October.] The police and civil duties of the town and district of Sydney were now regulated by civil magistrates. At Parramatta, Lieutenant McArthur continued to carry on the duties to which he had been appointed by Lieutenant-Governor Grose, the public service at that place requiring the inspection and superintendance of an officer.
On Sunday the 4th of this month the Young William, the storeship whose unavoidable delay in her sailing we had regretted on the arrival of the governor without her, anchored safe in the cove from England, after a short passage of four months and nine days, with a cargo of provisions only. She sailed from Spithead in company with the Sovereign, another storeship, on the 25th of May, taking her route by the way of Rio de Janeiro, where she anchored on the 12th of July, leaving it on the 21st of the same month; and meeting with very bad weather nearly the whole of the voyage, she shipped great quantities of water; and, being very deeply laden, the vessel was considerably strained.
By letters received from this ship we learned, that some promotions had taken place in the New South Wales corps. Captain Nicholas Nepean had obtained the commission of second major; Lieutenant John McArthur had succeeded to his company; Lieutenant John Townson had got the company late belonging to Captain Hill; and Ensigns Clephan and Piper were made lieutenants, all without purchase. Messrs. Kent and Bell, the naval agents, who left this country in the Britannia in September 1794, arrived safely in England in March last.
In consequence of this arrival the governor had it in his power to issue a better, though not so ample a ration of provisions as he could have desired. The supply had not been sufficient to allow him to order more than four pounds ten ounces and two thirds of an ounce of pork, and four pounds of flour, to the convicts. The same quantity of salt meat was ordered for the military; but they received two pounds of flour more than the prisoners. The other parts of the weekly ration remained nearly the same as before, except the article of sugar, the convicts receiving six ounces instead of one pound and a half of that article.
The report of the general muster which was ordered in the last month having been laid before the governor, he thought proper to make some regulations in the assistance afforded by government to settlers and others holding grants of land. To the officers who occupied grounds was continued the number of men allowed them by lieutenant-governor Grose; viz ten for agriculture, and three for domestic purposes. Notwithstanding this far exceeded the number which had at home been thought necessary, the governor did not conceive this to be the moment for reducing it, much as he wanted men. A wheat harvest was approaching; ground was planting with Indian corn; not a man was unemployed; but he saw and explained that a reduction must take place; that government could not be supposed much longer to feed, maintain, and clothe the hands that wrought the ground, and at the same time pay for the produce of their labour, particularly when every public work was likely to stand still for want of labourers. He was sensible that the assistance which had been given had not been thrown away, and that the small number allowed by government could never have produced such rapid approaches toward that independence which he thought, from what he had already seen of the cultivation of the country, was now much nearer than at his leaving it in 1791 he could have conceived to be possible. To the settlers* who arrived in the Surprise he allowed five male convicts; to the superintendants, constables, and store-keepers, four; to settlers from free people**, two; to settlers from prisoners, one; and to sergeants of the New South Wales corps, one.
[* Messrs. Boston, Pearce, and Ellis.]
[** Such as the marine settlers, those at Liberty Plains, and others who never had been prisoners.]
As much inconvenience also was felt, and the end for which government gave up the services of these convicts to individuals liable to be defeated by their not residing at their respective farms, the settlers were directed as much as possible to prevent their servants from having any intercourse, particularly during the night, with the towns in their neighbourhood; as most of the robberies which were committed were not unjustly laid to their account.
It appeared likewise by this muster, that one hundred and seventy-nine people subsisted themselves independent of the public stores, and resided in this town. To many of these, as well as to the servants of settlers, were to be attributed the offences that were daily heard of, they were the greatest nuisances we had to complain of; and there was not a doubt that they were concerned about this time in rolling two casks of meat from a pile at the store in a very hard storm of wind and rain. Enough to fill a cask was found concealed in different holes the following morning.
An indulgence had been allowed to some of the military and others, which was now found to have produced an evil. Having been permitted to build themselves huts on each side of and near the stream of water which supplied the town of Sydney, they had, for the convenience of procuring water, opened the paling, and made paths from each hut; by which, in rainy weather, a great quantity of filth ran into the stream, polluting the water of which every one drank. It therefore became an object of police; and the governor prohibited removing the paling, or keeping hogs in the neighbourhood of the stream, under penalty to the offender that his house should be pulled down.