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to a friend: You will smile at the mention of Botany Bay ; but I am most serious, and I assivre you that next to a parliamentary situation, to whieli either nature or early ambition has constantly directed my views, I should prefer, without much re^i^arding pecuniary advantages, that of beiu}^ the law-giver of Botany Bay/' One wide function of government did not exist m the eighteenth century in New South Wales. There were no taxes. There were no customs duties. The government fed the bulk of the population, which was composed of coerced con- victs and their custodians. Bills on the Enji^lish Treasury provided most of the animal food consumed. If a colony had thus to he supported, how could it contribute funds? Hunter required a larger gaol in 171H), and could not build it without reclaiming convicts assigned to officers and others. He called a meeting, at which civil and military ofMcers, with the principal colonists, undertook to provi<le funds from an assessment on property, and duties on wines and spirits. The gaol was thus voluntarily Imilt with the aid of u'on ro^ided from the king's stores. On the principle of self- reservation a public meeting of the few free inhabitants might succeed, when the object was to provide prison-room for offenders ; hut appeals in the streets could not secure all the funds necessary for government. Much less could they do so where the l)olk of tlie population was or had been of the felon class. Duiing IIunters government no change was made, but his immediate successor, King, imposed customs duties and port charges, in order to create a public fund, an expedient which had occurred to Pliillip, but to which he had not resorted. It is the distinction of Englishmen that they have con- stitutionally a share in the administration of the law, and that they are consecpiently more contented under its discipline, more law-abiding, than nations which are ruled by a central or bureaucratic government. No foreign levy, no internal revolution, can he couipared to the grandeur of the triumph when the seven bishops were acquitted, and the law was brought face to face with James XL, by the erdict of a jury of their countrymen. But no jury existed n New South Wales, nor was it possil>le to create one in the primitive period. Most of the officers conc^YVV^d .ifc.