attorney whom he had pressed Judge Bent to admit to
practise, and who had ineffectually prosecuted Judge Field
for slander, was the principal speaker. Macquarie received
a tropical shower of compliments. The aggrieved attorney-merchant was deputed (with the chairman of the meeting)
to carry complaints to England. He did not return; but
in 1823 Sir James Macintosh presented a petition to the
House of Commons from him praying that he might be
heard by counsel at the bar of the House against two
provisions in the New South Wales Judicature Bill then
before the House. The prayer of the petition was not
granted.
The admirers of William Charles Wentworth might have hoped that the success of Sir J. Mackintosh's resolution. would bring their young champion into the foreground. After his exploration in the Blue Mountains he had gone to England, but not before in his youthful ardour he had satirized Colonel Molle in a manner which D'Arcy Wentworth had to explain for his absent son when the circumstances came to his own knowledge.[1] Unfortunately the domestic associations of the father were not such as to allow the son to take an unbiased view of the struggle between the emancipist and the free. In the household of Thomas Jefferson, who boasted of his love of freedom, there were slaves of his own blood; and though D'Arcy Wentworth was an official called upon to administer the law, and to maintain a standard of morality, he associated, and his
- ↑ The alleged lampoon was thrown into the barracks. Mr. Surgeon
Foster, in the name of the officers, advertised that a reward of £200 would
be given for information leading to the conviction of the author or authors
of a paper "containing a false, malicious, and scurrilous attack on Colonel
Molle, both as Lt. Governor and commanding officer." A report was circulated that an officer of the 46th was the author, and the officers were
greatly exasperated. Bigge's Reports, 1822-3.
Macquarie had early noticed the capacity of young Wentworth. He made him, in 1811, Deputy Provost-Marshal, when he was only eighteen years old, and, as the Provost-Marshal was in England, the duties of the office devolved entirely upon the deputy. Wentworth was ever complimentary to Macquarie. He was one of a committee of twelve persons appointed by a public meeting to prepare an address of congratulation to him, and a dinner to commemorate his assumption of the government was given in January 1814. The company was heterogeneous. Mr. Gore, who was imprisoned by the deposera of Bligh, was in the chair; others who were active in deposing Bligh were in prominent positions.
