But the decision of the King's Bench discovered a serious omission in the forms of pardon issued by Macquarie, and further enquiry even threw doubt on his power to grant them at all. The Act of Parliament empowered the crown to delegate the _authority to remit_ a sentence of transportation, to the Governor of New South Wales; but the commission of Macquarie said nothing of this power, except the criminals were colonially convicted, when he could grant reprieves and pardons. His _instructions_ authorised the pardons to British offenders, and those instructions were warranted by _parliamentary enactment_; but the royal commission gave _no such power_: and thus all his pardons were legally void. Another essential condition was neglected: to give effect to the pardon of the Governor, it was required that he should transmit to the Secretary of State the names of the persons whose sentences he remitted, to secure their insertion in the next list of general pardons. This course had never been taken: no list of remissions had been furnished to Downing-street. Among the extraordinary omissions of the government at home, was in many instances the place of trial, and even the sentence of the transports; to save the labour of penmanship, "ditto," was sometimes the sentence found under another name, in the line of which 7, or 14, was written; not at full length, but in numerals. Some "indents" exhibited erasures: in one, a sentence of seven years had been converted to "life." More strange than all, some were sent without even their names, and others without any sort of information of their crime or sentence; and the authorities felt justified in gaining by artifice, from the unsuspecting prisoners themselves, what the ministers had neglected to furnish. An Irishman, who could give no information, was suited to a sentence by a process of analogy: he was set down, in compliment to his comrade, for "life."[128] The regular transmission of this kind of information was neglected, chiefly, by the Irish executive; ever slow to perceive the obligation of reason and justice. The longevity of abuses is among the most instructive lessons of history. The first fleet left their lists with the owners of the transports: soon after their arrival, several prisoners declared their sentence was completed; this, the government was unable to affirm or deny, and therefore did nothing; but one of the claimants, having expressed his discontent in a manner disrespectful to the Lieutenant-Governor, received 600 lashes, and six months in irons![129] Such atrocious neglect of the first principles of equity, is a sad set-off against the license of indiscriminate pardons. The Roman judge was a far better casuist: "For it seemeth to me unreasonable, to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes laid against him."[130]