formation of a class of agriculturists throughout the territory, these grants were generally transferred to the wholesale or retail dealers in ardent spirits, as soon as the governors order to take possession of the land was obtained. In the mean time, the large expenditure of British money by Governor Macquarie, in the erection of buildings of inferior importance in the colonial towns, necessarily congregated large bodies of the convict and emancipist population in these towns;?,nd by affording high wages to free labourers of all classes, held out the requisite encouragement for the establishment of numerous public-houses, both licensed and unlicensed; most of which were mere receptacles for stolen goods, while all of them were sources of irresistible temptation and ultimate ruin to such emancipated convict settlers as had acquired property by their own industry in the interior. Nay, for four years during the administration of Governor Macquarie, three individuals in Sydney had an authorized monopoly of all the ardent spirits that were imported into the colony, on condition of their erecting a public hospital in the town of Sydney; and during the continuance of this monopoly, every means was used to increase the number of houses for the sale of ardent spirits, both in Sydney and all over the colony, to augment the
