PREFACE 



VII 



its food-supply upon other countries, New South Wales grew 

 during this period into an agricultural Colony providing its own 

 food, beginning to establish manufactures and exporting wool. 

 A few years after Macquarie's return it was even able to support 

 a civil establishment without help from the Imperial Treasury. 

 In these years also is seen under peculiarly simple and isolated 

 conditions the working of" military " government a curious and 

 anomalous system of autocracy working through the forms of 

 civil law. It is in the study of this system that the true signifi- 

 cance of what at first sight seems merely a series of personal 

 quarrels between the Governor and the judges emerges as a 

 conflict of principles, as the outcome of the real intellectual 

 difficulty of reconciling the due administration of the law with 

 a judiciary dependent upon an autocratic Governor. The fact 

 that it was a one-man government also renders very important 

 the study of this one man's character and training, his prejudices 

 and opinions. Macquarie, himself a man of very ordinary 

 ability, is an intensely interesting figure in Australian history, 

 because for twelve years the development of the country was 

 almost wholly dependent upon his guidance. The period illus- 

 trates too the almost inevitable failure of such an autocracy, and 

 it comes to an end with the commission of J. T. Bigge, who was 

 sent from England in 1819 to investigate on the spot the com- 

 plaints against the Governor, and to inquire generally into the 

 Colony's affairs. Acting upon the reports of the Commissioner^ 

 the Home Government in 1823 granted to New South Wales 

 some measure of Constitutional Government, and thus accom- 

 plished the first step in that progress which led to the great 

 autonomous measures of 1 85 5. The years from 1 8 10 to 1 82 1 form 

 a distinct period in this transition, and behind the simple con- 

 stitutional history of the time are all the complex elements 

 which went to make up the social and economic organisation 

 of the people. These Englishmen settled in southern seas 

 found that they had to face old problems as well as new, and 



