The square short face and sturdy form of Samuel Marsden show the force, vigour, and determination of his nature, which told on beast as well as man. On the road between Sydney and Paramatta, he used to let the reins lie loose on the splash-board of his gig and read, saying that "the horse that could not keep itself up was not worth driving," and though one of the pair he usually drove was unmanageable in other hands, nothing ever went amiss with it when it went out with its master. Such a spirit of determination produced an impress even on those who opposed him most, and many works were carried out in the teeth of the difficulties thrown in their way; such as the erection of schools, of a factory for the reception of the female convicts, and of a sort of model farm, where it was intended to collect, tame, and civilize the aborigines. This was at first planned between the governor and chaplain, but when it was ready Marsden was under Colonel Macquarie's displeasure, and was therefore excluded from all share in the management, though the site was actually in his own parish of Paramatta. The experiment was a failure, probably not on this account, but from the restless character of the blacks, whose intellect was too small, and their wants too few, to feel any comfort a compensation for their freedom and wandering life. Mr. Marsden and the other chaplains repeatedly tried bringing up children,-some too young to retain any memory of their native habits, but they always relapsed into savage life on the first opportunity, and though here and there individuals may have better come up to the hopes of their devoted friends, yet as a race they seem too little above the animal to be susceptible of being raised.
Governor Macquarie was an iron-handed man, who could not brook opposition, or endure any scheme that did not originate with himself. So when Mr. Marsden laid before him a project for diminishing the appalling misery and vice in which the utter neglect of Government left the female convicts, he acknowledged the letter, but did not act upon it. After waiting eighteen months for him to take some measure, the chaplain sent a statement of the condition of these poor creatures to the Colonial Office; it was laid before Parliament, and Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, sent a letter of inquiry to the Governor. Macquarie's fury was intense on finding that the chaplain had dared to look above and beyond him; and he gave a willing encouragement to whatever resisted the attempts of Marsden at establishing some sense of religion and morality. After refusing to accept his resignation of his post as a magistrate, he dismissed him ignominiously, and all the underlings of Government knew that any attack from them would be regarded with favour. A vile and slanderous letter, full of infamous libels, not only against Samuel Marsden, as a man and a Christian priest, but against the missionaries, and signed "Philo-free," appeared in the Sydney Herald, the Government paper, and was traced to Macquarie's own secretary! The libel was such that Mr. Marsden felt it due to his cause to bring an action against the publisher, and in spite of the prejudice against him, after a trial of three days, he gained a complete victory and damages of 200 pounds; but the newspaper published such a false and scandalous report of the trial that he was obliged a second time to prosecute, and again obtained a verdict in his favour.
The officers of the 46th Regiment, on leaving the colony, presented him with a testimonial, and an address most gratifying, amid the general obloquy, and showing a feeling most honourable to themselves. Every one who cared for the cause of virtue at home, especially Wilberforce, Simeon, and Mrs. Fry, wrote encouraging letters to him; and Lord Bathurst, on receiving a despatch from Macquarie, full of charges against the chaplain as man, magistrate, and minister, sent out a commission of inquiry, which, coming with fresh eyes from England, was horrified at the abuses to which the Australian world was accustomed, found every word of Mr. Marsden's perfectly justified, and at last extracted the following confession from Colonel Macquarie: "The Governor admits that Mr. Marsden's manner to him has been constantly civil and accommodating, and that nothing in his manner could provoke the Governor's warmth. The Governor admits his qualifications, his activity, and his unremitting vigilance as a magistrate, and in society his cheerful disposition and readiness to please." The report of this commission resulted, among other more important consequences, in the unsolicited grant of 400 pounds a year additional stipend to Mr. Marsden, "in consideration of his long, laborious, and praiseworthy exertions in behalf of religion and morality." This was only fitting compensation on the part of Government, for the accusation of avarice had brought to light how many schools and asylums, the proper work of the Government, had been built, and were being maintained, out of the proceeds of the farm which had prospered so excellently.
As long as Macquarie continued in office, Mr. Marsden was out of favour, but Sir Thomas Brisbane, who came out in 1821, was friendly with him, and knew his value, insisting on his returning to the bench of magistrates. He did all he could to avoid it, till the judges and almost every one in the colony so urged him to accept that he yielded; but in 1824 a case occurred in which a rich and insolent culprit was severely punished by the Paramatta bench, and contrived to raise such an outrageous storm that Sir Thomas Brisbane, who, if better disposed, was more timid than his predecessor, dismissed the whole five magistrates. The offender's wish had been merely to overthrow Mr. Marsden, but this was found impossible. The whole fury of the colony again rose against this fearless man, and accusations absolutely absurd were trumped up. One was that he allowed his windmill to work on Sunday! The fact turned out to be, when investigated, that somebody had once seen the sails turning on a Sunday, some time before Mr. Marsden had purchased the land on which the mill stood. A real act of persecution affected him more seriously, as it was the ruin of another person in whom he was interested. There was an old regulation forbidding the hiring out of convicts who were assigned to residents as domestic servants, but this had been virtually repealed by another under Macquarie, permitting such hiring out on the owners complying with certain rules. These had been duly attended to by Mr. Marsden in the case of one James Ring, a plumber and glazier, who, as a reward for good conduct, was allowed to go out to work in Paramatta for his own profit. Being ill-used and beaten by another servant, he summoned the man before the bench of magistrates, but these, who had been put in when Mr. Marsden and his colleagues were dismissed, immediately committed Ring to jail for being at large. His master went to demand his release, showing that the rules had been observed, but the magistrates replied by levying a fine of two-and-sixpence for every day that Ring had been at work, and as Marsden did not offer to pay, they sent a convict constable to his house to seize property to that amount, while poor Ring himself was sent to work in irons with the penal gang; though at that very moment one of the magistrates had a servant, a tailor, at work in Mr. Marsden's house; and another person had two hired convicts of another of these justices employed at his home. In fact, it was the only sentence of the kind ever inflicted, yet Sir Thomas Brisbane was afraid to interfere; whereupon Mr. Marsden caused his case to be tried before the Supreme Court, and so completely proved it, that restitution of the illegal fine was commanded, though the spirit of persecution was still shown in the absurdly small sum of damages allotted to him. What was worse was that he could not procure the release of Ring, for while he was sending an appeal to England the unhappy man lost patience, ran away from the gang where he was working in irons on the roads, and escaped to New Zealand, but was never heard of more. Had he but borne with his misery a little longer he would have been restored to his kind master, for a commission came out which a second time resulted in the complete triumph of Mr. Marsden, and the entire discomfiture of his persecutors.