The Far Horizon by Gretta Curran Browne

Author:Gretta Curran Browne [Browne, Gretta Curran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure, Romance, Genre Fiction, Biographical
Amazon: B009RWTD64
Publisher: Eighty-Eight Publications
Published: 2014-01-12T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Although ruled by a soldier, Sydney was becoming more and more like a well-regulated civilian town. But in order for it to function efficiently, there were a number of civic posts that still needed to be filled.

Yet Lachlan found, to his dismay, that the only freely come persons to the colony that had any administrative or executive ability were his own officers. So, without qualm, he continued to seek men of capacity and merit within the emancipist community to fill these positions.

In quick succession a number of emancipists were appointed to civic and government posts, including the appointment of Simeon Lord and Andrew Thompson as magistrates.

Reverend Samuel Marsden was apoplectic when he found he was expected to sit on a committee with two emancipists. He faced the Governor armed with the wrath of God.

‘You expect me to join my priestly name with these two men whose characters are notorious for improprieties!’

‘Yes, I do,’ Lachlan replied calmly. ‘And they are not notorious characters, as you well know. Simeon Lord was sent out here at the age of nineteen for a crime so insignificant it is not even in the records. Since then his behaviour has been exemplary.’

‘Say what you will of Simeon Lord, he is still a former convict. And as for the other one, Andrew Thompson, he is even worse! His crime was political!’

‘Of political origin, yes. He burned a landlord's haystack at the age of sixteen and served seven years in Botany Bay in retribution. Those seven years are gone, Reverend Marsden. The debt has been paid.’

Reverend Marsden shook his head stubbornly. ‘I would find it totally incompatible with my sacred functions to sit on any committee with two men who have worn leg-irons. It would be a degradation of my office as senior chaplain of the colony!’

Lachlan regarded him coldly. ‘I am well aware, Reverend Marsden, that you have been sent out here in a religious capacity. But if you continue to regard emancipists with condescension and contempt, then I see you serving little purpose to the majority of the population. If we cannot expect humanity and some small degree of charity from a Christian priest, then who – in God's holy name – can we expect it from?’

Reverend Marsden swept imperiously out of Government House, muttering his fury. If Macquarie thought he could order the saints to mix with the sinners then he would find himself facing a holy war in New South Wales.

*

Reverend Marsden's holy campaign started the following day. He visited all his Exclusive parishioners, confiding to them in tones of pious despair the fears he was beginning to harbour about Governor Macquarie's ‘peculiar system.’

‘He is trying to unite the free and convict population,’ Marsden said. ‘Like goats and sheep.’

Weeks later he was still murmuring his fears, although when speaking to those Exclusives he knew to be somewhat less than devout, he edged his words on a different vein, that would cut just as deep.

‘He is trying to raise one class and lower the other.

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