Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/491

AND THE GOVERNMENT. 377 the public stores. One of the most urgent considerations 1789 in connection with the project being the matter of expen- diture, this objection became serious. Every item in the long list of expenses, from the Governor's salary down to the daily allowance of salt pork, would have to be carefully scrutinised^ in order to reduce the sum total to the lowest possible amount. Provisions calculated to last two years would be supplied, out of which the two King's ships would have to be victualled ; and the people sent out, marines and convicts alike, must then be taught to look to the land for their means of subsistence. There was still another point to be considered. The loyalists had been accustomed to the exercise of all the rights, legal and political, of freemen in their own colonies ; 2. PoUticaJ and the Government had already had a taste of American uonL **" views on the rights of colonists. It did not want another. In any case, free settlers could not be governed on the same principles as convicts ; and if the settlement was to be com- posed, wholly or in part, of men who had not forfeited their liberty, Sydney's scheme would have to be completely altered. The administration of justice could not be left s. Adminig. trfttioD of entirely in the hands of half a dozen young officers of justice, marines, whose notions of legal principles were those of soldiers. Englishmen on trial for their lives or liberties, contesting a question of right, or seeking redress for a wrong, were entitled by the common law to a jury of twelve; and juries meant judges who were qualified to expound the law. An establishment formed on such princi- ples would be essentially different from that which it was intended to send out with the convicts. On the one hand, there was a small military camp ; on the other, there would Martial law be a free settlement, which would very soon demand legis- inatitutions. lative institutions and the right of self-government on the model of the American colonies. It is always easier to fall back upon precedent and rou- tine than to strike out an original course of action ; and Digitized by Google