ject by the generality of the inhabitants, who have not yet
forgotten the insurrection which took place when the whole
population was not nearly so great as the present amount of the
convicts, although the military force was of equal magnitude.
That insurrection indeed was easily quelled; but the result of
another, under existing circumstances, would in all probability,
be very different.

An equal degree of anxiety is felt, and more particularly by
the mercantile part of the community, that a sloop of war, or a
king's vessel of some description, should be stationed in the
harbour, both as a protection against the easy possibility of
outward assault, and to frustrate the numerous combinations which
the convicts are constantly forming, and often too successfully,
to carry away the colonial craft, to the certain destruction of
their own and the crew's lives, and to the ruin of the
unfortunate owners Not fewer than three piratical seizures of
this nature have been effected within the last three years. On
all of these occasions the vessels so seized were run ashore on
the uninhabited parts of the coast, and all hands on board, the
innocent crews, as well as the abandoned pirates, either perished
from hunger, or were immolated by the spears and waddies of the
ferocious savages.

When Governor Macquarie assumed the command in 1810, the
population was only half its present number; and yet a sloop of
war was stationed at Port Jackson, and the military force also
was on a much more extended scale. Why a diminution has thus been
made in the means of protection and defence, when there appear to
be such strong grounds for their augmentation, merely with
reference to the internal state of the colony, it is no easy
matter to conjecture.

The expediency also of putting the colony in a better posture
to repel outward attack, is not less obvious; for although we are
now at peace with the whole world, it would be absurd to overlook
the possibility of future wars. The only battery of any strength
is called, "Dawe's Battery;" and is, as I have already casually
noticed, situated in the extremity of that neck of land, on which
the western part of the town of Sydney is built. This battery, if
I remember right, mounts fourteen long eighteen-pounders, but the
carriages of the guns are in a bad state of repair, and the
embrasures are so low, that a single broadside of grape would
sweep off all who had the courage or temerity to defend it.