confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated
indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of
his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the
pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and
those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person
contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law,
are become fashionable and familiar--adultery, fornication, theft,
drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind,
the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have
boldly thrown off the mask, and stalk through the colony in the
open face of the sun, so that it is no uncommon thing to hear a
person say, 'When I was a Christian, I thought so and so.'"

This is strong, but it is true.

This letter was addressed to the directors of the London Missionary
Society, and many of similar purport written by Johnson and Marsden, the
chaplains of the settlement, are to be found in the records. All these
writers agree on one point: the colony had fallen from grace under the
military administration. Phillip had left it in good order, and Hunter at
the time, these witnesses testified, was doing his best to improve
matters.

Lang (not a reliable authority in many things, but to be believed when
not expressing opinions), in his _History of New South Wales_, tells an
anecdote of Hunter which is worth retelling. Captain Hunter was on one
occasion the subject of an anonymous letter addressed by some disreputable
colonist to the Duke of Portland, then Home Secretary. (There was no
Colonial Secretary in those days.) The Duke sent back the letter without
comment to Hunter, who one day handed it to an officer who was dining with