196 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



friendliness, and at its close they were openly opposed on 

 matters of official concern. 



The ostensible cause of the quarrel was a difference in 

 opinion as to the duties of the Judge- Advocate, but the real 

 force pushing them apart, and making both ready to seize on 

 any matter for offence, lay in their entirely different attitudes 

 towards the emancipated convicts. 



Writing to Commissioner Bigge in 1819, Macquarie gave 

 the following account of his feelings towards them : " At my 

 first entrance into this Colony," he wrote, " I felt as you do, and 

 I believe I may add every one does at that moment I certainly 

 did not anticipate any intercourse but that of control, with men 

 who were or had been convicts. A short experience showed me, 

 however, that some of the most meritorious men of the few to 

 be found, and who were most capable and most willing to exert 

 themselves in the public service, were men who had been con- 

 victs ! I saw the necessity and justice of adopting a plan on a 

 general basis which had always been practically acted upon 

 towards those people." l The plan was that once free, whether 

 by servitude or pardon, no retrospect should be held into any 

 convict's former history, but that the emancipist should be 

 placed on precisely the same footing as any other inhabitant of 

 the settlement. Macquarie subscribed to this doctrine early in 

 i8io 2 and the Committee on Transportation gave him their 

 hearty support. 3 But they did so in ignorance of the practical 

 deductions Macquarie had already drawn from it. Although 

 he had spoken of Lord, Thompson and Redfern as "deserving 

 emancipists," he had said nothing of the appointment of 

 Thompson to the magistracy in January, and delayed announc- 

 ing Lord's appointment in August. 4 Macarthur, who was in 

 England, was astounded by the news. Until then he had been 

 very favourably inclined towards Macquarie and was still ready 

 to absolve him from blame. 



" I urge," he wrote to his wife, " that the Governor has been 

 misled, and involved in a mist through which it is impossible 

 he yet can see, by the artifice and falsehood of some persons 



1 Macquarie to Bigge, 6th November, 1819. R.O., MS. 

 " D.. soth April, 1810. H.R., VII. See above. 

 3 R. on T., 1812. 4 See Chapter III. 



