Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/505

 THE COLONISTS' PETITION. 391 be conducted by tbe person who presided as judge, and tbat 1788-1828 person an officer of marines ; a barrister was appointed JlJfJJ"* Chief Justice and another Attorney-General, whose duty it J^^^JJ*^ was to draw the indictment in criminal cases and to appear G«n«™i- in Court for the Crown, according to the practice of the English Courts.* This reform in the administration of the law was the result of an elaborate report made by a special commis- sioner — John Thomas Bigge — ^who was sent out in 1819 to Biggo's report on ''the state of the judicial establishments^* and on the other matters in the colony. Early in that year the free ErtabUsh- settlers had sent home a petition in which they expressed their objections to the existing method of administering the criminal law, and prayed for some measure of reform. Their objections — as stated by Bigge — ^were principally these : — 1. The combination in the person of the Judge- Advocate of TheJadf^e- the duties of a magistrate (who commits the prisoner upon in- vestigations conducted by himself), of prosecutor, of juryman, and of judge. 2. The military character of the Court, to the members of The Miiitan* which there is no right of challenge, and from whose decisions there is no right of appeal ; the military title of the presiding member [Judge- Advocate] ; and the occurrence of cases wherein the* accuser was a member of the Court. 3. The general unfitness and incapacity of a Court so consti- JJj^"^„ tuted to administer impartial justice to the free and respectable population of the colony, or to command the respect; the repugnance of its forms and proceedings to the feelings of the petitioners as Englishmen, and to the institutions of their native country, t in 1814, the first Judge of which was Jefifrey Hart Bent, who arrived in that year, and was summarily removed by Governor Macqnarie two years afterwards. Bent's brother, Ellis, came out as Judge-Advocate with that Governor in 1809, and died in 1815. The last Judge-Advocate was John Wylde, who came out in 1816. He was appointed a temporary Judge of the Supreme Court in 1824, and left the colony in the following year. t Beport of the Commission of Inquiry on the Judicial E2stablishment of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Leiid, p. 19. In his Report on the State of Agriculture and Trade in New South Wales, Bigge stated (p. 80) Digitized by Google
 * A Court called the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature was established