without the slightest hope, he said, of mitigating the sentence now to be pronounced on himself and fellows. Three of the others also spoke. Whelan said "that he was not one of the men properly belonging to the boat's crew, but had been called upon to fill the place of another man, and had no knowledge of any intention to take the vessel, and the part he took on board was forced upon him. He was compelled to act as he had done; he had used no violence, nor was he in any way a participator in any that had been committed." At the conclusion. of the address to them, Jones, amidst the deep silence of the court, pronounced a most emphatic prayer for mercy on his own soul and those of his fellow-prisoners, for the judge and jury, and finally for the witnesses. Sentence of death was then solemnly pronounced upon them all; but the judge informed Woolfe that he might hold out to him expectations that his life would be spared. They were then removed from the bar, and sent back to the condemned cells.

I can not say how much I dreaded my interview with them that day; for, although I had all along endeavored to prepare their minds for the worst result, and they had themselves never for a moment appeared to expect any other than this, I feared that the realization of their sad expectation would break them down. Hitherto

there might have been some secret hope sustaining them. The convulsive clinging to life, so common to all of us, would now, perhaps, be more palpably exhibited.

Entering their cells, I found them, as I feared, stunned by the blow which had now fallen on them, and almost overpowered by mental and bodily exhaustion. A few remarks about the trial were at length made by them; and from that moment I never heard them refer to it again. There was no bitterness of spirit against the witnesses, no expression of hostility toward the soldiers, no equivocation in any explanation they gave. They solemnly denied many of the statements made against them; but nevertheless the broad fact remained, that they were guilty of an attempt to violently seize the vessel, and it was useless debating on minor considerations.

In the mean time, without their knowledge, petitions were prepared and forwarded to the judges, the governor, and executive council. In them were stated various mitigatory facts in their favor; and the meliorated character of the criminal code at home was also strongly urged. Every attention was paid to these addresses, following each other to the last moment. But all was in vain. The council sat, and determined that five of the men should be hanged

on the following Tuesday. Whelan, who could have no previous knowledge of a plan to seize the vessel, together with Woolfe, was spared. The remaining four were to suffer. The painful office of communicating this final intelligence to these men was intrusted to me, and they listened to the announcement not without deep feeling, but still with composure.

It would be very painful for me to dwell on the closing scene. The unhappy and guilty men were attended by the zealous chaplain of the jail, whose earnest exhortations and instructions they most gratefully received. The light of truth shone clearly on the past, and they felt that their manifold lapses from the path of virtue had been the original cause of the complicated misery they had endured. They entreated forgiveness of all against whom they had offended, and in the last words to their friends were uttered grateful remembrances to Captain Maconochie, his family, and others. At the place of execution, they behaved with fortitude and a composure befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Having retired from attendance upon them in their last moments, I was startled from the painful stupor which succeeded in my own mind, by the loud and heavy bound of the drop as it fell, and told me that their spirits had gone to God who gave them.

Our main object in laying the foregoing narrative before the world in its present shape, is to impress those who may be tottering on the verge of crime with the danger of their situation-to show them that a course of error is a course of misery, ending in consequences the most afflicting.

It may be seen from the history of the unhappy men before us, that transportation is at the best equivalent to going into slavery-that the convict loses, for the time, his civil rights. Torn from his family, his home, and his country, he is placed at the disposal of the crown and its functionaries; can be put to any kind of labor, however repugnant to his feelings; dressed in the most degrading apparel; chained like a wild beast if refractory; and on the commission of any new offense while in this state of servitude, he is liable to fresh punishment by transportation to such penal settlements as Norfolk Island. It might almost be said that no man in his senses would voluntarily commit crimes which would expose him to the risk of so terrible an infliction as that of transportation even for the limited period of seven years. But, alas! men who have entered on a course of error, forgetful of every duty which they owe to themselves and society, can scarcely be said to be in possession of a sound mind; and they go on floundering

from one degree of vice to another, till brought into the condition of transported and personallyenslaved convicts. Should the present narrative fall accidentally into the hands of individuals who are in danger of falling into a course of vice, we would hope that it will help to restrain them. The unfortunate men whose death has been recorded were once as they are; they went over the golden line of honor and duty-and behold the consequences; a short life of hardship, misery, and a violent and ignominious death.