BARKER, E.H. (editor)

Geographical, Commercial, and Political Essays.

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A.J. Valpy for Longman and Co. London, 1812. Octavo, original blue papered boards with printed spine label, bookplate of John Chapman, an excellent uncut copy. A very fine copy, in entirely original condition. This collection contains a number of entries related to transportation and the early history of Australia, including three important letters by Samuel Marsden, apparently not otherwise recorded.

The collection also includes a further two printed letters relating to the early settlement of Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land written by Mrs. Hartley, wife of the settler and failed entrepreneur John Hartley: the Hartleys became involved in a long-standing and litigious debate with Lieutenant-Governor David Collins about what they considered his hasty abandonment of Port Phillip in favour of the newer settlement across Bass Strait. No other printed account by either of the Hartleys appears to be extant, although the government version of events, including a detailed denunciation of the Hartleys' opportunistic trading practices in the new settlement, can be read in some detail in the Historical Records of New South Wales (volume 5, pp. 503-8).

All of these letters are collected in a chapter entitled "Fragments for a future History of Botany Bay, or New South Wales". The first is Marsden's six-page appraisal of the nascent colony entitled 'Present State of the Colony in New South Wales, related to me February 14, 1809.' In this letter, written during his brief sojourn in England of 1808/9, Marsden bemoans the degenerate morality of the soldiers and convicts while calling Governor Bligh (here spelt "Blythe") 'a man harsh and unpopular.'

There are also two unsigned letters in this collection which can be shown to have also been written by Marsden. One is dated 14 September 1798, and gives wonderful details regarding his farm and the 26 convicts he employed, as well as commenting on the overall agricultural prosperity of New South Wales and Norfolk Island. There is also specific mention of the seventeen missionaries and migrants who had recently arrived 'from Otaheite' - a scheme with which Marsden was closely involved. The other letter gives the strongest clue about the authorship of the letters, writing about the building of a church for 'his parish of Parramatta and Hawkesbury': Marsden's parish. These two letters provide interesting information relating to the day-to-day management of Marsden's Parramatta farm, in particular, and do not appear to be otherwise recorded.

Equally interesting are the two letters from the pen of Mrs. Hartley. The first is dated 23 May 1805, and notes that it was sent home on Flinders' old ship the Investigator. Mrs. Hartley, as she writes here, arrived in Port Phillip in October 1803, and describes it as a 'delightful spot' and that they were terribly disappointed at being forced to abandon the settlement 'through the whim and caprice of the Lieutenant-Governor.' As this suggests, Mrs. Hartley is certainly less enthusiastic about the 'barren mountains' of Van Diemen's Land. The following letter by the same correspondent is dated 25 May 1806, and she writes favourably of conditions in Botany Bay ('a most desirable country').

Barker's collection, besides, includes any number of other interesting essays, most notably 'A Curious Account of a Convict-ship', by one Captain Bertram, who describes two days spent on board a transport preparing to leave London.

The collection is said in the introduction to have been compiled by a London merchant and man of affairs who chose to remain unknown, but is known to have been edited by the eminent classical scholar and prolific literary editor Edmund H. Barker (1788-1839).

Only very rarely offered for sale, this is the Ivo-Hammett/John Chapman copy, with the latter's bookplate.
Ferguson, 529.

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