Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/147

 CROWN LAHBS TTNllEIl PHILLIP. US[ . There was a remarkable omission in,Phillip's Instmctions ^■5^*®- ODncerniu^ land grants. Whila prorision was made for Land grants ihe non-commissioned officers and men of the marine f orce^ marines. nothing-was said abont grants to the commissioned officers.. Phillip^ on his own responsibility^ had given them small plots of land^ which they were encouraged to cultivate with the aid of oonviet labour, and such live stock as could be spared ; but the land was only held on sufferance, the occupiers had no ownership in it, and when iftiej left the colony they could neither sell it nor the improvements they had. made upon it ; when their occupation ceased, their interest in the land ceased also. Li his first despatches Phillip mentioned that the officers com- felt this to be a hardship ; but nothing was done to remedy ?{S°J" ?°^ it, and when the officers of the New South Wales Corps arrived to relieve the marines they were much chagrined to find that they were no better off in this particular than their predecessors. They had joined the Corps with the knowledge that free grants of land would be made to settlers, and in the expectation, that they wouldbe allowed to participate in the good things to be distributed. Phillip was well aware of this, as is- shown by his despatch to Dundas of the 4th October, 1792. The officers in the New South Wales Corps," he wrote, have supposed on coming to this country that lands might be granted to them, with indulgences similar to those which have been granted to settler&'^ Some Acquisition of them, there cannot be the least doubt, joined the Corps motive chiefly because of the special advantages which belonged to corps, life in a new settlement, where land was to be given away. Such appears to have been the case with Lieutenant John Macarthur, who exchanged from the 68th Foot into the New South Wales Corps, and came out to the colony with his wife, to whom he had not long been married. The voyage to a distant uncivilised country, and the separation from rela- tives, friends, and iassociations which the new appointment involved, would have discouraged and alarmed many women ;
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