ON THE HIGH SEAS. 183 



who had sent him notes of the evidence, and on this occasion 

 Field and Macquarie had been in agreement. 1 



Thus fortified in his opinion, Macquarie wrote to the Judge- 

 Advocate, so soon as he had received the reports, that he felt 

 himself compelled by his sense of public duty " to dissent en- 

 tirely from the opinion given by you and D'Arcy Wentworth, 

 Esq. . . . as to the degree of criminality of the parties concerned, 

 and of there not being sufficient grounds for committing them 

 for trial in England. ... I feel it my indispensable duty to 

 request you will as soon as practicable reassemble your Com- 

 mittee of Enquiry for the purpose of revising your own and 

 Mr. Wentworth's report. I must also request that the Hon. 

 Mr. Justice Field may be solicited to join the Committee and 

 give his legal opinion as to the course which ought to be adopted 

 in regard to the commander of the Chapman, the surgeon- 

 superintendent, the officer commanding the military guard, and 

 three mates of the Chapman, one of whom, Mr. Baxter, appears 

 to have been the most active and sanguinary in the long series 

 of cruelties and atrocities committed on board the Chapman'' 

 There followed a paragraph of which the unconscious and imper- 

 tinent patronage must have made Wylde's blood boil. " After 

 having revised your report," wrote the Governor to his chief 

 Law Officer, "and added thereto the Hon. Mr. Justice Field's 

 legal opinion, I request you will favour me as soon as possible 

 with the result, that I may adopt such measures as may then ap- 

 pear expedient on the occasion." 2 Thus Wylde was to learn 

 worldly wisdom from Mr. Campbell and law from Mr. Justice 

 Field. 



Field wisely declined to join the Committee. " I beg leave 

 to submit to your Excellency," he wrote, " that not having had 

 the benefit of hearing all the evidence and inspecting all the 

 documents before that Committee, it is too late for me to come 

 in as a member of the Committee, and give an opinion against 



1 Field was never friendly with the Governor, and by 1820 was scarcely on 

 speaking terms. The division between them was due to the emancipist policy pi 

 Macquarie, and especially to the fact that when Field opened his Court early 

 1817, Macquarie appointed Lord and Wentworth to sit on the Bench wit! urn 

 without telling him of the convict status of Lord and the all but convict status 

 Wentworth. See Field's Evidence, Appendix. Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. 



2 Macquarie to Wylde, I7th November, 1817. R.O., MS. 



