Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/419

New South Wales Corps out of the sale of spirits, and it is therefore necessary to describe accurately the moving causes of his deposition, although his short career affords in other respects little which deserves to be chronicled. It is fortunate that time has spared authentic materials for forming a judgment.

The generation of pioneers, whether governors or colonists, has almost passed away, but as yet there are ample means to test the various records of the times. Pilgrim fathers stand in an exceptional position. The world feels curiosity about them, and accords to their lives an interest which it refuses to the mixed crowd of which a long-established community is composed. A prudent man in Bligh's place would have circumspectly carried out the laws which, under King, had brought order out of confusion; and when he found they required alteration would have devised new methods, not in haste, but at leisure. Bligh was neither prudent nor circumspect. He was arrogant and coarse in speech, savage in use or abuse of power. Of governors, as of Juvenal's Romans, it may be said, Lingua mali pars pessima servi; and the tongue of Bligh was an ill servant even to himself.

He was deposed on the 26th Jan. 1808. But long before that time his doings disgusted the community. After the fact, there was much contradiction as to its cause. Bligh's friends asserted that those who said he was unpopular before he imprisoned Macarthur in 1808 were false witnesses. Among the letters preserved in the family descended from Governor King are some which prove beyond all cavil that, whether justifiably or not, Bligh had earned an ill report long before his collision with Macarthur.

On the 25th Oct. 1807, Dr. Harris wrote to King as "Dear Governor." Bligh's tyranny had become notorious.

"Going to church in full uniform, he conjectured that the soldiers laughed at him. . . . He abused the soldiers in the church, and had a whole bench of them confined for some days, but thought proper to liberate them without trial. He has executed more men by three in his short time than you did the whole time you were with us, nor has he ever given a reprieve except to a man who was condemned the day his friend Gore was acquitted. . . . His friends and directors at Sydney are Campbell, Palmer, Luttrell, Gore, Divine, and Crossley—the last not least."