Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/519

The acerbity which Macquarie displayed in his letters led him into excesses which not even his friends could excuse. Since the framing of Magna Charta by the great Stephen Langton, it had ever been the boast of his English countrymen that only by law could even the king deal with his subjects. "Nec super eos per vim, vel per arma, ibimus nisi per legem regni nostri, vel per judicium parium suorum." But Macquarie would be greater than a king. He had in 1812 built a wall to separate the government pleasure-ground from the open space outside. There was a wicket through which the public were admitted near a lodge occupied by a constable. Like the primitive limit of Rome, the wall was so low that profane persons could easily pass over it, and numerous breaches were made by continual trespass. In April 1816, Macquarie placed two men in ambush to apprehend trespassers. Six men and two women were seized. One of the latter was a servant, and had her mistress's child with her. All were arrested. The servant was permitted to take the child home, and when the mistress refused to let the servant be carried off, the chief constable threatened the mistress. All the alleged trespassers were lodged in gaol. The gaoler reported their condition to Macquarie. One of the men was a free immigrant; two were freedmen; and three were convicts. Macquarie ordered that the free men and one convict should, without trial, receive twenty-five lashes; that the other two convicts should receive thirty lashes, and that the women should be imprisoned in a cell for forty-eight hours. Conscious of the wrong directed, the gaoler showed the order to D'Arcy Wentworth, the Superintendent of Police, who declared afterwards that he had a strong desire to suppress the order, but it was executed; and there was an immediate ferment in Sydney. A petition for Macquarie's recall was prepared. Many of the class emancipated by the direct favour of Macquarie joined in the protest against his arbitrary audacity. He, in return, refused licenses to publicans in whose houses the petition had been seen, and refused, with opprobrious epithets, a grant of land to a freedman who had signed it. But he could not undo or justify his act. The free-man and the freedmen who had been flogged, sailed to England. The facts were proved before the Select Committee of the House