Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/273

 decided that the colonial clergy are subject to Courts-Martial, your Lordship will, in justice to my sufferings under the unknown circumstances, order me all the allowances to which military chaplains are entitled from the earliest date of my commission, and that if it should be decided, as I trust it will, that the colonial clergy are not subject to Courts-Martial, your Lordship will order me those allowances from the time I was put under a military arrest."

While Moore and Vale both sought the sympathy of the Colonial Office, they were by no means inactive in the Colony. In June, 1816, Vale drew up a petition to the House of Commons describing the conduct of Governor Macquarie, who unfortunately chose this very moment for making the most indefensible mistake of his whole administration.

In 1815 he had laid out the Government House Domain as pleasure gardens for the use of the public, and enclosed them with a stone wall. There were three entrances to the park, but the townsfolk, to save themselves the trouble of walking round to any one of the three, and also that they might enter unobserved, were continually breaking down the wall and climbing over. The favourite spot for this mode of entrance was a corner by a small plantation, which was the haunt of a very bad class of persons. Here they would drink and gamble or exchange stolen goods with one another, and Macquarie determined to prevent them making bad use of the Domain by continuing to enter it surreptitiously for these purposes. He issued no order on the subject, but on the 18th April he directed the chief constable to place one of his men inside the wall, who was to arrest and lodge in gaol any one attempting to climb over. The constable during the first day of his watch, the 19th April, arrested three men and two nursemaids. The latter, greatly to the indignation of their mistresses, were kept in gaol all night, but were sent home next day. But the three men were flogged in the gaol yard by warrant from the Governor before they were released. One of the three was a convict, one an emancipist, and one a free man. Not one of them had—as colonial reputations went—a bad name, and Riley, who had been many