of the bushrangers all through the later developments of that crime tend to prove that the Australians considered bushranging as a sort of exotic introduced into the country with the convicts sent from England, and only to be wiped out by the suppression of the convict element in the population. We see the influence of this view in New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and elsewhere, as well as in Victoria. In this colony the appointment of Mr. John Price as Inspector General of convicts was an expression of the popular belief. Mr. Price had had a long experience among convicts, and the very fact that his treatment of them was harsh was a recommendation in his favour. He had been superintendent of the convict station of Port Arthur, where he was known to the convicts placed under his charge as "Bloody Tyrant Price." When that establishment, of the character of which the late Marcus Clarke gives us an idea, but an idea only, in his story, "For the Term of his Natural Life," was broken up, in consequence of the cessation of transportations to Van Diemen's Land, in 1853, Mr. Price was specially chosen for the position he held in Victoria because of his knowledge, not merely of convict character, but of the personal appearance of a large number of the criminals who were disturbing the peace of the colony, because the majority of them had already been under his charge in Van Diemen's Land. The Victorians desired above all things to keep the convicts out of their colony, and as a means to this end they endeavoured to make their prisons a "holy terror" to this class of immigrant. When that object had been achieved, or the convict element in the population had died out by the effluxion of time, they modified their prison discipline in accordance with the growth of humanitarian ideas. Whether they have done all that is possible in this direction may be doubted, but this is not the place to discuss this question. The evidence so far as it has been collected and considered tends to show that the chief remedy for crime is education. It is impossible to believe that even the worst of the bushrangers would have grown up to be such scourges to society had they been properly cared for during the impressionable period of their lives, and many of them amid all their savagery show traces of qualities which might, under happier circumstances, have fitted them for useful positions in the world. It may be added here that Mr. John Price is popularly supposed to have been the prototype of "Maurice Freere" in Marcus Clarke's novel, which should be read by every student of Australian history. CHAPTER XIV.