Lachlan Macquarie - Governor of New South Wales

Governor of New South Wales

In November 1807, Macquarie's cousin Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell became his second wife. In April 1809 Macquarie was appointed Governor of New South Wales. In making this appointment, the British government reversed its practice of appointing naval officers as governor and chose an army commander in the hope that he could secure the co-operation of the unruly New South Wales Corps, and aided by the fact he arrived in New South Wales at the head of his own military unit, the 73rd Regiment. At the head of regular troops he was unchallenged by the New South Wales Corps whose members had become settled in farming, commerce and trade.

Macquarie was promoted to Colonel in 1810, Brigadier in 1811 and Major-General in 1813, while serving as governor.

The Macquaries departed from England in May 1809 aboard the HMS Dromedary, accompanied by the HMS Hindostan. They reached Sydney on 28 December 1809. He started as a governor on 1 January 1810 and he appointed John Campbell as his secretary.

The first task Macquarie had to tackle was to restore orderly, lawful government and discipline in the colony following the Rum Rebellion of 1808 against Governor William Bligh. Macquarie was ordered by the British government to arrest both John Macarthur and Major George Johnston, two of the leaders of the Rum Rebellion. However, by the time Macquarie arrived in Sydney in December 1809, both Macarthur and Johnston had already sailed for England to defend themselves. Macquarie immediately set about cancelling the various initiatives taken by the rebel government—for example, all "pardons, leases and land grants" made by the rebels were revoked, (although many were later re-issued).

Macquarie ruled the colony as an enlightened despot, breaking the power of the Army officers such as John Macarthur, who had been the colony's de facto ruler since Bligh's overthrow. He was "the last British proconsul sent to run New South Wales as a military autocracy".

In 1812, the first detailed inquiry into the convict system in Australia by a Select Committee on Transportation, supported in general Macquarie's liberal policies. However, the committee thought that fewer tickets of leave should be issued and opposed the governor having the power to grant pardons. The committee concluded that the colony should be made as prosperous as possible so as to provide work for the convicts and to encourage them to become settlers after being given their freedom.

On a visit of inspection to the settlement of Hobart Town on the Derwent River in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in November 1811, Macquarie was appalled at the ramshackle arrangement of the town and ordered the government surveyor James Meehan to survey a regular street layout. This survey determined the form of the current centre of the city of Hobart.

Macquarie is credited with producing the first official currency specifically for circulation in Australia. Foreign coins were common in the early years of the New South Wales colony but much of this coin left the colony as a result of trade with visiting merchant ships. To secure a reliable supply of coins, in 1812 Macquarie purchased 40,000 Spanish dollar coins and had a convicted forger named William Henshall cut the centers out of the coins and counter stamp them to distinguish them as belonging to the colony of New South Wales and prevent them being useful elsewhere. The central plug (known as a "dump") was valued at 15 pence and the rim (known as a holey dollar) became a five-shilling piece.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought a renewed flood of both convicts and settlers to New South Wales, as the sea lanes became free and as the rate of unemployment and crime in Britain rose. Macquarie presided over a rapid increase in population and economic activity. By the time of his departure for London on February 15, 1822, the white population had reached an 'estimated' 36,969. The colony began to have a life beyond its functions as a penal settlement, and an increasing proportion of the population earned their own living. All this, in Macquarie's eyes, made a new social policy necessary.