Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/200

for similar atrocities in England; the ferment in the country, which was nowhere more noticeable than in Edinburgh, where a "British Convention" parcelled out in anticipation the whole kingdom into departments within which the Heberts and St. Justs of the islands might rival the exploits of their prototypes; plots against Parliament and king; tamperings with the soldiery and the fleet—were the topics pressing upon Pitt and Dundas when the latter received a long despatch from King conveying minute details as to the wants of Norfolk Island. If he read it at all he must have smiled amidst the dangers of the time^[1] at the tale of Norfolk Island.

Pitt was unable to obtain convictions of the seditious in London; but Dundas must have had grim pleasure in sending the Scotch convicts, whom a difference in the Scotch law subjected to transportation, to a land where high and low might work with common consent to secure the bounties of Providence. Dundas was bitterly accused of straining the Scotch laws to procure convictions. King told him that at the island he and the magistrates awarded "Buch pains and penalties as are equitable, guided by Burn's Justice' and Blackstone's Commentaries,' the only law-books we have to guide us." There were no barristers and no attorneys as yet in the south land, and those who first practised were convicts themselves.

No lawyer was available to assist the government. The Judge-Advocate in Sydney was an officer of marines. In Norfolk Island there was no Criminal Court. If a theft was committed, or any other capital crime," the rare means of conveyance to Sydney, and the necessity of sending witnesses thither, brought about a denial of justice. Settlers could ill leave their farms to go to Sydney. King submitted the matter to Dundas's consideration. An Act (45 of 34 Geo. III.) was passed in 1794; a Criminal Court was established by letters patent as a Court of Record; it was duly proclaimed at Norfolk Island, and a Civil Court was then petitioned for by King.