Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/145

 CB.OWN LANDS XTNDEE PHILLIP. 117 the Colonial OiBce while lie was in power, contain no in- ^^•^ dications of the administrative ability with which his con- temporaries credited him. In the heat of party strife and The colonial the pressure of the domestic afEairs of the Empire (which formed the chief business of his Department), Grenville appears to have lost sight of the infant colony, or to have regarded it merely as a convenient solution of the problem presented by the overcrowded gaols. '^ The penal colonies,'* wrote one of the leading authorities on the administration of Colonial affairs, " were regarded as mere conveniences for the execution of justice at Home, and excited no farther interest in the minds of statesmen. '** If any further proof *^*jj^*® be needed of the failure of the leading statesmen of the ^,S2j^ time to realise the significance of Phillip's mission, it can be found in the fact that Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, in a comprehensive treatise on the " Colonial Policy of European Powers," published in 1803, while he devoted considerable space to small insular settlements in the West EnjiiWi statesmen Indies, made no allusion whatever to New South Wales, ""d New South Wales. which had then been an occupied part of the British Dominions for fifteen years. In acknowledging the receipt of Grenville's despatch covering the Royal Instructions concerning land grants. Land flrrant Phillip wrote that he would obey the directions he had received, but he was compelled not very long afterwards to tell the Secretary of State that they would have to be carried out according to the spirit rather than the letter. In March, 1791, he gave grants to some marines and sailors who had returned to Sydney from Norfolk Island, where they had cleared land with the view of settling upon it. It would have been impossible, he explained, for these a neocssaiy men to maintain themselves at the expiration of twelve months, and he undertook on his own responsibility to give them eighteen months' provisions, td build huts for them, and clear half an acre of land for each. These cases were • Colonization and Colonies — By Professor Merirale — "Preface.