202 



A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



he had always treated persons who had at any time been con- 

 victs, however remote the period of their offences, and however 

 meritorious their subsequent conduct may have been ". From 

 this course Bent had only deviated " in a few particular instances, 

 where he found his pecuniary interest and other personal ac- 

 commodation concerned, and on such occasion he is not at all 

 scrupulous . . . which conduct shows that his motives in the 

 one case or the other are not those arising from a strict sense 

 of propriety." l 



The justification for this statement was probably the fact 

 that Bent distinguished between friendly and business relations, 

 and considered the latter separable from the former. Macquarie, 

 however, made no such distinctions. He held a very exalted 

 notion of his position as the head of New South Wales society^ 

 and had neither the education nor the natural good taste which 

 would have induced him to distinguish one man from another 

 in the ranks below him. But Ellis Bent was something of a 

 scholar, and, with a delicacy of mind probably heightened by 

 ill-health, shrank from intercourse with ignorant men of doubt- 

 ful character such as Lord or Thompson. 



The division of opinion between the Governor and the 

 Judge-Advocate existed from the beginning, but for long Bent 

 preserved a studious discretion and kept the subject in the 

 background. In all that concerned the Charter of Justice they 

 agreed, and in 1811 Macquarie urged that Ellis Bent should be 

 at the head of the new judiciary. He spoke of him as having 

 " most happily blended the mildest and gentlest disposition xvith 

 the most conciliating manners, great good sense and accurate 

 legal knowledge ". 2 



It was Macquarie also who recommended Jeffery Hart Bent, 

 the Judge- Advocate's brother, to the Colonial Office. 3 



In 1813 several causes for friction occurred. The Judge- 

 Advocate complained unavailingly of the small size of his 

 court-room. 4 The Governor complained that the Judge-Advo- 

 cate failed to rise with the rest of the congregation when he, 

 the representative of the Crown, entered the church. In 



1 D.I, 24th February, 1815. R.O., MS. 



2 D., i8th October, 1811. H.R., VII. 



3 Ibid. * It was an office attached to his house. 



