Of course, no one would look into the pages of MacKenzie's _Gazette_ to get a favourable impression of Sir George Arthur, but a perusal of these excerpts shows that the dissatisfaction against Arthur was widespread. The Launcetown _Advertiser_ states that, "Throughout the whole period of his government the military have been placed in too prominent a position. Lieutenants and Ensigns, fresh from the frolics of Chatham, have been turned into justices of the peace and the whole administration of the colony has been pipe-clayed into a service of an amphibious, half-military, half-civil complexion."[9] The _Colonial Times_ quite frankly lays it down that "A worse British Governor never ruled during the present century."[10] This is strong language, written in the heat of the moment, but when sufficient discount is made for hot temper the fact remains that Sir George Arthur made a number of enemies in Van Diemen's Land. To a certain extent Arthur was not to blame since he was the victim of circumstances. He was forced by the nature of his office to uphold the abominable system of transportation and his position as commander-in-chief of the military forces on the island made him a military as well as a civil governor of a penal colony. But on the other hand, he was by nature an aristocrat with but little democratic feeling. He mistrusted popular government and he had to keep down a discontented population of whom over one-third were convicts. Sir William Molesworth in his speech on transportation delivered in the British House of Commons on May 5th, 1840,[11] gives the following statistics culled from Sir George Arthur's despatches from Van Diemen's Land in 1834. "Its population in 1834 did not exceed 40,000, of whom 16,000 were convicts, 1,000 soldiers, and 23,000 free inhabitants; what proportion of the latter had been convicts it is impossible to say. In this small community the summary convictions amounted to about 15,000 in the year in question, amongst which there were about 2,000 for felony, 1,200 for misdemeanour, 700 for assaults, and 3,000 for drunkenness. Eleven thousand of these convictions were of convicts who are summarily punished for all offences to which the penalty of death is not attached." With such a turbulent population to control it is no wonder that Sir George Arthur had but little belief in popular government. But however great the opposition to Governor Arthur in Van Diemen's Land may have been, the Australian Commonwealth to-day owes him one debt of gratitude. According to his biographer Arbuthnot, Arthur was the first person to suggest the advisability of a federation of all the Australian colonies. In this he was years in advance of his time. Still it is to be doubted whether any scheme of federation brought forward in Arthur's time could have been so complete and satisfactory as that consummated in 1901.