Little Bigge
So, Bathurst turned to his roomful of files containing letters from the angry and dissatisfied exclusives, pondered for not very long, and appointed a bloke called John Thomas Bigge as a commissioner of enquiry.
Lord Bathurst, concerned about the efficacy of using transportation to reduce the incidence of crime, the cost of maintaining the prison colony, the way the colony should develop (note the use of the word “colony”), and any faults with Macquarie’s rule, instituted a royal commission to enquire. He appointed John Thomas Bigge, former barrister and Chief Justice of Trinidad, aged just thirty-nine when he arrived in Sydney in 1819, as royal commissioner.
We know it’s an overly easy joke to make, except there’s really nothing funny about it, and that’s got nothing to do with the fact that if it was a joke it would contain little humour, but John Thomas Bigge was a small man, and that’s got nothing to do with his physical appearance.
Bigge’s final report, actually three reports, was not a completely negative, conservative, and destructive document. But his approach to his enquiry was worse than appalling, it was absolutely outrageous.
Bigge was not a senior member of the British élite, but he was part of it and was in total accord with its beliefs at a time when the Conservative Party, known as the Tory Party, representative of the conservative élite, dominated government. He was also a public servant, and he knew perfectly well his job was to implement everything he was instructed to do, both formally, and informally through implication and his understandings as to what his master wanted, whether expressed or not. And, of course, that was the only path to good promotion.
Lord Bathurst, the conservative, but allegedly not reactionary, Secretary of War and Colonies, gave Bigge his commission documentation, and outlined his expectations of Bigge in three further letters. He was to investigate 'all the laws regulations and usages of the settlements', particularly the laws having an impact on civil administration,the convict system, the courts, the Church (note the singular, this meant the “established” church, the Church of England), trade, governmental revenue, and natural resources.
Transportation, Bathurst wrote, should be made “an object of real terror” and Bigge had to report whether Lachlan’s humanitarian, for the time, policies had caused the need for convicts and anyone likely to commit a crime to be terrorised to be weakened because of Macquarie's “ill considered compassion for convicts”. Where he reckoned the convict system was too soft, Bigge could recommend the establishment of a more terrible regime.
Disgracefully, there was to be no privacy for the highest and mightiest of New South Wales, both private sector and public sector people. The royal commissioner was to elicit anything he could about the private and public lives of these people, secret and/or supposedly private conversations, even when the participants were under the impression what they said was “off the record”, tittle tattle of all kinds, with no apparent regard for the relationships between the people being tittle tattled on and the tittle tattler, the British Government wanted to know it all.
So not only was Bigge to conduct his commission outrageously, but Bathurst instructed him outrageously. This was, quite simply, wrong.
Oh, and both Bigge and Macquarie were instructed that Bigge outranked Macquarie, who was to implement any instruction from Bigge. By now you can well imagine how that went down in Government House.
Lord Bathurst, concerned about the efficacy of using transportation to reduce the incidence of crime, the cost of maintaining the prison colony, the way the colony should develop (note the use of the word “colony”), and any faults with Macquarie’s rule, instituted a royal commission to enquire. He appointed John Thomas Bigge, former barrister and Chief Justice of Trinidad, aged just thirty-nine when he arrived in Sydney in 1819, as royal commissioner.
We know it’s an overly easy joke to make, except there’s really nothing funny about it, and that’s got nothing to do with the fact that if it was a joke it would contain little humour, but John Thomas Bigge was a small man, and that’s got nothing to do with his physical appearance.
Bigge’s final report, actually three reports, was not a completely negative, conservative, and destructive document. But his approach to his enquiry was worse than appalling, it was absolutely outrageous.
Bigge was not a senior member of the British élite, but he was part of it and was in total accord with its beliefs at a time when the Conservative Party, known as the Tory Party, representative of the conservative élite, dominated government. He was also a public servant, and he knew perfectly well his job was to implement everything he was instructed to do, both formally, and informally through implication and his understandings as to what his master wanted, whether expressed or not. And, of course, that was the only path to good promotion.
Lord Bathurst, the conservative, but allegedly not reactionary, Secretary of War and Colonies, gave Bigge his commission documentation, and outlined his expectations of Bigge in three further letters. He was to investigate 'all the laws regulations and usages of the settlements', particularly the laws having an impact on civil administration,the convict system, the courts, the Church (note the singular, this meant the “established” church, the Church of England), trade, governmental revenue, and natural resources.
Transportation, Bathurst wrote, should be made “an object of real terror” and Bigge had to report whether Lachlan’s humanitarian, for the time, policies had caused the need for convicts and anyone likely to commit a crime to be terrorised to be weakened because of Macquarie's “ill considered compassion for convicts”. Where he reckoned the convict system was too soft, Bigge could recommend the establishment of a more terrible regime.
Disgracefully, there was to be no privacy for the highest and mightiest of New South Wales, both private sector and public sector people. The royal commissioner was to elicit anything he could about the private and public lives of these people, secret and/or supposedly private conversations, even when the participants were under the impression what they said was “off the record”, tittle tattle of all kinds, with no apparent regard for the relationships between the people being tittle tattled on and the tittle tattler, the British Government wanted to know it all.
So not only was Bigge to conduct his commission outrageously, but Bathurst instructed him outrageously. This was, quite simply, wrong.
Oh, and both Bigge and Macquarie were instructed that Bigge outranked Macquarie, who was to implement any instruction from Bigge. By now you can well imagine how that went down in Government House.