course there was no end of confusion and uproar, but with great difficulty we managed to get the dog off again. I had, however, to hold him back with all my force to keep him from renewing his attack. As soon as Brady was free he jumped up like a madman, rushed into the tent, and coming out again with a revolver in his hand, drew on the dog, perfectly regardless of whom he might hit. Luckily the first barrel missed fire, and before he could discharge the second a bystander caught him a blow over the arm with a pick-handle which made him drop his weapon. I stooped to pick it up to prevent his regaining it, but you may imagine what my surprise was when I perceived that it was the very revolver I had often noticed in Steele’s tent. The five notches in the stock left no doubt of it.
“Brady,” I cried, “where did you get this from?”
“My name is O’Connor,” said he; “and as to the pistol, what’s that to you?”
“I’ll soon tell you that. Look here, mates, this is Steele, the Hatter’s, revolver, which was taken out of his tent the night he was murdered. Dick Brady the trooper here, or O’Connor as he now calls himself, was on Springfield at the time, so I think it would be just as well to ask him a few questions.”
I suppose Brady began to think that things were growing awkward, for seizing a shovel he gave it one sweep, clearing a circle all around him, and then taking advantage of the confusion, started for the bush as hard as he could lay legs to the ground. He was a very fleet runner, and would probably have escaped had it not been for Watchman, who seized him before he had got many yards, and in spite of all his struggles held him till he was secured. As we were taking him down to the township we met a party of troopers.
“Who have you got there?” said they.
“Dick Brady.”
“The very man we were after. He’s wanted for a murder in town. It’s a clear case, for one of his pals has peached.”
We handed over our prisoner, glad enough to get rid of him. He was taken down to Melbourne, tried, and condemned. Before his execution he confessed to the murder of poor Steele, and to have been tempted thereto by the store of gold he was supposed to have by him, which, however, he had been unable to find. He had discovered my axe lying outside the door, with which he had committed the foul deed, and which, had it not been for my fortunate encounter with Vesey, would probably have served to bring me to the gallows.
RUSSIAN UKASES.[1]
“Ce que mon père a fait il a bien fait.” Such were the words with which Alexander II. commenced his reign as constitutional King of Poland. We have seen something of what that father did through the military dictatorship of the Czarowicz Constantine,[2] and it may not be uninteresting to observe the working of the Imperial system in the still more iniquitous tyranny of its so-called justice.
The belief in the possibility of freedom under the Romanoff dynasty, was the primary cause of failure in the November Revolution of 1830. The Constitution sworn to by Alexander I. in 1815, was still fondly dreamed of by the chiefs of the Polish aristocracy, both in the senate and the army. The traitor minister, Lubeckoi, who, whilst actually sold to the Czar, still retained the complete confidence of his countrymen during the first months of the revolution, had contrived that the command of the army should be given by popular acclamation to General Chlopici, a brave man and good patriot, but whose earlier energy and daring had been completely annihilated under Constantine’s paralysing system. Chlopici and Prince Adam Czartoriski possessed unbounded influence, but under the fatal glamour of a Russian constitutional monarchy their very patriotism did but ruin the cause they had at heart. The Poles had a Fairfax and an Essex, but no Pym or Cromwell, and those who might have fulfilled their mission were overpowered beneath the personal popularity of the “moderators.” The moderators declared the country still faithful to its constitutional king, discouraged all proposals of co-operation from the ancient provinces of the republic—Grodno, Kijow, Minsk, Wilna, Podolia, Mohilew, Witerbsk, Volhynia—filched from it by earlier dismemberments, and in their infatuated idea of propitiating Nicholas by proofs of loyalty, even discouraged the enlistment of the peasantry, and totally opposed any idea of guerilla warfare.
The loyal address sent by the Diet at Warsaw to St. Petersburg in January, 1838, in which the Emperor, though in the most respectful terms, was reminded of his engagements as a constitutional king, to observe the laws of the country, was answered with such insult and contumely, that those who had so blindly placed all their hopes in royalty, discovered too late the infatuation of demanding free institutions from a Germanised Tartar autocrat. In December the Polish army, aided by the innumerable reinforcements which would have joined it from the Western Guberniums, might have triumphantly carried the war into the enemy’s territory, but diplomacy imposed inaction on the gallant spirits to whom the revolution owed its origin. Ambassadors were sent from Warsaw to London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, endless despatches were written, and civilities exchanged at least with the two former capitals, but time advanced without regard to diplomacy, and the great army which was to have submerged the Monarchy of July crossed the Dnieper, and then the Vistula, and the Poles found themselves shut up within the narrow limits of the so-called kingdom, and reduced to defensive measures. The Polish generals, though at the head of but 45,000 men, whilst the enemy had 150,000, long discouraged any but regular warfare, and were resolved, since the contest was almost hopeless, that the country should die according to strict scientific rule. They concentrated the whole of their forces
