Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/564

was indignant. The entry must have been a forgery as regarded his presence.

The man supposed to have been thus punished by Marsden's order afterwards made an affidavit that he was never punished by him for any offence. Marsden subsequently ascertained that the record produced before the Council was a forgery, and in 1828 received certificates from the Colonial Secretary, and from the Parramatta Superintendent of Police, showing that no such entry existed in the official records. But before 1828 Brisbane had given place to another Governor.

The report drawn by Forbes had elicited an instruction from Lord Bathurst to reprimand Marsden privately. He sturdily appealed to Governor Darling for the fullest inquiry. He wrote to Huskisson (then Secretary of State) to demand it. He published (1828) a pamphlet, in which he vindicated himself.

In the colony the prime mover in the transactions by which inquiry into Douglass' conduct was stifled, was well known. A writer friendly to him stated (Sept. 1826) that it was in order to put an end to feuds that Forbes "thought fit not merely to suggest the propriety of passing such an act of indemnity . . . but also most readily to sign the requisite certificate."^[1] But the iron must have entered into the soul of William Wentworth when he saw the champion of his friends resort to foul weapons. He could not approve their use, but his newspaper endeavoured to throw the responsibility for their use upon the man who condemned them at the hazard of his post.

Bannister (the Australian^[2] said), when "called on to extricate the Government from embarrassment" . . . "cast upon the Council of the colony, and upon the Government, the odium of interfering with the administration of the law—the odium of staying prosecutions already commenced—the odium of resorting to that most desperate