He adjudicated in petty sessions as a magistrate, and dealt in a summary manner with capital offences, which were very numerous.  To imprison a man who was already a prisoner for life was no punishment; the major’s powers were, therefore, limited to the cat and the gallows.  And as the first gallows had been built to carry only eight passengers, his daily death sentences were also limited to that number.  For twenty years torture was used to extort confession—­ even women were flogged if they refused to give evidence, and an order of the Governor was held to be equal to law.  Major Abbott died in 1832.

In 1835 the court consisted of the judge-advocate and two of the inhabitants selected by the Governor, Colonel Arthur, who came out in the year 1824, and had been for eleven years a terror to evil-doers.  His rule was as despotic as he could possibly make it.  If any officer appointed by the Home Government disagreed with his policy he suspended him from his office, and left him to seek redress from his friends in England—­a tedious process, which lasted for years.  Disagreeable common people he suspended also—­by the neck.  If a farmer, squatter, or merchant was insubordinate, he stopped his supply of convict labour, and cruelly left him to do his own work.  He brooked no discussion of his measures by any pestilent editor.  He filled all places of profit with his friends, relatives, and dependents.  Everything was referred to his royal will and pleasure.  His manners were stiff and formal, his tastes moral, his habits on Sundays religious, and his temper vindictive.  Next to the articles of war, the thirty-nine Articles claimed his obedience.  When his term of office was drawing to a close he went to church on a certain Sunday to receive the Lord’s Supper.  While studying his prayer book he observed that it was his duty if his brother had anything against him to seek a reconciliation before offering his gift.  The ex-Attorney-General, Gellibrand, was present, a brother Christian who had had many things against him for many years.  He had other enemies, some living and some dead, but they were absent.  To be reconciled to all of them was an impossibility.  He could not ask the minister to suspend the service while he went round Hobart Town looking for his enemies, and shaking hands with them.  But he did what was possible.  He rose from his knees, marched over to Gellibrand, and held out his hand.  Gellibrand was puzzled; he looked at the hand and could see nothing in it.  By way of explanation Colonel Arthur pointed out the passage in the prayer-book which had troubled his sensitive conscience.  Gellibrand read it, and then shook hands.  With a soul washed whiter than snow, the colonel approached the table.