I found myself catching fire with indignation. ‘Notorious’? ‘Deeply read in the corruption of human nature’? How dare this pipsqueak say that!

Then I learned that Atkins had swallowed a glamorised version of Wiseman’s crime: a story that he was transported for smuggling on the shores of Dover rather than pinching timber on the muddy old Thames.

Justice Roger Therry, on his circuit, also visited Wiseman, and took a kindlier view of him as: ‘a person of great natural shrewdness and of considerable prosperity; for he was then engaged in the fifth year of a contract with Government, for supplying provisions to convicts who worked upon the roads, that brought him a net income of from £3000 to £4000 a year’. Therry also believed the smuggling story, but added, ‘in the Colony his conduct was industrious, and his character for probity irreproachable’.

But my hackles rose again when the judge took the opportunity to have a bit of fun at Wiseman’s expense:

In literary attainments of any kind old Solomon was sadly deficient…He condoled with General Darling, who paid a visit to his beautiful place, by informing him frankly that his Excellency, by his measures, had lost all his population (meaning popularity) in the district. On inquiring from him the name of a curious bird that attracted Archbishop Polding’s attention, Solomon replied—‘Your Grace, we call that the laughing jackass in this country, but I don’t know the botanical name of the bird’. The climax of his intelligence was, however, crowned by another reply he made to Dr Polding. Solomon attached this meaning to the words ‘Protestants and Romanists’, that the former were Englishmen, and the latter either denizens of Rome or descendants from Romans who had early emigrated to England. With this impression, and in the belief that the Catholic Archbishop was a Roman, he said—‘I am very sorry to tell your Grace that there’s a great down upon the Romans in this country.’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said his Grace (thinking of course that Solomon meant the Roman Catholic portion of the community). ‘I have received great kindness,’ his Grace added, ‘from persons of all religious denominations here.’ ‘Oh my Lord, ’tis a fact, I assure you. There’s a great down upon the Romans.’ ‘And why should there be?’ inquired his Grace. ‘Because, my Lord, the English people never will forgive Julius Caesar and the Romans for invading their country.’ After this answer the Archbishop was dumbfounded, and quite incapable of further discussing the topic with so erudite a critic of historical events.

How dare this silvertail, with his nice education paid for by Daddy, mock a man who’d had to drag himself up by his own bootstraps?

But this exchange made me wonder about Wiseman and his attitude towards the Aboriginal people. If he’d been thinking about the Romans invading Britain, did he draw a parallel with what he himself was doing?

Another account described Wiseman without judging him. It was written by Baron Charles von Hugel, a German botanist, diplomat and army officer: