ontagu to be a
man of ability, magnanimously gave him a letter to Lord Stanley,
recommending him for employment in some other important position. This
letter, being conveyed to Lord Stanley, was adduced by Montagu as a
confession from the Governor of the superior ability and special fitness
of the Chief Secretary for his post. Lord Stanley ordered his salary to
be paid from the date of his dismissal; and Franklin, shortly after this
insult to his authority, suddenly found himself superseded by Sir
Eardley Wilmot, without having received the previous notice which, as a
matter of courtesy, he might have expected. In 1843 he returned to
England, followed by the regrets of nearly all the Tasmanians.

Two years afterwards he sailed with the ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_ to
search for a passage into the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic regions
of North America. He entered the ice-bound regions of the north, and for
many years no intelligence regarding his fate could be obtained. Lady
Franklin prosecuted the search with a wife's devotion, long after others
had given up hope; and, at last, the discovery of some papers and ruined
huts proved that the whole party had perished in those frozen wastes.

#4. Governor Wilmot.#--Sir Eardley Wilmot had gained distinction as a
debater in the British Parliament. Like Governors Bligh and Gipps, in
New South Wales, Wilmot found that to govern at the same time a convict
population and a colony of free settlers was a most ungrateful task. A
large proportion of the convicts, after being liberated, renewed their
former courses: police had to be employed to watch them, judges and
courts appointed to try them, gaols built to receive them, and
provisions supplied to maintain them. If a prisoner was arrested and
again convicted for a crime committed in Tasmania, then the colony was
obliged to bear all the expense of supporting him, and amid so large a
population of criminals these expenses became intolerably burdensome. It
is true that colonists had to some extent a compensating advantage in
receiving, free of charge, a plentiful supply of convict labour for
their public works. But when Lord Stanley ordered that they should in
future pay for all such labour received, they loudly complained of their
grievances. "Was it not enough," they asked, "to send out the felons of
Great Britain to become Tasmanian bushrangers, without forcing the free
settlers to feed and clothe them throughout their lives, af