not been exchanged for the launch, more than half of those who did go with him would have been obliged to stay with me.  Forgetful for a moment of my own misfortunes, I cannot help being agitated at the bare thought of their narrow escape.

’Every body must, and I am sure that this Court will, allow that my case is a peculiarly hard one, inasmuch as the running away with the ship is a proof of the mutiny having been committed.  The innocent and the guilty are upon exactly the same footing—­had the former been confined by sickness, without a leg to stand on, or an arm to assist them in opposing the mutineers, they must have been put upon their trial, and instead of the captain being obliged to prove their guilt, it would have been incumbent upon them to have proved themselves innocent.  How can this be done but negatively?  If all who wished it could not accompany the captain, they were necessarily compelled to stay with Christian; and being with him, were dependent on him, subject to his orders, however disinclined to obey them, for force in such a state is paramount to every thing.  But when, on the contrary, instead of being in arms, or obeying any orders of the mutineers, I did every thing in my power to assist the captain, and those who went with him, and by all my actions (except in neglecting to do what, if I had done, must have endangered the lives of those who were so fortunate as to quit the ship) I showed myself faithful to the last moment of the captain’s stay, what is there to leave a doubt in the minds of impartial and dispassionate men of my being perfectly innocent?  Happy indeed should I have been if the master had stayed on board, which he probably would have done, if his reasons for wishing to do so had not been overheard by the man who was in the bread-room.

’Captain Bligh in his narrative acknowledges that he had left some friends on board the Bounty, and no part of my conduct could have induced him to believe that I ought not to be reckoned of the number.  Indeed from his attention to and very kind treatment of me personally, I should have been a monster of depravity to have betrayed him.  The idea alone is sufficient to disturb a mind where humanity and gratitude have, I hope, ever been noticed as its characteristic features; and yet Mr. Hallet has said that he saw me laugh at a time when, Heaven knows, the conflict in my own mind, independent of the captain’s situation, rendered such a want of decency impossible.  The charge in its nature is dreadful, but I boldly declare, notwithstanding an internal conviction of my innocence has enabled me to endure my sufferings for the last sixteen months, could I have laid to my heart so heavy an accusation, I should not have lived to defend myself from it.  And this brings to my recollection another part of Captain Bligh’s narrative, in which he says, “I was kept apart from every one, and all I could do was by speaking to them in