excess to which drunkenness was carried: it was no uncommon occurrence for men to sit down round a bucket of spirits, and drink it with quart pots, until they were unable to stir from the spot; and frequently did the settler involve himself so deeply in debt by drunkenness, that it terminated in his ruin."—Dr. Redfern, in reply to Governor Macquarie's Queries. January 1820. Parliamentary Paper.
During the protracted administration of Governor Macquarie, who succeeded to the government of New South Wales in the year 1810, the measures adopted by authority, for the welfare and advancement of the colony, had unfortunately a direct tendency to strengthen the general propensity of the lower classes of the colonists to the excessive use of intoxicating liquors, and to afford additional means of indulgence to all classes of its anomalous population. By an injudicious and unwarrantable extension of the system of granting free pardons, conditional pardons, and tickets of leave, or exemption from government labour, numerous convicts were from time to time thrown loose upon the colony before they had acquired industrious habits, or were at all capable of conducting themselves with propriety: for although the governor uniformly gave small grants of land in the interior to newly-emancipated convicts, to encourage the
