terized as the "Rum Selling Corps." On the assumption of office by Governor Hunter, he stated that he considered the trading in rum as "highly disgraceful to men who held in their hands a commission signed by His Majesty." During the three years in which Grose, Patterson, and their subordinates and henchmen held unrestricted sway, they were enabled by corruption and acts of arbitrary violence, to solidly entrench themselves to the extent of being a veritable menace to future good government. Governor Hunter made little headway against the clique, and Governor Bligh was by them placed under arrest in 1808. In 1810 they were drummed out of the Colony. On their return to England they were constituted a "Condemned Corps," and spent the rest of their existence where the hopeless outcasts of the military service were sent—in India. One of the first acts of Governor Macquarie was to declare null and void all the acts of the "Officers' Government" during the time of their rule. Such was the political religious, and social position of a people who were now to witness a new and momentous spectacle.
That God moves in a mysterious way was plainly demonstrated in 1799, when there arrived at Sydney three exiled Catholic priests named respectively, Fathers Dixon, Harold, and O'Niel; with them came also another exile, a Protestant clergyman—the Rev. Mr. Fulton. On arrival Father Harold was sent to Norfolk Island, where he was for some years permitted to officiate. These Fathers had been exiled on the charge of having been implicated in the Irish rebellion of 1798. The Home Government afterwards discovered that the Rev. Dixon and the Rev. Harold were in nowise connected with the uprising, and they were released. Father O'Niel was pardoned and returned to Ireland in 1802.
Prior to his release Father Dixon was granted a conditional emancipation in order that he might be able to exercise his functions. In 1803 the Colonial Government appointed Father Dixon to administer to the religious wants of the Catholics in the Colony. On the 19th of April of the same year he received faculties from his ecclesiastical superiors. An order was made allowing him to perform his clerical duties once in three weeks in the settlements in Sydney, Parramatta,
