Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/268

 the conduct of Macquarie and Wentworth. He claimed again that judges were exempt from all criminal process save for treason or felony, a statement to which Macquarie gave no direct answer. It may be observed, however, that Barron Field, Bent's successor, held that this exemption did not extend to the colonial judges, and proposed that it should be conferred by statute.

Macquarie's description of his position deeply injured Bent. "Your Excellency," he wrote, "has &hellip; considered me as an officer under your command and not as a judge holding a commission from His Majesty, and who is not bound by any instructions or by the tenor of his commission to take any orders from your Excellency, and whose commission was so given for the express purpose of rendering him independent of the Governor of this Colony."

He avoided further conflict by abstaining from any use of the turnpike road, and thus carried his point of never paying toll. The apparent victory lay with the Governor, but Bent had thrown a doubt on his power to tax, and offered to the malcontents a tenable ground of attack against the Government.

He soon found a more efficacious and subtle manner of harassing the Governor, using as his tools the Rev. Benjamin Vale, a discontented young chaplain, and W. H. Moore, a mischievous young solicitor, one of the two who had been sent out by the Government.

Vale had left England early in 1814 to take up the duties of assistant chaplain on the colonial staff. Like all the chaplains in New South Wales, with the exception of Marsden, he held a staff commission which placed him under "the Rules and Discipline of War". Marsden had originally held one of this kind, but when he visited England, in 1808, he persuaded Lord Castlereagh to replace it by a civil commission, fearing that the other might render him amenable to a Court-Martial. Castlereagh had denied that he could in any event be court-martialled, but yielded to Marsden's persistence, and had a