The Governor must be acquitted of great blame. A discussion,
of considerable warmth, arose (1825-6) on an address being presented
from fifty persons, who complained of the delays of justice on
bushrangers already condemned. The gaol was crowded, and the prisoners
seemed not unlikely to escape: several did actually break out of prison.
This memorial was transmitted by the government to the chief justice,
who, while he disdained giving reasons to the colony, vindicated his
court: the magistrates neglected the depositions; the attorney-general
the indictments, and the jury their summons. He had sat in a silent
court until ashamed, while prisoners awaited deliverance. He had often
felt disposed to discharge them; some of whom were detained longer for
trial than for punishment. He could not perceive how the delay of
execution could facilitate the evasion of capture by those at large. In
transmitting this reply, Arthur took occasion to refer to the colonial
press, supported by several of the memorialists, as largely implicated
with the crimes of the bushrangers. He traced, with some artifice, the
violence of the robbers to political dissensions, as inspiriting men who
easily confounded "the liberty of writing and the liberty of acting." To
be satisfied that the Governor did not seize an occasion of rebuke,
rather than account for a public misfortune, is difficult; and not less,
to sympathise with the petitioners. It is common for private individuals
to deprecate the severities of public justice, but the awful state of
the colony must be admitted, when fifty persons, among its most opulent
and even humane inhabitants, were anxious to hasten the offices of the
executioner.

The ignorant and brutal among the prisoners rushed into violence and
crime, with a recklessness of life scarcely credible. Not less than one
hundred were in arms at that time:[172] most of them were absconders
from the various penal stations, and had exhausted all those forms of
severity which stopped short of the scaffold. Of seventy-three sentenced
together, nine were for sheep-stealing, four for forgery, five for
murder, and twelve for robbery; besides four for the offence known in
gaols under the name of blanketing, who were ordered for execution--a
punishment which was commuted, being even then thought too severe for a
theft committed in gaol. They threw over the man whom they robbed a
blanket, and raised loud outcries; and in this form effected their