CROWN LANDS ITNDEE PHILLIP. 125 tbem were almost as soon as given offered for sale/' and 1703 Grose was absolutely obliged to encourage and promote the purchase of them by the officers, dreading that, without this precaution, the dissipation of a week would exterminate effectually a stock that had been the work of years to collect/' It became known to the authorities that the pro^Med by offloeza. military settlers sold their land as well as their live stock to the officers, while many of the convict settlers bartered away their possessions for rum.* It is worthy of note that Grose, who assumed the crovern- omm ud •^ ... the land ment of the colony on Phillip's departure in December, 1792, question, began to issue grants to the officers of the New South Wales Corps before the arrival of Dundas's despatch, which did not reach him until the 16th January, 1793. He justified his action on the ground that he could not conceive the exist- ence of any intention on the part of the Home Government to deal less liberally with the commissioned officers of the orante Corps than with the non-commissioned officers and men.f In Phillip's Additional Instructions, the assignment ]^«^^^ system, which exerted so powerful an influence on the^^^"**™-
- Measures to prevent the abuse of their priTileges by the convict settlers
were taken. Writing from Whitehall, on the dOth June, 1793, Dundas directed that the following clause should be inserted in all grants made to convicts either on emancipation or on the expiration of the terms for which they had been transported : — "And it is hereby provided that the said shall reside upon and cultirate the lands hereby granted for and during the term of five years from the date hereof, provided the said shall so long live ; and any sale or conveyance of the said lands before the expiration of the said term of five years shall be void, and the said lands shall in such case revert to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, except it shall be certified imder the hand and seal of the G-overnor, or in his absence the Lieutenant- Governor, of his Majesty's Colony of New South Wales for the time being, that the same was made with his consent." It was also directed that leases maie to settlers of the convict class should not be assignable except with the consent, in writing, of the Governor or Ideutenant-Govemor. — Historical Becords, vol. i, part 2, p. 50. t Beferring to the issue of a grant for twenty-five acres to Lieutenant Cummings on the 13th December, 1792, Collins says (vol. i, p. 266) : — " In the instructions for granting lands in this country, no mention of officers had yet been made ; it was, however, fairly presumed that the officers coald not be intended to be precluded from the participation of any advantages which the Crown might have to bestow in the settlements, particularly as the greatest in its gift, the free possession of land, was held out to people who had forfeited their lives before they came into the country."
