Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/180

 goods from England, more often spirits and tobacco from Rio Janeiro or the Cape. In the first case the goods were not entered at the Customs House in England, in no case did they pay any freight, and finally Macquarie often allowed shipments (especially of tobacco and spirit) to be landed by the master or surgeon without paying even the colonial dues.

In 1816 Riley and Jones, the largest firm of merchants in Sydney, complained to the Colonial Office pointing out that these trade ventures were an infringement of the Charter-party and took up the tonnage which properly belonged to the convicts. What was more important from the merchants' point of view was that these surreptitious cargoes injured their custom. The Colonial Office, who heard of these practices for the first time, at once instructed Macquarie to bring them to an end. He was directed to order a careful examination of the stores brought by the convict vessels, and a comparison between those and the official list sent in the Charter-party. He was not to allow any surplus to be sold in Sydney. Macquarie received this despatch on the 11th May, 1818, but did not at once impose any order. There were at the moment several transports in the harbour, and to prohibit the sale of their cargoes would, he thought, have been unjust to them as well as a "loss to the revenue". They had so long been allowed to break the law that perhaps he had some reason to speak of the "injustice" of making them suddenly conform to it. Eventually he made a prohibitory order in October. A few weeks later he received a memorial from "many principal inhabitants" including Macarthur, Lord and Townson, praying that the prohibition might not be continued. They pointed out that it would greatly check "the diffusion of manufactures of the mother-country," but admitted that their chief reason for advocating the