Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/503

383 ADMINISTRATION OP JUSTICE. t How little importance was attaclied in those days to the 1788-1828 moral aspect of public questions^ may be seen in the pro- Tision made for the administration of justice in the colony. It is an ancient boast of English jurisprudence that the meanest subject in the realm is as much entitled to the pro- tection of its laws as the greatest; one of his safeguards H||K|it to being that^ when placed on his trials he must be tried by a jury of his countrymen before a judge whose independence of the Crown is not open to suspicion. But the Criminal Court established in the colony was not a Court of Justice in any sense coosistent with legal definitions. The persons tried before it were not tried according to the common law of England. They were tried by a Court invented for the occasion^ framed on the model of a Garrison Court-martial, but wanting even the security it afforded for an impartial administration of justice; every trial being conducted on a system originally established for the preservation of military discipline by a rough and ready process of arriv- ing at conclusions — ^a process well enough adapted to cases in which soldiers were to be tried for petty offences against discipline, but which amounted to a flagrant denial of justice when civilians were arraigned on charges entailing terrible punishment. Where was the moral justification for a law denied to by which people sent out to form a colony were denied a right that could not have been denied them in England ? What assurance could there be that any man condemned to suffer death or flogging in the Judge-Advocate's Court had been justly convicted f Even if the right to be tried for any subsequent offence according to the common law had ooloniiits. Digitized by Google