deal with as Bligh had attempted to treat the highest Court
in the colony in 1808. The quarrels of civil litigants, it
was resolved, should be separated from the administration
of the high Criminal Court. A new commission and letters
patent (4th Feb. 1814) effected a separation of the civil and
criminal judicatures, formerly united under the presidency
of the Judge-Advocate. A Civil Court, called the Governor's
Court, was composed of the Judge-Advocate of the colony
and two inhabitants appointed by the Governor. Another,
called the Lt.-Governor's Court, was created in Van
Diemen's Land under the presidency of a Deputy Judge-Advocate.
A Supreme Court was established in Sydney. The Judge was to be appointed by the Crown. Two magistrates appointed by the Governor were to aid the Judge. Over all was the High Court of Appeal, presided over by the Governor himself, with the Judge-Advocate as assessor. No change was made in the Criminal Court, where the Judge-Advocate presided. Mr. Ellis Bent, after painstaking compilation of rules of practice, died, universally regretted, without being able to open the Governor's Court. A locum tenens opened it for the first time in January 1816, and a new Judge-Advocate, Wylde, arrived in October of that year to preside over it. Mr. Wylde (afterwards Sir John Wylde, and Chief Justice at the Cape of Good Hope) had the rare and not felicitous fortune of presiding in the Court in which his father was a subordinate official as Clerk of the Peace.
The first Judge sent to the new "Supreme Court of Civil Judicature" was Jeffery Hart Bent, a brother of Ellis Bent.
Macquarie quarrelled with Judge Bent at a very early date. Bent questioned the legality of a certain road toll, of which the surplus, after repairs, was paid to a Police Fund. Macquarie told the Secretary of State that a letter from Bent contained "false assertions and malignant insinuations." Macquarie having determined to associate with freedmen, and to force their society upon others, was enraged because Bent would not suffer convict attorneys to practise before him. George Crossley was one of those who desired the privilege. The irate Governor wrote of Bent—he holds no Court, "nor is it his intention to hold one until the point in regard to the re-admission of attorneys
