mination of bringing him to a Court-Martial upon the charges which you ultimately preferred against him. Admitting that it was matter of doubt whether Mr. Vale's appointment might not be considered so far a Military Commission of Chaplain to His Majesty's Forces as to bring him within the Provisions of the Mutiny Act, yet had you proceeded with that consideration which would have but befitted the occasion, and referred as it behove you to the Act under which you claimed the authority so to try him, you would have seen that Military Chaplains can only be brought to trial for the offences specified in the 4th and 5th Articles of the first Section of the Articles of War, and that those offences are either absence from duty, drunkenness, or scandalous and vicious behaviour derogatory from the sacred character with which a chaplain is invested. That Mr. Vale was guilty of any such offence cannot be pretended, it is not even imputed in the charges that there was any vice or turpitude reflecting on his moral character in the act which he had committed, and the decision of the court still further negatives any such supposition. The whole of your proceedings against him were consequently illegal, and it is therefore utterly out of my power to give them any sanction or approbation; and although I feel that Mr. Vale's conduct was in many points of view extremely reprehensible and should willingly have interfered with a view to its correction, yet I have now only to lament that you should in a moment of irritation have been betrayed into an act which at the same time as it exposes you personally to considerable risk, cannot fail to diminish your influence among the more respectable part of the community, who justly look upon the law as the only true foundation of authority."[1]
Macquarie's reply was a double-barrelled one. On the 24th November, 1817, he warmly defended the Court-Martial and refused to authorise the payment of Moore's salary, and on the 1st December, 1817, he tendered his resignation. He wrote: "Finding with deep regret that certain measures of mine, alluded to in your Lordship's Public Despatches bearing dates
- ↑ D. 86, 6th February, 1817. R.O., MS.
