Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/167

 and returned to the south in H.M.S. Gorgon. At the Cape of Good Hope he took the risk of drawing bills on the Treasury to pay for live stock and supplies of which Sydney was in sore need. Having arrived in Sept. 1791, King, after earnest conferences with Phillip, returned to Norfolk Island on the 4th Nov.

Writing to Sir Evan Nepean on the 23rd Nov., he said he "found discord and strife in every person's countenance, and in every corner and hole of the island, which you may easily conceive would render this an exact emblem of the infernal regions.' "General murmuring and dis- content at Major Ross's conduct assailed me from every description of people."

On former occasions he had earnestly impressed upon the authorities the necessity to arrange for the due administration of justice on the island. He now reminded Nepean of the "great necessity there is for some regular and authorized mode of distributing justice." Sending prisoners for trial before the Criminal Court in Sydney entailed the removal (as witnesses) of some of the most useful people on the island. A Criminal Court on the island was needed, but capital sentences might be stayed until the Governor in Sydney had signified his approval. Law-books, such as the Judge-Advocate in Sydney was possessed of, were a prime necessity. King had no desire for arbitrary authority. On the contrary, in one of his earnest pleadings for a duly constituted Court, he wrote to Nepean: "As a civil Governor, I cannot approve of the martial law."

Ross, relieved from his post at Norfolk Island, returned to Sydney and embarked 13th Dec. in H.M.S. Gorgon with his detachment of marines, "those excepted (Phillip wrote) who have become settlers, or who remain for the service of the colony until the remainder of the New South Wales corps arrive."

In Feb. 1792 Grose arrived as Lt.-Governor and commandant of the new corps. It bears an ill name and frequently deserved censure. But the previous misconduct of the officers of the marines led, in great measure, to that of the new corps. Power corrupts all but the purest minds, and its abuses are written not alone in the acts of tyrants, but in those of mobs. The marines first, and