140 PSOGBSSS OV THE SETTLEMENT l^W munity, from the Governor downwards, suffered from the want of fresh food ; and as all shared alike, the labourers in the field were in reality working for their own advantage. Bat the convicts could not, or would not, see this. It was enough for them that the work was compulsory ; they detested it, and avoided it as much as possible. In giving tiSoiS**rJff *^^°^ their own gardens, Phillip touched the only vulner- to labour, g^j^jg gpQ^ . j^q appealed to the selfishness of human nature^ and he did not appeal in vain. The land which the convicts cultivated for their own profit was not, of course, granted to them. It was simply held Sw iMd on during the pleasure of the Governor, and might pass out of aufferancc. ^-j^e hands of the occupiers without a moment's notice. Phillip, in founding the town of Parramatta, did not con- template the establishment there of a permanent convict settlement. He was obliged to put the convicts on the soil to begin with, but he proposed that they should be removed in a few years to new country, at a distance from Sydney, and that the town of Parramatta should be placed at the disposal of free settlers, who, he supposed, would be glad mente"^°* to build ou the ground.^ It was impossible to ^^ detach a delayed body of couvicts to any distance," because there was no one to whom the charge of a distant settlement could be given.t If it had been determined, for example, to establish a settlement on the Hawkesbury, as was done a few years afterwards, nothing would have been easier than to have sent with the convicts a detachment of troops under an officer as a guard ; but something more than this was required. It for want of would havo been useless to send to a distance a number of denta men who only worked under compulsion, and knew nothing of agriculture, without some one to direct their labours, and Phillip, as already mentioned, had no such man at his command. A still more serious obstacle, and one which Phillip had more difficulty in surmounting, stood in the way
- Phillip to Gronyille, Hiatorioal Beoords, vol. i, part 2, p. 368.
t lb., p. 860.
