which appealed to Slinger's humanity rather than to his courage.
The bushman continued,—"I have only shed blood to save my own life, and never then if I could avoid it. I know that for some time I and my band have been falsely accused of every depredation which has been committed; but that I have done much to regret, is too true. Let me give you a short history of myself during the last few years, and you will then be the better able to judge for yourselves. I am the son of an Irish gentleman. When young and inexperienced I was induced to join in an election row in a county town in Ireland, which ended in a serious fight between the soldiers and the people, who were flying, when the officer in command ordered another volley to be fired upon them. I was disgusted with this cruelty, and by example and exclamations rallied the people, who faced the soldiers, and although several fell, they beat them out of the town, unfortunately killing, with two others, the officer in command. A warrant was obtained against me as ringleader, and being tried, I was transported. I was sent to Van Dieman's Land, where it fell to my lot to be assigned to a master who had five years before been a bricklayer's labourer, but who, by his good fortune, aided with a great proportion of rascality, had amassed some money, and had actually been made a magistrate. This was the man I had to call master, and to obey his behests however tyrannical, without a word. I submitted to my lot for a time with patience; but one day, for a trifling thing, which he construed into an insult to the dignity of a colonial magistrate, he ordered me to be tied up and to receive three dozen lashes. He was surrounded by men who were bound to obey him as much as I was, and I was seized. I appealed to him in vain to spare me the degradation—to pause and consider whether he was not overstepping the bounds of the law and of humanity.
