Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/491

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NEW C0UHT8 OF .lUDICATURM Ideal with a« Bligh had attempted to treat the higliest Court ill the colony in 1808, Tlie cjuaiTels of civil litigants, it waH leyolved, should he sepantLed iVoHi the administration of the higli Criminal Court. Anew commission and lettern patent (4th Feh. 1814) effected a separation of the civil and criminal jndicatureB, formerly united under the ]}rL"sideucy of the tTudge- Advocate. A Civil Court, called the GovcruorV Com*t, was composed of the Judge- Advocate of the colony ■ and two inhabitants ai»pointed by the Governor, Another, called the Lt.- Governor's Court, was created in Van ' Diemen's Laud under the presidency of a Deputy Judge- ri Advocate. ^H A Supreme Court was established in Sy^hiey. The Judge ^F was to he appointed hy the Crown. Two magisfcratea ap- pointed hy the Governor were to aid the Judge. Over all ^k'^'as the High Court of Appeal, presided over by the PBCovernor himself, with the 'Judge-Advocate as assessor. ' No change was made in the Criminal Court, W'liere the ^L Judge- Advocate presided. Mr. Ellis Bent, after painstaking ^■compilation of rules of practice, died, universally regretted, ^Pwithout being able to open the Governor's Court. A loctatt tenrnH opened it for the first time in January 1810, and a new Judge-Advocate, Wylde, arrived in October of that year to preside over it. Mr. Wylde (afterwards Sir John Wylde, and Chief Justice at the Cape of Good Hope) had the rare and not felicitous fortune of presiding in the Court in which his fatber w'as a suliortliuate official as Clerk of the Peace. The first Judge sent to the new ** Supreme Court of Civil IT Judicature" w^as Jeffery Hart Bent, a brother of Elhs Bent. |H Macquarie t]uarrelk<l with Judge Bent at a very early l^date. Bent questioned the legality of a certain road toll, of wvhich the surplus, alter repairs, was paid to a Police Fund. Macquarie told the Secretary of State that a letter from Bent contained ** false assertions and malignant in- sinuations.** ^lacquariu having determined to associate with freedmen, and to force then' society upon others, was em^aged because Bent would not suffer convict attorneys to practise before liim. George Crossley was one of those who desired the privilege. The nate Governor wrote of Bent — he holds no Court, "nor is it his intention to hold one. until the point in regard to the re-adims^lou ol idiXX'^xw'e.^^