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A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



after the precept had been made out actually signed by me 

 in conformity to a promise made before your arrival in this 

 Colony. . . . 



' With all due deference to your acquirements and the 

 superior faculties of your mind, I consider myself at least your 

 equal in the consideration of a subject new to you, but familiar 

 to me in my daily and hourly duties for now nearly ten years, 

 and I cannot let this opportunity pass without dwelling a little 

 longer on the subject which has given rise to this communication. 

 The most virtuous and best disposed of the free people of this 

 Colony agree with me in the adoption of this principle. The 

 malcontents who since Governor Phillip's time to the present 

 moment have ever been the burden and turmoil of this Colony 

 have free access to you." The blandishments of these people, 

 he continued, usually brought newcomers to their way of think- 

 ing, a matter of little importance when the strangers were birds 

 of passage. " But you and I, who have voluntarily undertaken 

 a duty which combines us equally with all, must, in the just ful- 

 filment of those duties, lay aside our own personal feelings for 

 if we are so delicate in our moral sentiments as to be unapproach- 

 able by the general mass of the population of this Colony, or so 

 refined in our senses as to be unable to bear the approach of a 

 naked and generally filthy native, it will be difficult, if not im- 

 possible, to form a just estimate of the wants and claims which 

 all alike have upon us. 



" The class of persons here who must ever be considered as 

 the first . . . have overturned the Government of this Colony 

 they have occasioned the retirement of every Governor who 

 had held the Government, they are factious, discontented and 

 turbulent. . . . Let not the disposition with which nature seems 

 to have endowed you for doing good," he concluded with a 

 sudden flight into rhetoric, " be overwhelmed by an overstrained 

 delicacy, or too refined a sense of moral feelings, for such I 

 consider the preference given to a bad man who perhaps 

 narrowly escaped the stigma of having once been a convict to 

 one who is now good but who has been proved not to have 

 been always so. Avert the blow you appear to be too much 

 inclined to inflict on these unhappy beings (if you make them 

 so !), and let the souls now in being, as well as millions yet 



