Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/237

 Macquarie began to lose his temper. On the 9th January he wrote, "I was very much chagrined and disappointed to find on conversing with you this day on the subject of the Port Regulations of this Territory, that you were unwilling to frame them in the manner and on the principle proposed by me in the manuscript draft I had some time since the honor to submit for your revisal and correction, on the plea that you did not conceive the proposed regulations were warranted by the law. In this opinion I must beg leave to differ from you &hellip;; and as you are the only Law Officer now here belonging to the Crown, I must still call upon you, in this official manner, to revise and frame the proposed Port Regulations &hellip; so as to enable me to publish them with as little delay as possible. &hellip; Trusting you will see the propriety on more mature reflection of complying with my present request, and thereby prevent my being compelled to resort to the unpleasant alternative of making a reference to His Majesty's Ministers on this subject, "I am, etc.,"

Bent took a rather high line in reply—

"His Majesty," he wrote, "has been graciously pleased to confer upon me the offices of Judge of the Court of Vice-Admiralty and Judge-Advocate in this Territory. By virtue of the first office I have to exercise various and important judicial functions. By virtue of my office as Judge-Advocate I am a magistrate throughout this Territory, and have to officiate at general Courts-Martial whenever called upon by your Excellency, to preside at the Chief Criminal Tribunal in the Colony, at one of the Civil Courts of the Territory, and judicially to assist at the Court of Appeal. To these duties I may also add that of giving my legal opinion to your Excellency on such matters as you may think fit to submit to me for that purpose. These various duties are as much as one man can properly perform, and I hope are sufficiently laborious to excuse my declining other labours not distinctly attached to my office and which I never did or could imagine would be required of me.

"I have," he continued, "to the utmost of my ability,