31 
onel T. Potter Macqueen, forwarded a memorial to the Secretary 
of State, offering' to provide shipping' for the purpose ot taking out 
ten thousand persons within a period of four years, and to find these 
persons in provisions and necessaries allowed to immigrants. 1 urther 
they would take to tin; settlement a thousand head of live stock, and 
have three small vessels running between Sydney and the settlement 
as occasion required. They estimated that the cost involved would 
be £30 per head, £300,000 in all, and in return, asked for land at 
the rate of one acre for every Is. 6d. of that amount, or four mil- 
lion acres in all. 
Acting Upon what they considered to be a personal assurance 
of the Secretary of State that their proposal would he accepted, 
they proceeded to incur expense to the extent of £20,000 in purchas- 
ing a vessel and supplies. Then some inkling was received, appar- 
ently personally, as there is no correspondence upon the matter, that 
all was not well with their proposal, and, on the 2nd December, they 
wrote again to the Colonial Office asking for a written acceptance. 
Four days later they received a reply to the effect that their pro- 
posals would be accepted except as to the extent of land they would 
receive, the Government being prepared to allow only one million 
acres. Evidently this decision was not satisfactory to the members 
of the syndicate, who, one by one, withdrew from it, leaving Mr. 
Thomas Peel to carry the whole burden. He then decided to accept 
the Government’s offer himself and made an attempt to carry it out. 
With the results of that attempt we are not concerned here, but it 
may be mentioned that the scheme was a complete failure from every 
point of view. 
We are, however, concerned with the original syndicate’s offer 
to this extent, that it seems to have been the one additional factor 
necessary in order to enable the Government to make up its mind, 
for we find that on the 12th November the Secretary of State for 
the Colonies addressed a letter to the Admiralty asking that a ship 
be provided for the purpose of conveying a detachment of troops 
and other persons to the western coast of New Holland “where it is 
intended to form a British settlement,’’ and, on the 20th November, 
the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Lord Hill, was asked to pro- 
vide a detachment “to be held in readiness for embarkation for i he 
western coast of New Holland, where 1 1 is Majesty’s Government 
judge it advisable to establish a British settlement.” Judging from 
a letter, dated December 28tli, Captain Stirling was personally in- 
formed that he was to be appointed to the command of the new set- 
tlement, but the formal appointment was not made until the 30th. 
On the following day the administrative establishment was appointed. 
Although, as T have said, the proposal of the syndicate seems 
to have given just that additional weight necessary to tip the scale 
in favour of colonisation, the principal reason, according to the docu- 
mentary evidence, was a recrudescence of the fear of French annexa- 
