government were military at the first, but the Governor
stood in some degree apart from and above them. When
Phillip departed, Grose, mingling the office of governor
with that of commandant of the New South Wales Corps,
abrogated the civil law and fostered arrogance in the
minds of the military. The absence of ordinary control
left faults unchecked. Impunity in wrong-doing intensified
the evil and made wrong-doers impatient of any curb
which a future governor, especially one who was not also
their commanding officer, might impose upon them. These
difficulties must not be forgotten in judging the conduct of
Hunter. He was involved in acrimonious disputes with
John Macarthur in 1798; but in the same year was congratulated by the Rev. Mr. Johnson and by Marsden on his
efforts to promote public morality.
He did not willingly submit to the resistance he encountered. He wrote to the Secretary of State:—"After the departure of Governor Phillip a general change took place. All his plans and regulations were completely laid aside, the civil magistrate was superseded entirely, and all the duties respecting the distribution of justice, and every other concern of that office was taken into the hands of the military." (He took credit for reinstating the civil magistrate, but it must be remembered that the Secretary of State had, in 1795, laid down distinct rules on the subject in response to King's appeal from Norfolk Island against the displacing of civil authority, and that Hunter had received instructions on the subject.) On the restoration of law, "those changes, I had soon reason to observe, were not well relished by those of the military. Since that time frequent indirect and some direct attempts have been made to annoy the civil officers officiating as magistrates." (1796).
Hunter vainly strove to repress the traffic in spirits. Even officers had been (1796) "engaged in a most destructive traffic with spirituous liquors," which were sold to settlers "at an immense profit, to the destruction of all order, to the almost total destruction of every spark of religion, to the encouragement of gambling, the occasion of frequent robberies, and, concerned I am to add, to several very recent and shocking murders." In July 1797 he
