STATE OF CRIME IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 46, 17 April 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

STATE OF CRIME IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

(From the Lachlan Observer, 14th March.) In whatever other direction this colony may be progressing, its advancement in the direction of criminality is unquestioned and unquestionable. | Whether all the scoundrelism which in bygone days infested the highways of Victoria has come ovr the border or not to honour our soil with its presence, we are not aware, but this we do know, unfortunately for out future repose, that we have in our neighborhood — in the outskirts of these districts — as promising a crop of young highwaymen as the world ever saw, who are now passing through, or have already completed, the necessary preliminary training for the profession for which they havedestiued themselves. Reared, if not born on horseback, illiterate as the animals they ride, and destitute of all moral training or sense of social responsibility, they are singularly fitted by their activity, hardihood, and regardlessness of every restraint but that of prison walls, for any enterprise in which robbery and violence are the conditions of success. New South Wales has its dangerous classes as well as the older countries of Europe, and in days gone by we have many times and oft called attention to the serpent which society was nursing in its bosom by permitting, unheeded, the growth of such a class. True> it was not, nor is it now, easy to understand how prevention is to be effected, but it is still more difficult, and certainly much more discreditable, to tolerate the consequences ; and the question is now beginning to force itself upon the public mind, whether even in a pecuniary point of view, it would not have been in every respect more economical to have brave*! the dangers and encountered the difficulties of bringing the numerous brood of budding young miscreants (who are now springing up atthe heads of our rivers, and in all those nooks and corners of the land where human vegetation is progressing unseen, and precipitating upon the country a swarm of horse thieves and cattle stealers, mail and escort robbers) within the pale of the law, education, and human sympathy, than to permit its offspring to tuu wild, and to supply their criminal propensities with the best opportunities of a speedy and vigorous development. Tbe sort of free selection Which the country has long been called upon to exercise in behalf of our border population, is between schoolmasters and the police ; it has decided in favor of the latter, and is beginning to discovet that an indifferent teacher is a much more useful member than an inefficient constable. Where doe 3 Gardiner bury bimself, and whenoe, from time to time, does he issue forth upon the outside world, in the prosecution of his plundering, freebooting, bloodthirsty purposes ? What sort of country has Lowry selected for his run, and what class of people for his associates ? Both naturally betake themselves to wild, savage country, such as the mountains at the head of Fish, and Campbell's Rivers, and the fastnesses of the Weddin and the Abercrombie, where priests and policemen, schoolmasters and lecturers are rarely or never seen — where the people are little less savage than the country they occupy^-*are as rude as its own broken, rugged surface. To cultivate patches of wheat, and collect together, in a very promiscuous fashion, herds of cattle and horses, occupy about half their time. The rest is spent in idleness, occasional dissipation, and in riding through the mountains. Beef is abundant, and costs nothing but the catching and killing ; the wheat paddock supplies their bread ; and their tea and sugar, saddlery and rum, are furnished from the proceeds of property which lies unprotected over the surface ot? the country. Little care, as may be supposed, is taken under such circumstances in preserving the boundary Jines between meum and tuum, nor is it difficult to understand that amongst people so circumstanced— Strangers to all restraint, whether moral or legal-* — existence should receive a zest from an occasional raid upon the inside world, I and that the contemplation of an affair with one of her Majesty's mails, Or the robbery of a gold escort, with the possible interchange of shots, should, apart from the probable profit, supply a pleasurable excitement. We are far from supposing that all who dwell in these regions participate in such crimes, but there are few who do not connive at them, and not one in twenty who will take any step or supply any information which may lead to the detection or the apprehension of the delinquents. In such a society as we have now faintly sketched a tutor of Gardiner's stamp — bold, reckless, "open-handed, and hardened by familiarity with crime against all promptings or appeals of conscience — is sure to muster a good supply of pupils, and when " enterprises of great pith and moment" are ready for execution, to gather round him as many auxiliaries as he chooses to ask. He has fought his way up to a captaincy, and although he has long ceased to eat honest bread, and has rollicked upon the fruits of others' sweat and tofl, he is still looked up to as a hero — the beau ideal of a bushranger, and commands the admiration and, whenever necessary, the assistance and services of a wide circle of untaught, half-civilised native youth.

It is clear, then, for the reasons above stated, that the raw material out of which -bushrangers and highwaymen are manufactured exists in these districts to an alarming extent, and that the circumstance ofthe times are favorable to the manufacture. In the first place, the periodical transmission of large quantities of gold from our various mines offers a tempting prize to the cupidity of men who have forsworn all

honest labor, and hold very light the magnitude of its rewards. The encouragement, moreover, to this species of adventure offered by impunity, has done much to stimulate it, and when a chieftain presented himself, who was willing to risk his life and liberty in an enterprise which presented large gains and a highwayman's glory, volunteers were to be found in abundance. Executions, with all their attendant ignominy, have latterly fallen into something like disuetude through a culpable exercise ofthe prerogative of mercy. The gallows has lost its terrors, and to this end the mischievous logic and maudlin sentimentalism of abolitionists bave materially contributed. One of the results, we feel assured, has been witnessed in the frequency of highway robbery, accompanied with violence ; and the country is reaping the rich reward of mistaken official tenderness. We are happy to learn, however, that the Executive has resolved upon an opposite course, by making an example of the villains who have heen convicted of particiption in the escort robbery, and the murderous outrage upon Mr. Stephens. Let canting moralists argue as they may, a few such stern lessons as offended justice is called upon to impart will do more to strike terror into the hearts of the murderous robbers by whom our highways have latterly been infested, than all their fine-spun theories of solitary coufinements wifh religious teaching, pious exhortations, and all their collaterals to boot. Death, under any circumstances, even in the state of preparedness which sickness brings about is an awful trial, but surrounded by all the paraphernalia of the gallows-tree, with its gloom and solemnity, and whilst the criminal, who has provoked its vengeance, is in possession of perfect health, the ordeal must be terrible indeed. Occasionally, some hardened wretch, whose stolid nature, soaked in crime and steeped in depravity, may outbrave all the horrible ceremonial attendant upon his approaching fate, but such cases are the rare exceptions and only prove the rule. Something more, however, is wanted than the Supreme Court, the Executive, and the executioner. We require a vigilant and energetic police, who know and are wiling to their duty, and a strict surveillance over the mountain regions in which bushrangero are bred, manufactured, and harbored. It is quite time, moreover, that many of the ancient sinners whose cabins have not only aflorded shelter to the principal actors in many ofthe late outrages, but who have themselves aided in the organisation of their schemes of villainy, were rooted out and driven from their abiding places. This, in many instances, the Government, possess the power to do, and, in exercising it, they would be rendering good service to these

communities and to the ends of justice