Major-General Lachlan Macquarie had no sooner taken up his post as Governor of the penal colony of New South Wales in 1810, than he had set about liberating convicts from their besmirched past and releasing them into a bright future, according to Luke Slattery in his book The First Dismissal. Macquarie favoured talented and able prisoners with tickets of leave: a form of early parole enabling a convict to support him or herself in a defined area.
We tend to read history as if the appointed leaders had full power and authority to control the events which occurred during their terms of office, but in Macquarie’s case there was entrenched opposition from the start, defined largely by the Conservative-Liberal divisions in political philosophy back in England. The Liberals, it would seem, were interested in seeing convicts rehabilitated, while the Conservatives were interested in maintaining class distinctions and seeing convicts suffer the full force of their punishment.
Macquarie’s downfall came in the form of Commissioner Bigge, sent to Australia in response to complaints made by the Governor’s sworn enemies. Bigge’s mission seems to have been to gather evidence against Macquarie, rather than to make an impartial investigation of the allegations. In 1821 Macquarie’s resignation was accepted, and he headed back to Britain to try to clear his name.
This is a short, elegantly written and entertaining book. It focuses on particular aspects of Macquarie’s term as Governor, including the extraordinary buildings created by the convict architect Francis Greenway, rather than on his life as a whole. I was not entirely convinced by the author’s attempt to Macquarie’s battles with more recent Australian political struggles, but the book does make a useful contribution to the field of Australian political history.