THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF AN AUTOCRAT. 255 



such conduct on your part cannot fail to call forth from His 

 Royal Highness the strongest marks of displeasure." l 



Angry though he felt on the receipt of this letter, Macquarie 

 gave orders for the payment of Moore's salary, and in 1820 he 

 offered him a grant of 1,000 acres. 2 He acted too precipitately 

 in reinstating him, for Bathurst, after reading Macquarie's 

 despatch of November, 1817, decided that Moore should be 

 dismissed. What chiefly influenced him was Moore's untruth- 

 fulness in trying to save his brother's grant by telling Macquarie 

 that he had signed the brother's name to the petition without 

 his knowledge a statement utterly without foundation. As 

 affairs had been settled before this despatch 3 reached Sydney, 

 Moore retained his position. Macquarie was completely puzzled 

 by the censures he had drawn upon himself. " If, my Lord, I 

 had prevented, or even thrown any obstruction in the way of 

 any of His Majesty's subjects under my Government addressing 

 the House of Commons on any subject whatever, I am aware I 

 should have merited the royal censure and displeasure which 

 your Lordship has conveyed to me ; but when I feel that my 

 conduct has not only on this, but on every other occasion, ex- 

 hibited the reverse of such arbitrary and unconstitutional exercise 

 of power, I am at a loss for language sufficiently strong to give 

 adequate expression to the regret I feel in the consideration 

 that either my former communication should not have been 

 sufficiently explicit, or that it should have induced His Royal 

 Highness and your Lordship to conceive that I meant to pre- 

 vent or restrain the general right of British subjects to address 

 Parliament on any real or imagined grievance whatever." 4 

 This despatch was certainly written with perfectly serious in- 

 tentions, and Macquarie was honestly unaware that in allowing 

 Vale to take the petition home with him he was not doing all 

 that could be required of him. 



He understood just as little the position of Lord Bathurst 

 in regard to Vale. The Secretary of State wrote : " Upon a 



1 D., 12th May, 1818. C.O., MS. In that year two assistant chaplains were 

 sent to New South Wales, but the words "according to the Rules and Discipline 

 of War " were omitted from their commissions. See C.O., 1818. 



2 Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. 



3 D. 14, 26th July, 1818. R.O., MS. 



4 D. i, ist March, 1819. R.O., MS. 



