Page:Life and Adventures of William Buckley.djvu/182

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APPENDIX.
159

1787, (who moreover appointed him his Secretary,) which situation he filled with the greatest credit to himself, and advantage to the colony, until his return to England in 1797. The History of the settlement, which he soon after published, followed by a second volume—a Work abounding with information highly interesting—and written with the utmost simplicity, will be read and referred to as a book of authority, as long as the colony exists whose name it bears. The appointment of Judge-Advocate however proved eventually injurious to his interests. When absent, he had been passed over when it came to his turn to be put on full pay, nor was he permitted to return to England to reclaim his rank in the corps, neither could he ever obtain any effectual redress, but was afterwards compelled to come in as a junior Captain of the corps, though with his proper rank in the army. The difference this made in regard to his promotion was, that he died a Captain instead of a Colonel Commandant—his rank in the army being merely Brevet. He had then the mortification of finding, that after ten years of distinguished service in the infancy of a colony, and to the sacrifice of every real comfort, his only reward had been, the loss of many years' rank—a vital injury to any officer. A remark, which his wounded feelings wrung from him at the close of the second volume of his History of the settlement, appears to have awakened the sympathies of those in power, and he was almost immediately after its publication offered the government of the projected settlement of Van Diemen's Land