A decade after Arthur's experience in Honduras, the Legal Adviser in the British Colonial Office was the powerful evangelical James Stephen. According to Manning Clark,34 even then Stephen thought of Benthamism as a subtle enemy of Christianity.
Early in 1824, Stephen told the appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, George Arthur, that he had an opportunity to make Tasmania a branch of a great and powerful nation which must exercise a mighty influence for good or evil over a vast region of the Earth. He told him of the importance of his mission to establish a Christian, virtuous and enlightened State in the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere and within reach of the Chinese, Hindu and Mohammedan nations which surrounded him. The problem was how to render it Christian, virtuous and enlightened. Jonathan Edwards rides again!
