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being absent from the meetings 4 times in a row or 8 times during the course of 12 months, shall by the court martial, which has so found, be reported to the Supreme Commander, “who will then know to make use of the authority vested in him”-
Attorney Holtermann’s objections against the procedure in the court martial do not actually pertain to my function in this case, but I ought most humbly to remark that what he points out regarding the wordings are, partly with regard to the written command of Your Majesty dated the 10th of August 1765, of no consequense in the matter of form, and less in the matter of reality, as among all his judges English and Danish speakers, there was none who entirely understood the question of the case, as it has for considerable time been the subject of conversation and Holtermann himself has not failed to give it publicity, and as, according to rumor, he has expected and is still expecting that it will give him celebrity status as a man of attorney talent; likewise, both of the military prosecutors who have handled the case are more than sufficient masters of the English language for that purpose, and, as otherwise it pertains to the judges, Holtermann is firstly seen by each as an opportunist; when he desired to be voted into the King’s Life Squadron and it, which supposedly knew of his unwillingness in the Christiansted’s Citizen Company, rejected him in the vote, he came up with the idea of viewing the squadron’s officers as his enemies, and for this reason, I did not order any of these to the superior court martial. The citizens militia of Christiansted were excluded for like reasons; against military prosecutor Frederiksen, who is attached to the same company, he also advanced a completely invalid exception, grounded in nothing more than a disagreement which I suppose all attorneys have with one another, but, which request I granted so that in his own mind, he could be satisfied with every one of his judges.
His arguments, however, against my powers to dictate the alternative punishment which shall be used according to the militia law on anyone who is not a citizen and accordingly cannot transgress the citizen law, I must most humbly review for Your Majesty. – These arguments contend that no lawfull militia actually exists and that the governor has not been given any special authority with regards to the militia department, in which matter he lays claim to the 17th paragraph in general Clausen’s instructions of the 19th of August 1773; but this sentence is both absurd in and of itself and, as regards useful law, false, because the militia is in its entirety established by the 31st article of the charter dated the 9th of February 1734 and subsequently, from the takeover of the island, maintained by the King, modified by Baron Prøck by ordinance dated the 3rd of January 1760, and the measures of the Governor General there about are sufficiently permitted in the aforementioned Supreme Instruction dated the 19th of August, 1773 sk[unreadable] 20th paragraph, general Walterstorff’s Militia Law dated |