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Historical Records of New Zealand

Governor Macquarie to the Under-Secretary of State

Governor Macquarie to the Under-Secretary of State.

Sydney, N.S.W., 12th May, 1814.

Sir,—

1.

By the arrival of the ship Three Bees, with male convicts, on the 6th instant, and since closing my dispatch of the 30th ultimo, I have had the honor to receive your letters under dates 28th Septemr. and 13th November, 1813, the latter enclosing copy of a memorial from George Bruce, addressed to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

2.

I have perused the above-mentioned memorial, and in obedience to the commands of the Secretary of State, beg leave to submit for His Lordship’s information the following remarks thereon, namely: 1st, the assertion made by George Bruce in his memorial, in regard to my having advised him to go to England is totally unfounded, having gone thither entirely of his own accord. He was greatly involved in debt here, and to avoid paying them he entered himself as sailor on board His Majesty’s ship Porpoise, and returned to England in her in May, 1810. 2nd, George Bruce (who went by the name of Druse in this country) came originally a convict to this colony; deserted from the Government vessel Lady Nelson at New Zealand, where he remained, and afterwards married the daughter of the chief Tippahee. 3rd, I believe he went to Bengal in the manner he described, and practised gross impostures on that Government, representing himself as a prince of New Zealand, and as being a man of great consequence there, by which means he obtained considerable sums of money from the Bengal Government, and a passage back to this colony, where he arrived about the time of my assuming the government of it. 4th, it is not true that George Bruce, alias Druse, possesses any interest or authority in New Zealand, where he is, on the contrary, much despised and disliked, on account of his ill usage and neglect of his wife, the daughter of the chief Tippahee, by whom he had an only child (a girl), who is now supported in the Female Orphan School at Sydney, the poor unfortunate mother having died here some little time before her husband returned to England in the Porpoise, and by whom she was most shamefully and cruelly neglected in her last illness. 5th, to conclude these remarks, I must observe that George Bruce page 323 (whose character is perfectly well known in this country) is a man of no principle whatever, of desperate fortune, much given to drunkenness and every kind of dissapation, and of most profligate manners in all other respects.

3.

I therefore strongly recommend that George Bruce, alias Druse, may never be permitted to return to this country, nor to New Zealand, in which last, instead of doing any good, he would do a great deal of injury and mischief, both to the natives of that country and to such European traders as might chance to touch there.

I have, &c.,

L. Macquarie.