"cordial relations" with the Governor.[1] Alas, their cordial relations have long been broken past repair.
Close upon the court-rooms dispute had followed the Judge-Advocate's retirement from the Magisterial Bench and his quarrel with Macquarie over the Port Regulations.
"From the earliest establishment of this Colony," wrote Macquarie, "it has been the invariable custom for the Judge-Advocate to preside (when his health permitted) at the Bench of Magistrates at Sydney, and Mr. Bent continued to do so from the time of his arrival until the 31st of December last."[2]
When the Book of Proceedings was laid before Macquarie on the 31st of December he read the following entry: "On this day the Judge-Advocate stated to the magistrates that a due attention to his leisure, his health, and the other functions of his office, rendered it necessary for him to decline presiding at their meetings in future". He had told the Governor nothing of his intention to withdraw, though he had probably formed it some time beforehand. "Notwithstanding it has greatly interfered with my other functions," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "and was in my opinion improper that the Principal Judge of the Criminal Court should perform the ordinary duties of a Police Magistrate, a wish to render myself as useful as possible has induced me till of late to preside at the weekly meetings of the magistrates."[3] He was, however, thoroughly dissatisfied with the position assigned by the Governor to the magistrates, and with the fact that he was not consulted as to their appointments or in reference to Orders concerning them published in the Gazette.[4] The Order of the 10th December, 1814, had deeply offended him.[5] He had indeed made a fruitless protest to the Governor, who "seemed to consider that my feelings were too acute, and added that he would cashier any magistrate who would not attend to his Orders".[6]
The office in which the Bench met was small, the time mid-
- ↑ Goulburn to J. H. Bent, 11th December, 1815. C.O., MS.
- ↑ i.e., December, 1814. Macquarie's D. 1, 14th February, 1816. R.O., MS.
- ↑ 1st July, 1815. Bent to Bathurst. R.O., MS.
- ↑ See Chapter III.
- ↑ Ibid. The Order censured the magistrates for the careless way in which they granted certificates for pardons.
- ↑ 1st July, 1815. R.O., MS.
