government was not severe enough to provoke an outbreak. Sir Joseph Banks,
writing to him, said:--

"There is only one part of your conduct as governor which I do not
think right; that is your frequent reprieves. I would have justice
in the case of those under your command who have already forfeited
their lives, and been once admitted to a commutation of
punishment, to be certain and inflexible, and no one case on
record where mere mercy, which is a deceiving sentiment, should be
permitted to move your mind from the inexorable decree of blind
justice. Circumstances may often make pardon necessary--I mean
those of suspected error in conviction; but mere whimpering
soft-heartedness never should be heard."

Dr. Lang published his _History of New South Wales_ in 1834; Judge Therry
wrote a book of personal reminiscences dating from 1829. Both these
writers describe things they knew, and relate stories told to them by men
who had come out in the first fleet. Therry and Lang were as opposite as
the poles: the first was an Irish barrister and a Roman Catholic; the
second was a Scotchman and a Presbyterian minister. The two men are
substantially in agreement in the pictures they draw of the colony's early
governors and of life as it was in New South Wales down to the twenties.

Lang and Therry both relate anecdotes of King. The stories do not present
him in a light to command respect; the official records rather confirm
than contradict the stories. Governing a penal colony seems to have had an
unhealthy influence upon the sailor governors; Phillip only escaped it.

King, Phillip's right hand, when a lieutenant, makes a voyage to England
in fashion heroic; he commands Norfolk Island at a critical time, when no