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.

[3] 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.

[2][3] 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.

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.

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.

[5][6] Darling was a professional soldier, military governor of what was still effectively a penal colony under martial law, and having lived entirely within the authoritarian structure of the army since childhood, he lacked experience in dealing with civilian society.

[3] Their accusations of tyrannical misrule were publicised by opposition newspapers in England and Australia (including the Australian, run by William Wentworth and Robert Wardell).

Darling's subsequent attempt to control the press through new legislation failed, because the Chief Justice, Francis Forbes, advised that the measures were not compatible with the laws of England.

Perhaps the most controversial act of his tenure was the harsh treatment of soldiers Joseph Sudds and Patrick Thompson, who had committed theft in the belief that seven years in an outlying penal colony would be an easier life than two decades of army discipline.

However, the incident proved intensely and persistently controversial at the time and formed a major element in the rising career of Mr William Charles Wentworth as a political thorn in the side of the establishment and a leading advocate for the self-government of the Australian colonies.

Mr. Wentworth – a native-born Australian barrister, of some eloquence and intense capacity for hating – would not rest satisfied with this explanation, and little by little the facts of the case leaked out"; "the ingenious Darling had placed round their necks spiked iron collars attached by another set of chains to the ankle fetters.

The fiercest denunciations met the Governor on all sides, and he was accused of wilful murder"; after Sudds' death Thompson was taken in a bullock-cart to Penrith gaol, and thence conveyed to "No.

Having gathered considerable evidence of his own, Wentworth wrote to Sir George Murray, the Secretary of State, and forwarded to him a long bill of indictment against the Governor.

On 8 July 1828, Mr. Stewart, a member of the British House of Commons, rose to move for "papers connected with the case of Joseph Sudds and Patrick Thompson".

[3] Darling sought to ensure the education of child prisoners, improve the treatment of female convicts, and promote the use of Christian teaching as a means of rehabilitation, and he made efforts to give the indigenous population the protection of British justice.

[3] The annual distribution of blankets to Aboriginal people was initiated by him in 1826, originally as rewards to those who assisted in the capture of bushrangers at the request of the Bathurst magistrates.

Continuing pressure from political opponents led to the formation of a select committee to examine his actions in Australia, but the inquiry exonerated him, and the day after it concluded, he was knighted by the king in a dramatic display of official favour.

The controversy in Australia may have contributed to the fact that he was not given any significant new military or political assignments, but further promotion and various honorific appointments did follow, and he was happy to devote much of his time to raising his young children.