Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/148

and consequently the farmers were at the mercy of the Governor's regulations. In 1810 the Government had given 3,630 weekly rations, and in 1819 the number had increased to 7,292, i.e., the Government which victualled 34 per cent. of the population in 1810, victualled 28 per cent. in 1819. In the latter year the ration consisted of seven pounds of meat and seven pounds of wheat a week, a slight increase in the ration of earlier years.^[1]

The Government did not go into the market and buy wheat at a competitive price, nor did it call for tenders. It simply fixed a price per bushel and opened the Government stores at certain times and allowed the settlers to bring in their wheat in the amount required. In 1813 the price fixed by Macquarie was eight shillings a bushel, which he considered would "repay the expense of labour and allow a reasonable profit".^[2] In 1814 he raised it to ten shillings per bushel. "The principal farmers," he wrote, "all acknowledge that ten shillings per bushel for wheat is a fair liberal price and that it allows them a handsome profit. Yet in scarce and unfavourable seasons these same persons will not sell their wheat to the Government under fifteen or sixteen shillings, and they have repeatedly^[3] even raised the price on Government to twenty shillings per bushel".^[4]

This puts the real ground of the farmer's complaint in a nutshell, and the Treasury suggested to Lord Bathurst in 1816 that the stores should be supplied by tender at a competitive price. The Deputy-Commissary in New South Wales had favoured this alteration, pointing out that the fixing of a low price in times of scarcity made it impossible to get all the grain required, while in years of plenty the Government paid too much.^[5] Macquarie, however, thought the fixed price necessary to afford protection to the poorer settlers,^[6] and gave no opportunity or temptation to the rich to buy up and engross the corn. On one occasion in 1814 "there was an artificial scarcity created

1. This was the ration for prisoners, and was less than the ration to Government officials and gentlemen-settlers.
2. D. 1, 28th June, 1813. R.O., MS.
3. This is a mere rhetorical flourish. It had happened twice only.
4. D. 40, 12th December, 1718. R.O., MS.
5. Enclosure. Treasury to C.O. R.O., MS.
6. D. 3, 31st March, 1817. R.O., MS. Macquarie suggested that the system of supplying by tender might be safely introduced by the end of 1818, but let the matter rest and made no such change when the time arrived.