Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/318

 208 PHILLIP 1788-9S Judge-Advocate made Collins the mouthpiece of the law, but it gave him no control over it ; he had no alternative but to pronounce judgment and sentence according to its letter. He had no discretionary power whatever. During the greater part of Phillip's time, the chief question he had to deal with was the supply and distribution of food. Public The very existence of the colony depended almost entirely when the ships did not arrive at the expected time, death from famine could only be averted by the most rigid regu- lations with respect to the allowance of food. To protect the public store against depredation became a matter of urgent necessity; and the only means of protecting — ^according to the ideas then in vogue* — ^was to increase the punish- ment for theft, although it frequently happened that the offenders, from want of sufficient food, were admittedly "too weak" to endure punishment at all. A terrible illustration of this dilemma may be seen in Collinses book. After Death from recording the death of a man who had dropped down dead at the store to which he had gone for his day's provisions — the cause of death being sheer starvation — Collins pro- ceeds to state that the Criminal Court, when assembled to deal with a prisoner who had been caught in the act of stealing potatoes in the clergyman's garden, "finding that the severity of former Courts did not prevent the com- mission of the same offence,'^ varied the ordinary punish- ment by directing that the prisoner before them should receive three hundred lashes, lose his ration of flour for six • Tench, referring to the extreme distress prevalent in May, 1790, de- scribed the measures adopted to suppress theft of provisions as follows : — "Persons detected in robbing gardens or pilfering provisions were never screened : because as every man could possess by his utmost exertions but a bare sufficiency to preserve life, he who deprived his neighbour of that little drove him to desperation. No new laws for the punishment of theft were enacted ; but persons of all descriptions were publicly warned that the severest penalties which the existing law would authorise would be in- flicted on offenders. Farther, to contribute to the detection of villainy, a proclamation, offering a reward of 60 lb. of flour, more tempting than the ore of Peru or Potosi, was promised to anyone who should apprehend and bring to justice a robber of garden ground. " — Complete Account, p. 43. Digitized by Google
 * *' on the arrival of ships from England with provisions ; and