Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/233

 order," he said, "to accommodate him as far as I felt myself justifiable". After that the Governor doubtless expected to carry his plans for the court-house without further opposition. In 1813 it had become clear that if another court was to be established, the Judge-Advocate's office would not provide sufficient space. Macquarie proposed to build a court-house, and a voluntary subscription list was opened which the Government headed with £500. The cost of the materials Macquarie calculated at £5,000, and he wanted a Parliamentary grant of £2,000 to help out the subscriptions. The labour was to be supplied by the convict gangs. Although tenders were called for and accepted, the whole project was abandoned in November, very much to the disgust of Ellis Bent, who blamed Macquarie for not "withdrawing the artificers and labourers from other public works".

In 1814 the Governor put forward a new plan. The hospital was almost completed and was on a scale far too extensive for present needs. It consisted of a main building containing four large wards, and two detached wings of considerable size intended for the residences of the chief surgeon and his two assistants. Macquarie thought that half of the main building—what he called "a wing of the hospital," should be appropriated for the sittings of the courts. The Colonial Office, as well as the Bents, took this to mean one of the detached wings, and agreed that the arrangement was a suitable one. But when the judges discovered that Macquarie meant to use two of the hospital wards they were very indignant. After a long discussion the matter was referred home, but it was of course too late to make any alteration in Macquarie's plans, and His Majesty's Court of Justice were "compelled to sit in the wards of a common hospital". Goulburn, writing to Bent in 1815, hoped that this minor matter would not disturb his