till after this business was settled, for if it had, I should not have been induced to have withdrawn the order.' So pointed a menace, he adds, could not tend to the good of the service or the preservation of peace in general. Some idea of the unpleasant condition of affairs is shown by another extract from the same letter.
'Officers have been put under arrest by their commandant, and courts-martial have been demanded, and which have likewise been requested by the officers in defence of their conduct, but no inquiry into the conduct of any individual above the rank of a non-commissioned officer can take place, and the consequences will be obvious to your Lordship where so little harmony prevails between the commandant and his officers. The strength of the detachment consists of only eighteen officers, one of whom is on duty at Norfolk Island, and a second has never done any duty since he was appointed by Major Ross; of the sixteen remaining for the duty of this settlement, five have been 'put under arrest by the commandant, and are only doing duty till a general court-martial can be assembled, in consequence of a sentence passed by them at a battalion court-martial sixth officer is suspended in consequence of a representation made by the corps of his unofficerlike behaviour; a seventh is suspended by his commandant for unofficerlike behaviour in taking a soldier who had been abused by a convict to make his complaint to the magistrates
