1 88 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



arrival in England, they were tried and acquitted. Macquarie 

 had later the humiliation of receiving through the Colonial 

 Office the following letter to Goulburn from the Home Office : 



" I am directed to request you that you will call Lord 

 Bathurst's serious attention to the public inconvenience which 

 attended these trials. To omit several points of minor import- 

 ance, it may be sufficient to particularise that it has been 

 necessary to set at large no less than thirteen convicts (some 

 of them of the worst description) who were sent to England as 

 witnesses, but were incompetent without a free pardon to give 

 evidence in this country. Lord Sidmouth l is well aware that 

 as Governor Macquarie is not invested with jurisdiction to try 

 any offences committed on the high seas, no prosecution 

 could in this case have been instituted in New South Wales. 

 But his Lordship recommends that the Governor should be 

 apprised of the serious inconvenience attending such a trial in 

 England, and should be enjoined, in the event (Lord Sidmouth 

 trusts the very improbable event) of the recurrence of so un- 

 fortunate a transaction as has led to the present inquiry, not to 

 send a case for trial in this kingdom unless he shall be strongly 

 impressed with the belief that the crime imputed to the accused 

 will be proved to the satisfaction of a jury by a body of evidence 

 worthy of credit." 2 



When Macquarie had sent the last papers concerning the 

 Chapman to England in 1817, he had written : 



" Altho' I cannot but despair of effectual justice being 

 rendered by the mode I have, under the advice of the Judge- 

 Advocate, been induced to adopt, yet I still hope that sufficient 

 may be effected at least to protect the persons of convicts in 

 future on their passage hither from the cruelties and violence 

 to which they have heretofore been, in a certain degree, exposed, 

 chiefly owing to the rude and boisterous description of men who 

 generally command merchant ships, and to the little care they 

 take to prevent their petty officers from exercising tyrannical 

 and unnecessary severities towards them." 3 



He little thought that the evidence which had been accepted 



1 Secretary of State for Home Affairs. 



8 Hobhouse to Goulburn, agth January, 1819. R.O., MS. 



8 D. 37, i2th December, 1817. R.O., MS. 



