Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/466

martial was assembled at Chelsea to try a charge exhibited against Lt. Col. George Johnston for beginning, exciting, causing, and joining in a mutiny, and by military force imprisoning the Governor of New South Wales. General Keppel was President. Sir David Baird and thirteen others formed the Court. The Rt. Hon. Charles Manners Sutton was Judge-Advocate-General. The principal points of the evidence adduced have been already incorporated in these pages.

Johnston suffered from the loss of witnesses. Governor King, whose evidence as to his character would have been sought, had died in 1808. Col. Paterson and Mr. Jamison had died more recently.

Though the Court cannot be suspected of animosity against Johnston, there seemed to be a prevailing sentiment that some condemnation of the deposing of the King's vicegerent must be pronounced. Sir David Baird was pointed in inquiries which indicated that his mind was made up as to the heinousness of Johnston and his advisers. The Judge-Advocate intercepted many questions tending to Johnston's justification, and the decision of the court-martial at Portsmouth was excluded from sight. When Lt. Kent, called by Johnston as a witness, offered to hand in a copy of his own honourable acquittal, the Judge-Advocate interposed. He could not "see the object or the importance of this examination," and the Court acceded to his view. He strove to exclude evidence of Bligh's intemperate and coarse speeches, on the ground that it was irrelevant unless the occasions on which such speeches were used were so important "as necessarily to fix them upon the memory of the person who did make use of them."

When the constitution of the Criminal Court in Sydney was discussed, Johnston's advisers put in a question: "Has not the Judge-Advocate a voice in the Court?" This manifestly touched the propriety of Bligh's conduct in refusing to substitute for Atkins a man who was not an avowed enemy of Macarthur. Mr. Manners Sutton informed the Court that such a question could not be "received by them," and that he, as Judge-Advocate, was "precluded from answering it." Nevertheless he fre-