Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/311

AND HIS STAFF. 201 of a sudden panic which had seized the Major. The wreck 1791 of the Sirius no doubt placed the people on the island in a difficult position ; their numbers had been largely increased by the new arrivals, while the imminent loss of the stores Rewons for and provisions on board threatened them with starvation ; it their lives at any rate would depend on rigid economy in the distribution of food. In this emergency, it occurred to the Major that, as there was no Court in the island empowered to inflict the penalty of death for stealing provisions, many men might be tempted to take advantage of the fact, and the public safety might be thereby endangered. The only Death for remedy he could think of was to substitute military law proviaions. for the civil, which practically meant taking the power of life and death into his own hands. Hunter and King, accepting him as an authority on the subject, allowed them- selves to be persuaded that this was the proper thing to be done under the circumstances. The arguments by which he justified his course of action were recorded in Eling's journal at the time : — At ten in the morning of the next day, Lieutenant-Governor Meeting of Boss, Captain Hunter, all the commissioned officers of marines and of the Sirius, and myself, assembled in the Government House, when the Lieutenant-Governor laid the situation of the island before the meeting, and pointed out the necessity of a law being made by which criminals might be punished with death for capi- tal crimes, there being no law in force on the island that could notice capital offences : he also proposed the establishment of rosb's martial law until further orders, which was unanimously agreed ^ ^^' to ; and that in all cases where sentence of death was pronounced, five persons out of seven should concur in opinion. This proceeding is one of many illustrations met with in Propensity our early history of the marked propensity shown by military miiitanr to men for setting aside the magistrate, and assuming arbitrary ciii power, power at a moment's notice. There was no precedent for the act ; nor was there any authority for it ; still less was there any justification. The only justification recognised by English law is necessity ; but that means a necessity demon- Digitized by Google