Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/492

sent here as prisoners shall be determined agreeably to his own wishes in the negative." Macquarie went so far as to express his "decided opinion" that Bent ought to admit Crossley.^[1]

Lord Bathurst was discreet enough to agree with Bent rather than with Macquarie.^[2] But the latter acted vigorously on the spot. He informed Lord Bathurst^[3] that he had issued a General Order (11th Dec. 1816), notifying Bent's "removal and recall from his official situation, and declaring his disqualification and incapacity to act from thenceforth as Judge of the Supreme Court or a magistrate of this colony." . . . It was a "severe measure"—"I did it with extreme reluctance. . . . In one letter particularly Mr. Bent declares in speaking of himself and me that 'our local rank places but a shadow of distinction between us,' and, with a view of drawing a malignant contrast of his own, he adds that his irritability of temper has never led him into acts either of illegality or oppression," Lord Bathurst sanctioned the removal of the angry Judge by the angry Governor.

Bent's successor, Mr. Barron Field,^[4] the author of more than one law-book, had arrived in Sydney when Macquarie thus justified himself. Of Wylde, the Judge-Advocate, and Field, Macquarie said, "I have every reason to hope and believe they will in their respective situations prove a great blessing and acquisition to this colony." Of a solicitor who had not been a convict he wrote: "This worthless and unprincipled reptile under the pupilage of Mr. Bent shows himself a ready agent to undermine and blast, if possible, my honour and public character."

Without any consultation with the Judge, or apprising him of the nature of the case, Macquarie appointed a freedman as one of the magistrates, who, with Field, were to constitute the Supreme Court. Field, unconscious of the fact, could not remonstrate, but he afterwards expressed