Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/495

This page has been validated.

MACQUARIE'S METHOD OF BUILDING A HOSPITAL.

467

Police, Treasurer of the Police Fund, and an active promoter of the Bank of New South Wales. It will be remembered that he had pledged himself on the faith of a gentleman, in 1800, not to enter into any future speculations contrary to His Majesty's instructions." He speculated in drunkenness with the aid of Macquarie in 1811. In a letter (23rd April 1811) to Mrs. King, the widow of the Governor, Marsden thus alluded to the transaction:—

"Messrs. Wentworth, Blaxcell, and Riley have got the contract for building the hospital at Sydney, and they have the sole privilege of buying spirits. . . . This contract will continue more than three years. consider it a very great evil to the settlement. The affairs of this country have taken quite a new turn, and a very unexpected one;—a new class of magistrates with all the new productions that such a union was likely to produce. I have retired behind the scene, and live very quiet, remote from the din of politics. I have nothing to attend to but my own duty, which makes me inore happy than I ever was since I came to this colony."

Macquarie laid the first stone of his hospital in Oct. 1811. He completed the King's Wharf in 1813. When Commissioner Bigge was conducting his inquiry Macquarie alleged as one of his reasons for keeping so many convicts employed on works and buildings that the settlers could not take them as assigned servants, but Bigge found ample evidence to the contrary. It is as satisfactory to find that Lord Liverpool was displeased with Macquarie's spirit-monopoly contract, as it is astonishing to notice that Macquarie expressed (Nov. 1812) his surprise that the contract had met with "disapprobation." He promised to avoid making similar arrangements without previous communication. He explained that when the project was first mooted, Wentworth^[1] had nothing to do with it, but at the request of Riley and Blaxcell joined them. He was forbidden to repeat such experiments. The

↑ Bigge said: "Mr. Wentworth . . . . . who has had considerable experience on this subject (admits), that the desire of obtaining spirituous liquors is the principal incentive to crime among the convicts, and that the greatest and only chance of their improvement is to be found in the absolute privation of them." Macquarie extended his favours to the uttermost. When instructed that the importation of spirits must be free, he, "in consideration of certain statements made by the contractors" for the hospital, extended their monopoly from 1813 to Oct. 1814.-Bigge's Report (on Judicial Establishments), p. 64.

[1] Bigge said: "Mr. Wentworth . . . . . who has had considerable experience on this subject (admits), that the desire of obtaining spirituous liquors is the principal incentive to crime among the convicts, and that the greatest and only chance of their improvement is to be found in the absolute privation of them." Macquarie extended his favours to the uttermost. When instructed that the importation of spirits must be free, he, "in consideration of certain statements made by the contractors" for the hospital, extended their monopoly from 1813 to Oct. 1814.-Bigge's Report (on Judicial Establishments), p. 64.

[1]