220 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



of Jeffery Hart Bent. For two years the judicial interregnum 

 lasted, and Bent, the first Supreme Court Judge of Australia, 

 never heard a cause nor delivered a judgment. 



It is difficult to say what other course he could have followed. 

 Diplomacy and conciliatory speech might have done much, but 

 the Governor would only have been satisfied by Crosley's ad- 

 mission, and it was the Governor who was Bent's real antagonist. 

 Had the judge given way and admitted Crosley, the principle 

 of the admission of emancipist attorneys would have been es- 

 tablished, and there is no reason to believe that the Colonial 

 Office would have interfered afterwards to reverse it. 1 Yet even 

 Riley saw that he had committed an error of judgment. " I 

 am compelled to admit," he said, " that during this period - I had 

 occasion to observe that numbers of the very class of men [whose 

 cause] I had strenuously advocated, acted with so little consid- 

 eration towards each other during the suspension of the law, 

 and took such advantage of the merchants and those to whom 

 they were indebted, that I could not but regret the line I had 

 pursued." 3 He would not say definitely that the admission of 

 emancipists would have been actually mischievous, but only that 

 it was " advantageous to the territory that there are sufficient 

 free solicitors ... to enable the courts to proceed without re- 

 sorting to that necessity," and that it was " desirable that not 

 any persons should now officiate in the courts, who have not 

 gone free to the Colony ". 



Amongst the convict and emancipist population the eman- 

 cipist attorneys had considerable popularity. This was born 

 partly of long intimacy and private association, but it was 

 increased by the mode they adopted of charging their clients. 

 The emancipist attorney took a percentage on the amount 

 recovered in place of ordinary fees, and was therefore willing 

 to undertake risky suits at no expense to his clients. So long 

 as the fees of the courts went to the judges this practice was 

 to their advantage also, for certainly it augmented the number 

 of cases brought before them ! 4 



1 They would probably have acted as they did in regard to the first convict 

 magistrates. See above. 



* i.e., while the court was closed. 3 C. on G., 1819. 



4 See Evidence of Wylde, Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. Business 

 in the Governor's Court fell off when emancipists were excluded. 



