Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/332

 at the head of the colonial department, solely by his personal merit, and he believed had fulfilled the sanguine expectations which were formed of his competency for the discharge of all the duties belonging to that arduous and distant station. Mr. Bennet entirely agreed in the high character of General Macquarie." Amid this general atmosphere of compliment to Macquarie the petition was read and no further proceedings taken upon it.

But the Government, while loyally supporting their officer in Parliament, were somewhat disturbed by reports from the Colony. The affairs of Vale and Moore, the condition of the female convicts as they learned of it in Bayly's letter to Sir Henry Bunbury, the strained relations between Governor and free settlers created a sense of strong misgiving. Meanwhile in England the number of crimes to which the punishment of transportation was affixed was rapidly increasing. On 23rd April, 1817, Lord Bathurst proposed to Lord Sidmouth that they should send a Commission of Inquiry to New South Wales. The important question was whether New South Wales was still a suitable place for a penal settlement. "So long," he wrote, "as the Colony was principally inhabited by convicts and but little advanced in cultivation, the strictness of police regulations and the constant labour, under due restrictions, to which it was then possible to subject the convicts, rendered transportation, as a punishment, an object of the greatest apprehension to those who looked upon strict discipline and regular labour as the most severe and least tolerable of evils".

The conditions were changed, and he proposed "to recommend to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent the appointment of Commissioners to proceed to those settlements, with power to investigate all the complaints, which have latterly been made, both in respect to the treatment of the convicts and the general administration of the Government".

Lord Sidmouth at once consented, and in the course of the next two years sought for a suitable person or persons with