Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/494

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MACQUARIE BUILDS A HOSPITAL.


months he promulgated fresh regulations, dividing Sydney into eight sections; appointed fifty constables; defined their duties; called on all householders to report within twenty-four hours all persons in their houses at any time; and made D'Arcy Wentworth Superintendent of Police in Sydney and its vicinity.

In 1806 patrols had been established by Governor King in Sydney and Parramatta, with power to "imprison idlers," to pass officers, masters, supercargoes, and others enumerated, on their "making themselves known," and to detain "persons answering officer' who were not entitled to that appellation;" but the troubled times which had intervened, and the growth of the community, had made more systematic measures necessary, and Macquarie, with ampler military force, addressed himself to the task. He denounced the total disregard with which many of the lower classes treated the Sabbath, and their notorious profanation of it. Reluctantly, in May 1810, he resorted to coercive measures "to put a stop to the growing evil," and empowered constables to take up persons who could "not give a satisfactory account of themselves."

He resorted to a singular experiment in building a hospital. In a colony where Governor after Governor had striven to repress the vice of drunkenness with varying success; where on Governor King's retirement Bligh had been specially enjoined to adhere to King's custom of allowing no spirits to be landed without his written permission—Macquarie bargained with three persons, Wentworth, Blaxcell, and Riley, that if they would build a hospital, according to a plan submitted, they should have a monopoly of the sale of spirits for a term of years. The monopolists paid their workmen partly with goods and spirits. They built public-houses in the neighbourhood of the hospital. They would not let the public participate in the trade which debased the community and enriched themselves. D'Arcy Wentworth was the principal surgeon[1] of the colony at this time, and became Superintendent of

  1. ↑ When Jamison died in England Lord Liverpool was requested by Lord Wentworth Fitzwilliam (Jan. 1811) to appoint D. Wentworth to the vacant office "if found not incapable of the duty-as the reward of long service."
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