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 livelihood 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 profession 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 Excellency, and therefore of withholding my assent to the application 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 Executive 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
- ↑ 18th April, 1815. Enclosure to Bent (J. H.) to C.O., 1st 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.
