THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF AN AUTOCRAT. 245 



decided that the colonial clergy are subject to Courts- Martial, 

 your Lordship will, in justice to my sufferings under the un- 

 known circumstances, order me all the allowances to which 

 military chaplains are entitled from the earliest date of my 

 commission, and that if it should be decided, as I trust it will, 

 that the colonial clergy are not subject to Courts- Martial, your 

 Lordship will order me those allowances from the time I was 

 put under a military arrest." l 



While Moore and Vale both sought the sympathy of the 

 Colonial Office, they were by no means inactive in the Colony. 

 In June, 1816, Vale drew up a petition to the House of Commons 

 describing the conduct of Governor Macquarie, who unfortun- 

 ately chose this very moment for making the most indefensible 

 mistake of his whole administration. 



In 1815 he had laid out the Government House Domain as 

 pleasure gardens for the use of the public, and enclosed them 

 with a stone wall. There were three entrances to the park, but 

 the townsfolk, to save themselves the trouble of walking round 

 to any one of the three, and also that they might enter unob- 

 served, were continually breaking down the wall and climbing 

 over. The favourite spot for this mode of entrance was a corner 

 by a small plantation, which was the haunt of a very bad class 

 of persons. Here they would drink and gamble or exchange 

 stolen goods with one another, and Macquarie determined to 

 prevent them making bad use of the Domain by continuing to 

 enter it surreptitiously for these purposes. He issued no order 

 on the subject, but on the i8th April he directed the chief con- 

 stable to place one of his men inside the wall, who was. to arrest 

 and lodge in gaol any one attempting to climb over. The con- 

 stable during the first day of his watch, the ipth April, arrested 

 three men and two nursemaids. The latter, greatly to the in- 

 dignation of their mistresses, were kept in gaol all night, but 

 were sent home next day. But the three men were flogged in 

 the gaol yard by warrant from the Governor before they were 

 released. One of the three was a convict, one an emancipist, 

 and one a free man. Not one of them had as colonial re- 

 putations went a bad name, and Riley, who had been many 



* Vale to Bathurst, 22nd March, 1816. R.O., MS. See Chapter III., Bent to 

 C.O., 1814. 



