A quarrel between Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Eagar, an emancipist attorney, displayed more forcibly the effect of the decision of the English Chief Justice. Judge Field presided at a session of magistrates at Parramatta, when Eagar attempted to act as counsel: this was prevented by the court; and the judge, as chairman, expressed himself, in reference to Eagar, in terms of severe disapprobation and contempt, stigmatising him as a common _barrator_, or mover of quarrels, whom the Governor might justly prosecute for sedition, or banish from the colony. Eagar, not daunted by the philippic of the judge, resolved to sue him in a secondary court for slander, and to recover back fees paid in the Supreme Court, and which he alleged the judge had levied illegally; but Judge Field ordered his solicitor to file an affidavit of his belief that Eagar was under attainder, and prayed for time to obtain an office copy of his conviction: this course was allowed, and the action defeated. Not long after, Eagar attempted to recover certain penalties imposed by the Act of Charles II. on foreign merchants trading in the British plantations: the penalties were enormous, and the law was obsolete. The particular object of Eagar was, to suppress the competition in the sale of tea, which the superior trading connection of Messrs. L. Mestre and Co. enabled them to offer. The French merchant very fairly pleaded the attaint of the plaintiff, and Judge Field, in giving judgment, insisted on the obvious injustice of the suit; that men, whose trading was permissive--themselves the creatures of indulgence--and who, by connivance, were allowed to become wealthy and prosperous--should endeavour to rouse forgotten and restrictive statutes, to put down useful commerce, and abuse privileges conceded by the clemency of the court; to force the court to become the instrument of oppression: he therefore allowed the plea of the merchants to bar the action of the plaintiff. All this, on the face of it, was just; but the emancipists saw that it gave to the judge a discretion which laid them helpless at his mercy: the same plea might be offered, to cover a fraudulent debtor, or deprive a large majority of traders of legal protection. Nor was it a competent answer, that the policy of the colony had been of an opposite description: to stand on suffrage, was to stand in peril.