George Boxall

“ A single act of disobedience is a sufficient ground of complaint before the magistrate, and is always severely dealt with. But, besides the master's power, the prisoners are in some measure under a dominion to the free population at large; any man can give him in charge without ceremony. If seen drunk, if seen tippling in the public-house, if met after hours in the street, if unable to pay his trifling debt, if impertinent—the free man has nothing more to do than to send him to the watch-house, and get him punished. The poor prisoner is at the mercy of all men. ”

“ I have no desire to raise any doubts as to the generosity and benevolence of Robin Hood, but I can find no evidence of any such beneficence on the part of any of the Australian bushrangers. No doubt they got their money easily, and spent it recklessly. But they did not pause to enquire whether the person they robbed was rich or poor. There was no such class distinction in the colonies as there is and always has been in England; no very poor class not worth robbing and ready to bless anyone who gave them a penny, and no hereditary wealthy class. ”

“ Is it any wonder that even such "passive and inoffensive creatures" as the Van Diemen's Land blacks are said to have been, should have been aroused to fury by such methods? But although the Government had no control over the convicts in the bush, and such outrages as this were not known of until long after they had occurred, it can scarcely be said that even Governor Arthur, in spite of his earnest desire to protect the blacks, was altogether blameless. The whole policy of the Government in relation to the blacks was weak and vacillating. ”

“ The prisoners of all classes in Government are fed with the coarsest food; governed with the most rigid discipline; subjected to the stern, and frequently capricious and tyrannical will of an overseer; for the slightest offence (sometimes for none at all—the victim of false accusation) brought before a magistrate, whom the Government has armed with the tremendous powers of a summary jurisdiction, and either flogged, or sentenced to solitary confinement, or retransported to an iron gang, where he must work in heavy irons, or to a penal settlement, where he will be ruled with a rod of iron. ”

“ A most exorbitant licence fee was imposed on all residents on proclaimed goldfields, and this tax was collected in a most arbitrary and brutal manner. There were no gaols nor lock-ups on the diggings at the time, and men arrested for all sorts of offences—murder, bushranging, stealing, or the non-payment of licence fees—were simply fastened with handcuffs to a bullock chain attached to a tree stump by a huge staple. ”

“ I do not grieve that the hour is fast approaching that is to end my earthly career. I welcome death as a friend;—the world, or what I have seen of it, has no allurements in it for me. 'Tis not for me to boast; but yet, Sir, allow a dying man to speak a few words to one who has always shown a sympathy for the wretched outcasts of society, and ever, with a Christian charity, strove to recall the wretched wanderer to a sense of his lost condition. ”

“ The people who had been detained in the dining-room speedily made their escape and collected on a ridge a short distance from the scene of battle, other persons, attracted by the sound of the firing, rode up from the stations round until some three hundred spectators of the fight were collected on the ridge, but they left the police to do the fighting unaided. Constable Bowen, who had already shot a bushranger in the Thunderbolt rising, was the first to make any impression, and a great cheer went up as one of Moonlite's men was seen to fall. ”

“ Batman came up to him in the mountains and called on him to surrender. "Are you an officer?" asked Brady, coolly cocking his gun. "I'm not a soldier," replied Batman, "I'm John Batman. If you raise that gun I'll shoot. There's no chance for you." "You're right," replied Brady, "my time's come. You're a brave man and I yield; but, I'd never give in to a soldier." Brady was taken to the nearest lock-up, where, as it happened, Jefferies, the cannibal, had been lodged some days before, and much to Brady's disgust the two men were conveyed to Hobart Town in the same cart. ”

“ The people generally, it was asserted, had given ample proof that they would not tolerate a reign of terror such as the bushrangers had striven so hard to establish, and if there should ever be another outbreak, which was not considered probable, it would be crushed out long before it could possibly assume such vast proportions as it had gained during the past era. If there were evil-disposed persons in the colony they would be aware that public opinion was opposed to them and would hesitate before they decided to adopt bushranging as a profession. ”

“ No doubt, among the enormous crowds which landed in Victoria in the early years of the rush to the diggings, there was a fair admixture of rough and reckless characters who were not convicts, but it was the custom to assume that all crimes were committed by the "old hands," and that any man arrested for any criminal offence had been "sent out." Thus, when Mr. Lachlan M'Lachlan was appointed police magistrate of Bendigo, he merely expressed openly the opinion held by other magistrates, and the public generally, when he declared that nearly all thefts were perpetrated by "old hands." ”

“ When we are in possession of the fact that the Sydney Executive could and did accomplish such protective arrangements over a hundred and fifty miles of country, we may be allowed to doubt the alleged inability of the Victorian Government to render equally efficient aid out of a revenue probably ten times as great as that derived by the sister colony from the same source; at least we might reasonably suppose that townships between Melbourne and Mount Alexander, Geelong and Ballarat, would be supplied with police, mounted or otherwise, to act in a radius of ten miles or so when called upon.... ”

“ There was a tendency among a portion of the people of Victoria to glorify that colony at the expense of the mother colony over the capture of Morgan. It was said that bushrangers would never receive the public sympathy and support in Victoria which they did in New South Wales, and attributed this to the fact that Victoria had never had a penal settlement within its borders. There has always been an absurd jealousy between the people of Melbourne and those of Sydney, and there can be no doubt that it has been somewhat of a disadvantage to the colonies generally. ”

“ I may admit that perhaps there may be men whose death is desirable or expedient; but, if it is so, if there are men unfit to live or whose death might add to the happiness or security of the majority, then I think that we might extend to our fellow creatures, however ferocious or abandoned they may be, the mercy which we show to savage or superfluous dogs and cease from torturing them in their last moments. Hanging has had a sufficiently lengthy trial in Australia if it has not in England. ”

“ Australia, as elsewhere, is to build up a wealthy class, but this class did not exist in convict times, and is only just beginning to appear now. The Australian bushranger in fact had to obtain money or go under. He was compelled to share his ill-gotten gains with those who supplied him with food and information. He was a mark for the blackmailer, and he was compelled to find money to bribe those who were in a position to lead the troops or the police to his hiding place. But the convict bushranger was not so well off as the native-born bushranger. ”

“ Several soldiers in New South Wales deliberately committed crime so that they might be convicted, in the hope that, by good conduct, they might earn some of the indulgences open to convicts. The fact is that any prisoner who contrived, by obsequiousness or in any other way, to make friends with an official, had his way made easy for him, while the independent, whether industrious or not, were ruthlessly persecuted until, in many cases, they were finally forced to the gallows. ”

“ Australia afforded them no escape valve by which their desire for excitement might be worked off. They did not pause to realise that their fight against society was hopeless from the beginning, and that in taking to the bush they were setting themselves, almost single handed, against the whole force of public opinion in the colony. Had they lived in Europe they might, perhaps, have enlisted in the army and thus been able to do something to satisfy their cravings for notoriety and adventure in a legitimate way. ”

“ Sir, out of the bitter cup of misery I have drunk from my sixteenth year—ten long years—and the sweetest draught is that which takes away the misery of living death; it is the friend that deceives no man ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Australias are so intimately connected together,—it is so easy for the residents of one colony to make their way into any other colony, and the people as a body are more prone to moving about than those of any other civilised country,—that any claim of superiority either in extraction, morals, or in any other particular, by the residents of any one colony over those of any other colony is absurd. ”

“ In Victoria the gaols were fewer but larger, and several of these have been closed, while others once full are now almost empty. A similar story might be told of each of the other colonies of the Australasian group, and Australia as a whole compares favourably with other civilised countries in criminal matters. What the Irishman calls "the bad drop" in the blood of the country has been purged away by the most drastic remedies, and it is extremely improbable that there will ever again be a Frank Gardiner or a Ned Kelly to incite the young and thoughtless to deeds of violence. ”

“ Frequently a "roll up" was called for the purpose of organising a party to hunt down thieves or other evil-doers, and very soon the "roll up" carried terror through the ranks of tent thieves and other robbers. Sometimes the delinquent when caught was cuffed and beaten and ordered off the diggings on pain of death, but, as a rule, he was marched to the police camp, popularly known as "The Camp," and handed over for trial. It was perhaps because of this attitude of the diggers, that "Lynch law" did not become an institution in Victoria, as it had in California. ”

“ Scarcely a day passed without a body being found murdered and rifled, and thus a peculiar sort of morality was developed on the diggings, and the diggers, while resisting the police, jeering at them and showing their hatred of them in every possible way, still assisted them in capturing thieves and other criminals. It was the custom to call public meetings for political and other purposes, by sending men to all the various camps each carrying a tin dish. These heralds would beat their tin dishes and yell, "Roll up! roll up!" ”

“ The very papers which were most strenuous in their exhortations to the Government of the day to stamp out bushranging at any cost, and which urged the police and all orderly citizens to slay and kill any person who interfered with the mails or who molested travellers on the high roads, now admitted that the bushrangers had been harshly dealt with. Those who had been convicted of murder, or of attempts to murder, had been hung or shot, while the lesser criminals had been sentenced to penal servitude for life or for very long periods. ”

“ It was generally understood that Sunday was to be a holiday, or day of rest, but excuses were readily found for making the convicts work on this day, and this was a fruitful source of discontent. Very frequently men absconded on Saturday night, remained in the bush on Sunday, and returned on Monday to take the customary fifty lashes and resume work.
If flogging is efficacious in preventing crime, it should have made the convict colonies the most virtuous places on earth, for the "cat" was in almost continuous use in New South Wales and in Van Diemen's Land. ”

“ Australia ranged therefore from the comparatively innocent wanderer in the bush, to such desperadoes as these, while the crimes they committed varied from petty theft to burglary, bank robbery, robbery on the high road, and murder. The modern idea of a bushranger is a bold highwayman, and no doubt many of the bushrangers come up to this ideal, but the story of the bushrangers would not be complete if it took no note of the others.
The settlement on Norfolk Island was established with the view of sending all the reconvicted prisoners there. It was the penal settlement of a penal settlement. ”