Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/106

 Colony was due to the fact that the constables themselves were not to be trusted.

The Police Regulations published on the 1st of January, 1811, were of an exceedingly stringent character, but not more so than the turbulent and peculiar population of Sydney required. Lord Bathurst approved them but took exception to one clause. His objection was that "it gave power to a single magistrate to inflict corporal punishment on free men as well as on convicts." Macquarie denied that it did so, adding "No free man is ever corporally punished by the sentence of the superintendent of police or any single magistrate. Free men, whatever their offence may be, are always brought before and tried by a Bench of Magistrates whose sentences must be approved by me before they are carried into execution." The line between the man who had been and the man who ought to have been transported was sometimes hard to draw. Governor King and Macquarie each failed to do so on one occasion at least.

Some important clauses of the Regulations were very imperfectly carried out. The registration of the places of abode of all persons, free and convicts alike, at the superintendent's office at Sydney and at the magistrate's office in the other districts was difficult to enforce and allowed to fall into neglect. The regulation would have required free men to submit themselves to the inquiries of convict police officers. The chief constables too were, for the most part, too illiterate to carry out the work. Wentworth substituted a census taken by his assistant which was altered from time to time as occasion arose. It was very difficult also to trace the movements of the convicts from one master to another, a difficulty which was increased by the fact that the escape of Government or settlers' servants was made known not to the police but to the superintendent of convicts, who inserted a notice in the Gazette but made no other communication of the fact.

The revenue of the Colony rested on a remarkably insecure basis. In his evidence before the Committee on Transportation,