304 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



at the head of the colonial department, solely by his personal 

 merit, and he believed had fulfilled the sanguine expectations 

 which were formed of his competency for the discharge of all 

 the duties belonging to that arduous and distant station. Mr. 

 Bennet entirely agreed in the high character of General Mac- 

 quarie." l Amid this general atmosphere of compliment to 

 Macquarie the petition was read and no further proceedings 

 taken upon it. 



But the Government, while loyally supporting their officer 

 in Parliament, were somewhat disturbed by reports from the 

 Colony. The affairs of Vale and Moore, the condition of the 

 female convicts as they learned of it in Bayly's letter to Sir 

 Henry Bunbury, the strained relations between Governor and 

 free settlers created a sense of strong misgiving. Meanwhile in 

 England the number of crimes to which the punishment of 

 transportation was affixed was rapidly increasing. On 23rd 

 April, 1817, Lord Bathurst proposed to Lord Sidmouth that 

 they should send a Commission of Inquiry to New South 

 Wales. The important question was whether New South 

 Wales was still a suitable place for a penal settlement. "So 

 long," he wrote, "as the Colony was principally inhabited by 

 convicts and but little advanced in cultivation, the strictness of 

 police regulations and the constant labour, under due restric- 

 tions, to which it was then possible to subject the convicts, 

 rendered transportation, as a punishment, an object of the 

 greatest apprehension to those who looked upon strict discipline 

 and regular labour as the most severe and least tolerable of 

 evils ".- 



The conditions were changed, and he proposed " to recom- 

 mend to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent the appoint- 

 ment of Commissioners to proceed to those settlements, with 

 power to investigate all the complaints, which have latterly been 

 made, both in respect to the treatment of the convicts and the 

 general administration of the Government". 3 



Lord Sidmouth at once consented, 4 and in the course of the 

 next two years sought for a suitable person or persons with 



1 S.G., gth August, 1817, quoting from Courier, nth March, 1817. 



2 Letter, printed in P.P., XIV., 1823. 3 Ibid. 

 4 Sidmouth to B., 25th April, 1817. R.O., MS. 



