As a fellow Scot by upbringing I too admire Lachlan Macquarie but would moderate the eulogy provided by Richard Grimmond (Independent, March 3). Macquarie is to be respected for his support of the emancipists and for his belief that, having paid their debt to society, they deserved a second chance. Also to be admired is Macquarie’s commitment to providing essential infrastructure in the young colony, together with his insistence on quality (viz the architecture and buildings of Greenway). However, it might rightly be claimed his path was greatly facilitated by a blithe disregard of budget constraints and that it becomes relatively easy to spend other people’s money, even if in the main that money was wisely spent. Expenditure in Macquarie’s case came from the British taxpayer and year on year soared way beyond the limits set. Although Australians might give this the thumbs up, emotion apart, the fact is that those being taxed in Britain were themselves doing it extremely tough with mounting unemployment, enclosures and evictions (cf The Peterloo Massacre).
John Thomas Bigge was sent by Secretary of State Bathurst to rein Macquarie in and saw, in a way that Macquarie never did, that the way forward for NSW and Australia was large-scale pastoral farming as envisaged by John Macarthur. In this sense, by pointing the way to the breeding and rearing of sheep and cattle on large stations Bigge (largely reviled in Australia although certainly not in Britain), rather than Macquarie, may be regarded as the progenitor of future rapid development both in NSW and Australia as a whole. Macquarie laid a foundation but Bigge and Macarthur in the final analysis saw the way forward and got the job done.
Professor Neil K Buxton.
