236 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



dining to pay a demand absolutely illegal, or to submit to a 

 burthen from which your Excellency has relieved yourself and 

 the Lieutenant-Governor and your respective families and suites. 

 As I must," he concluded, " always feel great reluctance to dis- 

 turb any arrangements of your Excellency, or to impede in any 

 manner the execution of any measures adopted previous to my 

 arrival at this Colony, I thought it proper before my determina- 

 tion became public to apprise your Excellency, in order that 

 an opportunity might be afforded of removing the necessity 

 that leads to it" : 



Macquarie made one of those answers in the third person 

 which are the usual refuge of persecuted dignitaries. Without 

 easing the situation, it inflated him with a sense of virtuous in- 

 dignation and stifled any question of right and wrong. In- 

 solent and turbulent though Bent was, he knew the ways of 

 the law. In such matters Macquarie was at sea without chart 

 or pilot, and he was more than a little uneasy under the judge's 

 onslaught. 



And so he took a bold line and wrote : " The Governor has 

 received a most insolent and disrespectful letter of this day's 

 date from Mr. Justice Bent, full of gross misrepresentations and 

 calumnies, which merits no other answer than his expression of 

 contempt for the weak and ineffectual efforts of the writer to 

 disturb the peace of the Colony and to counteract the measures 

 of his administration ". 2 



Bent easily refuted the charges of "misrepresentation and 

 calumny." Having once more gone over the ground covered 

 by his previous letter, he proceeded : 



" I may again say that such a system is contrary to that 

 established in England by numerous Acts of Parliament in 

 cases of turnpike roads ; and that it is (to me at least) both 

 new and arbitrary. I feel justified in the inference I drew from 

 these facts that there is no person in England, hearing that a 

 trustee of the roads had been appointed, but would conclude 

 that he had the same powers and was subject to the same 

 responsibilities as similar trustees at home, and no one could 

 conceive that such person was a mere non-efficient, or that 



1 Bent to M., i8th August, 1815. Enclosure, D. i, 1816. R.O., MS. 



2 M. to Bent, i8th August, 1815. Enclosure. D. i. 1816. R.O., MS. 



