reached £2,000 and the amounts recovered £59,000. The growing importance and complexity of the work necessitated, he thought, an additional judge, and lawyers to conduct the pleadings.
He suggested also that some restrictions should be laid on the right of appeal from this court to the Privy Council.
In the Criminal Court he urged that Trial by Jury should replace the present system, and that prosecutions should be conducted by a Crown solicitor.
Finally he reviewed the commission, status, and functions of the Judge-Advocate, and recommended a complete change in his position.
His commission was a military one while his duties were civil. It placed him under the orders of the Governor, while at the same time he was sworn to administer the law of England. "… I can assure your Lordship," wrote Bent, "that the comfort and happiness of any Judge-Advocate, nay, even the proper discharge of his duty, must depend entirely upon the personal character of the person in whose hands the executive power of the Colony happens to be vested."
The duties of the office he considered too heavy for one man, and in many ways inconsistent with one another. Thus in the Criminal Court he acted as judge in cases for which he had himself prepared the indictment, and in which he had the conduct of the prosecution.
This letter of Bent's was accepted in its entirety by the Committee on Transportation of 1812, and they embodied its proposals in their Report. But Lord Bathurst, the new Secretary of State, held different views. He described in a letter to the Governor, in 1812,[1] the reforms which were to take effect in a new Charter of Justice to be issued for the Colony.
He agreed that thorough changes were necessary in the Civil Court, that the cases required "more elucidation than what the parties, as they have no professional assistance, are able to produce," and that the decisions "are frequently too summary, while they are at the same time not sufficiently conclusive, and from most of them an appeal to His Majesty in Council is allowed".
- ↑ D. 13, 23rd November, 1812. R.O., MS.
