28 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



With him there went as Judge-Advocate, Ellis Bent, 

 Barrister-at-law and member of the Northern Circuit The 

 Judge- Advocate was the one judicial officer in the Colony, 

 presiding in Civil and Criminal Courts, acting as chief judge 

 and chief prosecutor. The appointment of Ellis Bent, a man 

 learned in the law, to this post, marked an important develop- 

 ment in the history of the settlement. Collins, who held the 

 office first, was a captain of Marines, 1 and Gore, who succeeded 

 him, had been without either legal or military knowledge. 

 Then had come Richard Atkins, a hard drinker and a born 

 fool. King had put the case in strong language. He had 

 felt it " indispensable as well for the benefit of the inhabitants 

 as for a guide to the Governor that a professional man be ap- 

 pointed, either as Judge- Advocate or Chief- Justice, who can 

 give the Governor (who cannot be supposed to be a lawyer) 

 that conclusive information which is so requisite, and who is 

 able to counteract the chicane and litigious conduct of a few 

 transported practisers, who have practised sufficient of the laws 

 of England to know the chicanery and evil purposes a bad man 

 can turn them to". 2 But the matter rested until the Bligh 

 affair gave conclusive proof of the need, and Ellis Bent, appar- 

 ently at the suggestion of Nightingall, obtained the appoint- 

 ment. 3 He was a Master of Arts of Cambridge and had been 

 a gentleman commoner at Peterhouse. Some calamity in- 

 volved his family in a ruin which induced him, while still 

 under thirty, to give up his position and prospects at the Bar 

 and accept this post in a far-off country for the sake of his wife 

 and young family. He was a man of singularly sweet dis- 

 position, and for the four years which preceded his early death 

 he fulfilled the multifarious tasks allotted him with justice, 

 dignity and ability. There is little to be found which tells of 

 him directly, but his judgments and expositions of the law, his 

 official letters, and the opinions held of him by all sorts and 

 conditions of men, all alike suggest a man of great delicacy of 

 mind, gentleness of bearing and acuteness of intellect. 



1 He was afterwards Lieutenant-Governor at the Derwent, Van Diemen's 

 Land, from 1803 to 1810. 



8 H.K., V., p. 188, 7th August, 1803. 



3 See Bent's letter to Castlereagh, 3oth November, 1811. H.R., VII., 

 p. 641. 



