This wholesale plundering of houses and stations does not often happen. Operations are nowadays generally confined to the road. And usually no violence is offered except in resisting capture. For unless a bushranger has already forfeited his life by committing murder he will abstain from taking life if he can, being pretty sure that for any number of highway robberies unaccompanied with violence he will only be punished, at the worst, with penal servitude for life, and that if he behaves well in prison he may very likely be at large again in ten years. The owner of a house which is attacked must resist if he has much to lose which he cannot spare. But in travelling, people generally prefer to take little that is valuable with them, and to leave their pistols at home. For the bush which borders all the roads, more or less, gives the bushranger an almost irresistible advantage. He can choose his own position, and without being seen cover a driver or a passenger with his rifle or his revolver, and bid him throw up his arms or be shot, before the latter has time to get at his pistol. The traveller cannot be prepared on the instant. To undergo the jolts and plunges of an Australian coach on Australian roads with a cocked pistol in one’s hand would be to run a greater risk than any to be apprehended from bushrangers. They practise, too, a certain contemptuous Turpin-like courtesy towards passengers, especially poor ones and women; and often take nothing but the mails. And so the actual loss and danger from this state of things is not so great as might be supposed. But the insubordinate and lawless spirit of the population, of which it is the evidence, is a more serious matter. And it must prevail very widely. A bushranger’s person and features are generally perfectly well known in the district where he carries on his depredations. A large reward is offered for his capture. He could not get food to support him or clothes to wear without the connivance of a great number of persons. _With_ their connivance he often pursues a successful career for years; and it is often only by a lucky accident if the police succeed in making a capture. XI. POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.