[1] His father owned a successful chandler business and was a descendant of the Scottish Lawson family of Cairnmuir House in the Pentland Hills of Edinburgh, Scotland.

At this time, a planned insurgency of Irish convicts and soldiers on the island was discovered with Foveaux hanging two alleged ring-leaders without trial and punishing others with 500 lashes.

This court was accused of corrupt practices and in one high profile case which Lawson helped preside over, an appointee to a government position who Foveaux did not like was found guilty of incest.

[8] In January 1808, when Governor Bligh had John Macarthur arrested on charges of sedition against the colonial government, Lawson was one of six officers appointed to help oversee his trial.

Macarthur, Johnston, Lawson and the other officers and soldiers of the 'Rum Corps' then proceeded to collaborate in a full armed mutiny against Governor Bligh known as the Rum Rebellion.

[9][1] At Newcastle, Lawson was in charge of several high profile political prisoners who had been arrested and transported to the penal settlement for being supporters of Bligh.

These included Henry Browne Hayes, a wealthy emancipist who owned the Vaucluse estate east of Sydney, and George Crossley, who was Bligh's principal legal advisor.

Lawson ensured that these prisoners, which he called "Bligh's mob", were worked as hard as the ordinary convicts digging coal and collecting shell.

[10] When Hayes was transferred to house-arrest at Vaucluse for health reasons, Lawson had him violently re-arrested and ordered the ransacking of his house for not meeting the conditions of his parole.

In that same year, Charles Throsby guided by local Aboriginal men had formed an easier trail to Bathurst from Sydney that approached from the south.

Following information from James Blackman and being guided by a local Aboriginal man named Ering (Aaron), Lawson became one of the first white men to travel along the Cudgegong and Talbragar Rivers.

However in 1823, after an Aboriginal raiding group led by a man named 'Jingler' got hold of muskets and ammunition and successfully stalled British expansion, Lawson decided to order the formation of a patrol composed of armed settlers and four soldiers of the 40th Regiment.

However, with the escalation of violence, the authorities decided in late 1823 to replace Lawson as Commandant of Bathurst with a veteran of the Peninsula War in Major James Morisset.

[14] In mid 1824, conflict with the Wiradjuri soared, around a hundred Aboriginal people including women and children had been murdered, while twenty-two whites had been killed.

In August, Governor Thomas Brisbane obliged the settlers by announcing martial law in the Bathurst region and ordered Commandant Morisset to implement measures to control the situation.

In September, Morisset organised a large military punitive expedition containing soldiers of the 40th Regiment and armed settlers, to sweep the area around Bathurst and Mudgee.

Officially there was no death toll recorded from this military campaign, but witness reports from the time and oral evidence indicate that multiple massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out.

[21] With the end of transportation of convicts to New South Wales in the 1840s, Lawson strongly advocated for the importation of cheap foreign coolie labour.

[23] Lawson also chaired meetings in support of the resumption of convict transportation and also employed imported Chinese coolies, who absconded due to poor rations and underpayment.

[24][25] Lawson had become one of the highest profile colonists and in 1843 he chose to enter politics, and was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council for the County of Cumberland as a representative of the Aristocratic party.

[3] In 1963 Lawson was honoured, together with Blaxland and Wentworth, on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post depicting the Blue Mountains crossing.