who were also rationed by the government for the space of eighteen months. The inquiry by Mr. Commissioner Bigge was partly owing to the representations made, in a work published by Mr. William Wentworth, during a visit paid to England for the purpose of being called to the bar.
Among other subjects that came under the notice of the commissioner was the ecclesiastical government of New South Wales. The report of Mr. Bigge recommended the appointment of an archdeacon. Mr. Scott, the secretary, lost no time in taking orders, and in 1825 reappeared in the colony as Archdeacon Scott.
In the year that the royal commissioner quitted the colony a Wesleyan chapel was opened, and the foundation stone of a Roman Catholic cathedral was laid by the governor at the request of Father Therry—good Father Therry—who shared with Parson Cowper the honour, the respect, the affection of the poorer colonists, and of the outcast prisoner population, whom they so faithfully tended, and the persecution of their spiritual superiors.
In 1822 Governor Macquarie embarked for England, after a longer and more successful administration than any governor in the Australian colonies has hitherto enjoyed. He found New South Wales a gaol, and left it a colony; he found Sydney a village, and left it a city; he found a population of idle prisoners, paupers, and paid officials, and left a large free community, thriving on the produce of flocks and the labour of convicts.
CHAPTER VII.
GOVERNOR BRISBANE AND GOVERNOR DARLING.
1821 TO 1831.
MACQUARIE was succeeded by Sir Thomas Brisbane, whose term of office, undistinguished by remarkable actions on his part, was full of events of importance to a colony which was fast acquiring a population that could no longer be controlled by a purely military despotism. From the day of Macquarie's departure a struggle commenced between the people and the government which was carried on up to the present year, when the Duke of Newcastle conceded to the Australians full powers of self-government and self-taxation.
Under any circumstances Sir Thomas Brisbane's task would have been difficult. The fortunes made in the colony had attracted a class
