Rum, rum, kick up the bum
The dominance of the NSW Corps officers in the rum trade very unfortunately interconnected with another issue the colony had. A great lack of hard cash. That's right. If someone actually earned an income, there was no hard cash to pay them. And if that worker wanted to buy something, there was no hard cash to pay for it.
Of course, the convicts couldn't earn cash, at least, not legitimately, but there were gradually increasing numbers of "emancipists", that is, former convicts who had served their seven or fourteen year sentence; "ticket-of-leave" people, being convicts who were allowed to work as free men, with a number of restrictions; and free immigrants. And these men and women had to be paid for their work, so they could afford to buy the officers' fake rum.
So the authorities had to replace actual cash with something else. In this case, influenced by the NSW Corps officers, of course, that something else was rum. And the corruption of the colony was almost complete. What was better than to sell rum to the drunken idiots, forcing them to pay some of that rum back in payment for the bit of rum they've got left? Phew, did you follow that? No, neither did we. But, believe us, the officers did very well out of it, thank you very much.
Finally, the British government realised that the other side of the world this joint might be, but they had to do something to clean the place up before Sydney became the capital of a pirate kingdom. Sydney and the other towns of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land were awash with the rum-scented urine of almost constantly drunk men and women, rutting wherever they could find the wall space. Word was spreading about how British people behave in the sun.
So, while determined to scrub the joint out, instead of doing anything effective, the nobs, true to form, decided that what the Sydneysiders one and all were in need of, was a good spanking of the kind they, the nobs, used to get at school. And they sent in a renowned disciplinarian to sort things out.
Unfortunately, while he was a renowned disciplinarian, William Bligh, he of the mutiny on the Bounty, was also a renowned martinet. He was tactless, bad mannered, incredibly bulldoggishly aggressive, and foully bad tempered. He had his good side, and certainly his heart was in his task, but he very quickly and absolutely inevitably and predictably ran into conflict with the officers of what had come to most aptly be called the Rum Corps.
This led to the so-called Rum Rebellion in 1808. This was Australia's only military coup, when Governor Bligh, New South Wales's representative of the King's power, in fact, probably more power than the King, was overthrown, subjected to enormous humiliation, and imprisoned. Well, "imgovernment" housed, really, if we can create such an ugly term. The Rum Corps ran things just the way they liked for the next couple of years.
And this is around when Lachlan arrived in the place with his savage highlanders in 1810.
Of course, the convicts couldn't earn cash, at least, not legitimately, but there were gradually increasing numbers of "emancipists", that is, former convicts who had served their seven or fourteen year sentence; "ticket-of-leave" people, being convicts who were allowed to work as free men, with a number of restrictions; and free immigrants. And these men and women had to be paid for their work, so they could afford to buy the officers' fake rum.
So the authorities had to replace actual cash with something else. In this case, influenced by the NSW Corps officers, of course, that something else was rum. And the corruption of the colony was almost complete. What was better than to sell rum to the drunken idiots, forcing them to pay some of that rum back in payment for the bit of rum they've got left? Phew, did you follow that? No, neither did we. But, believe us, the officers did very well out of it, thank you very much.
Finally, the British government realised that the other side of the world this joint might be, but they had to do something to clean the place up before Sydney became the capital of a pirate kingdom. Sydney and the other towns of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land were awash with the rum-scented urine of almost constantly drunk men and women, rutting wherever they could find the wall space. Word was spreading about how British people behave in the sun.
So, while determined to scrub the joint out, instead of doing anything effective, the nobs, true to form, decided that what the Sydneysiders one and all were in need of, was a good spanking of the kind they, the nobs, used to get at school. And they sent in a renowned disciplinarian to sort things out.
Unfortunately, while he was a renowned disciplinarian, William Bligh, he of the mutiny on the Bounty, was also a renowned martinet. He was tactless, bad mannered, incredibly bulldoggishly aggressive, and foully bad tempered. He had his good side, and certainly his heart was in his task, but he very quickly and absolutely inevitably and predictably ran into conflict with the officers of what had come to most aptly be called the Rum Corps.
This led to the so-called Rum Rebellion in 1808. This was Australia's only military coup, when Governor Bligh, New South Wales's representative of the King's power, in fact, probably more power than the King, was overthrown, subjected to enormous humiliation, and imprisoned. Well, "imgovernment" housed, really, if we can create such an ugly term. The Rum Corps ran things just the way they liked for the next couple of years.
And this is around when Lachlan arrived in the place with his savage highlanders in 1810.