the disreputable agents he sometimes employed in his service made the position of the officers extremely anxious, if not insecure.  Bligh had become popular with the expired settlers, who reckoned a long arrear of vengeance to their military taskmasters, and who, with the law on their side or encouragement from the governor, might have been expected to show no mercy.  Had Bligh escaped to the interior, the personal safety of the officers might have been imperilled.  The settlers, led on by the undoubted representative of the Crown, would have been able to justify any step necessary for the recovery of his authority, and at whatever sacrifice of life.”

The court-martial on Johnston was held at Chelsea Hospital, and lasted from May 11th till June 5th, 1811.  Bligh complained that many of his papers had been stolen, and the want of these was detrimental to his case.  Johnston, in the course of his defence, said:—­

“My justification of my conduct depends upon my having proved to the satisfaction of this honourable court that such was the state of the public mind on the 26th of January, 1808, that no alternative was left for me but to pursue the measures I did or to have witnessed an insurrection and massacre in the colony, attended with the certain destruction of the governor himself.  In doing this, I have endeavoured to show not only the fact of Captain Bligh’s general unpopularity, and the readiness of the people to rise against him, and the probability that they would be joined by the soldiery, but also the causes of that unpopularity, founded on the general conduct of the governor.”

The court came to the following decision:—­

“The court having duly and maturely weighed and considered the whole of the evidence adduced on the prosecution, as well as what has been offered in defence, are of opinion that Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston is guilty of the act of mutiny as described in the charge, and do therefore sentence him to be cashiered”;

and approval of the sentence is thus recorded:—­

“His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty, was pleased, under all the circumstances of the case, to acquiesce in the sentence of the court.  The court, in passing a sentence so inadequate to the enormity of the crime of which the prisoner has been found guilty, have apparently been actuated by a consideration of the novel and extraordinary circumstances which, by the evidence on the face of the proceedings, may have appeared to them to have existed during the administration of Governor Bligh, both as affecting the tranquillity of the colony and calling for some immediate decision.  But although the Prince Regent admits the principle under which the court have allowed the consideration to act in mitigation of the punishment which the crime of [Sidenote:  1811] mutiny would otherwise have suggested, yet no circumstances whatever