be exercised without collisions, and therefore I cannot but think the conduct of the Petitioners most blameable, highly disrespectful to the courts of which they wish to be admitted as attorneys, and calculated to occasion divisions between the Executive and Judicial Departments, by requesting your Excellency in a most unprecedented and unprofessional manner to exercise undue influence in their favour with the Supreme Court; thereby insinuating most unworthily and manifestly that the court would grant to the recommendation of your Excellency what they would not grant to the merits of their respective cases."[1]
This description of the facts was perfectly accurate, and Bent proceeded to drive home his points in workmanlike fashion. The petitioners (and by implication the Governor) appeared to be ignorant of the law which gave to each court "the discretion to admit or strike off the roll of their attorneys such persons as they may think worthy or unworthy". Were men so ignorant of their profession to be allowed to practise it?
But that was a small matter in comparison with others. There was, for example, the fact that the petitioners omitted the important fact that they had been transported for the crimes of perjury and forgery. Yet these were the facts on which the whole case turned. Crosley and Eager (and again, by implication, Macquarie also) had disingenuously omitted all mention of them.
The injury, he proceeded, to distant clients was materially lessened by recalling that under the rule of 1812 the emancipist attorneys had practised on sufferance, only until other provision might be made. There might even be a doubt whether any such clients existed, for their names had not been given.[2] The story of the money which had been advanced he treated with frank scepticism. Was it likely, he asked, that Eager, for example, who had been in the Colony less than six years, should be in a position to advance large sums? But if he had done so, he had done it knowing how small were the probabilities of his being allowed to practise when free attorneys had come out
