cient check upon some of the unruly spirits belonging to the former
class, while, at the same time, the thievish temper of the natives began
very early to show itself, and to provoke injuries from men possessed of
fire-arms. It must be owned, however, that proper regard was not always
paid to the rights of the poor savages; and even so late as in the year
1810, a person charged with shooting at a native and wounding him, was
tried simply for an assault; whilst another, who had committed a similar
offence against a European was tried on the same day for his life![84]
In the beginning of May, not four months after the arrival of the
British ships at Port Jackson, and at a time when death and disease were
making sad havoc among the settlers, it was found needful to cut short
the life of one very juvenile offender by the hand of justice. James
Bennett, a youth of only seventeen years of age, was executed for
burglary, and died confessing that the love of idleness and bad
connexions had been his ruin. Soon after this, three convicts were
killed, and a fourth dangerously wounded, by the natives; and upon
inquiry it was found that two of them had robbed these people of a
canoe, an act of injustice which was, no doubt, the cause of their
death. The celebration of King George III.'s birthday, on June the 4th,
gave an opportunity to the evil-disposed to commit several robberies,
and two of these afterwards suffered death for their offences, while
another, who had gone into the woods, was proclaimed an outlaw. For want
of any overseers or police, except those taken from their own class, the
convicts were getting beyond all discipline; and so utterly reckless and
improvident were some of them, that they would consume their weekly
allowance of provisions by the end of the third or fourth day, and trust
for their supply during the rest of the week to the chance of being able
to steal from others that were more provident.[85] One of these degraded
creatures is stated to have made up his week's allowance of flour (eight
pounds) into cakes, which having devoured at one meal, he was soon after
taken up, speechless and senseless, and died the following day. Among
a population like that of which we are treating, while crimes were
lamentably common, conviction was comparatively rare. There was so much
tenderness to each other's guilt, such an acquaintance with vice and the
different degrees of it, that, unless detected in the fact, it was next