270 



A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



the " poor, distressed, old and infirm," and no distinction of bond 

 and free was drawn. The funds were purely voluntary, and 

 the management vested in a General Committee, an " Acting" 

 Committee of seven, both of which met in Sydney, and five 

 District Committees. The subscriptions in 1820 amounted to 

 434, and many poor settlers were amongst the subscribers. To 

 have laid any compulsory obligation on any district to support 

 its own poor would have been unjust as well as inexpedient, for 

 there was no Law of Settlement, and population moved very 

 freely from one place to another. The system of voluntary 

 subscriptions to a central fund, assisted by local subscriptions 

 which were also voluntary, worked fairly well, and between 1 8 1 8 

 and 1820 the Society relieved 201 cases. The Government 

 built a house for the reception of aged people just outside the 

 town of Sydney, and handed it over to the management of the 

 General Committee, and also gave to the Society a piece of land 

 at Richmond, in the Hawkesbury District. Rations from the 

 Government stores were also issued to seventy-seven persons 

 recommended by the magistrates. 1 



An attempt at this time to form an Agricultural Society 

 came to an untimely end. Wylde hoped by means of balloting 

 for the election of members to prevent the necessity of exclud- 

 ing or including ex-convicts by any rule. With a ballot he 

 thought some would have been elected and others, who were 

 personally undesirable, would not. But the Governor refused to 

 be the patron of the Society unless the emancipists were freely 

 admitted ; and, lacking his support, the scheme was dropped. 



Wylde was probably right in thinking that with the ballot 

 the exclusion would only have been partial, for even Bell, one 

 of the strongest opponents of convict magistrates and of Mac- 

 quarie's emancipist policy generally, said he " would not con- 

 found a man sent out for a political crime with a common felon 

 or man guilty of an immoral offence." 2 



1 See Wylde's Evidence, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. See Bigge's 

 Report III., and Sydney Gazette for June, 1818. The absence of any compulsory 

 Poor Law organisation making each district self-supporting for purposes of poor 

 relief probably accounts very largely for the slow growth of local Government 

 institutions in Australia. The administration was from the first very much 

 centralised. 



a See Evidence of Wylde and Bell. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. 



