Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/526

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MACQUARIE AND MARSDEN.

the subject. By the Act 5 Geo. IV. cap. 84, passed in 1824, it was provided (sec. 26) that while conditionally or incompletely pardoned felons resided where they were lawfully entitled to reside, they might "maintain any action or suit for recovery of any property—real, personal, or mixed—acquired" after conviction. They might do so not only in the colony, but throughout the King's dominions. If the defendant should plead or allege the plaintiff's or complainant's conviction of felony, and the plaintiff could prove a remission of sentence by the Governor—" and is residing in some place consistent therewith and with the provisions of this Act, a verdict shall pass, and judgment shall be given for the plaintiff or complainant." The difficulty so prominent in the colony had been felt in the mother country also. The 27th section enacted that in England, Wales, or Ireland such a verdict should carry "treble costs."[1]

Marsden had offended Macquarie by refusing to associate himself on the magisterial bench with the ex-convicts whom Macquarie placed there. Mr. Bigge summed up the cause of difference between the chaplain and the Governor as based on the characteristic firmness with which Marsden refused to lend himself to Macquarie's schemes to mingle the convicted with the free. Macquarie was not content with alleging that convicts were fit to be his own associates. He would make others sit with them. Within three months of his arrival, without any previous communication with Marsden, he appointed (by a published Order) Bligh's ex-bailiff, Thomson, and another freedman, as co-trustees of a turnpike road with Marsden. Marsden declined the office, and assigned as a reason the notorious immorality of the lives of Macquarie's nominated freedmen. Macquarie declared that he would consider Marsden's refusal an act of hostility to his government, and personally disrespectful. The sturdy churchman still refused. His mind was fixed to accept no appointment which would degrade his office

  1. ↑ In Dr. Lang's "History" he speaks of Barron Field's judgment in favour of De Mestre's application as a denial of common justice, and an "outrage upon the common sense of mankind." He does not allude to Bigge's Report, to the leading case before the King's Bench in 1819 (Bullock v. Dodds), or to the law passed in 1824. If he had seen them he could hardly have commented thus on Field's conduct.
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