Volume 59: Archdeacon Scott letters, 1822-1844: No. 183

[Page 183]

As to your political petition having never seen it I do not know what to say - but if it is for Legislative assembly to be elected in the Colony, I am quite sure you are not yet fit for it & I am as sure that my reasons wd. coincide with yours why you are not - I shd.like to know how the trial by Jury has turned out - There was a serious defeat throughout the Colony upon that subject when I was there - no one with whom I conversed & who appeared to be qualified to serve as a juror, was at all aware of the duties first of a Grand Juror & secondly on the nature & subject of evidence as a petit  juror - We are not much better off in England & therefore the number is less.  All this arises from  defective education & until that is remedied neither N.S.W. or Engd will have any real justice; & until the value of a suffrage is estimated by the elector for whose good it is given & not for that of a Candidate, we shall not have a full elected assembly of Representatives & much less will you -

Again with regard to your Judicial departments there are three briefless & not highly educated barristers sent out to administer the laws of Engd "so far as they can be administered in NSW" wh are so complicated & diversified as to cause differences of opinion amongst the Judges from the Chancellor downwards, who have all these laws have [indecipherable] to the subject & all well practised in it.  The power therefor given to such men as you have, tho I do not say is  necessary, yet if necessary ought to be given to others & different to what it has been - Instead of a blessing they were a curse to the Colony - I speak in times past -