ARISTOCRACY AND ITS ANTIPODES.
If the Legislative Council of New South Wales are enabled to effect their proposal for the creation of an hereditary Peerage in that colony, it will be necessary to assign armorial bearings to the new noblemen. This will be no very difficult matter; respect being had to the origin of the chief families that will be comprised in that aristocracy. For example, here is the blazon of a coat that might be borne by the name of Sikes, elevated to the Dukedom of Norfolk Island.
Gules, on a cross ermine, between four hand-cuffs, or, a jemmy of the field. Crest, out of a window shutter vert a hand, sable, grasping a centre-bit proper.
The above coat will readily be seen to indicate that the founder of the bearer's family had been transported for burglary accompanied by violence. The latter feature of his achievements is denoted by the sanguinary colour of the field, and of the implement depicted on the centre of the scutcheon. By the number of the handcuffs are signified two convictions. The cross alludes to crossing the herring-pond, and the ermine indicates the judicial sentence by which the voyage was prescribed. The crest speaks for itself; the use of the term sable is an allowable liberty, as being necessary to represent the probable state of the member to which it is applied, considered in relation to soap and water. The family motto might be, Mortuus vivo, which would be a neat paraphrase of "Death Recorded."
The horse, the sheep, the pig, and other cattle—for stealing which the forefathers of the ennobled parties were relegated—would furnish abundance of animal forms for the purposes of heraldic symbolism. To these might be added the magpie, the stoat, the weasel, and other creatures that are the emblems of theft and larceny. Though, for the matter of that, the more ancient devices of eagles, dragons, griffins, lions, and the like beasts and birds of prey, would do quite sufficiently well to glorify exploits of plunder and rapine; nor could any motto for the member of a Botany Bay nobility be more suitable than some of those very professions of ancestral principle, which are the glory of certain high pedigrees among ourselves. "Thou shall want ere I want," for instance, would precisely suit the descendant of a footpad. A convict who had become a prosperous gentleman, after having completed his sentence of transportation for seven years, could not have left a happier legend to his posterity, than "I bide my time." Moreover, when it is considered that the foundation of not a few among our own great houses was either fraud or force, it cannot be asserted that a Peerage of New South Wales would not rest to a considerable extent on a like basis with the British nobility. So that, when you come to think it, there may not be so very much difference, after all, between those who came in with the Conqueror, and those who went out in the convict ship.
