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NATIONAL CHARACTER.

13

their standard of moral beauty. It is probable they may not approve of the Celtic type of countenance; of a nose not merely cocked, but positively curled; and a twinkling grey eye, screwed into the smallest imaginable focus-a habit adopted from infancy to guard it from the

sun.

The assault on the national countenance is followed up by a more serious attack on the national character; but to get proper specimens of unmitigated ruffianism, they had to go to Western Australia. Here they hunted up the real mandevil.

"The superintendent of convicts, in his report for that date [Sep. 1854], observes-'It may be remarked, as a noticeable feature in the idiosyncracy of the Irish prisoners-that is to say, those who arrived direct from Ireland, and who had not undergone the present discipline, held applicable to convicts sentenced in England-that there appears to be a singular inaptitude to comprehend the nature of moral agencies, or to be affected by

14

THE IRISH CONVICT.

them. Neither do they seem to understand the desirableness-we will say, of self-reliance, or the necessity for the exercise of habits of propriety, industry, or prudence, as a means towards extricating themselves from the consequences of their former errors.

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The Four Visiting Justices got all this from the first report of the new board of Irish Directors. If they had only looked a little further on in the same report, for 1854, page 20, they would have met with the following remarks, when speaking of the good working of the English, and the probable good working of the Irish system :-"We believe these results to have been fully produced of late years in England; and we do not see that any greater difficulties are presented to their attainment in this country. On the contrary, the character of the Irish convict is, in many cases, less seriously depraved; their crimes having been produced, in some measure, by extreme distress and want of industrial employment."

What will the Four Visiting Justices say to our

OFFENCES DURING THE FAMINE.

15

"raw material" now, or our "singular inaptitude to comprehend the nature of moral agencies, or to be affected by them?"

Mr. L. C. Burgess, in his evidence before the Select Committee on Transportation, in April, 1861, speaking of the Irish convict in Australia, says, "Generally speaking, we find the Irish convicts, after a time, do better than the English convicts. The reason that the people prefer Irish convicts to the English, is their seldom being habitual criminals."

James MacArthur, Esq., stated before the same committee, "I have known instances [under the Insurrection Act] where the parties themselves assured me that they had done nothing more than stayed out too late on a visit to a neighbour, or looking for a cow; and from the character of the parties who told me this, I have no doubt they spoke the truth."

The majority of the offences committed during the Irish famine, were not of such a character as to stamp a man as a thief or a robber. I have known

16

SHEEP-STEALING WINKED AT.

clergymen to wink at sheep-stealing, and a distinguished Member of Parliament to call a man a poltroon for allowing his wife and children to starve, while fat sheep were grazing in a neighbouring meadow.

"Is it a sin, sir," said a poor man to the parish priest, of "to stale a sheep? The wife and childer are very far gone. I don't think herself will hould out till the morning."

"Here's half-a-crown for you.

Go and buy

food for your family, and don't let them starve, at

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"But the sheep, sir? Would it be wrong, your Ravarence, to."

"Get out, you cowardly scoundrel! You have not the spirit of a man. To let your wife and Get out of my sight.

children starve while

I'm ashamed of you."

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The next morning the priest missed a fat sheep. He was a good deal annoyed, for I believe it was his last; but he laughed heartily, and said, "These scoundrels would not have the spirit to steal from

OUR WORST OFFENDERS.

17

a rich man, or from one that would prosecute them."

I once saw a flock of sheep driven, at mid-day, from a rich man's grounds, by a number of poor hinds, who looked as hungry as famished wolves. But they had not the courage to kill them. A few of the police came up, and induced the people to relinquish their prey.

I confess, at the time, I was sorry for it; and thought these pseudo thieves no better than poltroons. I never till then imagined there could be any nobility in sheep-stealing.

These were the kind of men that filled our prisons from 1850 to 1860. For the reformation of such thieves and robbers, there is but little credit due to any man or any system.

Some of our worst offenders, but not our worst prisoners-are of the agrarian class, like the Levellers, the White-boys, the Steel-boys, the Peep-of-day-boys and the modern Three-year-olds and Four-year-olds. For the list of "killed," "maimed," and "badly fractured" among the

VOL. II.

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