Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/508

 394 THE JUDGE.ADVOCATE*S COUBT. 1789-1898 Prom the foundation of the colony to the year 1824, when the Supreme Court began its sittings with Francis Forbes as Chief Justice, every criminal trial in the colony took place, or was supposed to take place, before the Judge- B^imentai Advocato and the six officers who sat with him. The ducted during that period would form a curious chapter in the history of English law. Writing in 1819 — ^when the country was comparatively prosperous and largely popu- lated, numbering many free settlers among its inhabitants — Wentworth wrote of the Judge- Advocate's Court as follows — p. 365 : — The bare appearance of this tribunal has long been odious and Went- revolting to the majority of the colonists. It is disgusting to an ^^n^ Englishman to see a culprit, however heinous may be his oflFenoe, arraigned before a Court clad in full military costume ; nor can it indeed be readily conceived that a body of men, whose principles and habits must have been materially influenced, if not entirely formed, by a code altogether foreign to the laws of this country, should be able on such occasions to divest themselves of the soldier and to judge as the citizen. If the appearance of the military Court was disgusting to Wentworth — who at the time he wrote was reading for the Bar in London — it seems to have made a similar impres- sion on the Chief Justice, when he found himself adminis- tering the law of England in the new Supreme Court with seven officers, in full uniform, serving as jurors. A criminal trial could not take place in his Court without a military jury; but as the law provided that Courts of Quarter Sessions should be held, without specifying the kind of jury to be empanelled in them, Forbes determined that the The Chief commou law should fill up the gap left by the statute. ttoronmon A rule nisi for a mandamus was accordingly directed to the magistrates, requiring them to show cause why they should not proceed to the trial of crimes and misdemean- ours according to the law and practice of England. The rule was argued by the Solicitor-General for the magistrates and the Attorney- General for the other side ; and judgment Digitized by Google
 * ' system on which the administration of justice was con-