should not be executed until the pleasure of the Prince Regent should be known.[1]
Macquarie refused his offer. "The disposition you have so openly manifested to counteract my public measures," he wrote, "and treat my authority with marked disrespect, would of itself be a sufficient objection to my appointing you to that office, but independent of so strong an objection I should consider it as highly irregular as well as illegal, your officiating as Judge-Advocate; the duties of that office being in my opinion quite incompatible with those of the office you hold as Judge of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature."[2]
To the Colonial Office the Governor wrote that the postponement of the execution of death sentences would have rendered altogether nugatory the purposes of a Criminal Court.[3]
No arrangement had been made for holding the Criminal Court when Ellis Bent's departure was first postponed and then put off altogether. By the end of October his disease so much increased that all thought of the voyage was given up. On the 10th November, 1815, he died at Sydney in his thirty-second year. Macquarie would not forgive him, but he tried to be just. "I still feel," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "that I should write to your Lordship in those terms which his administration of the law in his official capacity here seems to me to merit."[4]
Jeffery Bent wrote in a strain of sadness not without dignity, and the Colony mourned sincerely the loss of the young Judge-Advocate. Poems to his memory were printed in the Gazette, Marsden preached a sermon in his praise, and was reprimanded by the Governor for a simile which he deemed blasphemous.[5]
- ↑ Bent to Macquarie, 24th October, 1815. Enclosure, D. 1, 1815. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Macquarie to Bent. Enclosure, D. 1, 1819. R.O., MS.
- ↑ D. 1, 20th February, 1816. R.O., MS. It is quite clear, however, that Macquarie's real objection was Bent's behaviour towards him. The Supreme Court was not likely to sit for another six months at the earliest, and the delay in regard to death penalties was not of much importance.
- ↑ D. 1, 20th February, 1816. Lord Bathurst recommended Bent's widow and four young children for a pension, and one of £200 a year was granted. Later she was given £200 to help in educating the boys. See Correspondence in R.O. and C.O.
- ↑ There is some confusion in this matter. Marsden and Riley both gave the same account, but Macquarie said that Marsden's report was not true, that his reprimand had nothing to do with the part about Bent. See Appendix, Bigge's Reports, Evidence of Marsden. R.O., MS. Also Marsden's Memoirs.
