, without dread of future Turnkey Lockits,
Thus, in an honest way, still pick your pockets.[100]

The connection between ardent spirits and the early disorders of our
penal colonies is patent at every stage of their progress. Then the
habits of the navy were intemperate; rum was considered the great parent
of valor. The founders of our colonies never entertained a suspicion
that society could exist without its aid. Thus the first fleet, in their
progress, touched at a port to take in a large supply, which proved of
the most deleterious kind:[101] every vessel was deeply laden with the
same commodity. The limitation of wholesale dealing to the officers, was
not to restrain its consumption, but to monopolise its profits. The
advantage of its distribution, as an incitement to labor, atoned for the
moral ravages it spread: for this reward alone, would the prisoners
yield their full strength; and when the taste, inflamed by indulgence,
drove them to crime, or laid them in the dust, their ruin suggested no
reflection beyond the general evils of intemperance. Had the light of
science illuminated the imperial authorities, they perhaps had provided
some check on this grand incentive to crime.

The deposition of Bligh was occasioned by this fatal appetite: whether
from sullenness, or conviction, he discouraged the vendors of rum, and
attempted to obstruct their living on the vices of the prisoners. The
landing of a still, and its seizure, was followed by a series of
altercations, which led to the military rebellion, and terminated his
government. This event roused the public attention for a moment, to the
state of the colony. In 1811-12 a committee of the House of Commons was
appointed "to enquire into the manner in which the sentence of
transportation had been executed, and the effects produced by that mode
of punishment." The result was remarkable: the committee advised that
more constitutional tribunals should be established, and distillation
allowed.[102] The ministers of the day feebly vindicated the royal
commission violated in the deposition of Bligh; and having once more set
in motion the machine of legal government by the appointment of
Macquarie, fell back into long slumber. Thenceforth, and for many years,
rum was a great agent in the working of government, and the source of
private opulence. The monopoly escaped official hands, but the expirees
succeeded to the profitable calling. The large fortunes accumulated by