As they had no family to divide cares and
means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that
distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we
must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit
even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a
man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty
will permit."
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA.
"However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies...
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman."
--Richard II.
The more I saw of the subject of this sketch, over nearly all the
fifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the more
I explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where he
was without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable,
unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribed
line, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney,
he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by the
Governor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community,
a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon the
far southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney was
then the official and business centre.
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