will be rendered more comfortable ; and even now, all things Considered, thank God I have no reason to complain. Koyal instructions directed Phillip to ** enforce a due observance of religion** and to "take such steps for the due celebration of public worship as circumstances will permit." When he sent King to command at Norfolk Island he directed liim ** to cause the prayers of the Church of England to be read with all due solemnity every Sunday/' and one ought not lifJihtly to give credit to aspersions against a man so dutiful and iiprirrht as Phillip- Johnson was acquainted with Wilberforce and was the close friend of the lie v. John Newton, some admirahle letters from whom (to Johnson) are printed in the
- Historical Eecords of New South Wales, Part IL In one
of them he expresses a hope that Phillip's successor will treat Johnson better than Phillip had treated him. Though Phillip had a reputation for humanity, the law was a terror to evil-doers. Executions of robbers of the public stores have been mentioned. In Nov. 1789 a, woman died on the scaffold for breaking into the hut of al convict by day and stealing ai:)parGh It was not to be wondered at that the prisoners strove to flee from their place of exile. In Sept. 1790 five of them escaped under the guidance of John Tarwood. They took a small boat or punt from Parramatta, and Collins says (page 186) that *' they no doubt pushed dii^ectly out upon that ocean which, from the wretched state of the boat wherein they trusted themselves, must have proved their grave." ^^ Bryant, a native of the west of England, bred a fisher- man, and employed by PhilHp aa Government fisherman, was more successful in 1791. His peculations of fish having been detected he was strictly watched, but still '* The compiler of history here finds an inatanee of the difliculty relyitiig on an isolated passage in gatheriiiK his facta, for in a later part of Coiliiis' work (p. 245) we are told that H.M.S. Providence^ in I7U5, boiinctl from the coast of Brazil and driven northward in her voi^age to Hyduey* toolrf shelter at Port Stephens^ and there ** found ami received on board foiii* white people (if four miserable, naked, dirty, and Binoke-dried men could be ealled white), runaways from thia settlement/' They told a mel- ancholy tale of their aufleringa, but *' spoke in high terms of the pacific disposition and gentle manners of the natives/' They were the men whose entombment in the ocean Collins had previously noticed s* wv- doabted.
