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the Gazette (Feb. 1818) on the reluctance of settlers to supply grain to the government stores, "in the present alarming season of scarcity." Those indebted to the government were inexcusable. The Governor would show no lenity. He would cause them to be sued. Unless they became more prompt he would be under the "painful necessity to resort to foreign markets." There was one noble exception—Thomas Gilberthorpe, of Pitt Town. This order was to be read in the churches. In the following year an order from the Secretary of State relieved the stores of one drain upon their resources. Till 1814 Lord Bathurst had not been aware that the families of civil servants received rations from the public stores. Macquarie was to stop the practice, "as well as that of allotting to each a government servant, clothed and victualled at the public expense. Issue of fuel to civil servants was discontinued at the same time. In 1815 further "indulgences" were stopped by orders from England.

Macquarie's scheme for building a hospital by granting a monopoly in spirit-traffic was not to be repeated. The annual issue of a proportion of spirits, at a price, to civil and military officers, to superintendents, overseers, clerks, gaolers, constables, &c., and also to licensed publicans, was considered unnecessary, and prohibited. All contracts of government were to be paid for in money only. All barter of spirits for produce was forbidden, and offenders were to receive no indulgence. These directions prove that the Government, though slow to recall or arrest Macquarie in his career, could not long be ignorant of the mischief which his improper favours were calculated to produce.

Sir Joseph Banks, in a letter to Governor King, mentioned that Lord Hobart accepted as a reason for founding new settlements: "If you continually send thieves to one place it must in time be super-saturated. Sydney now, I think, is completely saturated. We must let it rest and purify for a few years, till it begins to be in a condition again to receive."

When Hobart was in distress its needs were met from Sydney. Bills drawn by Governor King supplied its early wants, whether of food, stores, or money, though, at