The Debt Repudiation Question: An exoneration for the Founding Fathers of the United States of America: Thomas Jefferson's trade mission to Great Britain: Questions of whaling: Lord Carmarthen and the British Creditors' petition:  `A bitter pill he and his friends could never swallow': After the Jefferson-Campbell meeting: Significance of the Jefferson-Campbell meeting: The East India Company, the whalers, and an ulterior motive: Further political pressure on the convict problem: a quickening of pace: Convicts and priorities: George Macaulay's unfathomable desire to transport convicts to Africa: The "accursed monopoly" of the East India Company:

 

The Blackheath Connection

Chapter 32

 

The Debt Repudiation Question: an exoneration for the Founding Fathers of the United States of America: Thomas Jefferson's trade mission to Great Britain:

 

       In 1784, Thomas Jefferson replaced Benjamin Franklin as a senior US resident diplomat attached to the Court of Versailles, and naturally he consulted often with Franklin and John Adams. During Jefferson's time at this post, the US intended to conclude commercial treaties with up to sixteen European powers including the Barbary States. ([1]) Ironically, about when he arrived in Paris, 1785,  Jefferson was asked to contribute an item to an encyclopedia, a new-fangled French trend in knowledge ([2]) He wrote, there were not enough convicts sent to the American colonies to bother to count. He thought, about 2000, mostly diseased men. He estimated they and their descendants at only 4000. It was quite an underestimation! The real number was between 40,000 and 50,000, men and women.

 

     Also ironically, even by 1786, notions still prevailed in Britain that her convicts might be sent to the former North American colonies! On 6 March, 1786, Thomas Bramwell wrote to a Mr. Richards (otherwise unidentifiable), in the context of Moore's difficulties with the ship Fair American to Honduras and Mosquito Shore. ([3]) By this time, London aldermen were petitioning George III for the resumption of transportation. Duncan Campbell and the British Creditors were made busy by the official activities of Thomas Jefferson. ([4]) Campbell and Jefferson were to meet in April 1786. As far as is known, their meeting has not yet been even cursorily examined by historians, certainly not by Australian historians. ([5])

 

     To understand proceedings, it is also necessary to outline some role for Barings as merchant bankers in London in 1786, however inadequately. ([6]) Firstly, in 1783, Lord Sydney had finalized negotiations for the Treaty of Paris between Britain and the new United States of America. This should have concluded hostilities and allowed the resumption of normal peaceful relations between states, but did not entirely. By 1786, certain stipulations had still not been met to American satisfaction, ([7]) while Britain's sense of humiliation nurtured bitter feelings. From the British side, many former British-American merchants who conceivably could have joined a group such as Campbell and the British Creditors did not join, as far as is known. ([8]) One non-joining merchant was Arthur Phillip's friend, Chapman, who later sent his son William Neate Chapman out to the new Australian colony. ([9]) Chapman after 1783 spent much time in North America, sufficient to strain his marriage, vainly trying to revitalize his former colonial interests. Chapman had vague connections with the house of Pigou and Booth (Pigous in London were noted gunpowder manufacturers).

 

     The American historian, Merrill D. Peterson ([10]), writes that the US was dealt "a crippling blow" in July 1783, when Britain had excluded American ships from the lucrative West Indies trade. (Doubtless, the US in the West Indies would have been intending to deal with both French and British sugar islands, a prospect which could not have pleased Britain). As Peterson has it, Britain was determined to hold the US in economic vassalage, as adumbrated by the first Earl of Sheffield in his 1783 Observations on the Commerce of the United States. ([11]) Lester Cappon writes, ([12]) "The stubborn stand of the British embittered both ministers [Adams and Jefferson in Europe], for it challenged the political independence of the United States by means of economic pressure."

 

By 1786, then, Jefferson had devised a grand and quite stunning plan, "an incredibly ambitious undertaking", to do nothing less than Americanize world trade, to align trade with the democratic principles of the American Revolution. ([13]) One major pressure point in the US was New England, where business interests wanted to trade again with Britain. Jefferson remained opposed any partial resumptions of trade - the United States had to stand united. ([14]) In all, Jefferson wanted to conclude treaties with about 16 governments, and he succeeded with most of it, Britain of course not co-operating. Here it is useful to note that Jefferson's views were objected to by the British because he wished to revise the navigation laws, and because of the constitution of the West Indies carrying trade. ([15]) And because of the debt repudiation question.

 

     In 1784, also, the West India planters and merchants wanted to abolish the existing trade compact with the US regarding the supply of the West Indies. Their secretary wrote a pamphlet in 1784, regarding Canada trade. The West India men wanted as short and cheap a voyage as possible from North America to the West Indies. Their view was that without such supplies (as were presently got from US) the sugar islands could not continue to be cultivated. ([16]) Any US incursions on the reliability or profit of the supply of the West Indies could only have been viewed with alarm in London.

 

Not surprisingly, pamphlets were written. In London in 1784, J. Allen published Considerations on the Present State of the Intercourse between His Majesty's Sugar Colonies and the Dominions of the United States of America. G. Chalmers in London in 1784 published, Opinions on Interesting Subjects of Public Law and Commercial Policy arising from American Independence. ([17]) By 30 April, 1784, Jefferson had wanted Congress to consider something like the British Navigation Laws, but the states would not co-operate. Jefferson wanted each partner in trade to use their own ships bottoms, which was tantamount to a major revision of Mercantilism. ([18]) Much hinged on perceptions of the indispensability of the West India trade. By 1785, Jefferson had decided that further US-West Indian trade was indispensable. John Adams thought the same. ([19]) Jefferson noted that Britain wanted trade with the US to be free and unrestricted, subject to no discriminations. The US adopted the position that the price of such free trade was to be free US trade with the West Indies. Britain disagreed. ([20]) Later, some issues respecting US-West India trade were embodied in John Jay's treaty of 1794, the idea being that US-West India trade might remain on a pre-revolutionary basis. Yet, revision of the US-West Indian trade situation does not seem to have been on Jefferson's mind when he saw Campbell.

 

      With trade broadly after 1783, it seems Jefferson and other Americans reacted by concentrating the dealership of two major commodities - tobacco and whale products - in the hands of very few capitalists. ([21]) Tobacco trading was to be largely in the hands of Robert Morris of Philadelphia. Peterson writes, the US Farmers-General by about 1785 had quite remarkably given Robert Morris an exclusive three-year contract for the supply of American tobacco. ([22]) This apparently suited Morris so well, with only a few traders in the market, there was a risk that for lack of price competition, the prices given to Chesapeake tobacco planters would fall. ([23])

 

     During his diplomatic terms in Paris and London, Jefferson faced problems associated with marketing American tobacco, and with redeveloping American whaling. A global industry, whaling from 1786 was subjected to international rivalry in unfamiliar waters. The Brazils whaling grounds were becoming depleted. ([24]) From Cook's explorations alone, it was suspected, if not known, that the Pacific Ocean offered fresh whaling grounds. As an added twist, the fact that whalers were unaware of whale migrating patterns in the Pacific made their whale-seeking physically anarchic and unpredictable over oceans. fresh whaling grounds. Rivalry over whaling is just one broad industrial theme requiring assessment in a context of the world trade of the day when Jefferson's meeting with the British Creditors is considered.

 

 

*    *    *

 

          It was here, with Robert Morris, that Barings the London merchant bankers entered the picture. Prior to 1803, at least one of the London bankers handling major US accounts, including the account of the US Government, had been Bird, Savage and Bird. ([25]) By February 1803, Barings had obtained the agency for the US government, taking it from Bird, Savage and Bird. (Later, Barings helped the US Government with the Louisiana purchase, a stupendous deal not accomplished without trepidation on Baring's part). The chronicler of the house of Baring, Ziegler, writes  that after 1783, Barings began to correspond with Robert Morris, and another "millionaire", Senator William Bingham of Philadelphia. ([26]) After this, Barings were to rise to eminence as American merchants. It seems in so doing, Barings deliberately stepped into a commercial vacuum - Britain was so resentful at its loss of the American colonies that it refused to seriously contemplate trading with the US. What the British government after 1783 thought of Baring's dealings here is not known.

 

        One often overlooked commercial question needing consideration after 1783 was trade in whale products. Jackson, historian of Britain's whaling trade, ([27]) writes that the first British ambassador to the US was George Hammond, son of an English whaler-owner. Presumably, Hammond might have informed Britain of many scenarios? As long as the American debt repudiation question existed, and rankled, many Loyalist Nantucket whalers would continue to abandon the United States and work elsewhere. ([28]) This was the stated position of the whalers Rotch, who had their people temporarily at Nova Scotia and wished to work from British ports, thereby coming into conflict with the   South Whale Fishery managed in London by Enderbys.

 

      American historians remain preoccupied by various sensitivities over "whiggishness", and so-called debt-avoidance, as well as reiterations of anxieties expressed after the Revolution - anxieties about the corrupting influences of commerce, anxieties about the dread possibility of the failure of the ideals of the Revolution. If the emigration of a well-knit whaling industry represented any problem, this has not been made part of any US rebuttals about "debt repudiation". This seems to be symptomatic of a seemingly typical American recoil at considering (or, confronting?) the world trade of the era, a recoil seemingly due to the example of attitudes long held by Jefferson. (Over decades, this recoil has had a stultifying effect on US maritime history, which is revealed when any survey is made of the first two decades of US shipping to Asia. No overview of that shipping, much of it sent by Bostonians, Philadelphians and New Yorkers, has yet been produced.)

 

      Once Jefferson's meeting with Campbell of the British Creditors is noticed, a certain tension gathers itself, born of biographical details. ([29]) American historians have meanwhile taken pains to rebut claims that debt avoidance was a motive for the American Revolution. Here, the most convincing rebuttal has been delivered by Emory Evans. ([30])  Curiously, London merchant groups and their political machinations prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution have received sustained attention by Alison Olson and other US historians. The post-1783 lobbying of many of the British merchants treated by these historians has received far less attention. This trans-Atlantic situation is difficult to explain, but it presents opportunities, particularly for any Australian historian interested in the long-held proposition that... The "founding" of Australia as a British convict colony was an aftermath of the American Revolution, because after the Revolution, Britain obliged itself to find a new location to dump its despised convicts. In this Australian context, the overseer of the Thames hulks is never seen as possessing the prestige enabling him to meet and argue with Jefferson. ([31]) Other topics tending to remain bereft of useful detailed information are the revival of the US-London tobacco trade, which before 1775 had been mostly a re-export trade to Europe, and the first US trade with India, South Asia, and China.

 

     Of all relevant questions, the most sensitive appears to be what American historians term "the debt repudiation question". ([32]) We also notice that American historians seem never to have been deliberately provoked by English historians to produce a resolution of this question. Repeatedly, questions have been raised and probed by American historians, who appear to suffer a "mea culpa complex". Each time American historians are visited by new trends in historiography, they find themselves freshly obliged to rake over "the debt repudiation question'. Given this, any assessment of the significance of the Jefferson-Campbell meeting would be most useful if it could contribute an opinion on the appropriateness of this long-standing American sensitivity.

 

    Much as English historians have refrained from raking over the coals of claims about any "debt repudiation" matters, American historians (except for Ekirch) have mostly refrained from mentioning another strange matter... the last expression visited on America of Britain's preoccupation with convict transportation.

 

Questions of whaling:

 

     As Lester Cappon writes, an American merchant wanting to sell US whale oil to France was Thomas Boylston of Boston. Another American merchant interested in whale oil was Nathaniel Barrett. Thus, the US between 1783 and 1786 had acted to organise capitalists to handle two of its major commodities, and it seems Barings managed a connection with Robert Morris the tobacco broker. To 1786, it was in the US interest to play off Britain versus France by being seen to be willing to trade with both. Meanwhile, Ziegler writes, ([33]) by 1803, Barings had become the British bank to whom Americans turned, and by the mid-1790s, Barings were dealing in real estate in Maine. By 1798, American business bought Barings a profit of £10,000 per year.

 

     Barings had made other interventions in the North American sphere. Ziegler writes ([34]) that Barings (Francis Baring had only a small staff at his Mincing Lane premises) had earlier calculated that their predecessors as contractors to government to supply forces in the American War had made 13.4 per cent or more. (Such predecessors could have included Macaulay and his partners?) Barings had offered to Shelburne to supply government's forces in America for 1 per cent only, and Barings still made £11,000 on their deals. (Barings also dealt on a long-term basis with Hope and Co. of Amsterdam, and later purchased the remainder of that firm). ([35])

 

     But there is no information on Barings' dealing in whale products to 1786, when the government, the East India Company and the London's South whalers were locked in a bitter struggle to remove Pacific resources from the clutches of the East India Company's exclusive charter over Pacific waters. Doubtless this lack of information is in part due to Baring being an influential director of the East India Company, enjoying a direct line to senior ministers such as Pitt and Dundas. It seems then that Baring dealt in respect of American tobacco, but that he stayed away from American whale products, because to deal in whaling products would have brought him into greater conflict with the government, the Board of Trade and the London whalers, and probably with his fellow East India Company directors. (Baring may well have reasoned that since Barclays had long been interested in whaling with Rotches, he would leave them to it (?)).

 

       Jefferson must have had his opinions, if only as a member of a tobacco-producing  family. Before the American war, the Virginia tobacco planter Robert Beverly did business with Samuel Athawes, and during the Revolution he sent his son to England to be educated and make commercial associations. Athawes refused to assist here, so Beverly "in a fury" sent business to Samuel Gist, and then by 1786 to William Anderson. But Beverly had switched from tobacco to wheat, and tobacco planting had also changed in style somewhat. ([36]) Jefferson for his part wanted Americans to have nothing to do with the new London-American merchants (led by Payne), but the consignment system was anyway already obsolete. From 1783, many British merchants had set up newly in American ports, often to be resented. Ferguson notes, as long as Jefferson was in France, he was determined to discourage the transfer of US domestic securities to foreigners, and in this he met fire with Morris' associates' dealings with Dutch speculators, but Jefferson failed with such a policy. ([37]) Jefferson has explained that Virginia tobacco planters returned to business with pre-war factors only because they had to. That being the case, it meant that Americans still had to talk to the "old" pre-war merchants, whose organisational leaders included Duncan Campbell.

 

     When Jefferson visited London in March-April 1786, Mincing Lane in the City became a focus of interest. Close to the Tower of London, running onto Great Tower Street, Mincing Lane was the address of Jefferson's pro-American friends the Vaughans, West India merchants, Samuel and his son Benjamin. ([38]) No. 1 or No. 5 Mincing Lane was Campbell's address. No. 6 was the address of Francis Baring. Little attention has been given to Jefferson's London visit, or to his meeting with the British Creditors. If it is a distinction, Campbell was probably the only Britisher who'd been a large loser by the Revolution, who actually met Jefferson. When Jefferson and Campbell spoke, two men loomed large in shadows behind them. Behind Campbell was George III, who had incorrectly believed that Britain's superior economic power would tell on the American rebellion, then crush it. Shifting worryingly behind the agrarian-minded Jefferson was the figure who had helped prove George III wrong, Robert Morris.

 

     At the time, Britain and the US were arguing over the West Indian carrying trade, and it was not ties of friendship alone which led Jefferson to visit the Vaughans. Sometime chairman of the British Creditors, Campbell was a former American merchant, but he also remained a West Indian merchant. The other sometime chairmen of the British Creditors were a former Virginia/Maryland tobacco merchant, William Molleson (1732-1804) and John Nutt, a Carolina merchant. Relatively little material has been published on any of the chairmen of the British Creditors, and due to lack of information, no chronology of the activities of the most influential Creditors has been compiled. ([39]) Jefferson's official dealings with the Creditors before and after 1786 in London remain however a minor sub-plot in Merrill Peterson's biography of Jefferson, although Jefferson's pre-revolution debts remained a personal difficulty to be mentioned. In Doron Ben-Atar's recent book, The Origin of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy, Jefferson's London visit is scarcely noted, although issues relating to the Creditors remained a sub-plot for Ben-Atar. It is not Jefferson's personal address of the pre-revolution debts which concerns American historians, so much as protecting the reputation of Founding Fathers from the implications of `the debt repudiation question". Into this gap in historiography fall some stories still not fully told. ([40])

 

     As noted earlier, John Adams in 1785 had unsuccessfully attempted to sell American whale products to prime minister Pitt. As he did, America was concentrating her whaling industry and successfully selling whale products to France. ([41]) A contract had been made for the lighting of the streets of Paris with US oil. Merrill Peterson thought this flow of capital would help check the flight of the Nantucket whalers to either Britain, or France. (It is in this sort of context that Eduoard A. Stackpole wrote his book, Whales And Destiny, The Rivalry Between America, France, and Britain For Control Of The Southern Whale Fishery, 1785-1825. ([42]) It is at this point in whaling history that in its eerie way, Australian maritime history - whalers carrying convicts - diverges generally from the history of the rivalry of European powers over the whaling grounds of the Pacific. By March, 1786, reports the Australian historian, Margaret Steven, ([43]) there was "feverish activity" in London, pro-whaling. Lord Dorset was writing to Carmarthen at Foreign Affairs about the whale fisheries. The whalers' lobby in London gathered strength apace.

 

      Jefferson arrived in England on 11 March, 1786. He and Adams saw much of each other. Jefferson arrived in London on 11 March, 1786, and was presented at the Court of St James on 17 March, 1786, when he was snubbed by George III, as has often been noted. ([44]) It is said, George III turned his back on the American. ([45])  Jefferson wrote to John Jay on 12 March, 1786, wondering if London had any "candour" for discussions. In general, Jefferson was to receive the British cold shoulder. But before he met Campbell, Jefferson got an immense amount of business done concerning trade treaties with Portugal and the piratical Barbary states. ([46]) ([47]) The US Congress intended that Jefferson should conclude commercial treaties with up to sixteen European powers, including the Barbary States. ([48]) Few prospects existed that such a treaty would be concluded with Britain, since the former enemy had determined to harass the new US' commercial maritime endeavour. After Jefferson made his treaty with the Barbary states, Britain withdrew her naval resources from the western Mediterranean, knowing Barbary pirates would harass US shipping. It was known in London that the US would have to pay hefty bribes to the Barbary states, up to three hundred thousand guineas, to buy off piracy. For this reason, London merchants cruelly joked that "if there were no Algiers it would be worth England's while to build one". ([49])

 

       Jefferson had been pondering his personal indebtedness, money he (and/or his tobacco-producing family) owed chiefly to Alexander McCaul, an aged tobacco merchant of Glasgow, and [Richard] Jones of Bristol. ([50]) Jefferson here seems quite candid. It seems he remained personally in debt to McCaul and Jones. He owed them both about £4200, [each, or, that sum in total, it is unclear]. Jefferson explained his own estate was partially ruined, that the British merchants might have lost the interest, but that the US people did not gain it either. Jefferson stressed, the US deemed Great Britain the aggressors. And it was Alexander McCaul in reply, evidently, who suggested that if Jefferson was gaining no diplomatic satisfaction in London, he should sound the opinion of the chairman of the British Creditors, Campbell. ([51]) Jefferson in his letters was as candid about his debts as he was about his inability to repay quickly. Jefferson's family debt situation mirrored in miniature the national situation of the new United States of America. ([52])

 

    By 1786, Jefferson had devised "an incredibly ambitious undertaking", to Americanize world trade. That is, to realign trade with the democratic principles of the American Revolution. It amounted to a revision of Mercantilism. This was fresh and challenging; more so it was excessively ambitious - but it was where Jefferson chose to begin. (The remark of T. S. Eliot, "Between the dream and the reality falls the shadow", is more appropriate than the harshness of Jefferson's critics on the outcome). ([53])  As Peterson writes, by 30 April, 1784, Jefferson had wanted Congress to endorse regulations resembling the British Navigation Laws, but the states would not co-operate. He also wanted each partner in trade to use their own bottoms, tantamount to another major revision of Mercantilism. ([54])

 

     But a pressure point in the US was New England, where business interests particularly wanted to renew trade with Britain. Jefferson remained opposed to any partial (regional) resumptions of trade - in his view the United States had to stand united. It is fair to say, Jefferson had not had time to explore all the implications of his views on how the US might conduct trade. ([55]) Jefferson's views were tinged with naïveté concerning commercial life due to his own agrarian/plantation background, which assumed the institution of slavery (as seen at quite close quarters), and his commitment to the (absurd) views of the French Physiocrats on economics and trade. And generally, it seems that the contradictions of Jefferson's own views and personality gave a high colouration to his views on commerce. His enemies at home were the commercially sophisticated New Englanders, such as Robert Morris, and especially Alexander Hamilton. ([56]) Nevertheless, Jefferson's views on trade were democratic, and the British Creditors still espoused the stranglehold theory of commerce that had helped provoke the American Revolution. ([57]) It was not to be expected that Jefferson and the British Creditors (Campbell) would see eye to eye. One reason that Campbell in 1786 was chosen by his Creditor-colleagues to speak with Jefferson was probably because he knew a great deal about West Indian trade, in which he'd been involved since 1753. ([58])

 

     The British Creditors have been neglected for so long, information on them has remained so scattered, that, contextually, using various findings from maritime history to treat both their business and family linkages has become the only reliable way to solve evident methodological problems, gaps in historiography; and even theoretical issues such as discussion of the tension in the US Congress between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians. Given the London battle between the whalers and the East India Company, the theoretical validity of Harlow's views on Britain's "swing to the East" following the American Revolution can be questioned, ([59]) since Harlow cannot adequately explain convict shipping sailing to Australia. (That topic is best considered as a unique sector of maritime history.)

 

      By early 1786, Jefferson's hopes about "redesigning" Mercantilism had scarcely amused the British, particularly in respect of West India trade. Jefferson's mostly agrarian views on trade could scarcely cope with actualities, which were remarkably complex, and also, as the historian finds, heavily crowded with names which ought to be researched (such as those of Jefferson's friends, the Vaughans, mentioned below). Factors such as the financial dealings involved, the style of competition between New England and New York merchants, the import of non-necessities, that are noticeable with the US' first trading with China and India, were the kind Jefferson disapproved. Reflected here were tensions between agrarians and the financially sophisticated New Englanders that persisted in the US till after the Civil War. Many themes could be developed here, including those pertinent to the almost-chnothic emergence of the great American contradiction, Isolationism versus Manifest Destiny. ([60])

 

     By 1786, Jefferson was increasingly unhappy about Morris' monopolistic handling of the American tobacco crop, and with the now-untrustworthy French buyers, the Farmers-General. ([61]) After July 1783, Morris had been virtually forced to sell Virginian tobacco to offset a Dutch loan, also to stimulate taxation by stimulating the market, also to meet regional criticisms that his policy was draining certain regions of specie. As Campbell probably knew, Morris by 1786 was still selling American tobacco at forward-contract prices to the Farmers-General, largely, and also understandably, as a result of understandings made earlier, from 1776. Also understandably by 1786, these arrangements had less flexibility than the "new nation", and Jefferson himself, felt would be appropriate. ([62]) The time had come for a renegotiation about tobacco marketing. The problem was: what to do about Robert Morris?

 

      On 24 January, 1786 from Paris, Jefferson wrote to Governor Henry of Virginia, since proposals had been received from Messrs Ross, Pleasants and Co. for sending US tobacco to the Farmers-General. Morris had obtained the contract. Jefferson feared the situation here was a double monopoly, a baneful influence on commerce. Regrettably, "the interests involved" (Morris and the Farmers-General) could not be opposed "even by the country". Here, Jefferson and Jay both agreed, Morris should not have enjoyed such influence. The tobacco trade was "in an agony"... the price had gone down from 40 shillings to 22 shillings and 6d. per lawful weight. ([63]) The American whaling industry also had problems. Earlier, by 19 January, 1786, Adams said he looked to Thomas Boylston alone to prevent the death of the whaling trade and a depopulation of Nantucket. ([64]) As Cappon writes, Boylston of Boston traded US whale oil to France. (Boylston was a frequent Jefferson correspondent to May, 1786). Another American interested in whale oil was Nathaniel Barrett; another, an associate of Morris, Daniel Parker, who was lately a contractor to the US army, and a cheating co-investor with Morris in the Empress of China, the first US ship sent to China. ([65]) There were few major commercial developments to which Morris's hand had not stretched. Debt matters caused continual comment as Americans monitored developments. Mr. Voss of Virginia had recently called on Adams with a statement of Virginia's [state] debts. Voss was aware of trade in pelts, grain and tobacco, and he or Adams fancied that US trade with India would go well in respect of the reception given to Pitt's Bill. Regarding the British Creditors, Voss thought the debts could not be sued for in US courts till the Treaty was complied with, respecting the British evacuation of posts and payment for negroes taken. ([66]) Lord Carmarthen, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had lately been compiling information on British Debts, and the Creditors had been complaining to the Ministry of late. Adams had hoped to find out what is "broiling in their Hearts" (that is, in the Creditors' hearts). ([67])

 

     On 13 March, 1786, London's whale fishery men were invited to be interviewed by the Jenkinson and the Board of Trade about all details. They chose 18th of March. By 14 March, 1786, Jenkinson, just appointed president at the newly re-constructed Board of Trade, was considering defining Newfoundland as a fishery, not a settlement or a plantation. ([68]) Which meant, convicts would not be transported there.

 

     Jefferson had written to Adams from Paris on 27 November, 1785, the US must pay its debts to Great Britain before US trade returns could be its own. ([69])  Jefferson by 11 March, 1786 already had in mind a "very summary" treaty, proposing an exchange of citizenship for "our [US] citizens, our ships, and our productions" generally. ([70]) On 20-23 March, 1786 the American banker, Thomas Barclay, wrote from Madrid to Jefferson on matters relating to the treaty Jefferson was writing with the Barbary States. On 30 March, 1786 Alexander McCaul wrote to Jefferson from Glasgow, replied to on 19 April, 1786 when Jefferson noted, settling those conditions which are essential to the continuance of a commerce between them [the two nations, Britain and the US]... the subject has not been deemed worthy [by Britain] of a conference... ([71])  Jefferson remarked, it was difficult to foresee how nations would pursue their own measures. The US remained disturbed about the insufficient evacuation of British troops, and many slaves been taken away contrary to stipulations. ([72])

 

    It had been said in London that the Americans had thrown restrictions in the way of recovery of debts due to the British merchants. Jefferson's view was that the debt could not physically be paid... "it is impossible". The debt was [about two millions]... but only ten per cent of such an amount was in circulation in the US, both debtors and creditors would be ruined, the London merchants wanted also their interest.     The Americans would repay, Jefferson honestly believed... "it is now time that they [the American debtors] should begin the paiment [sic] of their old debts." And here, Jefferson outlined (at what cost of personal embarrassment?) to McCaul the arrangements he was making to ensure that his own creditors would be paid. Finally, Jefferson relied on McCaul's sense of justice. ([73]) Jefferson remained obliged to McCaul and Jones of Bristol (Farrell and Jones). (He had owed them both [or still owed?] about £4200 - it is unclear if both debtors were owed such a sum. The total was probably £4200). Jefferson explained, his own estate was partially ruined, the British merchants might risk losing the interest [on monies owed], but the US people did not gain it either. In the circumstances of 1786, the US deemed Britain to be the aggressors. That Jefferson made little headway with London's commercial community is evident from lists of the persons he saw, and more so, those he did not see. ([74]) Also on 13 March, 1786, John Adams as one of the American Commissioners to the British government wrote to Carmarthen, informing that Jefferson, Minister Plenipotentiary for US at the Court of Versailles, had arrived in London, there were matters to communicate to his Lordship relative to the affairs of the US, and asking for an appointment. ([75])

 

      About 13 March, 1786, Lord Sydney in Parliament was being harassed about matters of convict administration. He sent urgently and unhappily to Campbell, who shot back, "I will not lose one moment". ([76]) Campbell remained busy with convict business. On 14 March, 1786, Campbell as hulks overseer wrote to Capt. James Hill mentioning "it" - that is, the matters of the 13th. And on 14 March, the London aldermen resolved that "an humble Petition be presented by this Court to his Majesty to pray that the Sentence of Transportation may be carried into execution against persons convicted of Felony". ... The draft petition was referred to the Rt Hon Thomas Harley, Brass Crosby, James Townsend, John Wilkes, Nathaniel Newnham, Richard Clark, Esqr, Aldermen. Of these names, James Sanderson, Brook Watson, Aldermen and Sheriffs, or any three of them, were to become a committee to prepare the raft of a Petition agreeable to the said Resolution. ([77]) The petition was ready as early as 21 March. The aldermen were prepared, their researchers had been examining matters since late 1785. ([78]) Did the aldermen know or care that Thomas Jefferson was walking their streets? They probably knew. The aldermen muttered... and as noted earlier, on 14 March, - resolved that an humble Petition be presented by this Court to his Majesty to pray that the Sentence of Transportation may be carried into execution against persons convicted of Felony. ... It was referred to the Rt Hon Thomas Harley, Brass Crosby, James Townsend, John Wilkes, Nathaniel Newnham, Richard Clark, Esqr, Aldermen - James Sanderson, Brook Watson, Ald and Sheriffs. Or any three of them to be a committee to prepare a draft of a Petition agreeable to the said Resolution. ([79])

 

      Thus, from 11 March, when Jefferson arrived in London, willing to candidly discuss matters directly with his personal creditors, arose a conjunction of business. On the hulks, Campbell found he had more prisoners sentenced for transportation than for hard labour, giving him a manpower problem that had possibly been sent to him, deliberately, by magistrates in collusion. Campbell also was dealing with British merchants wanting to recover debt monies. Convicts were rebellious about their probable destinations, the aldermen of London were losing patience and petitioning the king for a resumption of transportation. Parliament was generally unhappy with Lord Sydney and the administration of transportable convicts. Jefferson wished to engage in serious negotiations with Britain about the resumption of trade, but George III turned his back and Lord Carmarthen would not see Jefferson, who was quite willing to see US trade with France as a leverage point in dealing with the British. And Jefferson probably knew also that the Rotchs' "whaler colony" might lose patience with the British and sail for France. ([80]) Enderbys and the London whalers were negotiating closely with government, and it is known they wanted to sail the Pacific - against the wishes of the East India Company.

 

     It was then, concentrated in the third three weeks of March, 1786, that the outcome of the American Revolution was to coalesce in a way meaning that all the ingredients of Australia's early European history would be poured into the retorts of potentiality - except that then, transportable convicts still had no destination, and that Australia's indigenous people, nor those of New Zealand, could not possibly have imagined what the next century would bring. What historians have traditionally left out of consideration are the British demands for the return of debt monies relating to the American Revolution- and in response to that, Jefferson's admission that the US could not possibly pay, there was simply not money enough to pay, even in instalments backed by good faith. It was a case of - be realistic. Britain was not realistic. She refused to talk to Jefferson, to the United States, then shortly sent its convicts to Australia, having decided Australia was uninhabited. But as Australian Aboriginals say today, Australia was not uninhabited.

 

      During March, 1786 some of those Jefferson visited included Carmarthen, whom Jefferson found vague and evasive. ([81]) Sir John Sinclair of Whitehall. Mr Paradise of 2 Charles Street,, Cavendish Square. Mr Pierrepoint. Mr Bridgen of Paternoster Row. B[enjamin?]. Vaughan of Jeffries Square, W. Vaughan of Mincing Lane. Mr Chew at 35 Norfolk Street, Strand. Mr Rucker at No 6, John Street, The Adelphi. Welch at 14 Finchurst Buildings, Finchurst Street. ([82]) Talk revolved on American affairs. ([83]) On 22 April, 1786 Jefferson informed Richard Henry Lee regarding a planned dinner with Sir John Sinclair et al. This dinner was unofficial, enjoyed with men who were seemingly genuine friends of America. (Sinclair was a noted improver of British agriculture, and probably he and Jefferson had similar views on improving agriculture). ([84]) Jefferson dined with his host and a "Ministerial party".

 

     Jefferson was informed that if Americans were to petition Parliament to be again received on their former footing, the petition would be very generally rejected. "He was serious in this, and I think it was the sentiment of the company, and is the sentiment perhaps of the nation. In this they are wise, but for a foolish reason". ([85])  Jefferson found Benjamin Vaughan Jnr. sympathetic to the US' attitude. The Marquis of Landsdowne was sympathetic to the US view, and thought the British view was folly, but Jefferson found no one would speak on these matters in public.

 

     Much was already in train. On 17 March, 1786 came a letter from William Cowdry on the hulk Dunkirk to Evan Nepean. ([86]) On 18 March, the South whalers were interviewed by the Board of Trade. On 18 March, were dated contracts for management of the Fortunee and Dunkirk hulks. Capt. Hill on Firm was finding his convicts dying, and it is hardly surprising the healthier ones mutinied, about 21 March. As convicts mutinied, the London aldermen moved. A draft had been prepared for them by 21 March,  - Draft of Petition to the King respecting the enforcing the Sentence of Transportation. In the box at CLRO holding the draft petition to His Majesty for the resumption of transportation, which is dated 21 March, 1786, is also, a petition to Lord Mayor from Society of Owners and Masters of Ships Associated for Protection of Shipping at the Port of London. (Re: inconvenience and interruption to trade re present mode of placing ships at their moorings, and loss to trade.)

 

      During March-April 1786, Campbell was preoccupied with Creditors' business. At one point he wrote to Stephenson, Randolph and Cheston at Bristol for the Committee, "Mr Pitt desired that the respective States from which these  debts are due might be distinguished." (The committee met again on 20 March, 1790).

 

     On 22 March, 1786, Jenkinson defined Newfoundland as a fishery, not a settlement or a plantation. ([87]) On 24 March, 1786, convicts on the Dunkirk hulk at Plymouth rose and were not subdued until eight were shot dead, and 36 were wounded before order was restored. ([88]) Government would receive adverse publicity due to this uprising. ([89]) Presumably the prisoners were fearful of going to Africa - Campbell's Thames convicts were prone to developing a similarly ugly frame of mind about Africa. As well, the management of the hulk Dunkirk had just been traded to Bradleys, the convicts may have testing the mettle of their new keepers, or warning them. ([90]) It was not unusual, by now, for convicts to revolt on hulks when they became aware that political machinations were going to complicate their existing natural insecurities.

 

      Almost nothing is known of Alexander McCaul. But by 30 March, 1786, an old Glasgow tobacco merchant, Alexander McCaul, who had bought tobacco years before from Jefferson and the Custis family of Virginia, was about to exchange words with Thomas Jefferson, who replied on 19 April, 1786. Jefferson to McCaul, about "settling those conditions which are essential to the continuance of a commerce between them [the US and Great Britain]... the subject has not been deemed worthy [by Britain] of a conference"... Jefferson felt it was not easy "to foresee how nations [would] ... pursue their own measures". ([91])

 

     Before 4 April, 1786, Jefferson made notes from an enjoyable tour of English gardens. ([92]) On 4 April, 1786, the American Commissioners, Adams and Jefferson, again tried to see Carmarthen, and spoke to a Mr. Fraser, regarding an "enclosed project of A Treaty of Commerce .. for the consideration of HM Ministers"... matters commercial and otherwise. [Adams and Jefferson]. McCaul, meanwhile, knew enough about merchant politics to recommend - or merely suggest? - that if the question of American debts was to be discussed, it had best be discussed with Duncan Campbell in London. ([93])

 

      Jefferson had few in London who would listen. One merchant sympathetic to the US position was Benjamin Vaughan Jnr. When Jefferson dined with Sir John Sinclair and a "Ministerial party", all MPs, seated beside Jefferson was General Clarke. Nearby were "a Scotchman and a ministerialist", (If the entire party were all MPs, any Scotchman could not have been Campbell, nor McCaul). Talk turned on American affairs. Jefferson was informed that if Americans were ever for example to "petition Parliament to be again received on their former [pre-revolutionary] footing, the petition would be very generally rejected". His informant was "serious in this, and I think it was the sentiment of the company, and is the sentiment perhaps of the nation. In this they are wise, but for a foolish reason," Jefferson later wrote. And he made also a veiled reference to £100 million, the cost to the British of the American Revolution. Jefferson felt the English were advancing frenziedly to a precipice. (Here, in the light of George III's confidence that strong British credit would help Britain win the conflict, the figures on the cost of the American Revolution remain tantalising. Ferguson notes that James Madison recalled in 1790, "with some exaggeration", that Robert Morris had prosecuted part of the Revolution with $5,000,000, with four times more effectiveness than his predecessors. Such an American cost even for a part of the war seems much lower than British costs). ([94])

 

*     *     *

 

     Also during April 1786, Britain's "Whalefishery Bill", assisted by George Rose, came up for discussion. ([95]) It was never meant, apparently, to be discussed with Jefferson, who would have known something about the state of the American and French whale fisheries. ([96]) On 7 April, 1786, Campbell wrote to Sir John Eden at Durham about an individual convict. Also on 7 April, 1786, Lord Hawkesbury was wanting to encourage the Fishery, with an idea it could become a "pioneer of commerce in unfrequented seas". ([97]) That is, seas not sailed profitably by the East India Company. On 12 April, 1786, Campbell made a routine report on convicts to Lord Sydney. On 13 April, 1786, Campbell made a return for the hulk Censor for George Rose, and swore an oath on its veracity before [alderman] William Gill, who presumably knew of the machinations involved in the aldermen's petition to the king on the resumption of transportation. By 15 April, 1786, also routinely, Lord Sydney contacted George Rose at the Treasury about Campbell's latest report, and Rose referred it as usual for processing to Chamberlayne, the solicitor for the Treasury. On 17 April, Campbell handed to George Rose a petition about Mrs. Colden of New York, on behalf of her two sons.

 

          Jefferson wrote to Francis Epps on 22 April, 1786, informing he had been in London on public business for about six weeks, and he expected to leave in about four days. ([98]) Mr. Jones from Bristol had been to see Jefferson, to settle on the debt Jefferson owed him. ([99]) (It is possible, Jones might have soon seen Campbell about his discussion with Jefferson?)

 

      On April 23, 1786, only hours before his meeting with Campbell, Jefferson wrote to John Jay, "But their [the British] silence is invincible". No one would speak to him. He found the Marquis of Landsdowne sympathetic to the US view, admitting the British view to be folly, but Jefferson found that no one would speak on these matters in public. ([100]) All Jefferson had earlier had was a "perhaps" from a clerk employed by Lord Carmarthen. Nothing had come of seeing him.

 

     Jefferson continued to Jay: "With this country [England] nothing is done; and that nothing is intended to be done on their part admits not the slightest doubt. the nation is against any change of measures; the ministers are against it, some from principle, others from subserviency; and the king more than all men is against it. If he [the king] ever changes his plan it will be in consequence of events which neither himself nor his ministers at present place among those which are probable..... Even the opposition dares not open their lips in favour of a connection with us, so unpopular would be the topic. It is not that they think our commerce unimportant to them. I find that the merchants here set sufficient value on it. But they are sure of keeping it on their own terms."

 

         And so on Sunday, 23 April, 1786, annoyed no British official would meet with him, Jefferson wrote Jay, "But their silence is invincible". Then, as Jefferson wrote later to Jay... Campbell called at an appointed hour, a man... "formerly much concerned in the American trade"... "we entered on the subject of the non-execution of the late treaty of peace alledged [sic] on both sides". ([101]) Campbell was presumed by Jefferson to be "the chairman of the whole body of British merchants, and that such was the respect paid to his person and office that we might consider what came from him as coming from the committee themselves". ([102])There is nothing in Jefferson's correspondence to suggest that he had conducted any secret negotiations which may have cheered his spirits. The entire City of London had deliberately closed ranks against Jefferson!

 

*     *     *

 

      On 20 April, 1786, Governor Parr of Nova Scotia had written to Lord Sydney about the good progress of the whalers from Dartmouth, Massachusetts, (who used the Brazils whaling ground). To Parr's consternation. ([103]) Sydney informed Parr that any encouragement given to the South Whale Fishery would be in such form that... Nantucketeers would be individually recruited individually, not en masse. To Parr and his friends this was a severe blow, which meant that the Enderby-dominated fishery had won all the battle.

 

      Thus, London staved off new competition to its whale fishery... and how much remained hidden from American observers, especially Jefferson, is interesting to ponder. That is, there would be no whaler colony sustained outside London or the British outports. This decision provoked Rotch to decide to establish a whaler colony in France, at Dunkirk. But the policy Sydney referred to also meant that Britain would not only have any truck with American whaling products, Britain, that is, Enderbys, was going to poach American-trained and highly-respected whalers at will. Jefferson probably remained unaware or may not have known of this British policy in any detail. The stage however was set for intense rivalry between the British, French and American whalers in the Pacific. These were the views then of Lord Sydney, partly responsible for directing British whalers into the Pacific, later partly responsible for directing British convicts to Australia - while Jefferson was in town and being ignored.

 

*    *    *

 

      At this point, the US remained upset about an insufficient evacuation of British troops from North America, and that many slaves had been taken away contrary to stipulations (some were on Nova Scotia, where neither British whalers or convicts would go, there was hardly a shortage of labour there). Jefferson reported, it had been said in London that the Americans had thrown restrictions in the way of the recovery of debts due to the British merchants. Here, Jefferson had an immensely practical point - that the debts, which he acknowledged did exist, could not physically be paid. It was impossible - the debt was about £2 million, but only ten per cent of such an amount was in circulation in the US. Jefferson insisted that both debtors and creditors would be ruined, partly as the London merchants wanted also their interest. Still, the Americans would repay, Jefferson honestly believed.

 

      It is unfortunate that Campbell's reaction when he received an invitation to meet Jefferson was never recorded! All we find from Campbell's papers is this: Before about 4 March, 1786, probably, but maybe in April, Campbell as chairman of the British Creditors had printed a Memorial to Lord Carmarthen, secretary of state for the foreign department. ([104]) Campbell took responsibility for informing government that his merchant members had had "a very deep stake in America" by 1775, and their debts and investment losses in real estate and other property equalled more than £3 million  sterling. Some points in the memorial to Carmarthen were that (1) the merchants had been deprived of their property for ten years (2) they were deprived of eight years' interest, equal to 40 per cent. ([105])

 

*    *    *

 

Lord Carmarthen and the British Creditors' petition:

 

Campbell Letter 146:

 

   Campbell Letter No 146 is taken from an undated printed memorial, but probably March 4, 1786, to the Marquis of Carmarthen. Two copies of Campbell's printed memorial are extant, one mutilated, one unmutilated. On the last page of the mutilated copy is a notation in pen and ink,  "Memorial of March 4 to Lord Carmarthen about Debts prev to 1776 due British Mercht

 

To the Right Honourable the Marquis of CARMARTHEN, His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the Foreign Department. ([106])

 

The Case, and Memorial of the Merchants of London, Bristol, Liverpool, Whitehaven, and Glasgow, trading to Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, previous to the year 1776.

 

Humbly Sheweth,

 

That, at the breaking out of the late war, in 1775, your Memorialists, the British Merchants, had a very deep stake in America. .....

 

That, in the Year 1775, the British agents and factors, as well as many of the merchants, were compelled to quit the late American colonies, leaving behind them in real estate, debts, and other property, equal in value to more than three millions sterling, belonging to the merchants of London, Bristol, Liverpool, Whitehaven and Glasgow.

 

That, early in the year 1777, the British merchants and factors were expelled and banished from Virginia, in consequence of a resolution of the general assembly of that state, dated the 19th of December, 1776; and, in Maryland, and several other provinces, the ....

 

... acquainting his Lordship with a range of conditions not fulfilled to the satisfaction of the British Merchants ...

 

...

..I. That, it is now ten years since their property has been withheld from them.

 

II. That they are to be deprived of eight years interest, equal to 40 per cent.

III...

IV...

V...

VI...

      Your memorialists therefore most humbly beseech your Lordship to take the premises into consideration, and grant such effectual relief as in the wisdom of government shall seem meet.

                                  By order of the meeting,

                                         DUNCAN CAMPBELL

                                                                   Chairman.

                                        In behalf of the merchants

                                     ....., previous to the year 1776.

 

      In the long run, British merchants got back no more than 46 per cent of what they claimed the Americans owed them to 1783. ([107])

 

 `A bitter pill he and his friends could never swallow':

 

     One description of Jefferson is given thus: he was six feet two inches, large-boned, slim, erect and sinewy, with a ruddy complexion, sandy hair, and hazel-flecked gray eyes. His carriage was "relaxed and awkward". He had a "pleasant face" (which was a phrase of the day), but was not handsome. Sometimes he was cold on first meeting (as Campbell may well have found him), but usually he was even-tempered. The private Jefferson remained elusive. Ultimately he was a lonely man. Campbell was a warmer temperament (there is a family legend he was a musician).

 

      Campbell had come to Jefferson at an appointed hour, and one wonders if the Vaughans' address in Mincing Lane was the venue? Jefferson understood Campbell to be "formerly much concerned in the American trade". There was no mention of convict transportation, apparently. The two "entered on the subject of the non-execution of the late treaty of peace alledged [sic] on both sides". At first polite on peripheral details, they soon disagreed, though both conceded a point here, a point there. Disagreement rapidly set in about the 40 per cent of £3 million sterling the Britons thought they were owed. Jefferson later observed of Campbell, the interest from 1775 to 1786 "was his only topic". Campbell said he found the renunciation of the interest "a bitter pill he and his friends could never swallow." ([108]) They then spoke about the 1782-1783 treaty, but Campbell informed that he was not authorised to speak on future commerce. ([109]) On departing, Campbell told Jefferson he would discuss the matter with Lord Carmarthen, but only in the context of stipulations his friends made about the payment of old debts.

 

     In his letter to John Jay of 23 April, 1786, in which Jefferson named Campbell, Jefferson noted that Campbell had insisted that US legislatures had thrown obstacles in the way of debt recovery, and wrote: We observed to him that the great amount of debt from America to Great Britain, and the little circulating coin in the former country, rendered immediate paiment impossible, that time was necessary;...     Campbell, reasonably, acknowledged the impossibility of immediate payment. Jefferson later wrote to Jay again, saying Campbell nor any one else got back in touch with him about such matters. "Congress will judge how far these conversations should influence their future proceedings, or those of the states".

 

     What Jefferson did not say, and may not have known, unless Vaughans informed him, was that Campbell was also long-involved in West India trade. Campbell in his capacity as hulks overseer often spoke with government officials, and so was perhaps better-connected than Jefferson realised. In 1786, in view of the British-US dispute over West Indian trade, if government, or the British Creditors, or both, had wanted Jefferson to speak with a London merchant experienced with both West India and North American trade, Campbell may well have been an ideal choice. At least, it seems plausible to infer that whether or not Jefferson knew that Campbell was familiar with West Indian trade, it would have taken Campbell little time to assess any shifts in Jefferson's attitudes regarding West India trade. Much hinged on perceptions of the indispensability of West India trade. By 1785, Jefferson had decided that further US-West Indian trade was indispensable. John Adams agreed. Jefferson noted that Britain wanted trade with the US to be free and unrestricted, subject to no discriminations. The US adopted the position that US trade with the West Indies would be free. Britain disagreed. Later, some issues respecting US-West India trade were embodied in Jay's Treaty of 1794, the proposal being that US-West India trade might remain on a pre-revolutionary basis.

 

     Later, Campbell reported to his merchants again, and even later, after unsuccessfully re-contacting his former agent Matthew Ridley, Campbell went to the lengths of sending  an agent, Frank Mackett, to Virginia to search the prospects for recovery of debts. In vain.  Campbell in May 1789 began to think again on his American debts, so apart from his involvement with the Merchants Trading asked Frank Mackett, son of an old friend, John, to visit North America ([110]). (In 1780, Campbell had helped soothe an estrangement between this father and son). Campbell then wrote his former American agents of this forthcoming visit. Mackett was to see Austin Brockenbrough of Leeds Town, Virginia. Mr. Russell of Baltimore, Maryland. And Campbell's old attorney in Maryland, Matthew Ridley, brother-in-law of Jefferson's colleague, John Jay. After Mackett's departure, Campbell set about re-contacting his merchant friends. Just what had set him off is impossible to say. By 1 July, 1789 he was trying to arrange useful meetings with Prime Minister Pitt to discuss creditors' business. Young Mackett caught fever at Gravesend and died. ([111]) Campbell gave up till 1792.

 

After the Jefferson-Campbell meeting:

 

     Jefferson remained unhappy after he saw Campbell, his gloom about the US' economic conditions probably intensifying . Although he would have known France would remain happy to import US whale oil, he remained concerned about West Indian trade - British carriers would be ruinous to the US, more so if the US could not trade with the West Indies. ([112])  But if nothing else, the Creditors' pressures became one force impelling the development of the US Federal legal system. For his own part, Jefferson was not intending to stay much longer and endure the stony silence of the British, to continue watch them stand barefoot on old thorns. Jefferson during the interview had seen Campbell as emotional. If he was emotional, Campbell never revealed it in his letterbooks, which contain no mention of this momentous meeting. Jefferson had been serious. Campbell had been in a powerless situation. But Campbell evidently did approach - or earlier had approached - Lord Carmarthen, who was replaced as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1789 by the Duke of Leeds.

 

     Campbell's surviving papers have no record of the meeting. No report. No set of alternatives. No plans for further contact. No hopes. No memo. No torn off page. No half or quarter page ruled off in resentment and scribbled on. Nothing. The man Jefferson met is hard to square with the somewhat unctuous hulks overseer who so often, so screechingly, was obliged to beg his reimbursements from the Treasury for feeding convicts. And there is nothing to suggest that Campbell would not have any day exchanged his hulks contracts for a reasonable opportunity to plunge back into trade to North America.

 

*    *    *

 

     On 25 April, 1786 was produced for Rose at the treasury the report of Mr. Chamberlayne at Lincoln's Inn, solicitor to the Treasury, on Mr. Campbell's demand for maintenance of convicts on board the hulk Censor, for one quarter ending 12 April, 1786. Jefferson just then was planning to meet Sir John Sinclair, on 25 April, 1786. He called on Sir John on the 24th April, ([113]) who may have left a note for Jefferson, dated 24 April, 1786, regarding sending a tract, regarding "the propriety of a general colonial emancipation". (The tract itself has not been identified). ([114]) Jefferson on 25 April, 1786 wrote to James Molison, [probably, Molleson, of the tobacco merchants with whom Duncan Campbell would have been contact] that he was off to Paris tomorrow. That George III has an aversion to proposals....

 

"We have had conversations on the subject of our debts with the chairman of the committee of American merchants here. He [Campbell] was anxious for arrangements. He was sensible that it was for the interest of the creditor as well as debtor to allow time for the paiment [sic] of debts to this country [ie, Britain] and did not seem to think the time taken by Virginia was more than enough. But we could not help agreeing with him that the courts should be open to them immediately, judgements recoverable... [be paid by 1790], payments in money and not anything else... Jefferson was unsure on what footing American law was here. He and Campbell had agreed that the principal and interest preceding and subsequent to the war be paid - the two had differed on the interest [payable] during the war. the talks had been as preparatory to [the making of] authoritative propositions, but the minister [Carmarthen] would not condescend to meet. ([115])

 

     Jefferson wrote on 4 May, 1786 to his old friend, John Page, "That nation [Britain] hates us, their ministers hate us, and their king more than all other men..." ...they wanted our [American] carrying trade as all their own, our ideas "have been treated with derision". Jefferson thought the present British hostility to the US more deeply rooted than during the war, and he even wondered if Britain was willing to go to war again? Given Jefferson's correspondence with John Page, we might note that Page had earlier dealt with Campbell, but the connections there were formal and apparently innocuous. ([116])

 

                                         *   *   *

 

     Any juxtaposition of Jefferson's concerns when he was in London with concerns registered in Campbell's correspondence about managing hulks prisoners is revealing, and enables creation of a focus to be made which has long been missing from the historiography of "the founding of Australia". There are twists of irony. When Campbell first managed the Thames River prison hulks in 1776, the prisoners were kept at work improving the Proof Butts at the Woolwich Arsenal, that is, the artillery ground for proving the effectiveness of equipment to be used by the British army against the fractious Americans. Campbell's other correspondence about mid-1786 is mostly preoccupied with the business of hulks management, including suppressing convict mutinies, matters usually seen as part of the prelude to convict transportation to Australia... And about the time of his failed meeting with Jefferson, Campbell, though he did not then know it, would receive from William Bligh a letter of 22 April, 1786, Bligh wrote, "By this packet I had the pleasure to hear from Mrs Bligh that you had been so good as to get my part of the profits of the publication of Cook's voyage". ([117]) [This would have been the 1784 publication, of Cook third voyage.]) Campbell was something quite other than the "influential West India merchant" mentioned by generations of writers besotted with the legend of the Mutiny on Bounty.

 

Significance of the Jefferson-Campbell meeting:

 

    The significances of the meeting between Campbell and Jefferson are many. Most importantly, none of the information arising from a detailed examination of Jefferson's meeting with the British Creditors contradicts any responsible remark made by any US historian about post-1783 debt matters. Anyone seeking any such contradiction will encounter various mysteries and gaps in information, but the finding here is that the American purview so far adopted of Jefferson and his most respected colleagues is reliable, whether or not Anglo-Australian historians remain uninterested.

 

     Some significances of the meeting are of two orders: some practical and relating to commerce; others, more literary. The fact that so many of Campbell's colonial associates dedicated themselves to the revolutionary cause, especially Matthew Ridley, while Campbell was reduced to the role of an overseer of hulks prisoners, made his case as a Creditor conspicuous, and, in the literary sense, worthy of reconsideration by historians of convict transportation and related matters. Awareness of the Jefferson-Campbell meeting provides a new and different culmination to the narrative of convict transportation to North America. It also provides a background which shows more starkly how moods of negativity, depression, backward-lookingness and helplessness prevailed as Britain decided to send convicts to Australia. And also, secrecy, or, in terms of the likely reaction of the East India Company, great discretion about the future of British whaling!

 

     On 25 April, 1786 Jefferson also wrote to John Adams, American Commissioners to John Jay, from Grosvenor Square, about a conference with the secretary of state for foreign affairs, respecting a joint commission of Congress, respecting negotiating a Treaty of Commerce with Great Britain. A commission due to expire on 12 May, and the best terms Jefferson had been able to muster were ... "His Lordship Mr Frasier [sic, one of Carmarthen's staff] said, wished to receive a Plan of a Treaty merely commercial ... "All agree that if America will suffer England to pockett (that is their Expression) all her navigation, England would be unwise not to avail herself of the advantage." So, some discussion of Britain's navigation laws was entailed. ([118]) Jefferson or one of his people provided a brief note to Carmarthen, 26 April, 1786.

 

     "They [the British] abuse us for not paying our debts", said David Ramsay of New York, one of Jefferson's correspondents on 3 May, 1786. And all this time, American tobacco was going to France by the convoy, for sale in lots of up to 60,000 hogsheads, as had been officially mentioned. ([119])

 

    Meanwhile, Jefferson professed great admiration for British mechanical arts. ([120]) His unhappiness continued. In Paris on 7 May, 1786, he wrote to William Temple Franklin, that Britain did not undervalue US commerce, but she wanted to keep it in her own terms, and, Britain thought her own commerce indispensable to the US. Jefferson thought that if the US was to be "so excluded" from dealing with the British West Indies, it was better off without the commerce to Britain than with it, since Britain would always strive to keep the US in debt to her. And otherwise, in various letters, Jefferson informed he remained at quite a loss regarding Britain, where, he thought, the ministers were convincing everyone that Britain was richer than it was, and even willing to go again to war. ([121])

 

The East India Company, the whalers, and an ulterior motive:

 

     By April 1786, the East India Company thought it knew enough about government plans to promote whaling to suspect that somewhere, there was an ulterior motive, which meant the Company had to close ranks in order to protect its exclusive charter. On 25 April, 1786 the East India Company court of directors (including Baring) had forwarded to their Committee for Correspondence the plans they were aware of regarding the whalers. ([122]) The Company resisted the idea wholly and added, "Besides these reasons the Committee also suspect that the fishing Trade proposed will not be found to answer to the Projectors for want of fish, the danger of those Seas, etc, which induces a Suspicion that there must be some other Object in view". As Jackson has it, it was feared the London whalers might rendezvous with East Indiamen and purchase various goods from them for the European and/or American markets. Or, sell to East Indiamen various European and American goods for the Eastern markets. (Doubtless Jackson here refers to the private trading rights of East India Company captains]. ([123]) Hawkesbury, Pitt and Dundas at India Board had all worked to convince the Company there were "no ulterior motives" with plans for whalers, the whalers mostly wanted South American coasts, but the Spanish claimed more than they had the power to occupy. It was known, the Spanish were still pleased to call the Pacific their own... Meanwhile, in May, 1786, Alderman Brook Watson (who had business interests in Canada) was considering a Bill for the Encouragement of the South Whale Fishery - committed to his care for report and re-amendment. ([124])

 

     As Jackson has it, what came into play in negotiations was "the accursed monopoly" of the Company. (Whaling historians tend to express pro-whaler partisanship against the obstructive Company, an indication perhaps of the weight of monopoly the government and the whalers had to shift in 1786). Being considered was a theoretical breach in the Company charter, which excluded all vessels but its own from seas to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, across to Cape Horn, (It was an English equivalent of the absurdity of the old Papal anti-meridian). And in 1813, by the time the Company monopoly had gone, American whaling had overtaken British whaling in Pacific. ([125])

 

*    *    *

 

Further political pressure on the convict problem: a quickening of pace:

 

      Again as part of a general campaign against government inaction about convict transportation, there were formed serried ranks of men complaining about lack of suitable accommodation for prisoners. Parliament on 28 April listened to a petition from Charles Potts and the Justices of the Peace of the County Palatine in Chester, where the Castle of Chester had become ruinous and unsafe for the custody of prisoners. ([126]) They desired to rebuild the gaol and other parts of the Castle useful for administration, and asked, where were they to put the convicts? Their problem was common in the many counties - and government still had no answer. Except perhaps a proliferation of the hulks? (Yet, Nepean in giving evidence to the Beauchamp Committee of 1785 had deliberately refrained from mentioning the number of country prisoners sentenced for transportation). By May, more political pressure quickened about the convict problem. Two independent Devon MPs, John Rolle and John Pollexfen Bastard, were both opposed to the Duke of Richmond's plans for the fortification of the dockyards at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Both men wanted transportation resumed. Both men had hulks in their electorates, so their attitude is hardly surprising. ([127])

 

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     May 1786 was preoccupied with prisoner problems and whaler problems. During May, 1786, Smeathman's plan for Sierra Leone was printed. ([128]) In May, 1786, 70 convicts in typhus-ridden Lancaster Jail - the area where the vocal magistrate T. B. Bailey kept a watch on useless politicians - wanted a review of their situation. The inmates of Southwark, similar. In 1786, there were 56 different requests for the removal of convicts from Grand Juries, Sheriffs, under-sheriffs, mayors, judges, town clerks and jailers. Eight [only] were in response to Home Office demands for information. ([129])

 

     With whaling.... on 1 May, 1786 the Committee for Trade asked the Fisheries if they were prepared to apply for licences from the East India Company to pass beyond Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope and to give security not to engage in illicit trade? The fishers did not object. On 3 May, 1786 arose a Report of the Lords of the Committee for Trade proposing certain premiums, etc., for the encouragement of the Southern Whale Fishery. Jenkinson remained favourable to the fishery.

 

     About 3 May, 1786 was delivered a Report of the Lords of the Committee for Trade proposing certain premiums and other encouragements for the Southern Whale Fishery, matters which found Jenkinson's favour. Jenkinson was appointed president of the Board of Trade and made Lord Hawkesbury. ([130]) On 3 May, 1786 the Committee for Trade approved the report and recommendation of Hawkesbury for the encouragement of the Fishery. The Committee for Trade argued with the Chairman and deputy chairman of the Company who offered objections and desired to refer the proposals to the Court of Directors. ([131])

 

     On 4 May, 1786, the whalers received a set of directions from the Court - and were permitted proposals under restrictions. On 5 May, 1786, the whalers' report of 3 May  was submitted to the Privy Council for approval, to Pitt, Carmarthen, the Earl of Denbigh, Lord Amherst, James Stopford, the second Earl of Cartown (1731-1810, a brother-in-law of Lord Sydney), Admiral Howe, Lord Sydney and Henry Dundas. ([132])

 

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Convicts and priorities:

 

     What transpired now was evidently far more important to Britain than anything  Jefferson might say officially on behalf of the United States. By 5 May, 1786, the Devon MP, Rolle, was contacting Nepean about convicts in crowded Devon Jail. His constituents were wanting sentences of transportation carried out. ([133]) On 6 May, 1786, Pitt himself wrote to Rolle on the matter. Pitt admitted he could not name a place, nor suggest numbers of convicts which could be sent, but he said, measures were being taken for procuring the amount of shipping necessary to carry about 1,000, in about a month. Would Rolle inform Mr Bastard MP of this? Pitt hoped a farther number would be requisite. ([134]) It seems here that Pitt was designing something, something that involved, perhaps, whalers, or at least, maritime endeavour. But first, Pitt had to design a maritime situation that would permit action. On 7 May, 1786, Rolle wrote to Townshend about Pitt's letter, and the authority of the prime minister being given to "communicate to the public". ([135]) "At least two shipping contractors were given the same information, since they wrote to Nepean asking for details of the scheme". [The contractors are not named, but they were the slaver Anthony Calvert and alderman George Macaulay, who may or may not have been acting in concert].

 

      On 7 May, 1786, Pitt was to arrange a meeting with Jenkinson and representatives of the East India Company. ([136]) Jenkinson was to speak for the Board of Trade, the Privy Council was to be represented by Pitt and Dundas. London whale oil merchants were asked if they intended to apply to the Honble Company for licences to sail into the seas under Company jurisdiction. The whalers agreed. (At this time, Company ships carried an average of £700,000 worth of silver to China each year). ([137]) And over 1-11 May, 1786, following earlier moves. Pitt, Lord Hawkesbury, Lord Mulgrave and Sir Joseph Yorke formed a committee to take more evidence from leading London whalers. ([138]) Claims for bounties for southern fishery had to date been rejected, but Enderby, St. Barbe and Champion gave information. ([139]) The Committee got the whalers' agreement to taking licences from East India Company for ships passing eastward of the Cape, and to not engage in illicit trade. Then the Committee wrote to the East India Company and the South Sea Company asking to confer on the whalers' desires... the companies agreed, any permission from the South Sea Company being purely a formality, as that company had no serious interests in any southern seas.

 

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George Macaulay's unfathomable desire to transport convicts to Africa:

 

      The underground character of these circuitous dealings, where government, the East India Company and the whalers circled each other like suspicious dogs, was the environment from which the long-unknown alderman Macaulay stepped m