Convicts and Rebels

Abstract

Messrs. Clark,1 Shaw2 and Robson3 have given a conclusively negative answer ?o the first part of Professor Wood's question?Is it not clearly a fact that the atrocious criminals remained in England, while their victims, innocent and manly, founded the Australian demo cracy?'4 No longer are our founding fathers seen as 'innocent and manly'. But were they the founders of Australian democracy? To answer this it will be necessary to examine more than the skeleton of 'homo con victus'. Dr. Robson's method of choosing one convict in twenty?while statistically valid?is subject to some obvious limitations. It is, after all, a quantitative analysis and does not claim to tell us anything qualitative. In particular, it cannot distinguish between 'General' Holt and some illiterate footpad. Implicit within it is a complete denial of the role of the individual, making Dr. Robson the greatest of the levellers. Moreover, by limiting the description 'political' to 2 per cent of the total transport?es, it makes a value judgement about the remaining 98 per cent. His analysis would be similar to saying that the Bolshevik Party was unimportant in 1917 because barely one Russian in a thousand was a member. The political influence of the convicts cannot be deter mined by their indent papers alone. A man might be a thief and a rebel from the same cause; and if he is transported as a thief that does not obliterate his rebelliousness. Yet it is .true that the political influence of the convicts has been over rated. Their influence was slight not so much because they were small in numbers, but because of the situation in which they operated and because of the nature of their politics. To show this, three aspects of Australia's 'primitive rebels' require examination. Firstly, how extensive were their activities? Secondly, how political were they? Thirdly, how valid is a formulation of an Australian Democratic Tradition which takes the convicts as its starting point?