Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/319

 AND HIS STAFF. 209 months, and be chained for that time to two other de- 1788-96 linquents of the same class.* The efEect of this sentence may be estimated from the fact that '^ the Governor remit- ted, after some days* trial, that part of it which respected the prisoner's ration of flour, without which he could not long have existed.*' This case is chronicled by Collins without any expression of opinion tending to show that it was regarded as unmerciful ; the salient feature in the case was, apparently, that the potatoes were in danger. But in Potatoes justice to his memory it should not be forgotten that, at that time, the protection of the stores was undoubtedly a matter of life and death to the community. Nor was he singular in his opinion, wjien compared with the legislators and moralists of the age. The peculiar circumstances of the time led to a singular distortion of views with respect to the moral nature of the Diatorted offences brought before the Court. While the heaviest crime.^ punishment that could be inflicted was unsparingly dealt out to those who ran off with their neighbours' vegetables or helped themselves to the contents of the public store, mach more serious violations of the moral code were looked upon as comparatively venial. Collins, for instance, states that a soldier who was condemned to death in July, 1789, for a criminal assault on a child eight years of age, was Pardon recommended to mercy and pardoned by the Governor, "on condition of his residing, during the term of his natural life, at Norfolk Island."t At that time, residing at Nor- folk Island was practically no punishment, because there was a better supply of fresh provisions there than there was at Sydney Cove. Whether that was so or not, the mercy extended to the offender contrasts strangely with the hard but none measure dealt out to others. In March of the same year, " six marines, the flower of our battalion, were hanged by the public executioner on the sentence of a Criminal Court, composed entirely of their own officers, for having at various • Account of the Colony, pp. 110, 111. t lb., p. 80. o Digitized by Google