Their
companions were respited at the place of execution. They were all
extremely penitent, confessed the justice of their sentence, and
acknowledged how much mischief they had done, and how much more they
meditated, had they not been overtaken by justice.
One man, for robbery, was executed at Parramatta, George Mitton, who
certainly was a very fit subject for an example. He had been twice
pardoned when under sentence of death; once in Ireland; and once in this
country, by the present governor, for an offence similar to that for
which he now suffered.
These melancholy instances, had they been properly attended to, must have
shown to the convicts not only the difficulty which accompanied every
attempt to escape privately from the colony, and the danger to which
those who made the trial exposed themselves, but the certainty of meeting
that punishment which the various crimes that they committed on such
occasions so highly merited. The governor, in an order which he now
published, was desirous of calling back to the recollection of these
misguided people, who had been, either through ignorance, or through the
profligacy of their dispositions, so readily prevailed upon to engage in
such dangerous enterprises, that they would find an attention to the
advice which he had so often given them the most effectual means of
ensuring their real happiness.
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