ernment, it was necessary to check these prerogatives with a
considerable responsibility.

The arrest of Mackay, a free man, at Swan River, indicated the danger of
undefined powers, and the boundless arrogance of office. He was seized
by the commander of a vessel and delivered to the _Phoenix_ hulk, New
South Wales, where, loaded with irons of unusual weight, his clothing
branded, he was confined with prisoners destined for a penal settlement.
Having been brought up by a writ from the judges, he was _discharged_,
and _retaken_: again the court interfered, and the man--never known as a
prisoner, against whom nothing but a general suspicion existed; who had
been torn away from a distant colony, and exposed to the contemptuous
treatment of those through whose hands he passed--owed his final
liberation to the interference of an advocate, and the firmness of the
judges. He obtained L200 damages, against which the government appealed,
unsuccessfully, as excessive!

Absconding has been punished with various degrees of severity. By the
first governors it was held a venial offence: before the law provided
any specific penalty, it was usually flogging or a penal settlement. A
capital respite was, however, sent to Port Macquarie: within three
months he absconded, with several companions, and started to reach
Timor: on his re-capture, he was executed without further trial
(1823).[185]

A colonial law, of 1827, made it capital to escape from a penal
settlement. It was intended to prevent a recurrence of those evils which
resulted from the Macquarie Harbour elopements. That it intimidated a
single person, to whom the chance of escape was presented, is extremely
doubtful: that it rendered their efforts more desperate, and their
course more sanguinary, is far more probable. No one will contend for
the right of a prisoner to burst the bonds imposed by a sentence, yet
will it never appear to justify the sacrifice of life. Such laws are
useless: they outrage the common sentiments of mankind--more criminal
than the offences they intend to prevent: they belong to what Lord Bacon
stigmatised as "the rubrics of blood."

Their extreme diffidence of each other, has rendered the combined
opposition of prisoners impossible. A guard of two or three soldiers is
sufficient to intimidate hundreds, and to prevent an open effort to
escape. The sentinels have, generally, displayed forbearance and
consideration--the honorable characteristics of the B