proceedings that sprung from a curious monetary transaction known as the " Twelve Apostles," and if Willis had only given him time to answer, he could very satisfactorily have done so, as the question at issue was the consideration given for a certain bill, and the bond-fides of this could be established beyond a doubt. But the Judge did not want a satisfactory answer, and only hoped to be able to place W e r e where he so longed to send Lonsdale. H e n c e the outburst of petulant bullying and the result. Mr. Were, however, only passed one night in the prison, for the small place was so c r a m m e d that next day the Judge, on application felt forced, against his will, to permit his enlargement, but confined him within " the Rules." Mr. Were lost no time in bringing his ill-treatment under the notice of the Executive Council, and his memorial was endorsed by a number of very influential signatures. It is stated as beyond doubt, that on its receipt, the veryfirstact of the Council was to pass a resolution removing Judge Willis from office on various grounds— the principal one being his acting oppressively to suitors in his Court, not belonging to that section of the community known as the Judge's sycophants. THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
Melbourne was now in the turmoil of its first election of a Legislative Council representative, and its first m e m b e r did not win his seat without a hard fight for it. T h e candidates were Messrs. Curr and Condell, and the election was decided more by the religious creed of the m a n than his political proclivities. Personal feeling and sectarian intolerance mingled their bitter waters to s w a m p the chance of Edward Curr, whose superiority over the other was never questioned; and Judge Willis, bigot as he was, leaped into the whirlpool, from which he, of all m e n in the place, should have stood aside. H e had the audacious folly to personally canvass the persons with w h o m he dealt, to vote for Condell, simply because " he was an honest man." In the height of the electioneering campaign, Willis and Curr m e t face to face at Williamson's drapery establishment, in Collins Street (now Rothschild Chambers), when Willis began a loud gushing canvass for Condell, looking and speaking at Curr all the time. Curr, though an older and more pacifically disposed man, had some notion of subjecting the sacresanct person of the Judge to a taste of corporal punishment, but he prudentially restrained himself, satisfied with hieing off to the Police Court, where he laid his grievance at the feet of the Police Magistrate, and applied for a " protection order " in the form of a warrant to apprehend the Judge, as otherwise a breach of the peace m a y be provoked. Major St. John would as soon think of jumping into the Yarra as complying, even if he had the clearest perception of his power to do so, for he stood awfully in awe of Willis, though he thoroughly detested him. So the Major pooh-poohed the affair, and Curr's good sense kept him from going'any further. This electioneering escapade of the Judge was the last straw on the camel's back; but the crowning and most cowardly of all Judge Willis' m a d tantrums remained to be enacted at the opening of the Criminal Session on 15th June, 1843. The Crown Prosecutor was obliged to absent himself through severe illness, and though this was known to the Judge, he took the opportunity to publicly blame him for the inefficient manner in which he had discharged the functions of a grand jury, viz., by omitting to find bills in certain cases where there had been open cross-swearing and conflicting affidavits. S o m e of them he particularised and connected them with the names of Were and Lonsdale. H e declared that bills would be found soon enough against poor men, but the rich m e n were overlooked, and there should not be one law for the rich and another for the poor. If the Crown Prosecutor longer declined doing his duty, it would be for him (the Judge) to make a representation of the circumstance to H e r Majesty's Government. " If such cases as these were to be smothered and nipped in the bud, then an end at once to all prosecutions, and an end to all hopes of good faith in the higher ranks of society, and bad faith will be engendered towards the mercantile community." This was about the last of his public improprieties, for the sands of his official life were running through the glass faster than he expected. H e little dreamed at the time that the Executive Pares had already pronounced his doom, and that the Atropos, whose scissors were to sever the thread of his judicial existence was then posting hither in the overland mail from Sydney. Such is an uncoloured resume of some of the almost inexplicable vagaries of the brief reign of the first Resident Judge of Port Phillip, collated, after aflightof over forty years, by the unprejudiced pen of one w h o was an astonished witness of most of them.
