The history of Australia up to, and until the end of Bligh’s appointment, can be summed up in half a dozen sentences.  Phillip, during the term of his office, had repeatedly urged upon the home Government the necessity of sending out free men.  Convicts without such a leaven could not, in his opinion, successfully lay the foundation of the “greatest acquisition England has ever made.”  Time proved the correctness of his judgment.  The population of the colony, from something more than 1000 when he landed, had been increased at the close of King’s administration to about 7000 persons.  Half a dozen settlements had been formed at places within a few miles of Sydney; advantage had been taken of the discoveries of Bass and Flinders, and settlements made at Hobart and at Port Dalrymple; while an attempt (resulting in failure on this occasion and described later on) was made to colonize Port Phillip.  A good deal of country was under cultivation, and stock had greatly increased, so that in the seventeen years that had elapsed some progress had been made, but the state of society at Botany Bay had grown worse rather than better.  In the direction of reformation the experiment of turning felons into farmers was not a success.  Few free emigrants had arrived in the colony, and those who came out were by no means the best class of people.  Nobody worked more than they could help; drinking, gambling, and petty bickering occupied the leisure of most.  This was the state of affairs which Captain Bligh was sent to reform, and we have seen how his mission succeeded.

In the case of the mutiny of the Bounty, it is reasonably believed that the mutineers were, at any rate, partially incited to their crime by the seductions of Tahiti; in the case of the revolt in New South Wales, it is known that allegiance to constituted authority had no part in the character of Bligh’s subjects.  Therefore, notwithstanding that Bligh was the victim of two outbreaks against his rule, posterity, without the most indisputable evidence to the contrary, would have held him acquitted of the least responsibility for his misfortunes.  In the case of the Bounty mutiny the evidence of Bligh’s opponents that the captain of the Bounty was a tyrannical officer remains uncontradicted by any authority but that of the Bounty’s captain; in the case of the New South Wales revolt we can only judge of the probabilities, for the witnesses at the Johnston court-martial were of necessity upon one side.  But the court-martial, a tribunal not at all likely to err upon the side of mutineers, came to the same conclusion as we have, and, so far as we are aware, most other writers acquainted with the subject have been driven to:  that Bligh, to say the least of it, behaved with great indiscretion.