Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/445

the control of Crossley, instigating a Governor to summon the members of a Court before him for treason. On the whole it may be pronounced that—considering the elements of the population, and the manifest danger of destroying the constituted authorities, Johnston acted wisely and loyally when he left his bed to put down, in the person of Bligh, a form of disorder as deadly as the anarchy which, four years before, he had been instrumental in quelling in the field.

While the general facts are freshly in the memory it is right to refer to evidence regarding them in England when Johnston was tried by court-martial. Bligh's counsel argued that there would have been no mutiny if Johnston had not led the soldiers to it. Johnston averred that, even if by abetting Bligh he could for a moment have averted it, the soldiery, "identified as they were with the people, would before the night was past have joined with them," or have refused to act against them, and deplorable excesses would have supervened. Macarthur himself, Grimes, Dr. Harris, Captain Kemp, Lieut. Minchin, and two sergeants of the corps, deposed that the arrest of the six officers would have made soldiers and inhabitants unite and put in peril the life of the Governor. Sergeant Sutherland was tartly cross-examined by a member of the Court, in order to shake his assertion that if the officers had been confined "the soldiers would have raised and taken them out." "You think they would have gone contrary to orders?—Yes, I think they would. Do you understand the question perfectly, sergeant?—Yes, I do; I understand, sir, that we would not see our officers imprisoned." Sutherland required courage, for some members of the Court displayed antipathy to Johnston, and its terrors were so great that the turbulent Sergeant Whittle, after so many accidents by flood and field "fainted away" under cross-examination, "and was taken out of Court."^[1]