Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/507

 .THE JUDGE-ADVOCATFS COURT. 393 .in New South Wales; the simple question being, whether 17W-1808 the colonists were entitled to trial by jury according to the laws of England. For some years before the Chief Justice arriyed in the colony, the pressure of business in the Judge- Adrocate's BvAievin Court led to a curious modification of the original practice. Advocate's' Owing to the increase of crime, the judge, according to Wentworth, found himself unable to dispose of all the cases, civil and criminal, set down for hearing in his Court ; and business was therefore distributed in the following fashion: — offenders already under sentence were dealt with in a summary manner by the benches of magistrates and the Snmmay Superintendent of Police; while the Judge- Advocate re- reserved «or served himself for respectable cases, the persons brought before him being either free persons or emancipists. The convicts were punished either by transporting them to the Coal River, by putting them in the gaol gangs, by sending them (if they happen to be females) to the factory, or by simply ordering them corporal punishment, Modei of •II -1 1 'lii 1 punishment, unless they are charged with murder, or some capital felony ; and even in this latter case, they [the magistrates] frequently inflict some summary punishment.''^ This system meant trial by Court-martial for free settlers^ and summary punishment for convicts. gives another illustration of the manner in which the criminal law waa administered in his time. The herd of wild cattle fonnd at the Cowpastures in 1795 had been left to increase, under the impression that they would ultimately stock the country with cattle. At the time Wentworth wrote, they had disappeared, and he accounted for the fact by the ''exterminating incursions of numerous poor settlers who had farms in the neighbourhood, and who supplied themselves with fresh meat-by a raid on the Cowpastures^ in the fashion of Scott's Highland borderers. Every possible effort was made to suppress this kind ofrobbery, but without any success. For a xmg time it was thought beyond the power of the Courts to hold the robbers in check ; because although the cattle were originally the property of the Cro i, they had subsequently become intermixed with cattle oelonging to private owners, the result being that it was impossible to identify any par- ticular animal. On trials for cattle stealing, evidence of identification was required by the Judge-Advocate who administered justice from 1809 to 1815, and without sufficient evidence 0n that point, he would not convict ; but his successor, who held office from 18)6 to 1824, dissented from his ruling on that point, and would not be bound by it. Convictions then became easy. — lb., pp. 50-51. Digitized by Google
 * Deacription of Kew South Wales (1819), pp. 232-3. Wentfwortii