[CONVICTS] Police Establishment at Port Macquarie.

Despatch from the Right Honorable Lord Glenelg to His Excellency Sir George Gipps, stating that the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury do not disapprove of the increase of the Police Establishment at Port Macquarie, but suggest the apportionment of the expence [sic] between the Colonial and Convict Funds. No.3. Downing Street, 14th October, 1837 … [and] Enclosure to the foregoing. Treasury Chambers, 7th October, 1837. [London? : s.n., 1837]. Single sheet, 253 x 162 mm, letterpress on laid paper watermarked ‘J. & J. Town / Turkey Mill / 1832’, printed on both sides; very light creasing and toning, else fine.

This separately issued British government circular reproduces two items of correspondence pertaining to the funding of the proposed expansion of the penal establishment at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, in 1837.

The first is a copy of the despatch from Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, to Governor Gipps, dated 14 October 1837, informing him that the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury deem that any expenditure required for the expansion of the establishment should not be drawn from the Convict Services purse alone, but rather that the responsibility for such costs ought to be shared by the Colonial Government. The reasoning behind this stance is elucidated in the second item of correspondence, a copy of the communication sent to Lord Glenelg by A. Y. Spearman, on behalf of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, dated 7 October 1837. Spearman writes: ‘… my Lords are not disposed to object to the arrangements for the increase of the Police Establishment at Port Macquarie, reported in Depatch from the Governor of New South Wales, of 1st November 1836, so far as regards the number or rates of pay of the persons employed; but as he has averted to the great influx of free Settlers to the fertile country in the neighbourhood of that Penal Station, as forming one of the grounds for the increase, it appears to my Lords that the additional expense should not fall entirely on the funds applicable to Convict Services, but that a large proportion, if not the whole, of it should be defrayed by the Colony.’

The circular was published in The Sydney Herald, 15 August 1838.

Trove locates no copies.