William Effingham Lawrence
William Effingham Lawrence (1781–1841) was an English colonist to Australia, the son of Captain Effingham Lawrence, a merchant with houses in London, Liverpool and New York City. Previous generations of Lawrences had settled in the American colonies but returned to England after the War of Independence. Lawrence was an educated and refined man, an intimate of Jeremy Bentham, who was obliged to migrate to the colony of Van Diemen’s Land due to poor health. On his leaving England Bentham wrote to a friend in Rio de Janeiro: ‘Our excellent friend on his way to Australia is not without thoughts of touching at Rio de Janeiro: a worthier man, a more benevolent cosmopolite, never left any country; and very few better informed or more intelligent’. He purchased a small cutter, the Lord Liverpool and sailed via South America in 1822. On the way he sailed into Rio de Janeiro for provisions and water. Brazil, a Portuguese colony since the 16th century, was in the midst of a struggle for independence, and Lawrence became personally involved through his friendship with José Bonifácio, the liberal revolutionary and first minister under the new government of Dom Pedro, who had defied his father in Lisbon