Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/426

to the woods, he was to outlaw them and to shoot them." The orders were reluctantly obeyed. The settlers, according to Lieut. Kent, for the most part elected Hobart as their new abode, in order to remove as far as possible from Bligh. New Norfolk and Norfolk Plains still bear witness to the affection with which the exiles regarded the place from which they had been torn, and whose memory was revived in naming their new homes. The historian^[1] of Tasmania declared that "years after they spoke of the change with regret and sadness."

Dr. Harris predicted (Oct. 1807) that the state of dread created by Bligh could not last long. Bligh in the same month reported that the New South Wales Corps was a dangerous body:

"About seventy of the privates were originally convicts, and the whole are so very much engrafted with that order of persons as in many instances to have had a very evil tendency. . . . There is no remedy but by the change of military duty, a circumstance which can only prevent a fixed corps becoming a dangerous militia."

He roused their passions by his lawless treatment of Macarthur, who had once been a captain amongst them, and by threatening several of their officers.

Macarthur, after presenting an address to the retiring Governor, King, was equally prominent in presenting for the free inhabitants congratulations to the risen sun. Johnston, on the part of the military, and the Judge-Advocate for the civilians, presented addresses also. Bligh warmly responded. In a few days he assumed an attitude of hostility to Macarthur. The latter deposed that Governor King, on Bligh's assumption of office, retired for a brief period to the Government House at Parramatta; that Macarthur saw Bligh there, broached the subject of wool production, and asked him if he had been informed of the wishes of the English Government on the matter; that Bligh thereupon flew into a passion, said, "Are you to have such flocks of sheep and such herds of cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir! I have heard of your concerns, sir; you have got five thousand acres of land in the finest situation in the country, but, by God, you shan't keep it!" Macarthur said he had received it by order of