They were happy days in my youth, when I thought with Rousseau, that
the heart of man is from nature good. It was a sad fatality now that
compelled me to feel the truth from the prophet Isaiah, that the heart
of man is desperately wicked.
I was really thunderstruck at the savage eagerness with which spies and
red-coats sprang out of their ranks to point me out. Though a British
soldier was not ashamed to swear and confess his cowardice of running away
from before my pike, which I never had on the stockade, where the fellow
never could have seen me; I shall not prostitute my intelligence and
comment on the 'evidence' against me from a gang of bloodthirsty mercenary
spies. The printer will copy my trial from the public newspaper,
'The Age'.
Chapter LXVIII.
Condemn The Wicked, And Bring His Way Upon His Head, Oh,
Lord God Of Israel!
The first witness against me was such a rum sort of old colonial bird of
the jackass tribe, and made such a fool of himself for Her Majesty's dear
sake, about the monster meeting, where as it appeared, he had volunteered
as reporter of the Camp; that now God has given him his reward. He is a
gouty cripple, still on 'Her Majesty's fodder' at the Camp, Ballaarat.
Who will sharpen my quill and poison my inkstand, that I may put to
confusion the horrible brood of red-tape that ruled on Ballaarat at the
time. To administer justice in the sacred name of Her Most Gracious
Majesty, they squandered the sweat of self-over-working diggers, on a set
of devils, such that they actually competed with one another, in vomiting
like sick dogs! Their multitude was taken as a test of their veracity,
on the Mosaical ground, that 'out of the mouth of two witnesses shall the
guilty be condemned;' and yet, with the exception of spy Goodenough,
and spy Peters, none other to my knowledge ever did see my face before.
I assert and declare as an honest man and a Christian, that my eyes never
did see the witnesses against me, before I was under arrest at the Camp.
My soul was drowned in an ocean of bitterness when of that brood of Satan,
one did swear he had run from before my pike; another had fired at me,
but his pistol 'snapped;' a third made me prisoner within the stockade;
a fourth took me up chained to other prisoners who had surrendered,
from the stockade to the Camp.
Such, then, is the perversity of the human heart! In vain did I point out
to the sitting magistrate the absurdness of their evidence, and the fact
that Sub-inspector Carter and Dr. Carr could prove the contradiction.
I was so embittered and broken-hearted at the wickedness of so many
infuriated mercenary rascals, that had made up their mind to sell the
blood of an honest man, in as much as I had repeatedly told each and all
of them, when they came to 'recognize' in our prison, that they must
mistake me for another as I was not within the stockade that Sunday
morning; that I...but it is too humiliating to say any more.
