Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/505

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MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST NATIVES, 1816.
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The band of Captain Wallis had killed fourteen and captured five, Macquarie had invited the hunted creatures to become "settlers." In April 1817 he reported that, the bolder spirits being extinguished, hostilities had ceased. The terrified remnant sued for peace. At the annual meeting at Parramatta (Dec. 1816) 179 assembled, and some surrendered their children to be educated. Macquarie proclaimed that no native should appear armed within a mile of any town or village, and that they should not assemble in a larger number than six. He offered to introduce a passport system amongst them, and to give them land. If they would become farmers on small lots of land carved out of their old inheritance he would give them provisions for six months, seed, implements, a suit of clothes, and a blanket. His military detachments meanwhile obtained cheap glory. The killing of the fourteen blacks, reported to Lord Bathurst, was described as a battle. Many captives were lodged in prison. Many of their countrymen were shot in places not reported as battle-fields. On the branches of trees, in lagoons, in the swirling of rivers, many a black carcase was left to the kites and crows.

Under Macquarie the evacuation of Norfolk Island was completed. In June 1813 he informed Lord Bathurst that he had ordered the slaughtering of all the live stock on the island, to hasten its abandonment, which he reported as completed on the 28th Feb. 1814.

In Feb. 1816, while Macquarie was in the interior, the Rev. Benjamin Vale, military chaplain, caused an America vessel discharging cargo at Sydney to be seized as a prize under the Navigation Act. Macquarie removed the arrest from the vessel. A solicitor, whom Macquarie afterwards denounced as "an unprincipled reptile under the pupilage of Judge Bent," had aided the military chaplain. Macquarie told Lord Bathurst (March 1816), that the conduct of the chaplain and the lawyer was "highly disrespectful, insolent, and insubordinate" The former endeavoured to "vindicate the measure," "I ordered him into a military arrest, his commission as military chaplain rendering him amenable to martial law. I ordered a court-martial": 1. For the subversive act of seizure. 2. For insolent, disrespectful, and insubordinate conduct to the Governor