THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 17 



the Government to be bartered for corn and meat had been 

 commenced. The growth of private trading enterprises had 

 made this no longer necessary, and on Macquarie's assumption 

 of office it was brought to an end. 1 For some time before 

 that, however, the bulk of the trade had been in the hands of a 

 few merchants who were able to charge exorbitant scarcity 

 prices. To prevent such exploitation of the people's needs 

 the Government placed a maximum price on imported goods, 

 allowing in general 50 per cent, profit. In the dearth of 

 competition the maximum price became the sole price of the 

 merchant, though the retailer might still further heighten it. 2 

 The trading population in these early years was indeed a 

 strange one. Officers both civil and military were concerned 

 in every kind of enterprise. 3 Division of employment was 

 almost unknown. A man might be captain or commissariat 

 officer in the army as well as sheep-breeder, farmer, butcher, 

 merchant and ship-builder; and with scarcely one exception 

 he was a rum-dealer as well. The subject of spirituous liquors, 

 their importation, distillation, distribution and consumption, 

 fills many pages of the history of New South Wales. It must 

 be remembered that it was in England also an age of in- 

 temperance, and that the population of the settlement was 

 recruited from the two classes most prone to drinking, the 

 soldiery and the criminals. Amongst the rank and file as in 

 the mess-room, a soldier was not long in learning to drink 

 just as a man who was a criminal, so to say, by accident, had 

 little hope of escaping the vice in the prisons of England. 

 The rest of the population, unprovided younger sons, failures 

 and adventurers, were not men who would turn with horror 

 from the excesses and immorality induced by reckless drinking. 

 It is true that there were honourable exceptions, poor and rich, 



1 See Letter of Instructions to Macquarie, i4th May, 1809. H.R., VII., 



P- 143- 



2 There are no complaints to be discovered of the merchants against the. 

 fixing of the maximum price. This certainly suggests that the regulation was; 

 not strictly entorced. 



3 Marsden (Rev. S.) in An Answer to Certain Calumnies in the Late Governor 

 Macquarie's Pamphlet, etc., published in 1826, pp. 8-10, explains that it was 

 necessary in early times to give grants of land to officers of the Government in 

 order to ensure enough corn being grown in the settlement to feed the people. 

 This was undoubtedly the case before 1800. 



