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342 object in doing so, and drove off the same night to the house of a neighbouring gentleman. Most unfortunately, when returned to its owner the cart was found to contain the whole of the gentleman's plate. Here was a plain case, one would have thought, of a cart being misled and induced to aid in a burglary, but where was the justice of condemning a man to ten years' transportation in consequence of the aberrations of his vehicle! A second man had borrowed money from a bank, intending, he said, to rectify his disordered balance in three days' time, when he would again be in funds. Unfortunately the cashier was not present when the loan was effected, and he harshly called it a robbery. A third, a soldier, had struck his officer without the slightest provocation, and considered himself most severely used by "getting ten years," inasmuch as he was an innocent victim to the misdeeds of Bacchus. "Why, I was bastely drunk," seemed to him an ample excuse for his crime. A fourth had sacrificed himself to fraternal affection; his brother's appetite could only be tempted by hare and pheasant, and, no poulterer's shop being at hand, he had used his own ingenuity to supply the deficiency. A fifth, on whom I suppose a Recorder had passed sentence, regarded it as an extenuating circumstance that he had not been condemned "by a regular judge." In fact we could arrive at no other conclusion than that we must have left all the rogues at home, since we found none but honest men in Western Australia.

There was, however, one convict who departed from the general rule of pleading Not Guilty, and professed to have committed forgery on purpose to be sent to Western Australia. Having become a prisoner in the