He had been given a salary of £1,200 a year with the right to practise as a barrister, but he became discontented with his position; in October 1825, he was in conflict with Governor Thomas Brisbane on the question whether he was bound to draft a bill which seemed to him to be repugnant to the laws of England.
In September 1826, in a dispatch to under-secretary Hay, Darling described one of Bannister's letters to the governor as "very offensive and insolent".
[4] He left for England on 22 October 1826 and afterwards did a large amount of writing; the British Museum Catalogue lists about 30 of his publications.
Many are pamphlets but among the longer works are: Statements and Documents relating to Proceedings in New South Wales in 1824, 1825 and 1826 (1827), Humane Policy; or Justice to the Aborigines (1830), British Colonization and Coloured Tribes (1838), and William Paterson, the Merchant Statesman (1858).
[3] Bannister died at Thornton Heath, England, on 16 September 1877, survived by his wife and a daughter, Mrs Wyndham.