2i 4 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



to be opened under the new patent, solicit my interference in 

 their behalf." He supported their claim on two grounds. 

 One was that their exclusion would bear hardly on those of 

 their " constituents " who were out of the Colony and whose 

 causes were pending. The attorneys would suffer too, for they 

 asserted that they had already advanced large sums in these 

 cases. The other reason was that exclusion without specific 

 cause would cut them off from all means of obtaining a iiveli- 



o 



hood by the practice of the profession in which they had been 

 brought up. 1 



Macquarie thus altogether ignored the real point at issue, 

 which was whether men struck off the rolls in England could 

 properly continue in an English Colony to practise the pro- 

 fession they had disgraced. Bent, of course, was furious. 2 

 Though in comparison with later correspondence the tone of 

 his answer is calm, there is in it no sign of yielding. " As I am 

 under the necessity," he wrote, " of seeing the subject in a very 

 different light from that in which it is viewed by your Ex- 

 cellency, and therefore of withholding my assent to the applica- 

 tion of those petitioners, the respect which I entertain for your 

 Excellency makes me feel it desirable to lay before you the 

 reasons by which I am influenced." 



By the Governor's support of the petitions he felt himself 

 "placed in a most unpleasant and delicate situation, and the 

 other members of the court, in coming to a judicial decision, 

 will be subjected to the operation of an influence which ought 

 never to be applied to, and is inconsistent with the independent 

 deliberation of an English Court of Justice. I mean the open, 

 avowed and direct communication of the opinion of the Ex- 

 ecutive Government on a point under judicial discussion. I 

 am perfectly alive to the importance of a candid union between 

 the Executive and Judicial Departments in this Colony, but I 

 must observe that the functions of each are distinct and should 



1 i8th April, 1815. Enclosure to Bent (J. H.) to C.O., ist July, 1815. R.O., 

 MS. 



* In 1819 many colonists who had known Bent intimately told Bigge that it 

 was this interference on Macquarie's part with the business of the court that 

 " first excited resistance " in Bent against the Governor's measures ; but, as has 

 already been seen, it did not create it. See, however, Bigge's Report I., and 

 Harris' Evidence, in Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS. 



