Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/272

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246
BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN

you vest your property in when you leave the country.

'When the cows were lost, they were five in number; three were the property of the Crown, and two were mine. The bull and heifer belonged to the Crown also.'

And in a subsequent letter, he says:—

'You will not forget that before you left England I gave you a full power to take possession of, and dispose of, as your property, my claim on and share in the cattle running wild in the woods, and two cows belonging to me, having strayed with the cows belonging to the Crown.'

Long after he left the colony he was being continually quoted by his successors as an example of a 'good Governor.' Hunter, on his arrival in 1795, for instance, wrote thus:—

'Had the original regulations of Governor Phillip, as they stood when I left the colony in 1791, remained, with such alterations or amendments as the various existing circumstances might have rendered necessary, I should have known at once what I had to do; but to find upon my arrival in 1795 that the whole had been abolished as soon as he departed, I own, surprised me. There surely were some good rules amongst those he had established; and I can venture to say from my own knowledge that there was order and discipline in the colony then, and not near so many robberies. But by this rather too sudden and indeli-