AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGERS.* Ma. BOXALL, who has told the tale of
the Australian bush• rangers, is rather industrious than picturesque. He has gathered together a vast deal of information, but he has spent so little trouble in its arrangement that his book is less a history than a collection of anecdotes. Not that the anec- dotes are dull; the plain simplicity of their relation makes them excellent reading ; yet we are hurried from one exploit to another without a very clear idea of time or place. How- ever, with some diligence it is possible to make out a con- tinuous record, and Mr. Boxall's book enables us to study one of the strangest episodes in the history of crime.
It is not every crime whose explanation is as simple as its punishment. But there can be no doubt that bushranging, as it first grew up, was the result of a rather brutal system. When our Colonies were first established, they were designedly peopled only by convicts. They were not in the early days opportunities for enterprise ; rather they were mere dumping grounds of villainy and scoundrelism. The consequence was that a small garrison of soldiers and police had to impose order upon a large mob of ingenious criminals, and with such subjects the method of government could not but be savage. Refractory convicts were flogged, starved, and exiled to Norfolk Island. If they became servants, they were exposed to the kicks and insults of their masters, who had learned from experience the folly of kindness, and were not clever enough to distinguish between man and man. Truly the lot of the convicts was hard enough ; ruled by the cat, they had little hope of freedom or reform ; and behind their punishment there loomed always the horror of Norfolk Island, which for them was far worse than death. It is small wonder, then, that when they could they broke out and took to the woods. The first bushrangers were neither skilful nor avaricious. But they were brutes with a taste for cannibalism and blood. It was for their lives that they were fighting, and plunder was less their object than license to roam and kill. Such monsters as Pierce and Greenhill, who were hungering to eat their comrades or each other, are not pleasant to contemplate. At last they alone were left, each suspicions of the other. "I watched Greenhill," said Pierce, "for two nights, and thought that he eyed me more than usual. He always carried the axe, and kept it under his head when lying down. At length just before daybreak Greenhill dozed off to sleep, and I snatched the axe and killed him with a blow." The rest may be imagined, and it is the worst part of this horrible business that the taste for human flesh once acquired by these ruffians stayed with them to the end.
But, if they are fairly judged by their deeds, the most of the early bushrangers must be set down as maniacs. A monster named Lynch was driven by the lust of blood to commit murder after murder, and his confession is the strangest mixture of piety, superstition, and death that can be imagined. He seems never to have set out upon a murder without praying for direction, and he declared that he never struck a victim more than once, except Landregan, whom he struck twice, and to this he attributed his subsequent ill-luck. But all were not brutes or maniacs, and presently we en- counter such polished thieves as Jackey-Jackey and Gentle- man Brady, who were inspired by the example of English highwaymen, and who, while they did not respect the pockets of their victims, always obeyed the rules of the game. Jackey- Jackey, for instance, was the darling of the "old hands," and whatever were his crimes, it must be confessed that he had
c The Story of the Australian Bushrangers. By C. E. Boxall. Loudon : Sonnenschein and Co. [a]
naught in common with such monsters as Pierce and Lynch. He broke with Curran, his comrade, because Curran insulted a woman, and his gaiety while he was on the road fastened many a pleasant legend upon him. Moreover, he was well educated and polite ; when he met Governor Gipps they had a long conversation, and, said an old Colonist to Mr. Boxall, "you and me couldn't have understood what they said, though it was all English ; but they talked grammar." And Jackey- Jackey could write grammar too. For when at last he was sentenced to penal servitude for life, and led the most bloodthirsty rebellion that Norfolk Island had yet seen, he justified his ferocity in a document that is not without a kind of eloquence. He bitterly denounces the system of slavery and cruelty that was pursued on Norfolk Island, and he plainly hints that he led the revolt inspired by the mere hope of the gallows. Jackey-Jackey, in fact, was the most humane of bushrangers, and though we do not share Mr. Boxall's sentimental sympathy with the class, we may yet admit that Jackey-Jackey was the victim of a pernicious system. The crime which he had committed in England was trivial enough, and had he not been sent across the sea he might never have become a hardened criminal. But he had not a large following, and the famous Jew-boy was his nearest rival, whose best exploit was, from his point of view, humorous enough. "He rounded-up the chief constable of the district with a party of constables and volunteers who had gone out to seek for him, yarded them like a mob of cattle, and took their horses, arms, and whatever money they had, and rode away laughing."
Such were the bushrangers of 1840, and of them it may be said that robbery was almost their only chance of freedom. But the insensate policy which not only destroyed our Colonies, but created a separate class of criminals, was long since reversed, and by better luck, perhaps, than we deserve, the Britain across the sea is as prosperous and as loyal as any part of our Empire. And with a change of policy the excuse, if excuse it may be called, of bushranging disappeared. Captain Moonlite had no convict blood in him, and Ned Kelly, though his father had been transported, was born free. No, these men would have followed the profession of plunder whatever country had been theirs, and it was only because Australia was a land of distant towns and im- penetrable bush that they adopted the method of bailing-up. Moreover, both Moonlite and Kelly were men of courage and ingenuity. They fought their fights always against superior odds, and they owed their success to an insolent contempt of danger. Moonlite, whose name was Scott, was a well-educated emigrant, all but ordained by the Bishop of Melbourne, and his skill as an engineer stood him in good stead when he broke out of Ballarat Gaol. But neither imprisonment nor his own intelligence could keep him from the bush, and no sooner was one term over than he took to it again. Possibly he was fired by the example of Ned Kelly, for it was the prowess of that reckless freebooter that he attempted to emulate ; he was, moreover, kind to the members of hie gang and reputed a person of gentle manners. But in 1879 he was captured by the police, and most properly hanged in Darlinghurst Gaol.
Meanwhile, Ned Kelly was winning an ominous fame. As he was the last, so assuredly was he the greatest of the bushrangers. At the beginning of his career he was chiefly distinguished as a horse-thief. But with years his imagina- tion increased, and as others had stuck-up farms or hotels, he determined to stick-up towns. Of course, he could not have succeeded in his enterprise had he not been admirably mounted, and had he not known the bush as well as the black-trappers themselves. To his knowledge he added a fearlessness which gave him an easy advantage over the people, to whom his name was already a terror. So he rifled banks and filled his pockets, and at last he was emboldened to stick-up Jerilderee, and to hold the town at the mercy of his gang for four whole days. How he suc- ceeded is something of a puzzle, but his very name was an intimidation, and his mere bluster seems to have ensured the victory. But the ruffian's hour came at last. In 1:•:0 he gang was besieged at the Glenrowan Inn,' and defeated after a spirited fight, Kelly himself, who wore a suit of armour, being shot in the legs. He recovered, however, in time to be hanged, and his death was the end of bushranging. It is a
grimy, savage story, relieved by some few episodes of courage and daring. But such as it is Mr. Boxall has told it with considerable patience, and his book is the dry bones of Robbery under Arms.
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