Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/551

not exceeding fifteen nor less than ten. Two-thirds (sec. 21) of the whole were required to be present, and various details were prescribed as to legislation, protests, &c. English law was (sec. 24) to be applied in administration of justice, subject to power of the Governor and Legislative Council to declare by ordinance what laws should be deemed to extend to the colony. This provision furnished an intricate subject of dispute in the colony. By the common law it had been held that conviction of any infamous crime barred the convict for all time from being a juror. The English Statute, 6 Geo. IV. cap. 50, qualified this exclusion, by declaring that "no person attainted of treason or felony, or convicted of any crime that is infamous, shall be qualified unless he have obtained a free pardon."

But before this Statute was passed in England, a local legislature had been created by the 4 Geo. IV. cap. 96, and that legislature was debarred from enacting anything repugnant to "the laws of England." The laws of England therefore (it was said) in existence in 1823 (when 4 Geo. IV. cap. 96 was passed) having made felons ineligible, even though pardoned, they remained still ineligible. The English subsequent Statute did not run to the colony, and the Colonial Legislature could not remove the disability, for it could not do what would be repugnant to the law extant in England in 1823. The emancipists and their friends were furious. The wager of battle thrown down originally by the Chief Justice was clamorously taken up.

William Wentworth led the ardent spirits. He contended for the time-honoured principle of trial by jury. But circumstances already adverted to made him an exponent of the wishes of the emancipists. Dr. Wardell fought by the side of Wentworth. Dr. Bland was an energetic coadjutor. He was highly respected for ability; but his position was peculiar. A surgeon of a man-of-war, he had been challenged, and had killed his opponent in a duel in India. He was tried in 1813 at Bombay, and transported to New South Wales for seven years. He was never treated with disrespect in the colony by any man or set of men, unless his imprisonment under Macquarie's government for a quarrel arising out of domestic unhappiness constituted an exception. He was personally beloved. But he was not