Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/282

 down mutiny and disaffection wherever detected, and I should think I had neglected to do so, were I to be in any way instrumental in bestowing favours on persons who have set themselves up, in open defiance of the legal authorities of this Colony, and who have exerted themselves so earnestly to contaminate the minds of others to the disturbance of the public peace and violation of all decency of conduct."

Macquarie's despatch of April, 1817, which had prepared Lord Bathurst for this refusal to pay Moore's salary, had been answered on the 12th May, 1818, before the despatch, from which the quotations above have been made, had reached England. Moore's conduct in affixing signatures to the petition without the knowledge of the persons whose signatures they were was severely reprobated, and Lord Bathurst would have acquiesced in Macquarie's attitude towards him "had it not been for the information conveyed in the letters &hellip; enclosed in your Despatch, which while they afford the strongest proof of Mr. Moore's misconduct, develop a proceeding on your part which calls equally for my most serious animadversion.

"It appears that you have had no hesitation in considering the signature of a Petition to the House of Commons as an Act of Sedition, and as deserving such punishment as it was in your power to apply; and that you have, in two cases stated, made it the ground for withholding indulgences to individuals which it was previously your intention to bestow. It is my duty to apprise you that in thus attempting to interfere with the right which all His Majesty's subjects possess of addressing their petitions upon every subject to the House of Commons, by making the exercise of that right prejudicial to their interests, you have been guilty of a most serious offence.

"In signifying to you, therefore, His Royal Highness the Prince Regent's entire disapprobation of your conduct in having so acted with respect to some of the petitioners to whom your despatches refer, I have only to caution you most strongly against any proceeding in future which can have a tendency to check the Right of Petitioning either House of Parliament, as