for grain and food delivered to the government by 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 service (from "motives of delicacy" unnamed) had refused to pay the toll authorized by a Proclamation of 1811, and to declare that all except those exempted by Macquarie 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 Regiment. For these and many other purposes Macquarie used the columns of the Sydney Gazette, over which his secretary was censor. After his long reign, and the failure of his plan to cultivate virtue by honouring vice, Macquarie would perhaps have retired gladly from his thankless office. But under the circumstances, removal was a sore blow to him.[1] He remained in the colony after Sir Thomas Brisbane had (1st Dec. 1821) assumed the government, and he fondly contemplated the public buildings he had erected. His farewell to his favourites must have been strange.
- ↑ John Macarthur wrote to his son in London (1820): "You talk of the present Governor coming home. Take my word, he will never come unless ordered. . . . In our present state his distinguished convict friends are the majority, and their voices preponderate in every public question. . . . What labours has the new Governor, whoever he may be, to perform I maintain it would be easier to found five colonies than to reformn this. He must have unlimited authority, with power to cleanse the Augean stable,"
