MACQUABIE*5? DKPAKTtTRE. 307 ^ for grain and food delivered to the government bj a certain day they would be ** paid in copper coin for the receipts so overheld ;" to point out that the gallery of the church was extended, and that he *' confidently hoped all excuse for not attending Divine worship was done away ;'* to regret that an officer of very high rank in the civil Bervice (from
- ' motives of delicacy ** unnamed) had refused to pay the
toll authorized hy a Proclaniatioii of 1811, and to declare that all except those exempted h}^ Mactpiarie must pay ; to offer a free pardon for the discovery of the authors of the malicious libel (or Pipe) which was thrown into the barracks, and which maligned the 46th Kegiment. For these and many other purposes Macquarie used the columns of the Sj/ducif Oa-etfe,oveY which his secretary was censor. After his long reign, and the failure of his plan to cultivate virtue by honouring vice, Mac<|uarie would perhaps have retired gladly from his thankless office. But under the circumstances, removal was a sore blow to himJ*"^ He remained in the colony after Sir Thomas Brisbane had {1st Dec* 1821) assumed the government, and he fondly con- templated the public buildings he had erected. His fare- well to his favourites must have been strange. "' John MacartLiir wrote to his son in London (1820) : ** You talk of the present (iovernor coming home* Take my word, he wiU never come imless ordered. , . . In our present state hia distinguished conv ict friends are the majority, and their voices preponderate in every public question. . ♦ . What labours has the new Oovernort whoever he may bo, to perform I I maintain it would lie easier to found five colonies than to reform this. He must have unlimited authority, with power to cleanBe the Augean stable. "
