Читать книгу The Bushranger of Van Diemen's Land - Charles Rowcroft - Страница 3

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IT is well known to those who have the opportunity of observing the actual condition and the opinions of various classes of society in this country, that a dangerous notion is prevalent, among those especially where a misconception of the truth is most mischievous, that a transportation to the penal colonies is not, as the law intends, a punishment, but rather a change of country to be desired, from the opportunity which it is supposed to afford for the rapid acquisition of large fortunes in many ways; and for the sake of the licentious liberty of action which the wide wilderness holds forth the promise of, and which, to restless minds, presents so fascinating an attraction.

The publication, therefore, of the following narrative, taken from the oral communication of the facts by the party principally concerned in the adventures to which they relate, may perhaps be useful, at the present time, in counteracting the pernicious tendency of the false ideas which prevail in respect to the penal arrangements of the Australian settlements; and the circulation of the history, inculcating the certain punishment and remorse which follow crime, may assist in repressing that morbid craving after notoriety which of late years has increased with such lamentable rapidity. With respect to the curious psychological phenomena developed by the peculiar condition of solitude to which the modern Cain, of which this history treats, was exposed, they cannot fail to interest deeply all those who think that

"The noblest study of mankind is Man."