THE EXECUTIVE AND THE JUDICIARY. 213 



had entered into competition with him, and in the last term of 

 the old Civil Court, Chartres had appeared for the first time. 

 J. H. Bent thus described the three men. 



" George Crosley was struck off the rolls of the court of 

 King's Bench and transported to this Colony for perjury. . . . l 

 Eager has been transported here within the last six years for 

 forgery, and has never, as far as I can learn, been admitted an 

 attorney of any court. And Chartres has been sent here for a 

 species of the crimen falsi within the last five years, and at the 

 moment keeps a public house, and both ' 2 are under the sentence 

 of the law." 3 



The new judge had heard of these men from his brother 

 before he left England, and had endeavoured without success to 

 obtain a definite statement from Lord Bathurst " with regard 

 to the practice of the convict attorneys". 4 In the Colony the 

 divergent views of the Governor and the Bents were well 

 known, and trouble was probably anticipated. On the 22nd 

 April the first sittings of the new courts were summoned, and 

 the Governor's precept appointing Hook and Brooks as mem- 

 bers of the Governor's Court, Broughton and Riley as members 

 of the Supreme Court, was published on the same day. The 

 Supreme Court was to meet on the 1st May and the Governor's 

 Court on the 8th. 



The emancipist attorneys decided that to appeal straight 

 to the courts was dangerous. They looked upon the Gover- 

 nor as a higher authority and sought his support first. Mac- 

 quarie explained the situation in an official letter to J. H. Bent 

 dated i8th April, 1815. 



" I have," he wrote, " lately received memorials from some 

 of those attorneys who have hitherto been allowed to practise 

 in the line of their profession in the Courts of Civil Jurisdic- 

 tion . . . who being now apprehensive that it is in contempla- 

 tion to exclude them from that indulgence in the courts about 



1 See Chapter II. for reasons why King pardoned Crosley. 



2 i.e., Eager and Chartres. Both held tickets-of-leave. Eager received ; 

 emancipation a few years later and a free pardon in 1819. Chartres 1 license must 

 have been in his wife's name. 



3 Bent to Goulburn, ist July, 1815. R.O., MS. 



4 Letter to Goulburn, 2 5 th June, 1815. R.O., MS. See also earlier in th 

 Chapter. 



