MacArthur was summoned to attend the Judge-Advocate’s office to “show cause.”  He refused to come, on the ground that the vessel was not his property, but now belonged to the Government.  One Francis Oakes, an ex-Tahitian missionary, who, having disagreed with his colleagues in the islands, had turned constable, was then given a warrant to bring MacArthur from his house at Parramatta to Sydney.  Oakes came back and reported that MacArthur refused to submit, and had threatened that if he (Oakes) came a second time he had better come well armed; and much more to the same purpose.  Accordingly certain well-armed civil officials [Sidenote:  1808] went back and executed the warrant, and MacArthur was brought before a bench of magistrates, over whom Atkins, the Judge-Advocate, presided, and was committed for trial.

Atkins did not know anything of law, but he had as legal adviser an attorney who had been transported, and whose character, Bligh himself said, was that of an untrustworthy, ignorant drunkard.

The court opened on January 25th, 1808.  It was formed from six officers of the New South Wales Corps, presided over by the Judge-Advocate, and the court-house was crowded with soldiers of the regiment, wearing their side arms.  The indictment charged MacArthur with the contravention of the governor’s express orders in detaining two stills; with the offence of inducing the crew of his vessel to leave her and come on shore, in direct violation of the regulations; and with seditious words and an intent to raise dissatisfaction and discontent in the colony by his speeches to the Crown officials and by a speech he had made in the court of inquiry over the seizure of the stills.  The speech complained of was to the following effect:—­

“It would therefore appear that a British subject in a British settlement, in which the British laws are established by the royal patent, has had his property wrested from him by a non-accredited individual, without any authority being produced or any other reason being assigned than that it was the governor’s order; it is therefore for you, gentlemen, to determine whether this be the tenure by which Englishmen hold their property in New South Wales.”

MacArthur objected in a letter to Bligh, written before the trial, to the Judge-Advocate presiding, on the ground that this official was really a prosecutor, and had animus against him.  Bligh overruled the objection, on the ground that the Criminal Court of the colony, by the terms of the King’s patent, could not be constituted without the Judge-Advocate.  MacArthur renewed his objection when the court met; Captain Kemp, one of the officers sitting as a member of the court, supported MacArthur’s view; and the Judge-Advocate was compelled to leave his seat as president.