Among the prisoners were, Messrs. Muir, Palmer, Skirving, and Margarot,
four gentlemen lately convicted in Scotland of the crime of sedition,
considered as a public offence, and transported for the same to this
country.
We found also on board the _Surprise_ a Mr. James Thompson, late
surgeon of the _Atlantic_ transport, but who now came in quality of
assistant-surgeon to the settlement; and William Baker, formerly here a
sergeant in the marine detachment, but now appointed a superintendant of
convicts.
A guard of an ensign and twenty-one privates of the New South Wales corps
were on board the transport. Six of these people were deserters from
other regiments brought from the Savoy; one of them, Joseph Draper, we
understood had been tried for mutiny (of an aggravated kind) at Quebec.
This mode of recruiting the regiment must have proved as disgusting to
the officers as it was detrimental to the interests of the settlement. If
the corps was raised for the purpose of protecting the civil
establishment, and of bringing a counterpoise to the vices and crimes
which might naturally be expected to exist among the convicts, it ought
to have been carefully formed from the best characters; instead of which
we now found a mutineer (a wretch who could deliberate with others, and
consent himself to be the chosen instrument of the destruction of his
sovereign's son) sent among us, to remain for life, perhaps, as a check
upon sedition, now added to the catalogue of our other imported vices.
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