Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/224

 friendliness, and at its close they were openly opposed on matters of official concern.

The ostensible cause of the quarrel was a difference in opinion as to the duties of the Judge-Advocate, but the real force pushing them apart, and making both ready to seize on any matter for offence, lay in their entirely different attitudes towards the emancipated convicts.

Writing to Commissioner Bigge in 1819, Macquarie gave the following account of his feelings towards them: "At my first entrance into this Colony," he wrote, "I felt as you do, and I believe I may add every one does—at that moment I certainly did not anticipate any intercourse but that of control, with men who were or had been convicts. A short experience showed me, however, that some of the most meritorious men of the few to be found, and who were most capable and most willing to exert themselves in the public service, were men who had been convicts! I saw the necessity and justice of adopting a plan on a general basis which had always been practically acted upon towards those people." The plan was that once free, whether by servitude or pardon, no retrospect should be held into any convict's former history, but that the emancipist should be placed on precisely the same footing as any other inhabitant of the settlement. Macquarie subscribed to this doctrine early in 1810 and the Committee on Transportation gave him their hearty support. But they did so in ignorance of the practical deductions Macquarie had already drawn from it. Although he had spoken of Lord, Thompson and Redfern as "deserving emancipists," he had said nothing of the appointment of Thompson to the magistracy in January, and delayed announcing Lord's appointment in August Macarthur, who was in England, was astounded by the news. Until then he had been very favourably inclined towards Macquarie and was still ready to absolve him from blame.

"I urge," he wrote to his wife, "that the Governor has been misled, and involved in a mist through which it is impossible he yet can see, by the artifice and falsehood of some persons