service, and adding to the already almost overwhelming anxieties of the Governor. The matter was adjusted for the time by the officers taking Phillip's view of their position, but Ross did all he could to prejudice them against Phillip by stigmatising his conduct as unfair, saying that he 'thought it hard officers should be obliged to sit as members of the Criminal Court, and oppressive to the highest degree.'
'The consequences,' writes Phillip, 'which must have followed had the officers in general been of that opinion will be obvious to your Lordship; but as no legal inquiry could be made respecting the conduct of the officer to whom, as the Lieutenant-Governor and commandant of the detachment, I was naturally to look for support, and from whom the situation of this colony at the time call'd for an address of a very different nature, I did not think it proper to direct any more officers to be sent for on that subject,'—namely, that of learning their separate opinions on the point at issue.
What Ross thought of the colony and its future prospects, and what manner of man he was, is disclosed under his own hand. In a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty, written only six months after landing, he has much to complain of and much to condemn.
In another letter to Under-Secretary Nepean, he says:—
