Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/281

 daring and insulting manner, in direct opposition and open violence to my authority, in being one of those who seized the American schooner. &hellip; This Act is of too much importance (connected as it certainly was with the seditious and violent cabal headed by Mr. Justice Bent and some other disaffected persons then here) to the respectability of the Government, and stands in too prominent a point of view in regard to the future tranquillity of this Colony, to be passed over unpunished.

"At the distance at which your Lordship is placed, and the number of subjects which press on your consideration, I cannot but think that this matter has not met with that attention which its importance merited, as it regarded me or this Government in whatever hands it may be placed.

"My mind and time are exclusively bestowed here. I have no object but the upright fulfilment of my duty towards my Sovereign, and I am not without hope that your Lordship will approve of my acting according to what I consider my duty, although in this instance I am thereby deprived of the pleasure of paying that implicit obedience to your Lordship's commands which has at all times been my wish, and which but in this solitary case I have always had the satisfaction of doing.

"In regard to the grant of land promised to Mr. Moore, I have very good and strong reasons for declining to confirm it. Subsequent to his first mutinous conduct &hellip; he has set on foot a petition to the House of Commons. &hellip; I fully expected your Lordship would have sent me a list of the names of the persons who signed this false and slanderous petition, in order to enable me to prosecute them here for a libel, which I could easily have proved it to be. All those persons whom I knew had signed it I struck off the list of names for whom lands had been previously designed. Mr. Moore and his brother being the most culpable of all &hellip; their names were struck off the list as a matter of course."

He went on to state with perfect lucidity the whole duty as he understood it of a military governor.

"It would," he wrote, "be a very different line of conduct from that I have pursued from the period I had the honour to enter His Majesty's service, were I not to restrain and put