said Jack had been his companion for thirteen years, and that during all that time, his conduct has been most satisfactory. Regarding the case as one of great provocation on the part of the sailors, he told the judge, respecting the two Natives, "I have never found these persons wanting in humanity." Mr. Barry, now Sir Redmond Barry, the real founder of the noble Melbourne Public Library, and the Chancellor of the University, pleaded feelingly for the poor creatures.
But though the lives of these Tasmanians, who had rendered such good service to the State in the Black War, were sacrificed to the demands of the law, justice was not so inexorable when that same year three men were charged with shooting three three native women and a child at Port Fairy, and afterwards burning their bodies. The prisoners were acquitted by the jury. But the Governor, Sir George Gipps, has this remark in his despatch home: "It seems to be established beyond any rational doubt, that the three aboriginal women and the child were murdered by a party of white men, who left Mr. Osprey's hut with fire-arms, and returned to it after about an hour's absence, on the 23d of February, 1842; that two at least of the persons who have been acquitted accompanied the party."
In May 1826, the trial of Jack and Dick took place in Hobart Town. The excellent Governor was resolved to give the accused every supposed chance of fair play, although he had, like previous governors, neglected to place at the bar of justice such white men as had murdered black fellows. The two were charged with committing a murder, and were condemned only upon the evidence of convict stock-keepers, who were thought by some to have been concerned in the death for which the others suffered. Colonel Arthur nominated counsel to defend the Natives, and had interpreters to aid on the occasion. Old Dick, a miserable victim to disease, was carried screaming to the gallows. In his struggles he loosened his arms, and reached upward to his neck, a deluge of blood pouring from his mouth. The hangman laid hold of his legs, and so hastened the strangulation. The other man walked quietly to the scaffold, protesting to the last that he was not even present at the melancholy affair. They were thus launched into eternity; "there," says the historian of the event, the Rev. Mr. West, "to discover whether a warfare in defending their soil from the spoilers, and their
