In 1846 a special commissioner was despatched from headquarters at Hobart Town, to report from personal observation on the state of the settlement. It is abundantly evident from his report, which will be found _in extenso_ in a Blue-Book on convict discipline, issued in February, 1847, that some terrific explosion of the seething elements collected together at Norfolk Island might be looked for at any early day. Mr. Stewart, the commissioner, attributed the condition of the settlement chiefly to the lax discipline maintained by its commandant. This gentleman certainly appears to have been chosen unwisely. He was quite the wrong man for the place, utterly unfitted for the arduous duties he was called upon to perform. Of a weak and vacillating disposition, he seldom had the courage to act upon his own judgment. It was openly alleged that his decisions rested with his chief clerk. Most of his subordinates were at loggerheads with one another, but he never dared to settle their quarrels himself. Points the most trivial were referred always to headquarters. He was equally wanting in resolute determination in dealing with the great mass of convicts who constituted the bulk of his command. With them he was forever temporising and making allowances; so that rules, never too severe, came by degrees to be sensibly relaxed, till leniency grew into culpable pampering and childish considerateness. As might have been expected, the objects of his tender solicitude were utterly ungrateful. He interfered sometimes to soften the sentences of the sitting magistrate, even when they were light enough; but his kindness was only mistaken for weakness, and the men in his charge became day by day more insolent and insubordinate. Where firmness was required in almost every particular, in order to maintain anything like a controlling supervision, it was altogether wanting. This commandant was considered by his supreme chief, to be "totally unfitted for the peculiar situation in which he is placed, either from want of experience, or from an absence in his own character of the qualifications necessary to control criminals."