officers. The house of Campbell and Co. "pleaded
untruths" to the Governor-General in India. The statements of their partner in Sydney proved that they had
done so. "This conduet," King wrote (14th Aug. 1804),
"ill accords with the duty a merchant enjoying the protection of a government owes to the local regulations for
ensuring the prosperity of the society he lives in, and by whom he lives."
The Governor-General in India, on receiving King's complaints, ordered the re-landing of certain spirits from a vessel in which they had been placed for exportation to Sydney on false representations. In Aug. 1804 King thanked him for the attention thus paid to his remonstrances. In reporting all the facts to Lord Hobart (14th Aug. 1804), King said: "I have no view to injure Mr. Campbell, who I believe in every other circumstance has acted with a becoming propriety, and is deserving of every other encouragement except forcing spirits on the colony."
The devices of importers were numerous. A small vessel, the Fair American, was consigned to Campbell and Co. under American colours, on the pretext of importing cattle, of which "two arrived, but a considerable object was
favour of officers of the New South Wales Corps still subsisted" under King; that King dispensed "with liberality and profusion to emancipated convicts, licenses to sell rum;" and that a "general dissolution of morals and a general relaxation of penal discipline were the result of a state of things so outrageously preposterous." It is difficult to imagine whence statements so utterly untrue could have been derived, or on what plea they were concocted. The "General Orders" published in Sydney gave ample proof of the truth, and on other points Lang often quoted them. Other writers have followed Lang's errors. His unfounded statement that Bligh was "enjoined" to break up the monstrous system" by which officers, civil and military, trafficked in spirits, probably deceived some writers; the fact being that though the Royal instructions to Bligh were in their general terms similar to those communicated to the officers by King (as explained in the text), the special statement that "officers had entered into the most unwarrantable traffic" was omitted from the instructions to Bligh, as published by Lang himself. Even the general instructions might mislead the careless, or those who, not knowing of the previous more pointed instructions to King, imagined that any new duty was imposed on Bligh in the matter, and were ignorant that the reproach against the officers was withdrawn from the Royal instructions to Bligh because the evil complained of had been removed by Bligh's predecessor.
