188 FrUNTER',S EFF0RT8. CIVIL LAW RESTORElh ms firm. On one occasion, Oct. 1795, he ordered that Fnone of the military and others who had huts near the stream of water which supplied Sydney sbould presume to open the protecting palings and make paths which con- ducted filth into the sir earn. The penalty of the breach of the order was the pulHng down of the offender's house- Little or no attention was paid, and in Jan. 1796 Hunter '* declared in public orders io every description of persons, that when an order was given by him it was given to be obeyed;** He would have been believed had he made an example without talking about it. He allied himself as closely as he could to the military power by making Captain Johnston of the New Soutli Wales Corps his aide-de-camp. He endeavoured to clieck drunkenness by issuing "to deserving persons" licenses to sell spirits, and BO to limit the trattic. He failed, and "robberies now appeared to be committed more frequently than formerly." He then forbade the bartering by these licensed persons of spirits for grain. With the power that he possessed of withdrawing convict servants from settlers and from officersj he might perhaps have restored decency; but though he threatened to withdraw assistance from ofl'enders, he threatened in vain, and when he acted his acts produced no general results. To promulgate his orders more efi'ec- tively, he brought into use a small printing-press which Phillip had imported, but which had been idle until Hunter assumed the government. The immorahties of the time, if they had failed to shock the community as a whole duruig the rule of Grose and Paterson, had nevertheless aroused the consciences of many. A contemporary account relates that on the first Sunday after Hunter's arrival the Eev. Mr* Johnson in his sermon at Sydney boldly denounced the sbameless proceedings of the military government under Grose and Paterson, and congratulated the colony on the restoration of civil law, whicb Hunter was commanded to re-establish. Hunter revived the civil law on his arrival in Sydney. At Parra- matta he retained for a time as military commandant John Macartluxr (who became a captain in 1795). When David Collins (Judge-Advocate) left the colony, JJic])ard Atkins, i)revi0UBly an officer in the army, was
