Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/125

 27 PHILLIP'S COMMISSION. If there were any serious doubt as to the real nature of the 1787 expedition on which Phillip was despatched, it might be scopo of -__, - p _. -^ . . .,, Commission. settled by reference to the terma of his Commission, illus- trated as it is by the official Instructions which accompanied it.* There is certainly nothing in the former that could lead the reader to suppose that the sole object of the ex- pedition was the establishment of a penal settlement ; nor could a stranger to our history even gather from it that such a settlement was contemplated. The Commission conferred much the same powers on Phillip as those with which the Governors sent out to the colonies and plan- Plantation tations in North America and the West Indies used to p''®^®^®"**- be invested in days when "assemblies of freeholders^' were unknown. All these Commissions seem to have been framed more or less on the same lines, and according to precedents established in the early days of the colonial system ;* the points of difference observable among them being attributable to difEerence in the positions occupied by the various Governors — some being appointed to Crown crow-n colonies, others to colonies possessing legislative institu- tions. Phillip was sent out as the Governor of a Crown colony, and consequently there was practically no limita- tion of his powers-t He was appointed " Captain-General ♦Poafc, pp. 474, 481, 487. t A good illustration of the manner in ivhich Oovemors of the old school nsed to interpret their Commissions will be found in Edwards, History of the West Indies, yoI. ii, page 395 :— *'Mr. Stokes, the late Chief Justice of Georgia, relates that a Governor of a province in North America (at that time a British colony) ordered the Provost-Marshal to hang up a convict some days before the time appointed by his sentence and a rule of Court Digitized by Google