CHAPTER XLI.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XX, Issue 1428, 11 February 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHAPTER XLI.

I MAKE A POWERFUL EXETiIY.

I was on board the President hulk at least three weeks before I saw the inspec-tor-general of penal establishments. The th'ol time he fvLited the hulk he walked iuto my coll and quizzed mo through his glass for a minute or so without speaking. He then said, " I've just been taking you out of twist, and I can's exactly reckon you up." I answered him in his own style, and said, " People do say I'm a j>retty flymy bloak." Up to hisjeye *went the glass again, and then, seating himself on the tub in the corner of the cell, he said, " Come, don't be a flat ; just come here and tell me all about that gaol business — who did really pocket the dibs for the faking of the warrant ? " I told him I knew nothing about it, and that it was quite useless interrogating me in the matter. "Then," said he, "you'll have your ten years to complete."

I asked him if he would be so good a3 to allow me to write to the Government, as I was perfectly convinced that it was repugnant to every principle of justice to imprison me beyond the term of five years, that being the period of my commuted sentence.

" I am the Government," answered the inspecto", with an a'r of Louis le Grand ; "and as they tell me you are fond of oratorising, just make a speech, and I'll be patient enough to listen to it. As for writing, it is out of the question. If you can advance anything that I think is worth respecting, I am willing to make a note of it."

As I saw the: c was no chance of obtaining permission to write, I thought 1 might as well try the effect of a verbal appeal, and I thus addressed the impersonated *' Government " :—: — ' "I complain, sir, of the alleged recision of an unconditional and positive commutation of sentence granted me by the Governor of the colony. I shall first define what, in my opinion, constitutes an unconditional remission of sentence. A remission of sentence granted from considerations of a purely retrospective character, and untrammelled by any expressed conditions, and not in any way made contingent upon future good conduct, must be a remission of sentence absolute and indefeasible. The remission of this nature. It was officially notified to me, it was duly recorded, it was finally acted upon. Such a remission no subsequent act of mine could nulify. These are the very words in irhich it was granted :—: —

l " In consequence of the material assistance rendered by the prisoner named in the margin to the gaol authorities on the occasion of a lats attack made upon them by several of the convicts, and upon the special recommendation of his Honor the Chief Justice, His Excellency the Governor had been pleased to grant the remission of orsp-half of his term of sentence — that is to gay, iive years.' N " The reading of the letter to me by the cheriff constituted the > official notification of the remission. It is entered in every register in which my name appears as an absolute and unconditional commutation of sentence, and it was acted upon by my being discharged from the gaol. To punish me for my being discharged from the gaol. To punish me for any imputed offence by rescinding tills remission, is to punish me in an arbitary and illegal manner, because, although the Executive holds the prerogative of pardoning, it is not invested with the power of punishing, and to do so is to exercise the judicial functions. If the Executive have the power of rescinding a remission of sentence unconditionally granted, then it has the power at any moment to order the man in the opposite cell, whose sentence of death was commuted to fifteen years imprisonment, to be immediately executed. Jf It have no such power in the one case, neither can it legally exercise in the other, because the cases are precisely * analogous ; alike in kind, they differ only in degree. Further, sir, /waiving all question of the legality of a measure, it is evidently one directly hostile to your particular views of

prison policy. The i emission was granted to me for a certain act of meritorious conduct, aud such particular act must ever after retain its original ascription of merit, and the act performed aud the reward conferred should be as inseparable as any other cau°e and affect. I shall not conclude with any rhetorical flourish. You have the case before you in as concise and logical a form as I am capable of putting it, and it is for your judgment to decide whether my arguments have cogency or not." The inspector replied by saying that I had favored him with a very fair specimen of my abilities as a special pleader, and that he would think over the matter, and see me ngain on his next visit.

It was six week before he came again ; but during that six weeks I had made a fool of myself, and converted one who might have proved my friend into a most unrelenting enemy. lie had some good points about him, and I think he was inc'.ined to take my case up as a piece of flagrant injustice until he becime cognisant of an art of mine which greatly embittered him against me. Hofferan, the prisoner in the next cell to me on my right, one clay asked me if I knew a man called Frank the Poet. I told him I had often heard of him, but that 1 bad never seen him. lie said that Frank was the fellow to "show 'em up" in poetry, and he bogged of me to compose something for him about the other penal officials without any other dictionary words in it. "Just put John down below along with a lot of parsons and judges and them there sort of swells," said Hefferan. In a foolish moment I consented to do this, and I put together a lot of doggrel, which I repeated aloud a few lines at a time for Hefferan to commit to memory as I composed it. The prisoner iv the opposite cell could hear as well as Hefferan, and with the tooth of a comb ho scratched the lines down upon the margin of a Bible. After he had got the whole of the rhymed rubbish (very often the unrhymed) he sent for the superintendent, and obtained from him privately pen, ink, and paper for the purpose of writing it out to show the inspector-general. On that gentleman visiting, the doggrel was handed to him, and he- came to niy cell with it in his hand. He read aloud to me the part which referred to himself, and he then asked me if I avowed the authorship. I knew it was useless to deny it, and so I admitted that I had put it together for amusement. "Well," he said, "as some of the rhymes are very bad, you can amuse yourself for the next five years in improving them, for you can take my word that you will not get out until the expiration of your sentence of ten years. " I asked him if he intended to prohibit me writing to a friend for the purpose of trying tin; legality of my detention by a writ of habeas, and he very eooly replied, " You'll write nothing but rhymes here."

Month after month of wretchedness passed away, and as all my appeals to mairidtrato, chaplain, inspector-general, and everyone else who visited tli3 hulk had been in vain, and I found it utterly impossible to communicate with any person beyond those connected with the hulk, brooding over the injustica done me, and with one dear memory ever haunting me and filling my heart with grief for the loss of the happiness which had been promised me, I daily grew thinner and thinner, and became at length so emaciated that the doctor pronounced me to be far gone in consumption. I thought myself that I had not lons to live, but although I was so wretched, I shrank from the idea of dying in such aplac?.

A day or two ago I happened to meet with a book which I had at that time in my cell on board the President, and on looking it over I found the following sentence written upon the margin of some of the pages in pencil :—: —

" I feai- not death ; but to die in such. a place, oh, it is too dreadful ! Upon the green gra«s in the warm bright sunshine, with the living beauty of Creation's works around me, I could lay me down contentedly to die. Or in some cottage chamber where love would keep its vigil at my couch, a>id humid eyes would tell me I had not lived unloved and should nob die unmourned, I could, without a murmur, yield my soul up unto the God who gave it. But here in this prison cell to die, with the felon's fetters ri vetted upon my limbs, with none to smooth my death-pillow, none to join me in my last prayer, left to realise amid my dying agonies the terrible import of the word alone! — and then, the death-scene over, with no friendly hand to perform the last sad offices, for the lifeless clay to be consigned to a felon's grave, upon which affection's tear can never fall, oh, it is too dreadful, too horrible to think of ! Spare me, spare me, oh my God, from such a death as this."

I was long very ill, but God spared me at that time from the death which I so much dreaded. The medical officer wrote a communication to the inspector-general, recommending my removal from the President to some other establishment, where I could have the benefit of plenty of fresh air. In consequence of this recommendation, I was, after a detention of fourteen months in the President, removed to the working hulk Success, and sent on shore to work.

This was the second stage in the course of treatment at that time iv practice with reference to long-sentenced prisonors ; ai d Vie men composing the working pi rty— all in cross-Tons— were precisely il c swiio class of convicts as those con-n-ted at the hulk President.

Escape was the constant theme of conversation — the ruling thought in every mind. I was revdy enough myself to join in rnj scheme, however desperate, that app*;a*"ed to offer the remotest chance of success ; butlooliing observingly around me — seeing the narrow tonguo of land we were worked upon — a cordon of vigilant and well armed sentries on the one side and with the sea on the other — I speedily came to the conclusion that any attempt to escape would be utterly hopeless.

The men, it seems, had expected " great things" of me, and as soon as I made my appearance among them, those who knew me best crowded around me, and told me admiringly that I was the fellow to "lead them to glory." It is astonishing how I fell in their opinion when I assured them that I did not intend to attempt any escape at all, as I saw no prospect of success My popularity and the prestige once belonging to my name were lost from the moment it became known among the men that I was "a rank cur, and too gallid to be in a rush." However, the loss of such popularity didn't affect me much, for I was beginning to see " highsouled highwaymen 1 ' and " dashing hands

at a burglary" in a less romantic light than formerly, and my aspirations for felon-celebrity were fast dying within me. For the first month I was there I worked in a hand-cart with "Billy the Native," now more familiarly known as "King Morgan."

There was certainly at that time nothing about him from which one might have predicted his future career. In my estimation, he was an ignorant, commonplace sort of rogue. lie certainly was a lithe active fellow, and used to tell us some wonderful stories of his equine experiences ; but as for ever being know through the length and breadth of the land as king this or the other, I should just as well have expected him to become King of England. He had neither romance nor sentiment in his composition, and he had in spoaking a peculiar drawling way, which the men working with him used to mimic. I cannot but think that he owes his notoriety to the peculiar idiosyncrasy in matters pertaining to bushranging of the good people- of New South Wales, far more than to any special talents of his own for a highw.iyman's career. There are many around me who have sympathy for such men as Ben Hall and Frank Gardiner, but we all look upon this wretch as a disgrace to the profession, and are infinitely obliged to Mr. Wendlaw for terminating the career of a man who has clone so much to bring highwayman-life into disrepute.

I have already mentioned in this narrative how I was once cleverly cleaned out at Maidstone by a soi-disant military officer. Well, while working one day with a very politely spoken kind of fellow who was doing twelve years for twocascs of forgery, I was equally amused and surprised to hear my companion edify myself and those around with the story of ' skinning out the young swells at Maidstone."