THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF AN AUTOCRAT. 253 



daring and insulting manner, in direct opposition and open 

 violence to my authority, in being one of those who seized the 

 American schooner. . . . This Act is of too much importance 

 (connected as it certainly was with the seditious and violent 

 cabal headed by Mr. Justice Bent and some other disaffected 

 persons then here) to the respectability of the Government, and 

 stands in too prominent a point of view in regard to the future 

 tranquillity of this Colony, to be passed over unpunished. 



" At the distance at which your Lordship is placed, and the 

 number of subjects which press on your consideration, I cannot 

 but think that this matter has not met with that attention which 

 its importance merited, as it regarded me or this Government 

 in whatever hands it may be placed. 



" My mind and time are exclusively bestowed here. I have 

 no object but the upright fulfilment of my duty towards my 

 Sovereign, and I am not without hope that your Lordship will 

 approve of my acting according to what I consider my duty, 

 although in this instance I am thereby deprived of the plea- 

 sure of paying that implicit obedience to your Lordship's 

 commands which has at all times been my wish, and which 

 but in this solitary case I have always had the satisfaction of 

 doing. 



' In regard to the grant of land promised to Mr. Moore, I 

 have very good and strong reasons for declining to confirm it. 

 Subsequent to his first mutinous conduct ... he has set on 

 foot a petition to the House of Commons. ... I fully expected 

 your Lordship would have sent me a list of the names of the 

 persons who signed this false and slanderous petition, in order 

 to enable me to prosecute them here for a libel, which I could 

 easily have proved it to be. All those persons whom I knew 

 had signed it I struck off the list of names for whom lands had 

 been previously designed. Mr. Moore and his brother being 

 the most culpable of all ... their names were struck off the 

 list as a matter of course." 



He went on to state with perfect lucidity the whole duty as 

 he understood it of a military governor. 



" It would," he wrote, "be a very different line of conduct 

 from that I have pursued from the period I had the honour to 

 enter His Majesty's service, were 1 not to restrain and put 



