Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/306

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JOSEPH HOLT. HIS MEMOIRS.


property to the amount of £2000 and returned to Ireland, but was dissatisfied with the treatment he encountered there, and was said to have bitterly repented having left New South Wales. He left Memoirs, which were edited and published in London in 1838 by Mr. T. C. Croker. They are curious, but not trustworthy, and have misled several writers.[1]

When Holt's papers were ordered to be seized he concealed or destroyed many of them, and some were torn into shreds when found. They contained proof that Margarot was in constant communication with one Brady, and the magistrate (who ordered the search at daylight) reported that "Holt appeared to be aware that Brady's letters were particularly sought after." A careful perusal of the whole case leads to the inference that though Holt's vanity made him proud of the importance ascribed to his name, he may have been guiltless as to the insurrection.

At this time there was no interference with Margarot, who, like his fellow-martyrs, lived at his ease. Later in the year, however, King received a confession from one Maum, an Irish prisoner then in durance at the Hunter river. He said that the French officers of the Naturaliste had sounded him, that he had supplied them in Latin with all information about the settlements, that they contemplated in case of a rupture the capture of Sydney by Napoleon's order, the enlistment of all the prisoners in the French service, and the giving of rank to such men as Maum himself. They "said there must be some knowing ones here, and particularly mentioned Governor King, who prevented[2] the

  1. ↑ Two usually accurate writers have been deceived by Holt's account of the Irish rising in 1804. He stated that Laycock (not the trooper) rode up with Major Johnston to the rebel leaders, that Laycock with one blow killed Cunningham on the spot, and that Cunningham's dead body was brought in afterwards and hung up as an example. The official report in the text shows how widely Holt's statement wanders from the truth. He said he had his report from one of the insurgents.
  2. ↑ The treatment of Sir H. B. Hayes was the cause of this statement; vide a General Order of the Governor's (17th May 1803) in these words: "Henry Brown Hayes, a convict, having some time past applied to His Excellency the Governor for permission to hold a Freemasons' Lodge, preside thereat, and initiate new members, which permission His Excellency judged proper to forbid officially notwithstanding which it appears from the magistrates' proceedings of yesterday that he, Henry Brown Hayes, in contempt of that injunction, was found with
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