Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/483

 PHILLIP'S GOOD SPIRITS. 369 before lie wrote, lie had learned the most dismal news 1789 that had yet reached him — the wreck of the Sirius at Nor- folk Island. When he had sent her on her fatal voyage in March, the colony was threatened with famine through the wreck of non-arrival of the expected ships from England ; and her wreck had deprived it of almost its only hope of rescue. As soon as the news became known, a panic spread through the settlement; and at six o'clock in the evening all the officers of the garrison, civil and military, were summoned Council of to meet the Governor in council. It was then determined to reduce the allowance of food, already as low as it could well be, and to send the Supply to Batavia for provisions. The very existence of the people, as it then seemed, de- pended on her safe return. The prevalent state of mind among them is described by Collins and Tench as one of extreme dejection, bordering on despair. Is it conceivable that, under such circumstance, Phillip could have written to Sydney in good spirits, and represented the new settle- ment as having nearly overcome its difficulties ? It seems Rose- much more reasonable to suppose that Sydney's happy in- spectacles, difference to the settlement and the people in it, led him to interpret Phillip's reserve in the manner most consistent with his own way of thinking on the subject. In the dedication of his account of the colony to Sydney, Collins not only spoke of him as " the Originator of the The Plan of Colonisation of New South Wales," but added that andhis his pages would show " with how much Wisdom the Mea- sure was suggested and conducted." That Sydney was not the originator of the plan on which the colony was founded, is apparent from the proposals written by Matra and Sir George Young, whose suggestions were subsequently ad- apted to official purposes under his lordship's directions. In one respect, no doubt, he is entitled to credit for originality in his share of the work, inasmuch as it was g evidently through his influence that it was ultimately cut down to a scheme for clearing the gaols. " When I conversed with Lord Sydney on this subject," Matra 2 A nator lis Wisdom. Digitized by Google