Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/638

 610 GOV. DARLING'S BUSHRANGING ACT, 1830. apprehended without a warrant, and detained pending proof, of which the onus was on themselves, that they were wrongly suspected. Anyone carrying arms might be arrested. Anyone suspected of carrying arms might be searched. General warrants to search any houses might be granted by any magistrate ; constables might break in and enter anywhere with such warrant by day or night, and on reasonable cause might seize firearms and arrest inmates. Persons found with firearms, and not accounting for them to the satisfaction of a magistrate, were guilty of misdemeanour, and liable to three years' imprisonment. All were bound to assist in carrying out the law; which might be pleaded in all suits against functionaries, and gave them treble costs if the appellant should fail. Bobbers and housebreakers were to be executed on the day next but two after sentence. The audacity of the bushrangers seemed to justify inordinate powers on the part of the police, and the end was in a few months obtained. The criminal classes for long years associated Darling's name with oppression. It could not be denied that severity was called for at his hands. Bushranging had assumed alarm- ing proportions. At one time in the Bathurst district more than fifty desperadoes collected together, and a regular but indecisive engagement took place between them and the settlers at Campbell's river. The police afterwards suffered loss in an encounter with them. A reinforcement of the mounted police under Lieut. Lachlan Macalister hastened from Goulburn and found the bushrangers at the Lachlan river; Macalister was wounded, but the bushrangers were not subdued. A detachment of the 39th Eegt. (marched from Sydney at the first intima- tion of the gathering of the banditti) arrived and the gang surrendered. They were taken to Bathurst, where ten of them died on the scaffold. Outrages occurred in other districts. Persons were I'obbed close to the principal settlements. Donohue, long noted in tradition, established liimself as a terror in the land not far from Sydney. Governor Darling's firmness rose with the occasion. Chief Justice Forbes yielded to the time and was obsequious.^^ '* John Macarthur to his son, 'JOtli May 1S30: "The Chief Justice is very humble and cringing. . . . The effects of tiie Act have already