THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1880. THE EXECUTION OF KELLY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2101, 17 November 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1880. THE EXECUTION OF KELLY.

Nktee was greater excitement displayed in the colony of Victoria than at the time of the capture of the Kelly gang. And not only was the interest in that event not confined to Victoria, but throughout the colonies at large and in England the widest interest followed the current of events. And now the drama has been closed in a manner altogether in accordance with the strictest idea of poetic justice. The members of tho gang itself perished by the bullet, and the ringleader has come to his death more slowly but as surely, surrounded by all tho solemnity that can be given by the supreme display of the power of the law. It is a lesson that the least intelligent can read as they run. For a long time crime appeared to bo triumphant, a halo of success and prurient romance encircled tho deeds of these commonplace miscreants, and there was every danger that a state of lawlessness might supervene in the more thinly populated and inaccessible districts, that would have the effect of inducing many of the weaker minded and more unprincipled members of society to taka to a career where tho prizes seemed to be numerous and where the individual culprit reigned over a considerable section of his fellow creatures by force of arms and by the terror of his name. The more philosophically unprincipled probably used tho old threadbare argument that crime is after all but a thing of degree, that the robber on a large scale is dubbed a conqueror, and that such an affair as the partition of Poland was infinitely more culpable than any deed of the Kellys, seeing that the amount of misery occasioned thereby was felt by thousands instead! of by units. That may bo true enough.

but the culprit in the latter case, being above the roach of society, was left to the judgment of the Supreme Power. The duty of society to suppress with a firm hand any attempt against morality and the stability of its own laws is none the less patent because a misdoer is occasionally beyond its reach. The fate of the Kelly gang points to the fact that justice is almost sure, sooner or later, to overtake the man who dares to make a law for himself founded on the subversion of the very basis of all society.

But the action of Mr. Gaunson and the Kelly sympathisers opens a view of a depth below the depth we have alluded to. That gentleman holds a high position in the Legislative Council of Victoria, ho is a member of that profession whose duty it is to see that the laws are obeyed, and he is a man who plays some part in the general politics of the country, but, notwithstanding all this, ho has not scrupled to sot up a plea for the wretched culprit whose case ho defended and to draw a large number of misguided individuals into the same course with himself. Ho is a man of education, and yet he has chosen to see extenuating circumstances in a career of guilt over every crime of which not a shadow of doubt remained. He did not set np his plea on the general ground of the immorality of capital punishment but a morbid sympathy with a great criminal, and a love of notoriety alone appears to have moved him. Edward Kelly was almost totally uneducated, ho had been brought up among surroundings not calculated to promote his higher faculties, and his career had been a gradual lapse into the lower stages of crime. A certain amount of pity might therefore mix with the justice that demanded his death. But what can be said in favor of Mr. Gannson, whose arguments would lead one to suppose that the laws of his country might well bo set aside for no definable reason, but simply because of a popular- clamour raised by persons careless how they hamper the guardians of society ? Luckily his action has had no effect but to draw on his own head, and those of his friends, the general condemnation of all sections of the people. Seldom has such a general outbreak of indignation met the action of any man as has met this appeal of Mr. Gaunson. The Press at large has declared that the agitation casts a stigma upon the population of Victoria. Outside that colony, however, it will bo clearly seen that the general mass of the people have not sympathised with Mr. Gaunson. The colony may bo wedded to the policy of protection, but bushranging and murder are not included by the generality among native industries. They are held, on the contrary, to be fungoid growths, destroying the vitality of the general order of things; growths which even on economical principles, lot alone principles of morality, should be cut out with a sharp and firm hand, without the least delay or compunction.

THE MAYORAL ELECTION. If there Is one virtue more than another desirable in a public man it is consistency. One of the Mayors expectant. Councillor Ayers, long ago recognised this fact so far as regarded keeping silence on awkward public questions and aiming always to catch the fleeting babble popularity. But like some actors on the stage, at times the mask has dropped, and grave breaches of the consistent course marked out, ensue. It will scarcely he believed that so bright and shininiug a light amongst the sons ©f Rechab as Councillor Ayers could so far fall from his high estate as to allow his meetings of committee to be held—as Aminadab Sleek puts it—in the parlour of a profane public-house. How will the alphabetical dignitaries of the Order of Good Templars receive the backsliding of their erring brother ? But yet further has ho gone. His chairman of committee is no less a personage than the most popular dispenser of whisky in the city, whilst running, what he himself facetiously terms, his warehouse. Now, indeed, may the Good Templars exclaim, Ichabod ! for truly a heavy blow has fallen in the defection of so bright an example.