terms of imprisonment in another colony. Like many criminals, he had unfortunately not taken warning by previous penalties, as it was less' than a year since he had been released. He looked around with an affected contempt for his surroundings, and smiled at an occasional sympathiser in Court with unabashed defiance.
But, as the Judge commenced to address the prisoners before announcing the sentences, the look of tension on the other men's faces was painful to witness, and even he appeared to feel the seriousness of the situation.
'William Stokes, Daniel Lynch, Hector O'Halloran, Samson Dawker, Jeremiah Abershaw, you have been found guilty, on the clearest evidence, of a dangerous and concerted attack on society. If organisations of this kind were permitted—if lawless bodies of men, organising themselves with the discipline of a military force, were permitted to go about the country interfering with honest men—there could be no safety for any one in the community. I am gratified to find that the jury have arrived at the only conclusion rational men could arrive at in such a case, and with no more time spent in deliberation than was necessary to consider the case of each man separately. I do not suppose that, excepting the residents of the neighbourhood of Poliah and the Lower Darling region generally, people are fully aware of what has been going on there.
'I have had a tolerable knowledge of the country, but I had no idea, until I came to try this case, what a state of things existed in the locality mentioned in depositions—a state of things probably unparalleled in the history of New South Wales.
'I should not have thought it possible that six or seven hundred men could camp on a main stock route, by a navigable river, for the purpose of preventing honest men going to work, much less could capture, bind them as prisoners, and hold them as such.
'Let any one contemplate what may follow if this kind of thing is permitted. There would be an end of liberty and safety; but the law exists for the protection of all, whether high or low, in the community, and those who take part in proceedings of this kind must expect to have every man's heart hardened against them. If a man's liberty were interfered with, if his life were threatened by overwhelming
