Colonial Secretary Guide - Flipbook - Page 11
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Dore immediately solicited appointment to the "confidential situation" of Secretary. Hunter agreed, with
some reluctance, and appointed Dore Secretary under his order of 22 June 1798. The new Secretary,
however, tampered with the despatch reporting his appointment in order to give a favourable account of
himself to the Secretary of State, and his subsequent behaviour was in keeping with this action. (4)
Thus for the first time, serious differences arose between the Governor and the Secretary. In this instance
trouble arose from Dore's perverseness and what Hunter called his "improper innovations" and his
determination "to be govern'd by his own views and interests in the line of his profession, and to follow,
or rather to establish, such rules as best suited those objects". Dore was a sick man, but certainly as
Hunter complained, those objects "ill-accorded with his situation here, either as an officer on public
service, paid by the Crown, or the confidential situation in which he stood with me". O)
Hunter had no authority to dismiss Dore as his only legal officer but he could dismiss him as Secretary,
and did so, on 23 January 1799. He thereafter again managed the affairs of the colony without a secretary.
Governor King, however, on taking office in September of the following year had had ample opportunity
to perceive his predecessor's difficulties: he immediately appointed to act as his Aide-de-Camp and
Secretary Neil McKellar, a subaltern and acting adjutant of the New South Wales Corps. (6)
McKellar seems to have brought some order back into the secretarial administration, but his other duties
called and in April 1801 he was succeeded by William Neate Chapman, another of King's Norfolk Island
officers, and a loyal family friend.
When Chapman went home on leave in March 1804 King was at a loss for someone to appoint, but with
Hunter's experience still in mind he was determined not to do without a secretary emphasizing that "it is
impossible for the official Duty being dispensed with". He described the duties of the Secretary thus:
"Secretary - Has the custody of all official papers and records belonging to the colony;
transcribes the public despatches; charged with making out all grants, leases, and other
public Colonial instruments; also the care of numerous indents or lists sent with convicts
of their terms of conviction, and every other official transaction relating to the colony and
Government; and is a situation of much responsibility and confidence." (7)
and further expanded on his own duties at the time:
"Governor - As chief magistrate of the colony and Commander-in-Chief, he has the
direction and the superintending control of every act and person - civil, military, settlers,
and convicts - under his government, in executing which, he has to attend to the duty of
every civil officer. His attention must be particularly directed to regulating and
controlling the occasional expences of the colony, investigating and deciding on appeals
in civil causes; and from the peculiar nature of this colony, a constant attention is
required of him to keep the prisoners in order, attend to wants of all descriptions, fixing
settlers, alloting lands, and the personal inspection of every species of public work going
forward in the colony, added to which, he has every responsibility and care attached to
him of the settlements at Norfolk Island, and now the addition of Lieut't-Governor
Collin's Government - all which, and his correspondence with the different departments
of Government, occasions the most arduous exertions of the mind." (8)
King therefore appointed Garnham Blaxcell, formerly acting purser in H.M.S. "Buffalo" and latterly, like
Chapman, a deputy commissary, acting Secretary in April 1804 and he remained in office until his
appointment lapsed with Governor Bligh's assumption of command in August 1806.
With King's departure from office a new precedent was set in the appointment of a secretary. For the first
time, a governor brought to the colony with him his own secretary and thus was able to make himself
independent of whatever local talent might become available for that duty. Bligh may well have blessed
the foresight that led him to bring Edmund Griffin with him as Secretary, as he was served faithfully in
very trying circumstances.