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 many, were rarely derived from any other trade. Their prosperity was traced with startling uniformity: they sold their spirits to the settlers for produce, which they vended at the royal stores: they indulged them with credit, until hopelessly involved, when mortgages were executed, and foreclosed with a rapidity and precision which leaves modern conveyancing in the shade.[103] Individual powers of consumption were incredibly great: the expiree farmer, and his not more intemperate prisoner servant, broached the vessel, poured out its contents into buckets, and drank until they were insensible, or until, roused to frantic vigor, they were swift to shed blood. Such scenes were common.[104]