Sutton and the Home Department. Sutton thus wrote to Under-Secretary King:—
'Friend King,—Thou being so busy, it is not likely I can see thee to-day. Have inclos'd a paper similar to that given to Evan Nepean, only it is more specific. I hope thou will give it a proper sanction, and it will obveate any future disapointments. And if it be agreable to let me have any terms to carry persons, or provisions live or dead, I believe I can do it as low and more beneficial to the colony than it has hitherto been done. I will call in two or three days for thy opinion.'
Nothing came of Sutton's proposal, which was that he should be given land-grants, free passages, tools, and all the rest of it, for a party of Quaker emigrants; but in February 1793, the Bellona arrived in the colony with five men who were given a grant of land near Parramatta, which was appropriately named Liberty Plains. These five men were the first batch of bona-fide emigrants—the advance guard of that great army of colonists who have made Australia what it is.
Previously to 1791—although Dampier saw whales in Australian waters—no one appears to have thought that a whale or seal fishery could be founded there. But Phillip in a despatch, written in November 1791 to Secretary Stephens, commented upon the great number of 'spermaceti whales' that had been observed upon the coast, which gave him reason to hope that a whale fishery might be established at some port in
