of a legal court, the
magistrates set up a jurisdiction of their own. Criminal trials were
dispatched by the simplest process, and the mixed penalties of a
military and civil court inflicted on the assumed offender.[83] Thus,
the negligent provision for the administration of justice secured
impunity to crime, or seemed to require an arbitrary tribunal.

The proclamation of martial law, was to relieve the government from the
restraints of forms. The facility with which justice could be
administered by it, was illustrated at the Castle Hill insurrection: no
life being lost on the government side, the victorious troops arranged
that every third man convicted should be hanged. They drew the names of
the sufferers by lot, and were proceeding with great vigour, when the
appearance of the governor suspended the execution.[84] The dangerous
usurpation in both Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land, led to the
hasty sacrifice of life.

The scarcity of corn was once deemed a sufficient justification, when
there was no appearance of sedition: at these times the government
seized boats, or whatever was deemed useful for the public service, and
imitated the most irregular actions of the Stuarts.

The subordinate authorities were supposed to partake the license of
their superiors. One commandant, Colonel Geils, fixed a spiked collar on
the neck of a free woman; another flogged a female through Hobart Town
for abusive language; and another tied up a free man on the spot, for
placarding a grievance, when as yet there was no press.[85] Davey,
having ordered a person to the triangles, answered his remonstrances
with a pleasant jest: the sufferer reminded him that he could not flog
him; the governor answered that "he would try," and the flagellator soon
determined the problem in favor of authority. Indignant exclamations of
free men were deemed preposterous by a body of officials, who regarded
the diffidence of civil government as absurd, and considered power as
the standard of right.

The administration of justice is described by a work of the times:--"I
have known," wrote a contemporary witness, "men, without trial,
sentenced to transportation by a single magistrate at his own door: free
men, after being acquitted by a court of criminal judicature, banished
to another of the dependant settlements. I have heard a magistrate tell
a prisoner (then being examined for a capital offence, and who had some
goods, supposed to be stolen, for w