e crown. The degradation of those on the bench, could
not have been politically important, and was one of those acts of power,
which rather gratify the vengeance of caste, than vindicate the purity
of government. The mortification of the emancipists, at this triumph,
was intense: they justly felt, that the ministers, and not they, were
responsible for measures which had recognised their eligibility to the
usual honors of colonial opulence; and that, even were it expedient to
abandon the former system, a less violent process might have been
discovered.

It may not be amiss to describe the career of an emancipist, of whose
elevation Mr. Bigge remarks, "that it had been most strongly urged
against Macquarie by his enemies, and most questioned by his friends."
This case (1810) formed the precedent for appointments from persons of
his class, and, as selected by Mr. Bigge, may be considered a specimen
of the most objectionable. The facts of the Commissioner are all here
embodied; his detracting tone is abated.

Andrew Thomson was a native of Scotland: his relations of that class of
traders, in their own country called merchants; who carry their goods
from town to town. He was sixteen years of age on his arrival in the
colony, and therefore, a boy of fourteen or fifteen when he forfeited
his liberty. When free, he engaged in business as a retail shopkeeper,
and traded to Sydney in boats built by himself: the defects of his
education he partly cured by application, and acquired such knowledge as
ordinary retail shopkeepers possess. He established a salt manufactory,
a ship-building establishment, and it was _rumoured_, an illicit
distillery. He was chief constable: kept a public-house--such was the
common practice of traders. He acquired great influence among the
settlers, by his forbearance and liberal credits; his business extended,
and he became a considerable landholder. He supported the legal
authority during the rebellion, and suffered for his loyalty; a just
ground for the esteem of that Governor, who came to restore the
authority of his sovereign. When an inundation of the Hawkesbury exposed
the settlers to great suffering, he undertook their relief; supplied
them with goods, and was happily a gainer by the risk which his humanity
induced him to incur: so great was the importance of prompt exertions,
he was permitted to employ both the men and boats, which were under his
control as superintendent of convicts.

In his