Ralph Darling
Sir Ralph Darling was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831. His period of governorship was unpopular, with Darling being broadly regarded as a tyrant. He introduced austere policies that resulted in croneyism, prisoner abuse, curtailment of press freedoms, discrimination against emancipists, obstruction of representative government, theatrical entertainment bans and injustices toward Indigenous Australians. During his time as Governor, a significant area of eastern Australia was explored by the British with local geographical features being named after him including the Darling River and the Darling Downs, along with Darling Harbour in Sydney.
Early life
Born in Ireland around 1772, Ralph Darling was the eldest son of Christopher Darling, an English sergeant, and later military adjutant, in the 45th Regiment of Foot of the British Army. While his father was away on service during the American Revolutionary War, it is likely that Ralph spent his childhood in either England or Ireland with his mother and siblings.In 1785, the 45th Regiment was transferred to the Caribbean island of Grenada where Christopher Darling became the regiment's quartermaster. He took his family, including Ralph aged 13, with him.
Military career
Grenada
In 1786, Ralph Darling, at the age of 14, entered the army as a private in his father's regiment, and served for two years on garrison duty at Grenada. From 1788 until 1792 it appears he became a customs officer on the island and achieved a high level of education and familiarity with colonial administration.With the outbreak of war against France in 1793, Ralph was granted an officer's commission as an ensign in the British Army on 15 May 1793, without having to make the usual payment. He remained at Grenada and was concurrently promoted to Acting Comptroller of Customs at Saint George's, Grenada.
Fédon's rebellion
In 1795, a rebellion against British rule led by Julien Fédon, a Black French commander from Martinique, broke out in Grenada. Predominantly led by Francophone free people of color, the rebels aimed to create a Black republic as had already occurred in neighbouring Saint-Domingue. Darling was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in the 15th Regiment of Foot and fought against Fédon's rebels. He survived the high levels of soldier mortality to diseases such as yellow fever, which claimed the life of his father who was still serving in the Caribbean during the rebellion.Military secretary and lieutenant-colonel
In August 1796, Darling's efforts were rewarded and he was appointed as military secretary to Sir Ralph Abercromby, the British commander-in-chief in the West Indies. He was also promoted to the rank of captain in the 27th Regiment and was involved in the invasion of Trinidad in 1797. Darling accumulated wealth from his promotions and the prizes of war attained from military operations, and in 1801 he was able to buy a commission as a lieutenant-colonel in the 69th Regiment.By the time he returned to Britain in 1802, still aged only twenty-nine, Darling had become a respected officer. He seems to have been unique in the British Army of this period, as he progressed from an enlisted man to become a general officer, later obtaining a knighthood. Darling was posted to India with the 69th in 1804, but this affected his health poorly and in 1806 he was shipped back to England where he was appointed as an administrator in the Adjutant-General's office.
Napoleonic Wars
During the Napoleonic Wars, Darling was attached to the 51st Regiment of Foot which was sent to Spain in the early stages of the Peninsular War. Darling fought at the Battle of Corunna in 1809, a rear-guard action against advancing French troops. He later served as assistant adjutant general during the Walcheren Expedition, before returning to the headquarters at Royal Horse Guards in London, where he served for almost a decade as head of British Army recruiting. In this role, Darling was subsequently promoted to brevet colonel on 25 July 1810, major general on 4 June 1813, and deputy adjutant general in 1814. He married Elizabeth Dumaresq in 1817. Darling was also able to further the careers of his younger brothers Henry and William, and subsequently his nephew Charles; the three brothers all became generals, and Charles also earned a knighthood.Acting Governor of Mauritius
In February 1819 Darling took on the position of acting governor of British Mauritius and was placed in command of the British garrison on the island. In this role, Darling again exhibited his administrative ability, but he also became very unpopular, being accused of allowing a frigate to breach quarantine and start an epidemic of cholera which killed over 1,000 people. Darling's administration denied the outbreak was contagious and failed to implement any interventions beyond recommending hot baths and ingesting laudanum. In response to the public outcry, Darling suspended the island's Conseil de Commune and censored the only newspaper operating on Mauritius.Darling also failed to restrict the slave trade into Mauritius, overturning many of the anti-slavery policies brought in by the previous acting governor Gage John Hall. There were around 55,000 slaves labouring on plantations in Mauritius while Darling was in charge, with some being designated as government slaves working directly for the Darling administration. Chain gangs of female slaves were used by Darling as street sweepers and he also imported hundreds of convicts from Ceylon to work as forced labourers building roads and other government infrastructure. Notwithstanding the criticism from some quarters, it was largely on account of his service in Mauritius that Darling was appointed the seventh Governor of New South Wales in 1824.
Governor of New South Wales
Darling arrived in Sydney to take up the role of Governor in December 1825. He came with directions from the High Tory director of the British Colonial Office, Earl Bathurst, to continue the implementation of austere policies to make New South Wales a place of dread for transported convicts. He was also instructed to facilitate the assignment of large tracts of land and convict labourers to exclusive wealthy colonists such as John Macarthur.Darling, a loyal conservative Tory, enacted these directions thoroughly, as did his friend George Arthur who became the Lieutenant-Governor of the newly separate colony of Van Diemen's Land before Darling's arrival.
Convicts were subjected to regimes of brutal treatment especially at the secondary penal colonies of Moreton Bay, under the notorious superintendent Patrick Logan, and at Norfolk Island. In Sydney, as he did in Mauritius, Darling established convict road gangs which under harsh conditions, constructed several roads including the Great North Road, linking the Hawkesbury settlements around Sydney with those in the Hunter Valley.
However, Darling sought to ensure the education of child prisoners, improve the treatment of female convicts, and promote the use of Christian teaching as a means of rehabilitation.
Nepotism and accusations of tyranny
Convicts who had served their terms, known as emancipists, were barred by Darling from holding government positions and were widely discriminated against. As a result, he came into conflict with some liberal "emancipists" who wished to introduce greater political and social freedom in New South Wales. Their accusations of tyrannical misrule were publicised by opposition newspapers in England and Australia. Darling accentuated social class differences and even categorised convicts into three separate grades based upon their "delinquency".Darling was a professional soldier, military governor of what was still effectively a penal colony, and having lived entirely within the authoritarian structure of the army since childhood, he lacked experience in dealing with civilian society. He tended to rely upon like-minded military men for his administration, and it was soon subject to criticism for nepotism, favouritism and tyrannical rule in the colonial newspapers.
Darling's predecessor, Thomas Brisbane, had ended press censorship, creating in effect press freedom before Darling arrived in the colony. Darling's subsequent attempts to control the press through new legislation were not entirely successful, because the Chief Justice, Francis Forbes, advised that some of the measures were not compatible with the laws of England. However, Darling was able to pass some restrictive acts against newspaper editors which resulted in the jailing of one of his most vociferous critics, Edward Smith Hall, who was the editor of The Monitor.
It is certainly the case that Darling made land grants to relatives, including his brothers-in-law Henry and William Dumaresq, and others that he favoured, such as George Bowen and Stewart Ryrie, a brother-in law of Darling's first Lieutenant-Governor, William Stewart. Those same favoured people received appointments within his administration. He employed his nephew, Charles Henry Darling, as an assistant private secretary.
The government advisory bodies of the Legislative Council of New South Wales and the Executive Council were also stacked with close ideological associates of Darling such as Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott and Alexander Macleay. Darling consulted with these councils only irregularly and mostly for issues he regarded as unimportant. This opposition to representative government also extended to the courts where he obstructed or delayed civilian trial by jury reforms, preferring to keep appointed military juries especially for criminal cases.
In regards to public entertainment, Governor Darling "ruthlessly and implacably countered all attempts to establish a theatre in Sydney". He even introduced a law effectively banning the performance of drama. The law stated that no form of public entertainment could take place without approval from the colonial secretary, and Darling ensured that all such applications were rejected. He did permit concerts of music to take place.
Darling's nepotism also extended to those he chose to explore the uncolonised regions of New South Wales. In particular, Captain Charles Sturt, who was related through marriage to Darling's wife, was selected to conduct important expeditions into the interior of the continent over more qualified candidates such as the surveyor Sir Thomas Mitchell. In order to expedite the many land grants Darling made, he actively encouraged the charting and surveying of the colony. In 1826 he defined the Nineteen Counties which were the limits of location in the colony of New South Wales. From 1831 the granting of free land ceased and the only land that was to be made available for sale was within the Nineteen Counties.