In Governor Phillip’s time there was no authority to grant officers any land; in Lieutenant-Governor Grose’s time there was no limit to the land they might be granted, and as little value was attached to the Crown lands of the colony, lands probably of less value then than any other in the possession of civilized people, Grose’s officers, who had to do a great deal of extra civil work, were given land in payment for that work.  Much abuse has been heaped upon Grose for his alleged favouring of officers by giving them huge grants of land, but, as a matter of fact, Grose behaved very honourably; and Mac Arthur, who owned more land than any other officer in 1794, had only 250 acres in cultivation, and the grants to other officers never exceeded in any one case 120 acres.  If Grose’s land policy was bad, he was not to blame, but the trafficking which he permitted to grow up and practically encouraged was a different matter altogether.

Phillip warned the home Government before he left the colony that rum might be a necessity, but it would certainly turn out a great evil.  Soon after Grose took command of the colony there arrived an American ship with a cargo of provisions and rum for sale.  The American skipper would not sell the provisions without the purchaser also bought the spirits.  This was the beginning of the rum traffic; and ships frequently arrived afterwards with stores, and always with quantities of spirits—­rum from America and brandy from the Cape.  The officers purchased all the spirits, and paid the wages of the convicts who were assigned to them with the liquor; not only this, but they hired extra convict labour, paying for it the same way, and strong drink became the medium of exchange.

All this has been an apparent digression from the history of the New South Wales Corps, but, as will be seen, the subjects are intimately connected.  A later governor, who found the colony not so bad as it was at this time, said its population consisted of people who had been, and people who ought to have been, transported.  Little wonder then that the New South Wales Corps, enlisted from the lowest classes of the English population, became demoralized.  Most of the recruits came from that famous “clink” the Savoy Military Prison.  They had little drill or discipline when they were embarked for the colony, and the character of the service they were employed in was the very worst to make good soldiers of them.

In consequence they became a dangerous element in the early life of the colony; there were frequently breaches of discipline, there were cases of downright mutiny, and their career in New South Wales ended in a rebellion.  The responsibility for the last crime, however, is with the officers, and not the men.  One mutiny was that of the detachment on the Lady Shore in 1798.