ons, which were
intended to subserve another end. He attempted to prove that financial
oppression had driven back the expiree on his former course, which the
anti-emancipists maintained he had never forsaken.[132] It was, however,
the universal opinion, that atrocious crimes were diminished, and
misdemeanours increased.

The penal statistics were swollen by the extensive jurisdiction of
police: by the cognizance of acts which, in other countries, are left to
opinion. The distribution of public money, annually increasing towards a
quarter of a million, placed within the reach of all the pleasures they
were accustomed to obtain, without the risks of crime. A closer
inspection does not, however, exalt our opinion of their moral worth; of
4,376 emancipists, reported by the chaplains, 369 were tolerable, but
296 only were respectable.[133] Nor was the accusation without force,
that the proof of reform, admitted by Macquarie, was the possession of
money; that to thrive, by whatever means, within the letter of the
statute, was to honor the law, and to deserve well of the crown.

The administration of Macquarie was attacked with great vehemence,
and every detail of his scheme called in question. The British
government never had a system: the ministers treated every difficulty
as a thing apart from all others; and thus to arrest one form of
mischief, they released another. They directed the establishment of
separate settlements, and thus occasioned the vast expenses of their
control. They then approved the concentrated labor of Macquarie, and
when its cost became severe, advocated dispersion. Every parliamentary
discussion terminated in the abandonment of some principle, or the
establishment of some novelty. Always affected by the passing aspect of
transportation, the people of Great Britain never acquire a connected
view of the causes which alter its results; and have thus condemned or
applauded the local officers, for events casual or inevitable.

To diminish the pressure of the prisoners on the British treasury,
Macquarie granted tickets-of-leave: the holders, without employment and
without capital, became robbers. Then he turned his thoughts to public
works of permanent utility, and requiring continued labor: these
projects gradually absorbed his attention, and perhaps perverted his
judgment. Inspired by an able architect, whom the chances of public
retribution had thrown in his way, his erections greatly surpassed the
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