Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/210

106 PHILLIP ThelMt cniflt. 1788-92 directed to the remedy of some pubKc grierance — certainly not to any grievance of ids own. If he was silent on the subject of his own troubles, he was equally reserved with respect to the sacrifices he felt called upon to make ia the public interest. Had it not been recorded by Collins, nothing would have been known in the present day of the self-denial he displayed when, at a time of scarcity fast approaching to famine, he surrendered his own small supplies to the public stock : — The Governor, from a motive that did him immortal honour, gave up three hundred-weight of flour, which was his Excellency's private property, declaring that he wished not to see anything more at his table than the ration which was received in common from the public store, without any distinction of persons ; and to this resolution he rigidly adhered, wishing that if a convict com- plained, he might see that want was not unfelt even at Govern- ment House.* While this was the spirit in which Phillip met the priva- tions he had to encounter, the Lieutenant-Governor found time to write a letter of complaint to England, in which the Governor was represented as offensively arbitrary and inconsiderate, subjecting the oflScers of the garrison to un- necessary hardships and indignities, apparently for no other purpose than that of swelling his own importance at their expense : — I believe there never was a set of people so much upon the parrish as this garrison is ; and what little we want, even to a single nail, we must not send to the Commissary for it, but must apply to his Excellency; and when we do, he allways sayes — "there is but little come out," — and of course it is but little we get, and what we are obliged to take as a mark of favor. There were other officers attached to the establishment who had complaints to make on their own account. One of them, for instance, wrote a letter to Sir Joseph Banks in November, 1788, in which he complained of the hardship he had undergone in having to cut thatch and wattles for his The Majorca complamt. Soldiers on the parish. Grumbling letters. • ColHns, p. 108. Digitized by Google