cies). Sir Wm. Denison stated that the
silence of the Judges for fourteen days after the act was
passed,--whatever might have been the cause of that silence--ignorance,
indolence, sickness, or corruption,--rendered the most unlawful stretch
of power on the part of the council, including the total subversion of
all the limitary clauses, binding upon the colony, and if sanctioned by
the Queen, through the same ministerial inadvertence or corruption,
binding for ever. Judging of the intentions of parliament by the general
character of colonial legislation and by the cautious wording of this
act, it could scarcely be imagined that they suspended the public safety
on such a thread. That Englishmen should be deprived of their rights,
without the possibility of appeal, by the inadvertence of a judge--not
sitting in a court of justice, but in his own chamber--would be to
legislate by accident. Sir Wm. Denison relied on the despatch of Sir
George Murray (1828), which accompanied the Act 9 Geo. IV., known as the
"Huskisson Act." The former practice was to require the governor to
submit to the judge the draft of a bill before it was laid upon the
table of the council chamber, no principle of colonial law being more
"firmly established than that a colonial legislature cannot enact
statutes repugnant to the law of England." The judge (he said) "might
have found himself often required in open court to deny the validity of
a colonial ordinance, on the ground of repugnancy." By the Act in
question "provision was made for fully learning the views of the judges
upon the law, and for preventing their refusing to execute any law that
may be passed after a full consideration of their objections." Thus it
was intended to "combine, as far as possible, the advantage of a strict
observance of a general rule, and a harmony between the judges and the
legislature." It was therefore clear that the power given to the judges
to stop the enforcement of any illegal ordinance continued until their
objections--whenever and wherever they might arise--had been "fully
considered."--_Hobart Town Courier._]

[Footnote 249: Parl. papers, July. 1848.]

[Footnote 250: Despatch, August, 1838.]

[Footnote 251: Despatch to Earl Grey, 1848.]

SECTION II.

It now remains to record the most important colonial agitation of modern
times. The opposition of Van Diemen's Land to a system reprobated by
mankind--too long despised--awakened everywhere resistance