Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/219

 AND THE MILITARY. 115 Major Ross's eccentric conduct in these instances seems 1788 to have been the result of a peculiar temper rather than a studied display of insubordination. If he could not avoid coming into collision with the Governor, he was on no better terms with the Judge- Advocate or his own officers. On one occasion he made a formal complaint against Captain Collins, who, wrote Phillip, "in his turn, repre- quarrel with sented his having been treated in such a manner by the AdvJSie! Lieutenant-Governor and Captain Campbell, before con- victs and others, that he wished to resign his office.'^* The Major not only quarrelled with the adjutant and quarter- master, but placed a captain and four subalterns under arrest for no other reason than that they, as members of a Court- Memb€« of martial assembled to try a soldier for assault, had passed martiiu a sentence of such a nature as, in his opinion, tended arrest, greatly to the subversion of all military discipline. The idea of punishing the members of a Court-martial because their sentence did not meet with his approval is charac- teristic of the man. They were no more liable to punish- ment for such a cause than judges or magistrates would have been under similar circumstances. If any notice re- quired to be taken of their action at all, the proper remedy lay in an appeal to a General Court-martial, in order to have the sentence revised. But the Major evidently wanted some- thing more than revision ; he wished to bring his officers to trial in order to have them punished. In that matter he was disappointed, owing to a little difficulty which unex- pectedly presented itself at the last moment. It was as- sumed that a General Court-martial required thirteen mem- General bers to compose it, and as there were only nineteen officers maJtiai in the detachment, of whom five were then under arrest, *^ * and one was ill, it was not possible to get a General Court- martial together.t The result was that nothing could be mentions the difficulty connected with the holding of a General ODurt- martial ; p. 44. t Post, p. 294. This difficulty was afterwards obviated by sec. 20 of the Mutiny Act, 1805, which provided that any General Court-martial holden in Digitized by Google
 * Collins makes no allusion to these matters in his book, although he