Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/230

 192 EMANCIPATION. 1791: extinction of the civil rights which followed upon attainder S*dvu*'*°° for felony not being removed by a pardon under the sign- righta. manual, and the remission of a convict's sentence by the Governor of New South Wales having no more effect than such a pardon, it followed that until the name of the party was included in a General Pardon under the Great Seal of the Kingdom he was still, in the eye of the law, civiliter mortuus. In the cause under notice this had not been done, and the plaintiff, although he had, shortly after landing in the colony, been emancipated by the Governor, was unable to recover on a bill of exchange because he could conflnnft- not show that the act of the Governor had been confirmed tion by Crown ty an instrument under the Great Seal of Great Britain. required. «' Bullock's case does not appear to have been an exception. Mr. Commissioner Bigge, in his report (May, 1822), stated that the direction contained in 30 Geo. Ill, c. 47 — that duplicates of pardons granted by the Governor should be forwarded to England for insertion in the next General Pardon which passed under the Great Seal — ^' had never been literally complied with in New South Wales.*'* nu^' The Special Commission empowering Phillip to emanci- iSm^^^" pate convicts was received by the Gorgon in September, 1791; but Phillip had anticipated it. Writing on the 5th March, 1791, seven months before he received this Com- mission, he informed Grenville that he had emancipated two convicts — " one from his very meritorious behaviour and the great service he has rendered the colony by his own labour, and by instructing others, in the business of a bricklayer.^'t The other was particularly recommended by the Lieutenant-Governor as having been the means of saving the Sirius from being burned after that ship went " t This man, according to Collins (vol. i, p. 140), was emancipated in October, 1790. He was " at liberty to return to England/' but he agreed to work for two years more in retorn for food and clothing. The same writer says of this man : — "There was not a single house or building that did not owe some* thing to him."
 * Bigge'8 Report, p. 132.