Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/216

 was firm. On one occasion, Oct. 1795, he ordered that none of the military and others who had huts near the stream of water which supplied Sydney should presume to open the protecting palings and make paths which conducted filth into the stream. The penalty of the breach of the order was the pulling down of the offender's house. Little or no attention was paid, and in Jan. 1796 Hunter "declared in public orders to every description of persons, that when an order was given by him it was given to be obeyed." He would have been believed had he made an example without talking about it. He allied himself as closely as he could to the military power by making Captain Johnston of the New South Wales Corps his aide-de-camp. He endeavoured to check drunkenness by issuing "to deserving persons" licenses to sell spirits, and so to limit the traffic. He failed, and "robberies now appeared to be committed more frequently than formerly." He then forbade the bartering by these licensed persons of spirits for grain. With the power that he possessed of withdrawing convict servants from settlers and from officers, he might perhaps have restored decency; but though he threatened to withdraw assistance from offenders, he threatened in vain, and when he acted his acts produced no general results. To promulgate his orders more effectively, he brought into use a small printing-press which Phillip had imported, but which had been idle until Hunter assumed the government.

The immoralities of the time, if they had failed to shock the community as a whole during the rule of Grose and Paterson, had nevertheless aroused the consciences of many. A contemporary account relates that on the first Sunday after Hunter's arrival the Rev. Mr. Johnson in his sermon at Sydney boldly denounced the shameless proceedings of the military government under Grose and Paterson, and congratulated the colony on the restoration of civil law, which Hunter was commanded to re-establish. Hunter revived the civil law on his arrival in Sydney. At Parramatta he retained for a time as military commandant John Macarthur (who became a captain in 1795).

When David Collins (Judge-Advocate) left the colony, Richard Atkins, previously an officer in the army, was