Excerpt from Historical Records of Australia, 1788-1796, Vol. 1: Series I, Governors' Despatches to and From England The first series containing the despatches of the Governors will form the papers from which the backbone of history will be made. Until the introduction of responsible governments, the Governors being in charge of Crown colonies transmitted full and detailed reports on all matters of major or minor importance to the authorities in England. The early Governors all forwarded general despatches giving detailed reports on many subjects, but about the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century the practice was adopted of confining each despatch to a separate subject. Duplicates and triplicates of all public despatches were forwarded, and these were made in long-hand either by the Governor himself, by his secretary, or by a convict clerk. In the writing of these, many minor variations occurred in the text and even in the dates, and where these are of importance attention will be drawn to them. Many of the despatches were accompanied by enclosures. Prior to the administration of Governor King, a register of these enclosures was not kept; and when they were received, some of the enclosures were not filed with the despatches, and it is now impossible to tell in some cases which were the enclosures, for instance, Lord Grenville's despatch, dated 19th February, 1791, was accompanied by twenty-two enclosures, of which only seven can be defined. I have to acknowledge my great indebtedness to Professor G. Arnold Wood for reading my proofs and for many valuable suggestions made thereon, which have been incorporated. A series of notes is added at the conclusion of the text in each volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.