CAUSA RAIZ DE LOS PROBLEMAS

HRA III, iv p.366 Arthur to Horton, 14 September 1825. 21

HRA III, iv p.366 Arthur to Horton, 14 September 1825, see pp.876-7 n86 for Murray’s details. 22

When the colony was first settled, the Governor was the head of all administrative power; the few subordinate officials all formed part of a single hierarchy of

command with him as the authority figure. However, quite early, certain functions of government demanded specialization and multiplication of personnel, and before long a few particular groupings of officials were identified as distinct departments, or as units of administration, with a degree of separation from the Lieutenant-

Governor’s own immediate jurisdiction. 24 By 1812, the year of amalgamation between the County of Buckinghamshire and the County of Cornwall, it was possible to identify at least four departments: the Medical Department which had been

established in 1803, the Survey and Commissariat both in 1804, and the Naval Department in 1807.25

Although the availability of records makes identification difficult, various colonial departments can be identified, and also their approximate date of commencement can be established from surviving correspondence.26 The first of the departments

established during Sorell’s term of administration appears to have been the Convict Department in 1818, with both the Police Department and the Hobart Lower Courts following in 1820. The Richmond Courts (Coal River area) were established in

Historical Records of Australia. Series III. Despatches and Papers relating to the History of Tasmania. Volume vii. Tasmania, January-December 1828 (Canberra, 1997), p.758 n239. 24

R.L. Wettenhall, Evolution of a Departmental System: A Tasmanian Commentary, (Hobart, 1967), p.7.

25

AOT Agency Reports TA00768 (Medical); TA00069 (Survey); TA00058 (Commissariat); TA00932 (Naval).

26

1821, but the Launceston Lower Courts not until 1824.27 In 1820 both the Launceston General Hospital and the Royal Hobart Hospital (Hobart General Hospital) were first listed. The Attorney-General’s Department and the Gaol (Branch) are both listed as being established in 1823, and the Sheriff’s Office and Treasury Department in 1824. The name of the Commissariat was changed to Treasury in 1824, at which time its related agency was the Convict Department. Also in 1824, the Probate Registry was established.28

During the years the names and the operations of departments changed, and in 1822, Sorell and his assistants, in compiling the first ‘Blue Book’ identified ten

departments: Secretary’s, Naval, Engineer’s, Police and Prison, Judicial, Medical, Clerical, Commissariat, Schools and the Surveyor’s Department.29 The general instructions in the front of the Blue Book returns to the Colonial Office in London required Sorell to:

Insert the general Establishment of your Government arranged according to Departments including every individual employed therein with all the particulars specified in the several columns of the Return relative to the nature of their Duties, their emoluments, Length of Service, etc. Insert in the next leaf a List of all the officers, and the page in which their office is described. A return under similar heads of those public officers who may not be attached to any particular department.30

Sorell’s entries enable easy identification of each employee in each department and also the number of staff. He also listed the officers at Port Dalrymple. The

AOT TA00060 (Convict); TA00242 (Police); TA01055 (Hobart Lower Courts); TA01070 (Richmond Courts); TA01061 (Launceston lower Courts).

28

AOT TA00442 (Launceston General); TA00441 Royal General Hospital; TA00055 (Attorney- General); TA00031 (Gaol); TA00036 (Sheriff); TA00091 (Treasury); TA01574 (Probate Registry). 29

Engineer’s Department which included Public Works, had the highest number of employees with twenty-five, while the Schools Department employed fourteen schoolmasters and one superintendent. Police and Prisons were the next highest with twenty-three, while the departments with the least were Surveyor’s with two, and Clerical with five.31

As early as June 1821, Deputy Commissary-General William Wemyss

recommended, that with the anticipated separation of Van Diemen’s Land from New South Wales, the Commissariat branches should also be separated, and there should be an independent branch of the Commissariat of Accounts under a newly appointed officer responsible to the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.32 According to an extract from the Treasury Chambers in London, Sorell was directed that, as from 24 December 1822, the Barracks were to be placed under the control of the Master- General and Board of Ordnance,33 and the officers were to be directed to receive all building materials, camp equipment, hospital, and other stores for the use of the military. The Commissariat was to retain charge of the magazines of provisions and forage together with any stores.34 The Commissary was to be instructed to receive all money sent for its supply and to ‘negotiate all bills upon the treasury for the public expenditure’, and amongst those to be paid included Regimental payments, troops and heads of ‘several’ public departments, so as to enable them to ‘carry on

CSO 50/1 p.9. 31

CSO 50/1 pp.12-20 for details of employment 32

P. Chapman (ed.) The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes: Volume 1 1820-1832 (Melbourne, 1985),p.119 n.15. Wemyss was in charge of the NSW Commissariat 1822 to 1827, p.146 n.37. 33

AOT GO 39/1 Letters and Miscellaneous Papers passing direct to Lieutenant-Governor, 2 November 1821 to 15 March 1833, pp.11-17.

service of respective departments’, and to purchase forage, fuel, candles and oil for troops.35 It is evident that in 1822 some government departments were re-

organized.36

The Blue Books remained in much the same form until self government in 1825. A number of new departments appeared under Arthur’s administration, and the out- station (Port Dalrymple, Macquarie Harbour) officials, originally arranged in geographical groupings separate from the functionally departmentalized establishment near Hobart Town, were gradually absorbed into the appropriate departments. By the mid-1830s the Blue Book was identifying upwards of twenty departments, though the boundaries between some of them were still fluid and in the author Roger Wettenhall’s description, ‘it took little more than the whim of the recorder to bring about apparent changes in their number and functions’.37