It has not heretofore been usual for a Governor in writing to a Judge to tell him, “that his insinuations and [indecipherable] are as unjust as they were illiberal” or have I yet met with, in all the official writings that I have perused, any note couched in the following terms: the Governor has received a most insolent and disrespectful letter, of this day’s date, from Mr Justice Bent, full of gross misrepresentations and calumnies which merits no other answer than his expressions of contempt nor is Mr Justice Bent, indeed backward in replying in the same style. He thus concludes a note dated 8th September, 1815: Mr Justice Bent has never, as a private individual had any knowledge, acquaintance or correspondence with Governor Macquarie, and from the moritifications he had in his public station experienced from His Excellency, should by no means think such private knowledge or acquaintance desirable, or feel himself much honoured by such correspondence.

Total number of souls
N.S.W. in 1818 – 21,294, ditto at Van Diemans Land, 3,760.
Horses 15,173, Horned Cattle 159,932, Sheep 416, 158, Hogs [indecipherable]

Copy of a letter from William H Moore, Esq to Mr Justice Bent, dated Sydney, 6th March, 1816.

Your Honour,

I take the liberty of writing to you, in consequence of an official letter which I yesterday received from Mr Secretary Campbell, informing me that the Governor had given orders to the Treasurer of the public fund, to discontinue the payment of my salary from the 23rd ultimo (that being the day on which my [indecipherable] for the Rev Benjamin Vale, in the seizure of the American Schooner, Traveller, commenced) and that he would not fail to recommend His Majesty’s Ministers to discontinue the same. I am greatly at a loss to know, upon what principal of justice the Governor could have [indecipherable] such an extraordinary stretch of power, without giving me the least previous intimation. I am acting for Vale as a mere agent and in business in which the interests of the Crown are greatly concerned: the legality of the proceeding I have not the least doubt of, and yet I am accused in Mr Secretary Campbell’s letter to me, of insolent, offensive, and insulting conduct, in the late false, [indecipherable] and vain attempt (as he pleased to call it) to seize the vessel in opposition to the Governor’s public measures and in contempt of his authority. I knew nothing at the time of the seizure, of the Governor have given permission to the vessel to be entered at this port. There was no public order to that effect issued, which is the order usually taken by the Governor, to make known his measures. I could not therefore have done it with any such view as he attributed it to, and was actuated solely by a sense of duty and justice, that I owed to my Client, Mr Vale, and the British Government, on whose behalf I considered myself as acting. I therefore hope you will do me the favour, the first time you have occasion to write to Earl Bathurst, to certify to him that I have been guilty of no crime in conducting this business as an agent; and I trust his Worship will be concerned that I have been so very deserving of such a punishment as the Governor thought proper to inflict, by shipping [indecipherable] and that he will consequently send an order for the continuance of [indecipherable] colony as heretofore, and [indecipherable]