Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/429

 THE OFFICERS. 315 The saying of a few words to encourage the diligent when they saw 1788 them at work, and the pointing out the idle, when they could do 9 July. it -without going out of their way, was all that was desired. The convicts were then employed clearing the ground on which the officers were encamped, and this they refused. They did not sup- pose that they were sent out to do more than garrison duty ; and Garrteon these gentlemen (that is, the majority of the officers) think the ^ ^* being obliged to sit as members of the Criminal Court a hardship, and for which they are not paid, and likely think themselves hardly dealt by in that Government had not determined what lands were to be given them. But I presume an additional force will be sent out when the necessity of making detachments in order to cultivate lands in the more open country is known, and from four to six hundred men will, I think, be absolutely necessary. In explaining to Nepean the position taken up by the officers of marines, in reply to the suggestions made to them for the management of the convicts, Phillip referred to the matter without any display of irritation. Situated as he was at that time, nothing could have been more disheartening than the studied selfishness and want of consideration shown by those gentlemen. Without any overseers or superinten- dents, and consequently without any means of exercising moral control over the convicts, the Governor had a right to expect the cordial co-operation of the officers in pre- Moral duty, serving order and promoting good conduct among the degraded creatures by whom they were surrounded. It would not have cost the marines anything to comply with his wishes, while the results he hoped for would probably have followed from the line of policy which he sought to establish. The only alternative W9,s to leave the course of events to shape its own channel. If fifty farmers were sent out with their families, they would do Farmers more in one year in rendering this colony independent of the ^L^he mother country, as to provisio^is, than a thousand convicts. There ropSyrting is some clear land which is intended to be cultivated at some dis- tance from the camp, and I intended to send out convicts for that purpose under the direction of a person that was going to India in the Charlotte transport, but who remained to settle in this country, Digitized by Google