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and address, determining to procure signatures as they best could. Macquarie seemed "a good deal incensed with Gore, and told him that on such an occasion he ought to act impartially."^[1] It was arranged that the meeting should be resumed at three o'clock. The minority preferred to procure signatures privately rather than risk public defeat. The majority carried their amendment unanimously; resolving to support Macquarie's labours for harmony, and that their resolutions should be signed by the chairman, and published in the Sydney Gazette. Gore had endeavoured to vacate the chair, but was over-ruled, and eventually signed the resolutions of the majority under the same pressure. His evidence at first implied that Bligh's friends were in a majority and carried their resolutions, but when asked by a member of the court if they carried them fairly and honestly at the time," he admitted that when he was putting the question "there was a tumult at the time between the opposite party and those who made the requisition; but the party who made the requisition declared themselves satisfied with the number of signatures they had obtained, and went away." Captain Kemp swore that he was there, "taking no part," as was Lieut. Lawson, another member of the Criminal Court, whom Bligh had charged with treasonable practice. In his opinion "there was a majority against the address to Bligh—no doubt of it." Bligh's friends did not oppose the resolutions of the majority, and Gore waited on Macquarie to know whether he would allow them to appear as desired in the Gazette. "He read them over and said, 'Certainly;' but I was afterwards sent for and told by him that upon reconsidering the last resolutions and the original address, as signed by the persons who made the requisition to me, he thought it would be partial and unfair to publish one and not the other; therefore he directed that none of them should be published, and neither of them were."

The fate of the Sydney meeting was so significant, that the intended meeting at the Hawkesbury was abandoned, and Bligh reproached Gore for not managing better. Yet