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A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA T1-I\ 



specially from Home for the purpose. Such a state of things will, doubtless, come in 

 due course, as one of the stages of Australian development. Hut the colonies must 

 continue to rest under a debt of gratitude for the intellectual aids of growth supplied 

 by the presence amongst us of scholarly and disinterested men in the early period of 

 our intellectual awakening. 



THE LEGAL INTEREST 



""T^HE legal interest in Australia has been an affair of very gradual growth. When 

 Phillip landed his party of soldiers and convicts in 1788, one of the first acts 

 was to proclaim martial law in the Settlement, and though shortly after that a kind of 

 regular tribunal was established, it remained for some years a military court rather than 

 anything else. Wild stories have been told of the rough-and-ready proceedings of the irre- 

 sponsible rulers of these strange early days, but in 1800 the first regular Judge Advocate 

 was appointed in the person of Richard Atkins, in succession to Captain Collins, the first 



nominal holder of that office. After 

 the rule of the New South Wales 

 Corps came to an end by the action 

 of its officers in the Bligh affair, 

 Governor Macquarie brought out to 

 Australia with him a new Judge Ad- 

 vocate, Elias Bent, who arrived in 

 1809. This official was recalled in 

 1814, and his successor Geoffrey Hart 

 Bent, introduced a new Charter of 

 Justice, which, though crude enough 

 in itself, was at least a sign that the 

 affairs of the Settlement were emer- 

 ging from chaos into some distant 

 resemblance to order The charter 

 established three Courts. The Gover- 

 nor's Court dealt with civil matters 

 involving sums of money up to ,50, 

 the Judge Advocate and two magis- 

 trates adjudicating. The Supreme 

 Court consisted of a judge appointed 

 under the Sign Manual and two locally appointed magistrates , while the Lieutenant- 

 Governor's Court sat in Tasmania, under the presidency of the local Judge Advocate, 

 with two of the inhabitants nominated by the Governor. Judge Barron Field came in 

 1817, and, on his departure from the colony, was succeeded, in 1824. by the first Aus- 

 tralian Chief Justice, Sir Francis Forbes. This notable colonist brought with him the 

 first real Charter of Justice the colony possessed, and its liberal and expansive pro- 

 visions were due to his own broad sense of public justice in drawing it up a task 

 that was committed to his hands by authority before leaving England. The eminent 



SIR JAMES MARTIN. 



