hich their
situation requires; so as to make their interest totally
unconnected with those pursuits which have led so many to
sacrifice their principles, and to neglect their duty, for the
sake of pursuing the search after independence. The
incorruptibility which ought to characterise the conduct of a
magistrate should be so fortified by every prudent precaution,
that it may at no time, however remote, be in danger of
agitation; nor would it be prudent, in another point of view, to
permit these gentlemen to mingle in occupations which must have
an evident tendency to distract their attention from those
arduous tasks which they would be called upon to fulfil, in a
country where criminals must naturally abound. Numbers of persons
are doubtless to be found in Great Britain who would gladly
accept these appointments, whose educations have taught them to
look above situations to which unforeseen and unavoidable
calamity may have reduced them; men who have preserved their
principles and integrity unshaken by the attacks of adversity,
and who, consequently, must be eminently qualified to fill such
offices as those which I have here suggested. The example which
these persons would hold out to the rest of the settlement, could
not fail of producing very beneficial effects upon the moral
conduct of those who copy the models of their superiors; and
would also be of service in assisting to create a society of
power and independence, which might operate as a check upon the
influence of all other descriptions of persons.

As instances of the irregularities that have been practised by
some of those in magisterial capacities, I need repeat none
others than that I have known men without trial to be sentenced
to transportation, by a single magistrate at his own barrack; and
free men, after having been acquitted by a court of criminal
judicature, to be banished to one or other of the dependent
settlements: And I have heard a magistrate tell a prisoner who
was then being examined for a capital offence, and had some
things found upon him which were supposed to have been stolen,
and for which he would not account, that, were he not going to be
hanged so soon, he (the magistrate) would be d----d if he would
not make him say from whence he got them. Nor do I believe it
less true, that records of an examination, wherein a respectable
young man was innocently engaged, have been destroyed by that
same magistrate before whom the depositions we