A decision at Sydney, explained the nature of the claim for wages
granted by former regulations of government. A female, at the close
of a long servitude, sued her master for arrears: the judge advocate
declared "his court one of equity and right," not of law; that
the spirit of public orders, not their letter, was the rule of judgment;
that the allowance of money required by the crown, was intended to
secure the plaintiff certain comforts: those comforts she had already
enjoyed, and thus her claim in equity had been already satisfied (1823).
The wages of a man servant were stopped by the magistrates, because he
had been accused of stealing from his master (1821)!
The right of a master in the services of his assigned servant, was
incidentally raised in the celebrated case of Jane New. She arrived in
Van Diemen's Land under a sentence of transportation, and, according to
the prevailing custom, was assigned to her husband; who was allowed, by
Governor Arthur, to remove her to New South Wales: she was charged there
with a capital felony, and death was recorded against her. The
prosecutrix, Madle. Senns, a French mantua-maker, gave her evidence by
an interpreter: afterwards, it was discovered, that the conviction was
erroneous, both _in substance_ and _in law_: released on the
recommendation of the judges, by order of the sheriff she was committed
to the female factory at Parramatta. Her husband then sued out a writ of
_habeas corpus_, to which the return, as amended by the direction of the
court, alleged under the hand of the colonial secretary, that her
detention was by authority of Governor Darling, she being a prisoner of
the crown. The question seemed to depend on the nature of the rights
conveyed by assignment; but a second arose: whether those rights could
be exercised beyond the limits of the territory appointed for the
transportation; or whether Governor Arthur was authorised to permit the
removal. The judges, Forbes, Stephen, and Dowling, decided that the
prisoner having been transported to Van Diemen's Land, was, by removal
to Port Jackson, no longer under the provisions of the act of
parliament; that neither the magistrates nor Governor of New South
Wales, could make her the subject of summary treatment; but as a
prisoner illegally at large, must remand her to the place of her
original and unsatisfied term of transportation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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