Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/247

 can with difficulty keep pace with them. The flesh tastes somewhat like beef.'

Before the first Governor left, the traffic in rum was already growing into an evil, and Phillip, foreseeing the consequences, wrote home more than once on the subject. Grose, Phillip's successor, as soon as he took charge, relaxed the wise restrictions put upon the sale of spirits by Phillip.

Mr Johnson, in a letter to Hunter on the state of the colony during the administration of Phillip's successor, shows the effect of the liquor traffic:—

'Yourself, sir, being a kind of resident amongst us at the first formation of the colony, and for some time afterwards, I need not state to you the plans adopted and the measures pursued by Governor Phillip for the proper regulation and good order of the colony, as well as in a moral as in a civil point of view.

'Little or no alterations were made from those plans or measures, from the time you then left us to that when Governor Phillip himself returned to England, in December 1792.

'Some time previous to his going I was at his request sworn in to act as a civil magistrate in your place, which duty I continued to perform until the time he left us, at which time the colony was as peaceable, orderly and moral as could be expected