AND HIS WORK. 105 imprisonment^ moreover, meant loss of labour; and even if 178WW the letter of the law had left the members of the Court to the exercise of their own discretion in the choice of penalties the lash would necessarily, under such circumstances, have taken the place of imprisonment.* Nor the least noticeable feature in Phillip's character is the spirit of self-denial manifested by him throughout the trying times in which he ruled. Most, if not all, of those around him were loud in their complaints against the country; patient but he appears to have been so confident in its future that and »cif. the privations he had to undergo made little impression on him. Chief in the ranks of the discontented stood Major Boss, commanding oflScer of the marines and Lieutenant- Governor of the colony. It was apparently his ambition from the first to find every possible occasion for embarrassing Phillip in the discharge of his duties. Perhaps the Major's outbreaks may be accounted {or in some measure by his personal grievances, which were set out at length in a letter to Nepean, written from Sydney Cove in July, 1788.t It presents a curious contrast, in tone and temper, with the a oontnwt letters written by Phillip; for while the Major's abounds in petty complaints, the Governor's are absolutely silent with respect to everything in the shape of personal inconvenience. Yet it is certain that he had to bear his full share of the cruel privations which were endured by everyone in the settlement at that time; and whether he bore them patiently or not, there is nothing to show that he ever uttered a murmur on his own account. Whatever complaint he had to make was
- "On the 26th May, 1788, a soldier and a sailor were tried by the Crimi-
nal Ck>iirt of Judicature for assaulting and dangerously wounding James McNeal, a seaman. These people belonged to the Sirius, and were em- ployed on the island where the ship's company had their garden " — hencd called Garden Island — '*the seamen in cultivating the ground and the soldier in protecting them, for which purpose he had his firelock with him. They all lived together in a hut that was built for them, and on the evening preceding the assault had received their week's allowance of spirits, with which they intoxicated themselves and quarrelled. They were found guilty of the assault, and as pecuniary damages were out of the question, were each sentenced to receive five hundred lashes." — Collins, p. 30. t Post, p. 499. Digitized by Google
