Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/185

 settler being permitted to select with them. It was but a few miles to the westward of Sydney, in the direction of Parramatta. One hundred and twenty acres were given to Thomas Rose, a farmer, from Blandford, Dorsetshire, who was accompanied by his wife and four children. To two other married men eighty acres, to the single men sixty, were granted, while the convict settler was content with thirty. The Bellona, although she arrived after Phillip's departure, brought answers to his despatches, and conveyed permission to grant lands to officers, which permission was at once acted upon by Grose at Parramatta, the Kangaroo Ground, and other places.

The results of cultivation at these places were not encouraging, and agricultural settlement gravitated to the Hawkesbury.

When, after Phillip's departure, Lt.-Governor Grose availed himself of the newly-received permission to grant lands to officers in the army and navy, he introduced at the same time a pernicious principle. Collins (p. 268) narrates and applauds the fact that the officers, "not being restrained from paying for labour with spirits, got a great deal of work done at their several farms (on those days when the convicts did not work for the public) by hiring the different gangs. Thus was annihilated the prudent system under which Phillip at Sydney, and, under his orders, King at Norfolk Island, had striven to keep the convicts sober. Thus also was begotten the craving for profit by the sale of liquor, which corrupted so many officers in the times of Grose and Hunter, and the repression of which caused so much ill-feeling under Governor King.

As early as Nov. 1791 Phillip suggested the imposition of a duty on spirits, which King afterwards imposed. "The landing of spirits (Phillip wrote) without having a permit has been prohibited in the Port Orders. . . . but if some duty was laid on all spirits landed in the settlement it would more effectively answer the purpose. The duties so collected would of course be applied for the benefit of the Crown."

Phillip had not been unwilling to study the comfort of the officers so far as it was compatible with the diligent discharge of their duties and proper care for the morals of