He suggested that it might be well to send no more violent republican characters for some time, and partit^ularly thu priests, of whom we have now three, . . . With our present numhers I sec no grcmnd for alartn, and I shall do my utmost to preserve that peace and good order so necessary for the prosperity and even well-being of this colony/' Margaret would have derived no satisfaction from knowing how eonfuleiitly King looked upon the situation. He consoled himself in May l)y recording that a vessel had brought '*nouvelle que les Ensses out extennines la marine Anglaise."' This joy was again dashed by remarks in June that King proclaimed with "grande rejonissanee Union aveclrlaiide," and that in July, ** Semper idem Kingrevint de Parramatta/'^^ More consphaeies were formed in 1802, King subse- t|nently represented to Lord Hobart (9th May, 1808) the strain pot upon the local government by the continual in- fusion of Irish convicts.
- The list of fourteen men condemned lately to die was cansed by one
of those nn happy events that happen more or less on the importation of uauh cargo of Irish convicts. The exceaaea those people committed during the short time they were at large is an earnest oi what their conduct woitld be if not closely watched. Your Lordship will oljserve that only two were executed, and the rest pardoned. Theae wild schemes are generally renewed by this description as often as a ship from Ireland ari-ives, and when checked notoing more is heard about it till the next arrival. It is the people who arrive by the last ships who nmke similar attempts^ and not those who have been here any time/' The Governor's plans for enrolling volunteers were ap- proved in England: *' Continue (Jan. 1802) by every means within your power to encourage the Armed Associations, in which it is the indispensable duty and obviously the best security of every respectable inhabitant to enrol him- 8elf."«'^ " Margarot^ who was agent in Scotland for an English Rflvohilionary Society, wrote in his Sydney Journal : — '*At Pennycuick there are 174 men for a reform and four against it, viz., the parson, the precentor, the excise* nnin, and the schoolmaster.'"
- ^' King kept the mechanism of the Associations available, but did not
distract the §ettku3 by calling them from their avocations in a body. In Feb. 1803 a l*ublic Order declared that hia ** unbounded coutideuce in the loyalty and activity*' of the New South Wales Corpa prevented hia enrolling the Assoc iationa otherwise than by *' appiointing thsir officers,'*
Dec. I803» however, on the resumption of war in Europe, ** counting on
l/je zesd and loyalty of all His Majesty's subjects . . , aa well ub on i 4 A
