Explore "The Call of the Southern Cross, A Romance of Australia" by John Sandes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Governor Brisbane did not stay many years in Australia. He had not the brusque strength of character, the independence, the will power, the contempt for the opinions of those around him when they conflicted with his own, that marked his predecessor, Macquarie. To Brisbane, the perpetual attempts of the 'Exclusionists'--that is to say, the official and military class--to retain all the wealth, power, and influence of the territory in their own hands, were as ignoble as the unceasing efforts of the 'Emancipists' with whom many of the free immigrants of small means and unofficial standing threw in their lot--to procure for themselves social recognition and a share in the lands that were being made available for settlement. The Governor was sick of the interminable wrangling between these two classes. His philosophic and scientific temper caused him to hold himself aloof from both of them as much as possible, and consequently he satisfied neither.
He was a great mathematician. He could tell the distance of Saturn from the earth with wonderful accuracy, but he could not make the revenue and the expenditure of the colony balance. He could predict the exact hour and minute when a transit of Venus across the sun's disc would begin, but he could not foretell that financial troubles would follow if he interfered with the currency, and that the smaller agriculturists would be ruined if the Government refused to buy more than three months' supply of wheat from them at a time, instead of buying the whole crop, as previously.