ent at such a meeting, or assisting in the compilation, printing, or distributing of such print, should be held equally responsible with the speaker or writer thereof. And this astounding outrage on the boasted liberty of the subject was allowed to become law practically without protest or delay. The workers had waited many scores of years for legislation to ensure them steady employment and the fruits of their labor, and they had witnessed governments go in and out, but the legislative measure that was to bring justice to them had never come. And yet this dastardly measure to gag and destroy them was passed through both houses of the legislature, and had become law in three brief hours! It was rumoured that the labor representatives, and others who would in all probability have opposed the passage of the Bill, were bribed by large grants of land in an estate through which a proposed railway service was to be carried, and for which an enormous sum of money was voted just after the infamous “Seditious Conspiracy Bill” became law, and which promised enormous fortunes to its lucky promoters.
It was during the excitement consequent upon these remarkable legislative measures that the trial of the Melbourne Rioters took place. The evidence at the Criminal Court was alike to that in the lower court, and very little fresh matter was introduced, the witnesses for the prosecution repeating their former evidence and forging a complete network of damnatory evidence around the prisoners, who on their part repeated their innocence, refused to bring witnesses to what they asserted to be hatched up conspiracies that never existed and which could therefore have no witnesses, and asked the jury to honorably acquit them. The whole affair did not take long, for none were anxious to prolong it. And then came the judicial address to the bench. There was a fearful silence for a few moments. Then the judge solemnly and quietly delivered his charge. After the usual preliminary instructions regarding the nature of the charges, the duties of the jury, and the heavy responsibility that rested upon their shoulders, he proceeded as follows:—
“Gentlemen of the jury—It is now your solemn duty, after considering the evidence and hearing the instructions I have given you, to decide whether the prisoners are guilty or guiltless of the charges laid against them. The charge is the worst that can possibly be laid against any human being, for it is that of violently and maliciously depriving another human being of that, which is dearer than all else to him, his life. Do not be guided by the sentiments that the learned counsel for both sides have conjured before you; for it is not your place to be swayed by fine sentiments, or any appeal to the sympathies; but it is your place to now finally decide, from the evidence placed before you, whether those unfortunate men now standing in the dock are guilty, or not guilty, of the charges laid against them. Their lives hang by a thread, and that thread is in your hands with all its grave responsibilities. If you cut that thread, you take those human lives. Hence you must be discreet, you must be certain, you must be true in your convictions, and courageous in your verdict. Society now reposes its confidence for security in yourselves. If those men are guilty of the ferocious deeds assigned to them, it looks to you to
