STRIKERS' LAWLESSNESS.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 140, 12 December 1894, Page 3

STRIKERS' LA WLESSNESS.

♦ CHIEF JUSTICE DARLEF ON WORKERS' TYRANNY. |Bt Telegraph, i (Out Own Correspondent.) (PBB 8.8. IX ANAU AT THE BLUFF.] Sydney, 7th December. An examplary sentence of Boven years' penal servitude was imposed by the Chief Justice on Harry Lawless, Andrew O'Neill, Henry Berkley, and Paul Pabal, conviotcd of having set fire to an engine-shed at the Momba station, on the River Darling. In sentencing the prisoners, his Honour eaid they had been convicted on the clearest evidence. They, with 30 or 40 others, and probably with the sanction »f the whole camp, pulled down tho fences, cut the wires, burnt the sheepyards, and set the country on fire in several places, finally destroying the engine used for stock- watering purposes. It was soaroely possible to realise in the city the existence of a olo?oly-knit band of criminals with com- | missariat arrangements, with wagons of five- ' arms and ammunition, devastating the sparsely-inhabited country, holding the few inhabitants in terror and compelling honeat labourers to desist from work. No hostile ft T my invading territory would have acted as the prisoners had done, unless under immediate xooessity arising from the shook of battle. Yet all this had taken placo in a country where men possessed as large a share of I rue liberty as was possessed by any people the world had yet known. They had, however, sought tho abuse of true liberty. The liberty they Bought was that of tyrants, for they desired to deprive their fellow men of the right which the Almighty had given to all men to labour as they wished. The risk they had ruu was that if the labourers whom they sought to coerce had resisted and killed them it would have been justifiable, whereas if tho attacking party had killed any of the free labourers, it would have been mnrder. The Judge paid a high compliment to the police for the coolness and discretion with whioh they had aoted. Charles Murphy and Bobort Biohardson. convicted of riot at the Kallarra station were sentenced to seven years and fonr years respectively, his Honour explaining that he passed a heavier sentence on Murphy hcoaußO he was tho loader of the camp.