2i 8 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



passed over to dwell upon the Report of the Committee on 

 Transportation which set forth Macquarie's principle "that 

 long tried good-conduct should lead a man back to the rank of 

 society he had formerly filled," leaving out, said Bent, the next 

 words, "as far as the case could admit". 



" Without inquiring," he wrote, " what shall be the marks by 

 which to discover long tried good-conduct, or whether the mere 

 circumstance of not having been brought before a Criminal Court 

 in the Colony is a proof of it I may safely assert that the good- 

 conduct of the persons in question, . . . had neither been long 

 nor tried." 



The two magistrates told him that the local circumstances 

 of the Colony made it necessary to deviate from the strict 

 custom of other countries. " The local circumstances of this 

 Colony," he replied caustically, " have from its first formation 

 been an excuse for every illegality that caprice or ignorance 

 could dictate. . . ." 



Finding them immovable in their opinion, Bent felt himself 

 "obliged to come to a determination to refuse to admit or 

 swear in persons so circumstanced, and to declare that if the 

 attempt were persisted in to force them upon me, till His 

 Majesty's pleasure should be known, I should be compelled to 

 discontinue the sitting altogether ". 1 



Riley and Broughton declared that Bent wished to make a 

 rule of general application altogether excluding emancipists 

 from practice. 2 Bent on his side declared that it was the 

 magistrates who "endeavoured to mix a general abstract prin- 

 ciple with the case before the court ". The fact was that Bent 

 placed before them the general principles by reason of which he 

 proposed to reject the petitions in question, and that the magis- 

 trates confused the premises and the conclusion. 3 



The court met again on i ith May without having agreed 

 upon their course of action. W. H. Moore, one of the Govern- 

 ment solicitors, as he and Garling were called in the Colony, 

 was admitted, and Bent administered the oaths. Crosley then 



1 ist July, 1816. R.O., MS. 



2 Report to Macquarie in his D. 4, 24th March, 1815. R.O., MS. 



3 Bent's letter, ist July, 1815. R.O., MS. See rule suggested by Bent above, 

 which shows clearly that he did not wish to exclude all emancipists indiscrimin- 

 ately. 



