useful to the commanders of any ships
which the governor might have occasion to send into those seas on the
service of the colony.

The governor, convinced that an example was necessary to check the
present practice of villainy, had ordered James McCarthy, the prisoner
under sentence of death for forgery, to be executed on Saturday the 14th
of this present month; but yielded to the request of Mr. Johnson (the
clergyman who attended the prisoner) to spare his life, it appearing
evidently on the trial, that, guilty though he certainly was, he had in
the present instance been rather the victim of the vice of others, than
of his own. He was accordingly pardoned, on condition of his serving for
seven years at hard labour at Norfolk Island.

About this time the _Marquis Cornwallis_ and _Experiment_ sailed for
India. Previous to their departure, Mr. Hogan, the commander of the
former, had requested an examination might be taken as to the
circumstances of his conduct toward the convicts and others on board his
ship during their passage from Ireland to this country. The examination
upon oath was made by the judge-advocate, assisted by two other
magistrates, to whom it appeared, that Mr. Hogan, but for the fortunate
and timely discovery of it, would with his ship have fallen a sacrifice
to as daring and alarming a conspiracy as, perhaps, ever had been entered
into by a set of desperate wretches on board of any ship; and that
nothing was left for him, to save himself from the danger of a similar
circumstance occurring during the voyage, but to inflict immediate
punishment, on the persons who were concerned in it.

A civil court was assembled nearly about the same time, to try an
assault, the action for which was brought by Mr. Matthew Austin (a
gentleman who came out in the _Marquis Cornwallis_, as a superintending
surgeon of the convicts in that ship, on the part of government) against
Mr. Michael Hogan the commander, Mr. John Hogan the surgeon, and Henry
Hacking the pilot. The circumstances of the assault being proved, the
court adjudged Mr. M. Hogan to pay damages to the amount of fifty pounds;
the others were acquitted.

On Mr. McClellan's arrival from Bengal, he reminded us, that some
property had been found concealed in the bed of one of our people, which
property had been shown to him at the time, under a supposition that it
might have been stolen from his ship. On his return to India, he found
that a small bale, contai