grievous nature to the country at large…At present the agricultural and commercial pursuits of the territory are very much impeded and obstructed by the want of some adequately secured circulating medium. Under D’Arcy Wentworth, the Colonial Fund had a quasi-bank role, printing and issuing bank notes to people who had claims on the Fund. Wentworth had the Sydney Gazette print books of notes, labelled Police Fund, with four different Sterling values: two shillings and sixpence, five shillings, ten shillings and one pound. To protect against forgery, he had a Latin quotation from Cicero with a decorative border printed on the reverse side, and he signed each note. They circulated throughout the Colony, helping to overcome the shortage of small change. The idea of establishing a bank was raised in March 1810, but it wasn't until November 1816 that a meeting was held to discuss the proposal. In February 1817, the Bank of New South Wales was established; Macquarie gave it a Charter as a joint stock company, providing its directors with limited liability. The first directors were: D'Arcy Wentworth, John Harris, Robert Jenkins, Thomas Wylde, Alexander Riley, William Redfern and John Thomas Campbell. Campbell, Macquarie’s secretary, was elected the bank's first president; D’Arcy Wentworth was elected president in 1825. The new bank facilitated financial transactions and encouraged commerce; it helped bring to an end the Colony’s dependence on rum as money, and the need for dubious promissary notes. The bank received deposits from the Colonial Fund, previously held by Wentworth. Macquarie and the Emancipists In his third despatch to London, written on Easter Monday 1810, Macquarie reported on what he saw was the Colony’s most pressing problem: I was very much surprised and Concerned, on my Arrival here, at the extraordinary and illiberal Policy I found had been adopted by all the Persons who had preceded me in Office, respecting those Men who had been originally sent out to this Country as Convicts, but who, by long Habits of Industry and total Reformation of Manners, had not only become respectable, but by Many Degrees the most Useful Members of the Community. Those persons have never been Countenanced or received into Society. I have nevertheless, taken upon my self to adopt a new Line of Conduct, Conceiving that Emancipation, when united with Rectitude and long-tried good Conduct, should lead a Man back to that Rank in Society which he had forfeited,