eath. Some suspicion falling upon two people,
they were secured, and an examination was the next day taken before the
magistrates; but nothing transpired that could fix the offence upon them.

This shocking circumstance was followed shortly after by another equally
atrocious: a murder which was committed by a man on the person of a woman
with whom he cohabited. It appeared that they had both been intoxicated,
and had quarrelled on the night preceding and in the morning of the murder.

This made the fifth circumstance of the kind which had occurred within
the last twelve months; and so excessively abandoned were the people,
that it was scarcely possible to obtain sufficient proof to convict the
offenders. Strong presumptive proof, indeed, was frequently adduced; but
the kind of evidence necessary to establish the offence was almost
constantly withheld.

About this time, some dissatisfaction appearing among the Irish convicts
who were ordered to labour, and some threats having been made use of by
them, the governor thought it necessary to inform the inhabitants of the
colony in general, that, after having pointed out a number of people who
had, by false pretences, and various impositions, obtained certificates
of discharge from the commissary's books, he did not expect so soon to
have occasion to enter again upon the same subject. He then, taking
notice of those who had not hesitated to hold a language which implied a
determination to resist all authority, declared, that if any officer,
civil or military, any settler, or other person within the colony,
should, after Monday, the 7th of November, retain in his or their service
any one or more of the persons described in a former order, such persons
should be considered as encouraging a set of lawless and seditious
people, to the total subversion of all order and government, and to the
weakening of His Majesty's authority in the settlement. He next informed
the people whose conduct had occasioned this order, that if they were of
opinion, that to threaten would be the best means of obtaining what they
desired, they might repent that opinion when too late. That there would
not be any difficulty found in furnishing them with a situation in the
colony, or in some of its dependencies, where they would not be able to
disturb the peace of their neighbours; and that if they were troublesome
here, they should certainly be placed in that situation very soon. He
concluded this order b