authority'—I beg leave, with submission, to express my hope, that your Excellency on reconsideration will be satisfied that the tendency of my observations as to any influence goes no further than as to legal construction and principle—not upon the facts merely, but on the facts as involving legal distinctions, proceedings, etc., and in this sense I trust I may be free from any apprehension that your Excellency would think it unfit to be observed that your opinion ought to be influenced—not upon the facts abstractly considered—but 'by high legal authority' on legal considerations and points arising from these facts—and to which I myself thought it due, on a difference of opinion, to enter so at large into the grounds, as was the only motive that urged me at all to the remark in general excuse and explanation. I trust that no assurance on my part will be requisite to satisfy your Excellency that I could not have any intention of even in the least remarking upon that independence of judgment and conduct which so peculiarly belong to your Excellency's measures and Government."[1]
The Governor closed the correspondence in a conciliatory fashion, adopting all Wylde's proposals and expressing his feeling "that in such cases as the present, involving 'questions of a legal nature and construction,' it is peculiarly the province of the first Law Officer of this Government not merely to suggest but also to carry into effect the measures to be adopted for the ends of justice."[2]
All the papers bearing on the case, the witnesses, including ten soldiers and fourteen convicts, the three soldiers and the two officers, were sent to England early in December. They arrived in June, 1818. The surgeon at once applied to the Navy Board to be released from his arrest. The Board wrote to the Colonial Office supporting his petition and stating that they could not find that he had been to blame for what had happened. The matter was referred to the Home Office, who decided that the surgeon must remain under arrest until the case had been inquired into by the magistrates.
The inquiry was held and a prosecution instituted against the three soldiers. In January, 1819, six months after their
