on Sunday! The fact turned out to be, when
investigated, that somebody had once seen the sails turning on a Sunday,
some time before Mr. Marsden had purchased the land on which the mill
stood. A real act of persecution affected him more seriously, as it was
the ruin of another person in whom he was interested. There was an old
regulation forbidding the hiring out of convicts who were assigned to
residents as domestic servants, but this had been virtually repealed by
another under Macquarie, permitting such hiring out on the owners
complying with certain rules. These had been duly attended to by Mr.
Marsden in the case of one James Ring, a plumber and glazier, who, as a
reward for good conduct, was allowed to go out to work in Paramatta for
his own profit. Being ill-used and beaten by another servant, he
summoned the man before the bench of magistrates, but these, who had been
put in when Mr. Marsden and his colleagues were dismissed, immediately
committed Ring to jail for being at large. His master went to demand his
release, showing that the rules had been observed, but the magistrates
replied by levying a fine of two-and-sixpence for every day that Ring had
been at work, and as Marsden did not offer to pay, they sent a convict
constable to his house to seize property to that amount, while poor Ring
himself was sent to work in irons with the penal gang; though at that
very moment one of the magistrates had a servant, a tailor, at work in
Mr. Marsden's house; and another person had two hired convicts of another
of these justices employed at his home. In fact, it was the only
sentence of the kind ever inflicted, yet Sir Thomas Brisbane was afraid
to interfere; whereupon Mr. Marsden caused his case to be tried before
the Supreme Court, and so completely proved it, that restitution of the
illegal fine was commanded, though the spirit of persecution was still
shown in the absurdly small sum of damages allotted to him. What was
worse was that he could not procure the release of Ring, for while he was
sending an appeal to England the unhappy man lost patience, ran away from
the gang where he was working in irons on the roads, and escaped to New
Zealand, but was never heard of more. Had he but borne with his misery a
little longer he would have been restored to his kind master, for a
commission came out which a second time resulted in the complete triumph
of Mr. Marsden, and the entire discomfiture of his persecutors.