250 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



mination of bringing him to a Court-Martial upon the charges 

 which you ultimately preferred against him. Admitting that 

 it was matter of doubt whether Mr. Vale's appointment might 

 not be considered so far a Military Commission of Chaplain 

 to His Majesty's Forces as to bring him within the Provisions 

 of the Mutiny Act, yet had you proceeded with that considera- 

 tion which would have but befitted the occasion, and referred 

 as it behove you to the Act under which you claimed the 

 authority so to try him, you would have seen that Military 

 Chaplains can only be brought to trial for the offences specified 

 in the 4th and 5th Articles of the first Section of the Articles 

 of War, and that those offences are either absence from duty, 

 drunkenness, or scandalous and vicious behaviour derogatory 

 from the sacred character with which a chaplain is invested. 

 That Mr. Vale was guilty of any such offence cannot be pre- 

 tended, it is not even imputed in the charges that there was 

 any vice or turpitude reflecting on his moral character in the 

 act which he had committed, and the decision of the court 

 still further negatives any such supposition. The whole of 

 your proceedings against him were consequently illegal, and 

 it is therefore utterly out of my power to give them any sanc- 

 tion or approbation; and although I feel that Mr. Vale's 

 conduct was in many points of view extremely reprehensible 

 and should willingly have interfered with a view to its cor- 

 rection, yet I have now only to lament that you should in a 

 moment of irritation have been betrayed into an act which at 

 the same time as it exposes you personally to considerable risk, 

 cannot fail to diminish your influence among the more respect- 

 able part of the community, who justly look upon the law as 

 the only true foundation of authority." l 



Macquarie's reply was a double-barrelled one. On the 24th 

 November, 1817, he warmly defended the Court-Martial and 

 refused to authorise the payment of Moore's salary, and on the 

 ist December, 1817, he tendered his resignation. He wrote: 

 " Finding with deep regret that certain measures of mine, al- 

 luded to in your Lordship's Public Despatches bearing dates 



1 D. 86, 6th February, 1817. R.O., MS. 



