Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/241

 to a friend: "You will smile at the mention of Botany Bay ; but I am most serious, and I assivre you that next to a parliamentary situation, to which either nature or early ambition has constantly directed my views, I should prefer, without much rewarding pecuniary advantages, that of being the law-giver of Botany Bay."

One wide function of government did not exist m the eighteenth century in New South Wales. There were no taxes. There were no customs duties. The government fed the bulk of the population, which was composed of coerced convicts and their custodians. Bills on the English Treasury provided most of the animal food consumed. If a colony had thus to he supported, how could it contribute funds? Hunter required a larger gaol in 1799), and could not build it without reclaiming convicts assigned to officers and others. He called a meeting, at which civil and military officers, with the principal colonists, undertook to provide funds from an assessment on property, and duties on wines and spirits. The gaol was thus voluntarily built with the aid of iron provided from the king's stores. On the principle of self- reservation a public meeting of the few free inhabitants might succeed, when the object was to provide prison-room for offenders ; hut appeals in the streets could not secure all the funds necessary for government. Much less could they do so where the bulk of the population was or had been of the felon class. During Hunters government no change was made, but his immediate successor, King, imposed customs duties and port charges, in order to create a public fund, an expedient which had occurred to Phillip, but to which he had not resorted.

It is the distinction of Englishmen that they have constitutionally a share in the administration of the law, and that they are consequently more contented under its discipline, more law-abiding, than nations which are ruled by a central or bureaucratic government. No foreign levy, no internal revolution, can he compared to the grandeur of the triumph when the seven bishops were acquitted, and the law was brought face to face with James II., by the verdict of a jury of their countrymen. But no jury existed n New South Wales, nor was it possible to create one in the primitive period. Most of the officers concerned in the