236 LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR GROSK Major Grose assumes A CHAirQE OF GOYEBNHEinr. pending the appointment ofPhlUip's successor. A military regime. On Pliillip'a departure the direction of alEairs passed into the hands of Major Grose, Commandant of the New South Wales Corps and Lieutenant-Governor of the colony.* The arrangement was a temporary one, rendered necessary by the circumstances which obliged Phillip to return to England before his successor had been appointed, but it lasted for two years — from the 11th December, 1792, to the 17th December, 1794. There is no reason to suppose that Grose wished to become Governor of the colony, or that his appointment to that office was contemplated by the Govern- ment. Nothing had occurred to bring about a change in the policy originally pursued, under which the control of the settlement was placed in the hands of a naval in pre- ference to a military officer, and it must have been well understood by Grose that the supreme power would rest in his hands for only a limited period. In these circum- stances it might have been expected that he would have administered affairs as nearly as possible on the lines laid down by his predecessor, in accordance with the Commis* sion and Instructions from which authority was derived. Instead of doing that, one of his first public acts was to introduce into the administration of civil affairs the forms and procedure peculiar to a military regime.f
- G-rose succeeded Major Eoss in the Lieutenant-G-ovemorship. Although
he did not leave England until the autumn of 1791, his Commission is daUd 2nd November, 1789. t " Major Grose was, after a time, succeeded as Lieutenant-Governor by Captain Paterson, and during the principal part of the period of the rule of these two officers — nearly three years — the government of the settlement was practically a military despotism, of which the officers of the New South Wales Corps were the administrators."— Bennett, History of Australian Discovery
