Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/305

 had himself recommended to the Colonial Office the greater part of the measures which it argued. The most difficult and important of these was trial by jury.

Field dealt thus with its legal aspects. "Except in certain classes of misdemeanours, which do not induce legal incompetencies, and except in case of pardon under the Great Seal, which removes them, men convicted of felony or misdemeanour, after the expiration of their terms of transportation or (after being) pardoned by the Governor, are liable to challenge as jurors. The pardon of the King under Sign-Manual is sufficient in the case of transportation."

There was, of course, the property qualification, and in accordance with the returns sent by the magistrates to Sir John Jamison there were 614 persons free and emancipated owning freehold property and so entitled to act as jurors. But amongst these there were fifty-one officers of Government and many others who, as Bigge pointed out, were "raised too high above the condition of the ordinary description of offenders that come before the Criminal Court to be selected as jurors". Those born in the Colony and resident on their own property numbered no more than eighty-seven, and though equal, if not superior in intelligence and moral conduct, to the class from which petty jurors were taken in England, would find it burdensome and expensive to leave their farms to attend the sittings of the Criminal Court. Apart altogether from the legal aspect, it was necessary to consider what would be the actual effect of jury trial, and whether it would secure a more efficient administration of justice. It was in the Criminal Court that it was felt to be most needed, and the petitioners gave little consideration to its use in the Court of Civil Judicature.

Since the time when Ellis Bent and Macquarie had urged it upon the Government, feeling on the subject had undergone some changes. Jeffery Bent doubted whether petty juries would be an advantage and Riley was quite against it. "It is certainly most natural," he said, "that Englishmen should wish for so great a blessing, but according to my opinion the present state