THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 5 



store-ships kept the little colony, cast out like a band of 

 shipwrecked mariners on this uttermost island, for more than 

 two years on the verge of starvation. With aipopulation of 

 criminals and soldiers whose character was little better, people 

 in whom greed was a dominant sentiment and self-restraint 

 non-existent, Phillip weathered through four years of Governor- 

 ship beset on all sides by difficulties of almost incredible 

 magnitude. The community was as much alone as a ship in 

 mid-ocean until the hitherto uncultivated soil yielded crops, 

 and the few head of cattle increased. There were no means of 

 getting away. The merchant vessels which had formed the 

 bulk of Phillip's fleet had returned, and the crazy old Sirius, 

 the King's ship under his command, had been lost soon after. 

 While the Government at home delayed in sending store-ships, 

 they added to Phillip's difficulties by sending more convicts. 

 However, by 1792, when Phillip, broken in health and spirits, 

 returned to England, brighter prospects were dawning and the 

 immediate danger of famine had been put to rest by more 

 liberal supplies from home. Phillip never returned to New 

 South Wales, for shortly after his arrival in England he suc- 

 cumbed to an illness from which he had long suffered. Three 

 naval governors followed him, Hunter, King and Bligh. The 

 last was deposed and arrested by the colonists at the beginning 

 of 1808, and it was as his successor that Lachlan Macquarie, 

 the first soldier to hold the command, took the oaths of office 

 on New Year's Day, 1810. 



The work of free settlement had made little progress. The 

 stream of emigration from England to all parts of the world 

 flowed very slowly, and no definite efforts were made to divert 

 it towards New South Wales. Phillip's eager prophecy that, 

 given fifty farmers, future prosperity would be assured, may 

 have received theoretic approval, but was disregarded in practice. 

 Nor was any enthusiasm felt for the new system of "colonising 

 transportation". In 1/98 a Select Committee on Finance 

 declared that New South Wales was "already fully supplied 

 with convicts " and advocated the establishment of home peni- 

 tentiaries. 1 In 1803 Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for War 



1 See Report of Select Committee on Finance, P.P. 1798. 



