The Legacy of Gellibrand & CoThe question of Gellibrand’s religion is critical to a deeper historical consideration of the treaty frontier. The place of spiritual motivation has been shown as essential to come to cultural understanding. In ‘
The Interpretation of Cultures’ Geertz quotes Santayana: ‘Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. It’s power consists in its special and surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives life.’ Geertz then states: “religion tunes human actions to an envisaged cosmic order and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience.’
[1] This analysis applies both to Aboriginals and Evangelicals. Gellibrand was an active man of journeying faith in thought and practice, committed to a deep engagement, both with the issues and questions of his time, and also with the eternal sense of Christian verities as applied with great moment at the frontiers: of geography, law, religion, history, divinity, humanity, and, significantly, of human settlement/s.
Surely Gellibrand did seek the right to own land in Port Phillip. This has to be seen in context. It appears to be much more than the cynical land grab many mockers then and subsequently claim. It is only too easy to debunk a Gellibrand who disappeared down the paths of his own risk-taking. Gellibrand had a long history of protesting land laws in VDL. He often declaimed on the subject of rights to land interest
[2], land restriction
[3], land loss
[4], of land ruin
[5], and land jeopardy with all the social effects that go to diminishing the commonweal. This was as early as March 22 1827:
‘For the last three years every man’s property has been in jeopardy, and in some and many instances, not only in part, but the whole of his property. It is impossible to point out how the energies have been paralyzed - the peace and tranquillity of families broken in and destroyed - industry given way to apathy - temperance to drunkenness - prosperity to distress, - in short it makes the settler sick at heart, and when that is the case the result is well known.’
[6]Gellibrand was often on the prosecution against insecure tenure on land held during Arthur’s administration. He declares outright that citizen’s ‘Crown’ title is null and void.
[7] He held property himself, and showed an obvious disquiet in the peace of the frontier in adapting to the security of the women and children on the VDL frontier by swapping lands with his cousin-in-law for the sake of the wife, Gellibrand’s cousin. Gellibrand had been fighting the injustices of the British system of land ‘siezureship’, or ownership and its parcelling out for at least ten years before the 1835 treaty of Dutigalla. He was dissatisfied with the description of land in VDL. And also with his cause there. He expresses early on a belief that self-advancement, linked to the wider good was an essential part of entering into a possible commonweal.
“Of the various feelings which operate upon the human mind, and call its energies into action, self-interest has always been the most powerful. The philosopher and the philanthropist may pretend to act from better motives, and to consider its votaries as objects of compassion, or reformation; but if we strictly analyze the motives and the actions of the best of men, in all ages, we shall find that they have been imperceptibly influenced by this general, we might add, universal principle.”
[8]He also shows that self-interest should be served, even more, by a self-questioning which goes into deep issues of causality and effectuality; to where a real, yet more ideal grasp of life may become evident. Gellibrand seemed to be making the attempt to reconcile the drives, not just of economic self-interest, but of the deeper spiritual and wider social and political interests of the self as well, with the moral drives of an informed and activated conscience.
‘So easily do we accommodate ourselves to circumstances, and mould our opinions by our desires, that it not infrequently happens, we condemn in others the very actions which we are ourselves committing, until the voice of conscience says - “Thou art the man.” ‘
[9]Gellibrand was indeed the man! and even more so than just in his admission -of what can be seen as selfish desires-, in that he is here attempting to probe the workings of the man’s conscience made bare to the reality of the man’s own motives and actions. In a sense he takes it on the chin! just as he wrote this, he also accepted, as this shows, as his own subsequent and former story demonstrates, that a buck did stop with him. He was the unofficial opposition to Arthur and later leading light of the association to settle Port Phillip on the basis of a treaty, and then ‘abandoned to Providence?’ This early reference by Gellibrand: ‘Thou art the man’ to words of the Old Testament prophet Nathan, which come at the end of Nathan’s parable of the injustice of the rich man with many herds and flocks of sheep, yet choosing to appropriate the single sheep of the poor man so he can entertain in lavish style at no cost to himself, was the key part of the Biblical exposé of the King himself, (after David’s seduction of Bathesheba and his calculatingly-logistical murder of Uriah the Hittite) should alert us in context, to the metaphysical accountability in which Gellibrand took his sheep to Port Phillip. He went by treaty which spoke of paying annual tribute that has no date given for its end!
[10] and was therefore presumably to be paid in perpetuity, so that neither side would need to behave sheepishly!
Or possibly, were the Aborigines of Port Phillip to be integrated, in this pastoral care, into the pastural frontier, also as a sheepmen?
[11] Gellibrand disappeared and his leadership with him. Questions like this cannot be answered with glib denials just because settlement history took over in opportunism, and in the overpowering of these beginnings, by the consciencelessness, by a power seeking, that echoes the parable of Nathan, which implicates them, like that then pastorally rich, former shepherd of great power, King David. That these are Gellibrand’s thoughts and words at least seven years before the event, means there is more to the formulation of the treaty than has been levied by history so far.
[1] Clifford Geertz, 'The Interpretation of Cultures’ Clifford Geertz (quotes Santayana)
[2] The Tasmanian March 22 1827 ‘If this feeling of self-interest is so general, it cannot be a matter of surprise that its influence should be felt in this island; and as subjects to which we this week invite the attention of Readers, most materially affect their interests, as well as all classes of society, we shall at once enter thereon. His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor has held the reigns of Government in this Colony for three years, during which time some hundred thousand acres of land have been located to Emigrants, Large locations have been given to some who brought little capital with them, and, in some instances, smaller locations have been given to those, who brought out large capitals. His Excellency, in every case, impressed upon the emigrant the propriety of immediately settling on his land, and bringing a considerable quantity of it into cultivation.- BUT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS UPON WHICH THE LAND WAS TO BE GRANTED, WERE NOT COMMUNICATED.
[3] Gellibrand, J.T. Editorial ~ The Tasmanian March 22 1827 ‘We have a few observations to offer upon the subject of the sale of lands. The Lieutenant Governor has in some instances, sold lands free from restrictions; the parties have sold these lands to Gentlemen who are desirous of extending their possession; and after having paid for the land, and taken it upon the terms of the Government Letter, they find it is to be subject to this quit-rent of 4/6 per cent whole value. Whether the words “ free from restrictions will exonerate from quit rent which is a great restriction, we did not determine, nor the distinction which may exist between law and honour; but it is one of the evils arising from the parties not having the grant at the time, and of the conditions not being clearly and accurately defined.’
[4] “We understand that Mr Gellibrand had an allotment given to him whilst he was in office, but that it has been taken away upon the ground of being required for Government purposes, without any equivalent being offered!” pp 2 The Tasmanian Vol.1 No. 15 June 7, 1827
[5] Gellibrand, J.T. Editorial ~ The Tasmanian March 22 1827 ... the Government will impose a quit rent upon it, of such magnitude as to render it valueless, in fact not worth occupying; the effect of which is, that the money is borrowed, not upon the credit of the land alone, but also upon the credit of the settler, and both being precarious, it follows as a necessary consequence that the lender will be paid in proportion to his risk; and the settler, who ought to borrow upon the credit of this experience, at a moderate rate of 10 per cent, is by this injurious operation on the part of the government, obliged to pay 20 or 30 per cent; and, in the end, in many instances, ruined.’
[6] Gellibrand, J.T. Editorial ~ The Tasmanian March 22 1827
[7] The Tasmanian. March 25 1931 - ‘... Mr Gellibrand’s doctrine goes to the effect that the Crown could cheat its constituents, by taking advantage of its own wrong-doing. ... according to Mr Gellibrand’s doctrine there is no valid grant in the Island, the whole Colony is at the disposal of the Government, not only to locate, but to give possession of any estate within the Island, ... p. 93
[8] Gellibrand, J.T. Editorial ~ The Tasmanian March 22 1827
[9] Gellibrand, J.T. Editorial ~ The Tasmanian March 22 1827
[10] Batman, Gellibrand , Swanson, Wedge, 1835. Expedition From Van Diemen’s Land To Port Phillip /John Batman Letter: 25th June 1835 - and I also proposed to pay them an annual tribute in necessaries, as a compensation for the enjoyment of the land. I have proceeded on an equitable principle; that my object has not been possession and the expulsion or, what is worse, extermination, but possession and civilisation; and the reservation of the annual Tribute to those who are the real owners of the soil p.3. Letter: 23rd October 1835 ‘my proceedings at Port Phillip for the purpose of an amicable settlement with the Natives of that part of New Holland and of the Treaty concluded by me for the occupation of a certain tract of country under a certain annual tribute, and to be used for pastoral purposes. p 7
[11] Batman: Ibid. p.3 ‘I also explained my wish to protect them in every way, to employ them the same as my own Natives and also to feed and clothe them... The chiefs appeared most fully to comprehend my proposals, and much delighted with the prospect of having me to live amongst them.’ Many writers of the frontier mention aborigines appropriating whole flocks of sheep and successfully shepherding and enclosing them in sheepfolds - until attacked! See: (A Lady), Randell, Critchet, Robinson, Clark. etc.
