go ducing Governor Macquarrie to suspend the progress of the larger church, I did not jection to the addition of these ornamental deem it necessary to make any pointed obparts of the smaller one; though I regretted to observe in this instance, as well as in those of the new stables at Sydney, the turnpike gate-house and the new fountain there, as well as in the repairs of an old church at Paramatta, how much more the embellishment of these places had been and pressing wants of the colony. The considered by the Governor than the real buildings that I had recommended to his early attention in Sydney were, a new gaol, a school-house, and a market-house. The defects of the first of these buildings | than Beer and Britannia? — what event will be more particularly pointed out when more awfully important to an English I come to describe the buildings that have colony, than the erection of its first been erected in New South Wales. It is brewhouse?-and yet it required, in sufficient for me now to observe, that they were striking, and of a nature not to be Van Diemen's Land, the greatest soliremedied by additions or repairs. The other citation to the Government, and all the two were in a state of absolute ruin; they influence of Mr. Bigge, to get it effected. were also of undeniable importance and The Government, having obtained posnecessity. Having left Sydney in the month session of the best workmen, keep of November, 1820, with these impressions, them; their manumission is much and with a belief that the suggestions I had more infrequent than that of the usemade to Governor Macquarrie respecting less and unprofitable convicts; in other them had been partly acted upon, and would continue to be so during my absence words, one man is punished for his in Van Diemen's Land, it was not without skill, and another rewarded for his inmuch surprise and regret that I learnt, utility. Guilty of being a locksmith during my residence in that settlement, guilty of stonemasonry, or brickthe resumption of the work at the large church in Sydney, and the steady continuation of the others that I had objected to, especially the Governor's stables at Sydney. I felt the greater surprise in receiving the information respecting this last-mentioned structure, during my absence in Van Diemen's Land, as the Governor himself had, upon many occasions, expressed to me his own regret at having ever sanctioned it, and his consciousness of its extravagant dimensions and ostentatious character."— (Report, pp. 51, 52.) making;-these are the second verdicts One of the great difficulties in Botany Bay is to find proper employment for the great mass of convicts who are sent out. Governor Macquarrie selects all the best artisans, of every description, for the use of Government; and puts the poets, attornies, and politicians up to auction. The evil consequences of this are manifold. In the first place, from possessing so many of the best artificers, the Governor is necessarily turned into a builder; and immense drafts are drawn upon the Treasury at home, for buildings better adapted for Regent Street than the Bay. In the next place, the poor settler finding that the convict attorney is very awkward at cutting timber, or "I think it necessary to notice the want catching kangaroos, soon returns him of attention that has prevailed, until a very upon the hands of Government in a late period, at Sydney, to the circumstances much worse plight than that in which of those convicts who have been transhe was received. Not only are gover-ported a second and a third time. Although nors thus debauched into useless and expensive builders, but the colonists who are scheming and planning with all the activity of new settlers, cannot find workmen to execute their designs. What two ideas are more inseparable the knowledge of these facts is transmitted in the hulk lists, or acquired without difoccurred to Governor Macquarrie or to the ficulty during the passage, it never has superintendent of convicts, to make any difference in the condition of these men, not even to disappoint the views they may be supposed to have indulged by the success | many public houses licensed in the of a criminal enterprise in England, and neighbourhood.—(p. 14.) by transferring the fruits of it to New South Wales. "To accomplish this very simple but important object, nothing more was necessary than to consign these men to any situation rather than that which their friends had selected for them, and distinctly to declare in the presence of their comrades at the first muster on their arrival, that no consideration or favour would be shown to those who had violated the law a second time, and that the mitigation of their sentences must be indefinitely postponed." -(Report, p. 19.) "As to Mr. Marsden's troubles of mind" (says the Governor) "and pathetic display of sensibility and humanity, they must be so deeply seated, and so far removed from the surface, as to escape all possible observation. His habits are those of a man for ever engaged in some active, animated pursuit. No man travels more from town to town, or from house to house. His deportment is at all times that of a person the most gay and happy. When I was honoured with his society, he was by far the most cheerful person I met in the colony. Where his hours of sorrow were spent it is hard to divine; for the variety of his pursuits, both in his own concerns, and in those of others, is so extensive, in farming, grazing, manufactories, transactions, that with his clerical duties, he seems, to use a common phrase, to have his hands to which he imputes this extreme depres full of work. And the particular subject sion of mind, is, besides, one for which few people here will give him much credit.”— (Macquarrie's Letter to Lord Sidmouth, p. 18.) There is certainly a wide difference between a man of so much feeling, that he has not a moment's happiness from the beginning to the end of the week, and a little merry bustling clergyman, largely concerned in the sale of rum, and brisk at a bargain for barley. Mr. Bigge's evidence, however, is very much in favour of Mr. Marsden. seems to think him a man of highly respectable character and superior understanding, and that he has been dismissed from the magistracy by Governor Macquarrie, in a very rash, un He We were not a little amused at Governor Macquarrie's laureate a regular Mr. Southey who, upon the king's birth-day, sings the praises of Governor Macquarrie.* The case of this votary of Apollo and Mercury was a case for life; the offence a menacing epistle, or, as low people call it, a threatening letter. He has been pardoned, however,-bursting his shackles, like Orpheus of old, with song and metre, and is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge, but no specimen of his poetry given. One of the best and most enlightened men in the settlement appears to be Mr. Marsden, a clergyman at Paramatta. Mr. Bennet represents him as a gentleman of great feeling, whose life is embittered by the scenes of horror and vice it is his lot to witness at Paramatta. Indeed he says of himself, that in consequence of these things, "he does not enjoy one happy moment from the beginning to the end of the week!" This letter, at the time, produced a very considerable sensation in this country. The idea of a man of refinement and feeling wearing away his life in the midst of scenes of crime and debauchery to which he can apply no corrective, is certainly a very melancholy and af-in a country where their existence is fecting picture; but there is no story, however elegant and eloquent, which does not require, for the purposes of justice, to be turned to the other side, and viewed in reverse. The Rev. Mr. Marsden (says Mr. Bigge), being himself accustomed to traffic in spirits, must necessarily feel displeased at having so * Vide Report, p. 146. justifiable, and even tyrannical manner; and in these opinions, we must say, the facts seem to bear out the Report of the Commissioner. misses honest and irreproachable men Colonel Macquarrie not only dis scarce, and their services inestimable, but he advances convicts to the situation and dignity of magistrates. Mr. Bennet lays great stress upon this, and makes it one of his strongest charges against the Governor; and the Commissioner also takes part against it. But we confess we have great doubts on the subject; and are by no means He that was so distinguished by Governor Mac- and Paramatta. "In the divisions that prevailed in the colony previous to the arrest of Governor Bligh, Mr. Fulton took no part; but, happening to form one of his family when the person of the Governor was menaced with violence, he courageously opposed himself to the military party that entered the devotion to the authority of Governor house, and gave an example of courage and Bligh, which, if partaken either by the officer or his few adherents, would have spared him the humiliation of a personal arrest, and rescued his authority from the disgrace of open and violent suspension." -(Report, pp. 83, 84.) satisfied that the system of the Go- following case, for instance, from Mr. vernor was not, upon the whole, the Bigge:wisest and best adapted to the situation of the colony. Men are governed by words; and under the infamous term convict, are comprehended crimes of the most different degrees and species of guilt. One man is transported for stealing three hams and a pot of sausages; and in the next berth to him on board the transport is a young surgeon, who has been engaged in the mutiny at the Nore; the third man is for extorting money; the fourth was in a respectable situation of life at the time of the Irish Rebellion, and was so ill read in history as to imagine that Ireland had been ill-treated by England, and so bad a reasoner as to suppose, that nine Catholics ought not to pay tithes to one Protestant. Then comes a man who set his house on fire, to cheat the Phoenix Office; and, lastly, that most glaring of all human villains, a poacher, driven from Europe, wife and child, by thirty lords of manors, at the Quarter Sessions, for killing a partridge. Now, all these are crimes no too must be remembered. It is seldom, The particular nature of the place doubt-particularly the last; but they are surely crimes of very different de- the Bay, but commonly men of active we suspect, that absolute dunces go to grees of intensity to which different minds, and considerable talents in their degrees of contempt and horror are various lines who have not learnt, attached-and from which those who indeed, the art of self-discipline and have committed them may, by subsequent morality, emancipate themselves, the bitter school of adversity. And control, but who are sent to learn it in with different degrees of difficulty, and when this medicine produces its proper with more or less of success. A warrant effect-when sufficient time has been granted by a reformed bacon-stealer given to show a thorough change in would be absurd; but there is hardly character and disposition any reason why a foolish hot-brained colony really cannot afford to dispense young blockhead, who chose to favour with the services of any person of the mutineers at the Nore when he was sixteen years of age, may not make a and acuteness, are of such immense imsuperior talents. Activity, resolution, very loyal subject, and a very respect-portance in the hard circumstances able and respected magistrate, when of a new State, that they must be he is forty years of age, and has cast his Jacobine teeth, and fallen into the cagerly caught at, and employed as practical jobbing and loyal baseness all may not be quite so unobjectionable soon as they are discovered. Though which so commonly developes itself about that period of life. Therefore, as could be wished to say that a man must be placed in no situation of trust or elevation, as a magistrate, merely because he is a convict, is to govern mankind with a dictionary, and to surrender sense and usefulness to sound. Take the a young "Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri" as Colonel Macquarrie probably quoted to Mr. Commissioner Bigge. As for the conduct of those extra-moralists, who come to settle in a land of crir These passages, we think, are conclusive evidence of the practice of the Church till 1719. For Wake was not only at the time Archbishop of Canterbury, but both in his circular recommendations to the Bishops of England, and in his correspondence with foreign Churches, was acting in the capacity of metropolitan of the Anglican Church. He, a man of prudence and learning, publicly boasts to Protestant Europe, that his Church does not exact, and that he de facto has never avowed, and never will, his opinions on those very points upon which Bishop Marsh obliges every poor curate to be explicit, upon pain of expulsion from the Church. of Arminianism) to bishoprics and of England is made, in elucidation of archbishoprics-so little did a Calvi- the charity and wisdom of such policy. nistic interpretation of the Articles in Speaking of men who act upon a cona man's own breast, or even an avowal trary principle he says, O quantum of Calvinism beyond what was required potuit insana piλavria! by the Articles, operate even then as a disqualification for the cure of souls, or any other office in the Church. Throughout Charles II. and William III.'s time, the best men and greatest names of the Church not only allowed latitude in interpreting the Articles, but thought it would be wise to diminish their number, and render them more lax than they are; and be it observed that these latitudinarians leant to Arminianism rather than to high Calvinism; and thought, consequently, that the Articles, if objectionable at all, were exposed to the censure of being "too Calvinistic," rather than too Arminian. How preposterous, therefore, to twist them, and the subscription to It is clear, then, the practice was to them required by law, by the machinery extract subscription, and nothing else, of a long string of explanatory ques- as the test of orthodoxy-to that Wake tions, into a barrier against Calvinists, is an evidence. As far as he is authoand to give the Arminians a monopoly rity on a point of opinion, it is his conin the Church! viction that this practice was wholeArchbishop Wake, in 1716, after some, wise, and intended to preserve consulting all the Bishops then attend-peace in the Church; that it would be ing Parliament, thought it incumbent on him to employ the authority which the ecclesiastical laws then in force, and the custom and laws of the realm vested in him" in taking care that "no unworthy person might hereafter be admitted into the sacred Ministry of the Church;" and he drew up twelve recommendations to the Bishops of England, in which he earnestly exhorts them not to ordain persons of bad conduct or character, or incompetent learning; but he does not require from the candidates for Holy Orders or preferment any explanation whatever of the Articles which they had signed. The Correspondence of the same eminent Prelate with Professor. Turretin in 1718, and with Mr. Le Clerc and the Pastors and Professors of Geneva in 1719, printed in London, 1782, recommends union among Protestants, and the omission of controverted points in Confessions of Faith, as a means of obtaining that union; and a constant reference to the practice of the Church wrong at least, if not illegal, to do otherwise; and that the observance of this forbearance is the only method of preventing schism. The Bishop of Peterborough, however, is of a different opinion; he is so thoroughly convinced of the pernicious effects of Calvinistic doctrines, that he does what no other Bishop does, or ever did do, for their exclusion. This may be either wise or injudicious, but it is at least zealous and bold; it is to encounter rebuke, and opposition, from a sense of duty. It is impossible to deny this merit to his Lordship. And we have no doubt, that, in pursuance of the same theological gallantry, he is preparing a set of interrogatories for those clergymen who are presented to benefices in his diocese. The patron will have his action of Quare impedit, it is true; and the judge and jury will decide whether the Bishop has the right of interro gation at all; and whether Calvinistical answers to his interrogatories disqualify any man from holding preferment in |