THE DEPOSITION OF BLIGH. 35 



profit somehow. Probably they were right, for Macarthur was 

 not the man to hold power idly, and if he had ever suffered a 

 grievance would have used every weapon that came to his 

 hands to redress it. The officers themselves who had accepted 

 his interpretation of the law and acted in ignorant good faith 

 began to wonder if Macarthur, in seeking to form a new 

 Government, had not been furthering some schemes of his own. 

 But however much the settlers feared and distrusted 

 Macarthur, they had more to suffer under Foveaux. He and 

 Macarthur had long been on bad terms, and with his arrival 

 the Colonial Secretary fell into the background. The new 

 Lieutenant-Governor was a clever and vigorous man, and had 

 no need of the strengthening arm on which Johnston had 

 leant. But his administrative training had been gained in the 

 bad school of Norfolk Island, where harsh and rapid measures 

 had been adopted to govern a small isolated community of 

 convicts and soldiers, often on the verge of famine or insurrec- 

 tion. Foveaux could deal adequately with the commercial 

 and agricultural needs of the country, but in ruling men he 

 relied too much on the methods of sudden arrests and quick 

 and arbitrary punishments. When Paterson did at last reach 

 headquarters in January, 1809, Foveaux remained the real 

 though no longer the nominal chief. Paterson went up to 

 Paramatta and nursed his infirmities at the Governor's cottage 

 in peaceful retirement. The Government went on in his name, 

 and it was nominally under his orders that Macarthur and 

 Johnston sailed for England in the Admiral Gambler merchant 

 vessel in March, 1809. They went to lay their case against 

 Bligh before the Home Government, and in the same month 

 Bligh also set sail in His Majesty's Ship Porpoise of which 

 he held the command. At first he was to have been sent off 

 in the Admiral Gambier, but after long negotiations an agree- 

 ment was drawn up and signed by him and Paterson, and he 

 was allowed to set forth upon the journey on his own quarter- 

 deck. By the terms of the agreement Paterson was to allow 

 him the number of attendants and companions he desired, 

 while he was bound on his side to sail straight to England. 

 The terms were broken by both, and Bligh put in at Van 

 Diemen's Land, where he remained until the beginning of 1810. 



