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 resolute colleague of the equally resolute Prime Minister. He sent all documents bearing on the question, except the private letter which Grose refused to restore, and he sent them through Grose, hoping that the latter would not think his letters disrespectful. "I have no other motive for requesting you will bear this trouble, than that of stating my reasons for the line of conduct which I have pursued, and which has, unfortunately for me, met with your displeasure. He must have been confident in his own mind, for he assured the Secretary of State that if, in repressing mutiny, he had committed errors, they yet proceeded from an honest desire to forward the king's service, to protect the persons and property of every person under his charge, and "to make the soldier respected."

The Court of Inquiry in Sydney seemed to insinuate that the marine settler ought to have been flogged. King remarked that in the only books he possessed he could find no authority for sentencing a freeman to corporal punishment. Whether freed-men were entitled to benefit by the same "humane law" he knew not, but he was thoroughly convinced of the "policy and utility" of extending it, and had always extended it to them.

On reading King's justification Grose perceived that insolent assumptions on the part of the military, whom he had done so much to corrupt, would scarcely find favour in England. Accordingly he wrote to the Secretary of State that all that had happened had been "very fairly and exactly stated" by King. He added—

"As my letter to him was written at a time when the situation of the colony did not wear the most pleasing aspect, it may in some degree account for my having expressed myself in such severe terms to an officer of whom I have always had the highest opinion and for whom I should be exceedingly sorry if any unfavourable conclusions were drawn from anything I felt it my duty at that time to say."

Of this letter he sent a copy to King.

On the 10th June 1795 the Duke of Portland, who for a short time presided over the department, pronounced his