imposed it; whereas the fact is that a superior officer is invested with a discretionary power of liberating as well as of arresting, and of requiring that the officer so liberated do return to the exercise of his duty as before; neither can an officer insist upon a trial unless a charge is preferred against him. It by no means follows that an officer conceiving himself to have been wrongfully put in arrest, or otherwise aggrieved is without remedy. A complaint is afterwards open to him, if preferred in a proper manner, for which provision is made by a special article of war."
The officers of the army had perhaps hoped that an arrest imposed by a naval governor would not have been upheld at the Horse Guards. As the order supported the Governor's authority, and as Macarthur was devoted to his project of rendering England independent of the European continent in procuring fine wool, he shook off his martial fetters, obtained permission to leave the army, and submitted his plans to the Privy Council. With regard to the sending home of Macarthur, Lord Hobart (24th Feb. 1803) iterated the blame thrown by the Commander-in-Chief upon the Governor for want of judgment.
"I very much lament that you should have formed the resolution of sending Captain Macarthur to this country for trial for an offence committed within your government, where alone all the necessary witnesses for the prosecution and defence could be found. It is too evident that the dissensions which have unhappily prevailed in the colony, to so great an extent as to materially impede and prejudice the public service, have been in a great measure occasioned by the irregular behaviour of some of the officers of the New South Wales Corps; but as every officer is, in his military character, amenable for his conduct to the control of his superior, and in like manner responsible in his civil capacity to the authority of the civil power, I must expect a due exertion of that authority on the part of those to whom it is entrusted for the maintenance of discipline and subordination in every description of persons in the settlement."
He enclosed a copy of the Military Order made in consequence of the transaction, and added—"You are now furnished with a rule which will preclude you from feeling any difficulty how to act."
Neither the Commander-in-Chief nor Lord Hobart waited for the arrival of Lieut. McKellar, the witness sent to England with Macarthur's sword, and to "answer questions" which might be put to him there.[1]
- ↑ Instructions from King to McKellar, 1st March 1802. Communication with England was so precarious, that while Macarthur travelled thither by way of Norfolk Island, Amboyna, and the Indian Ocean, McKellar sailed in an American vessel to New Bedford, whence he was "to lose no time in getting a safe conveyance to England." Governor Bligh writing in 1808 said of King's despatches, "the duplicate of them was transmitted by a Captain McKellar in a small vessel, but who has been lost."
