Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/383

daring offenders, whose example it is hoped will prevent acts of so destructive a tendency." The Sydney Gazette narrated that the mutineers "were punished through the Cove in different boats equipped for that purpose."

The money question troubled the colonists before the end of the eighteenth century. By proclamation (Nov. 1800) King notified that His Majesty had graciously sent a supply of copper coin, which was to pass current at the rate of twopence for each coin weighing one ounce, stamped with the profile of His Majesty on one side and Britannia on the other." At the same time a table of specie legally circulating in the colony was published.

Exportation or importation of copper coin by the public was forbidden under severe penalties, and confiscation of the coin; and the authorized copper coin could not be legally tendered in sums exceeding five pounds sterling. In 1804, to check "vexatious suits," King fixed the rate of interest at 8 per cent.; anyone receiving more than that rate was to forfeit "treble the value, to be appropriated to such fund as the Governor may direct."

In 1803 a Government mineralogist accompanied Collins to Port Phillip. But the golden treasures of that part of the colony were not then to be unlocked. In 1805 the same mineralogist was at Sydney and it was ordered that he should "pass uninterrupted and receive assistance in his researches."

In 1801 the settlers at the Hawkesbury, alleging that they could not pay their debts "owing to extortions practised upon them," petitioned "for one year's suspension of the Civil Courts of Judicature." The Governor reminded them of "the inconsiderate conduct of a great part of those whose names appear in the petition and the flagrant abuses they have made of the exertions used to extricate them from the state they were in last year." They had