Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/471

presence is essentially necessary, and to the laudable and beneficial pursuits in which the public good is as much concerned as my private advantage, with security to my person, and relieved from those molestatations to the possibility of which I am at present exposed, and which operate as a banishment from everything that is most valuable in life."

The worser English was more pleasing to Mr. Goulburn, who was directed by Lord Bathurst to say, that considering Macarthur's long exile from his family, his exertions to promote the agriculture and prosperity of the colony, and

"above all the assurances that his Lordship has received from various quarters that you are fully sensible of the impropriety of conduct which led to your departure from the colony, Lord Bathurst no longer objects to your return. His Lordship will therefore transmit the necessary instructions to the Governor not to offer any molestation to you on account of past transactions, nor to adopt with respect to you any measure other than your future conduct in the colony may appear to him to require."

The temptation was great. To the heart's core Macarthur had been longing to rejoin the devoted wife who, in his absence, tended his affairs, and wrote loving letters about the children from whom he was parted. But above all, Macarthur loved that honour without which, in his wife's presence, he would have hung his head in shame. The "kiss, long as his exile," for which he burned, would have scorched his lip if he had felt that it was obtained by the confession of wrong-doing in that act by which he believed in his heart he had done his part to prevent Bligh from wreaking on the worthier colonists the bad passions of the scoundrel who was as ready to take life from the living, as he had been by forgery to obtain false evidence of the will of the dead. His counsellor, Mr. Taylor, who played the part of Menenius, in this instance yielded to Macarthur's resolve, but did not trust further negotiations to his fiery principal.

Macarthur wrote to Taylor. Taylor told Mr. Goulburn that Macarthur, "in a very gentlemanly manner, has put it to me whether, for any consideration whatever, he can become a party to his own dishonour; and I really think more highly of him for not being disposed to compromise his honour, and catch at a most important object upon any terms, to which a man of relaxed principle is too ready to submit." Mr. Taylor suggested that, instead of recording a stigma on himself, Macarthur should merely state that he intended to "devote undivided attention" to the important