THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 3 



of the Act of 1783. In the following year the project was put 

 into execution and a small fleet dispatched under the command 

 of Captain Arthur Phillip of the King's Navy, who was to estab- 

 lish the settlement and be its first Governor. His command 

 consisted of 1,100 all told, including a military garrison, 500 

 male and 250 female convicts and a sprinkling of free emigrants. 

 In January, 1788, he landed his people at Port Jackson, and 

 founded on its shores the town of Sydney. 1 



The expedition created scarcely a ripple of excitement in 

 England, full of interest though it was to a few students of 

 criminal law. One of these, William Eden (afterwards the 

 first Lord Auckland), wrote a History of New Holland, in 

 the preface to which he discussed the new experiment. 2 The 

 suggestions made by him in 1776 in the speech referred to 

 above had apparently fallen on barren ground, and he took 

 it as an accepted fact that so far no means of keeping convicts 

 at home had answered "the end of their exemplary correc- 

 tion," and that some way must be found of " exonerating this 

 country of its obnoxious members ". 3 New Holland seemed a 

 suitable location, and the annexation of that island was on other 

 counts desirable. He spoke with careful vagueness of the con- 

 siderable changes which had taken place since England first 

 turned over troublesome subjects " to the use and .benefit of its 

 infant colonies " changes " in the interests and political situa- 

 tion of many leading states of Europe ". 4 Whatever the actual 

 facts here alluded to, it seems at least worthy of note that two 

 days after Phillip landed at Port Jackson a French fleet was 

 sighted in the offing, and that for the next forty years each im- 

 pulse towards extended exploration and settlement in Australia, 

 which was fostered by Government, was almost without excep- 

 tion coincident with a similar enterprise rumoured or in course 

 of execution by France. 



However desirable such a settlement might be, Eden con- 

 sidered that to invite " the industrious and respectable artisan 



1 Named after Lord Sydney. 



2 The book was published in 1787. It gives an account of discovery and 

 explorations from 1616 to 1787. Eden was an intimate friend of the younger 

 Pitt, and probably expressed the views of the Government in regard to the new 

 settlement. 



3 History of New Holland, Preface, p. v. * Ibid., p. vii. 



