General Sir Ralph Darling, GCH (1772 – 2 April 1858) was a British Army officer who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831. He is popularly described as a tyrant, accused of torturing prisoners and banning theatrical entertainment. Local geographical features named after him include the Darling River and Darling Harbour in Sydney.
Early career
Darling seems to have been unique in the British Army of this period, as he progressed from an enlisted man to become a general officer with a knighthood. Born in Ireland, he was the son of a sergeant in the 45th Regiment of Foot who subsequently gained the unusual reward of promotion to officer rank as a lieutenant. Like most of the small number of former non-commissioned officers in this position, Lieutenant Darling performed only regimental administrative duties. He struggled to support his large family on a subaltern's pay.
Ralph Darling enlisted at the age of fourteen as a private in his father's regiment, and served in the ranks for at least two years on garrison duty in the West Indies. Eventually, as an "act of charity" to the family, young Ralph was granted an officer's commission as an ensign on 15 May 1793, without having to make the usual payment. The new officer soon found opportunities to show his ability, alternating front-line activity and high-level administrative duties, and in August 1796 he was appointed as military secretary to Sir Ralph Abercromby, the British commander-in-chief in the West Indies. By the time he returned to Great Britain in 1802, still aged only twenty-nine, the sergeant's son and one-time private soldier was a highly respected lieutenant-colonel.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Colonel Darling alternated between periods of regimental command and important administrative appointments, leading the 51st Regiment of Foot at the Battle of Corunna and serving as assistant adjutant general during the Walcheren Expedition, before returning to the headquarters at Royal Horse Guards in London, where he served for almost a decade as head of British Army recruiting. In this role, Darling was subsequently promoted to brevet colonel on 25 July 1810, major general on 4 June 1813, and deputy adjutant general in 1814. General Darling was also able to further the careers of his younger brothers Henry and William, and subsequently his nephew Charles; the three brothers all became generals, and Charles also earned a knighthood.
Darling married in 1817. Between February 1819 and February 1824, General Darling commanded the British troops on Mauritius, before serving as acting governor of the colony for the last three years of his stay. In this role, Darling again exhibited his administrative ability, but he also became very unpopular in Mauritius: he was accused of allowing a British frigate to breach quarantine and start an epidemic of cholera, and he then suspended the island's Conseil de Commune when it protested his actions; in reality, however, there was no evidence that the frigate had been carrying cholera, and the opposition to General Darling appears to have been motivated in large part by his vigorous actions against the slave trade, and the fact that British rule in Mauritius was still little more than military occupation of a proud French colony. Notwithstanding the criticism from some quarters, it was largely on account of his service in Mauritius that Darling was appointed the seventh Governor of New South Wales in 1824.
Governor of New South Wales
Darling initiated the construction, from 1826, of the convict-built Great North Road, linking the Hawkesbury settlements around Sydney with those in the Hunter Valley. In 1826 he also defined the Nineteen Counties in accordance with a government order from Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State in the British parliament; these were the limits of location in the colony of New South Wales. Settlers were only permitted to take up land within these counties. From 1831 the granting of free land ceased and the only land that was to be made available for sale was within the Nineteen Counties.
When Darling was commissioned as governor, the Colony's western boundary – set in 1788 at 135 degrees east longitude – was extended by 6 degrees west to the 129 degrees east longitude. This line of longitude subsequently became the border dividing Western Australia and South Australia. To the south, everything beyond Wilsons Promontory, the southeastern 'corner' of the Australian continent, ceased to be under the control of New South Wales and was placed under the authority of the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land. He proclaimed Van Diemen's Land as a separate colony on 3 December in 1825.