A just estimate of Arthur's administration, must include all the peculiarities of his position, and the complicated interests he held in trust, whether they relate to the imperial government, the free, or the bond. The measures best for the colony were not always compatible with the design of its establishment. Nor must we forget that, in surveying the past we have lights which rarely attend the present; that much which experience may amend, it is not possible for wisdom to foresee. The primary object of the crown in colonising this island, was accepted by this governor as the chief aim of his policy. The settlement of free men he considered but subsidiary to the control and reform of the transported offender: their claims, their duties, and their political rights were, in his view, determined by their peculiar position. They were auxiliaries hired by royal bounties, to co-operate with the great machinery of punishment and reformation. As the representative of the crown, he stood off from the colonists in their sympathies and ultimate views. Employed not to build up a free community of Englishmen, but to hold in check the criminality of an empire, with him the settlement was an institution requisite to the effective execution of penal laws. Such he found it: such he desired to mould its growth, _and to prolong its destination_. Thus, except in the capacity of employers, he regretted the arrival of free men, and warned the ministers of the crown, that by their encouragement of emigration, they were destroying the value of bond labor, the dependence of the settlers, and the adaptation of the island for the purposes of a prison. Thus, in his official correspondence with colonists on subjects of a political nature, Arthur always avowed hostility to liberal ideas, and scoffed at their solicitude for the common rights of English people. While the opposition could avail, he resisted the liberty of the press, trial by jury, and open discussion of legislative measures. His remarks were often in a tone austere and reproving; nor did he think himself obliged to preserve that dignified complaisance which softens the differences of political life. The settlers were expected to stay at home, to keep their servants in custody, to denounce their infractions of penal rule, and as the "materials of prison discipline," (so they were denominated) to carry out a judicial sentence. They knew, before they came, they must sacrifice British rights, and with the political or social influence of transportation, beyond their own fences, they had no concern.