The criminal history of the colony in its first years discloses a dreadful list of both crimes and punishments. Small bodies of the convicts occasionally broke loose, fled to the woods, and there, setting all restraints at defiance, became reckless and ferocious. The dread of punishment did not restrain them from robbery, murder, and the most appalling crimes. The risks were well calculated, for the chances of conviction were few, and punishment was uncertain. If they were detected, a convict, being dead in law, could not be summoned as a witness. The jury would probably be composed of men who had been sharers in crimes of equal magnitude, perhaps old associates. The prisoners would be defended by convict attorneys, a nefarious class with which the colonial courts were filled. Ineffectual attempts were made to exclude these men, but the influence they had been suffered already to attain, made this impracticable. Amongst the most notorious of them was one who obtained a large practice by dint of his ingenuity, and managed the most important business in the colony. He had been some years previously sentenced to transportation for life, for forging a will. He had resorted to the ingenious device of putting a _fly_ into the mouth of a dead man, and then guiding his hand to trace his signature to the writing; and, upon the trial, he swore, with audacious assurance, that he saw the testator sign the will while _life_ was in him. In passing sentence, the late Lord Ellenborough took the opportunity of congratulating the profession on getting rid of such a pest. The records of the court are scarcely less painful than the history of the criminals themselves. The punishments adjudged were frightfully severe. If they did not reclaim the prisoner, they must have hardened him beyond recovery, if indeed they did not in many instances torture him to death. The men thus punished were already convicts it is true, and more than usual severity may have been justified. But no penal code emanating from a people professing the name of Christ may inflict savage and barbarous penalties. They recoil with disgrace upon the legislation which exacts them, and a whole nation is degraded in the person of its own malefactors; while God's displeasure is evident both in the increase and audacity of criminals on the one hand, and in the loss of humane and virtuous sentiments throughout the community on the other. We have taken three cases as a specimen of the method in which justice was dealt out to criminals in the early days of the colony in New South Wales. "John Allen, stealing in dwelling-house to the value of forty shillings. Publicly whipped, hundred lashes, confined in solitary cell at Paramatta on bread and water for six months, and hard labour at Newcastle three years."