226 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



should not be executed until the pleasure of the Prince Regent 

 should be known. 1 



Macquarie refused his offer. " The disposition you have so 

 openly manifested to counteract my public measures," he wrote, 

 "and treat my authority with marked disrespect, would of it- 

 self be a sufficient objection to my appointing you to that 

 office, but independent of so strong an objection I should con- 

 sider it as highly irregular as well as illegal, your officiating as 

 Judge- Advocate ; the duties of that office being in my opinion 

 quite incompatible with those of the office you hold as Judge 

 of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature." ' 2 



To the Colonial Office the Governor wrote that the post- 

 ponement of the execution of death sentences would have ren- 

 dered altogether nugatory the purposes of a Criminal Court. 3 



No arrangement had been made for holding the Criminal 

 Court when Ellis Bent's departure was first postponed and 

 then put off altogether. By the end of October his disease so 

 much increased that all thought of the voyage was given up. 

 On the roth November, 1815, he died at Sydney in his thirty- 

 second year. Macquarie would not forgive him, but he tried 

 to be just. " I still feel," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "that I 

 should write to your Lordship in those terms which his ad- 

 ministration of the law in his official capacity here seems to 

 me to merit." 4 



Jeffery Bent wrote in a strain of sadness not without dignity, 

 and the Colony mourned sincerely the loss of the young Judge- 

 Advocate. Poems to his memory were printed in the Gazette, 

 Marsden preached a sermon in his praise, and was reprimanded 

 by the Governor for a simile which he deemed blasphemous. 5 



1 Bent to Macquarie, 24th October, 1815. Enclosure, D. i, 1815. R.O., MS. 



a Macquarie to Bent. Enclosure, D. i, 1819. R.O., MS. 



3 D. i, 2oth February, 1816. R.O., MS. It is quite clear, however, that Mac- 

 quarie's real objection was Bent's behaviour towards him. The Supreme Court 

 was not likely to sit for another six months at the earliest, and the delay in re- 

 gard to death penalties was not of much importance. 



4 D. i, 2oth February, 1816. Lord Bathurst recommended Bent's widow and 

 four young children for a pension, and one of ,200 a year was granted. Later 

 she was given 200 to help in educating the boys. See Correspondence in R.O. 

 and C.O. 



There is some confusion in this matter. Marsden and Riley both gave the 

 same account, but Macquarie said that Marsden's report was not true, that his 

 reprimand had nothing to do with the part about Bent. See Appendix, Bigge's 

 Reports, Evidence of Marsden. R.O., MS. Also Marsden's Memoirs. 



