APPEALS FROM AUSTRALIA
In 1870 the British government had granted conditional pardon to such political convicts in Australia as had been civilians at the time of their offense, but the military prisoners were exempted. Still the latter were not without hope, as the letter of one of them to O'Reilly, who had amnestied himself, shows. "It is my birthday as I write this," ran the letter, "and I know I am turning it to the best account by writing to such a dear old friend. Who knows? perhaps I may be able to spend the next one with you. If not, then we will hope for the following one. At all events, we must not despair."
The men were not always so calmly hopeful. Sometimes—
"There spake in their hearts a hidden voice
Of the blinding joy of a freeman's burst
Through the great dim woods. Then the toil accurst,
The scorching days and the nights in tears,
The riveted rings for years and years,
They weighed them all—they looked before
At the one and other, and spoke them o'er,
And they saw what the heart of man must see,
That the uttermost blessing is liberty."
And so it happened that Hassett, who was a man of remarkable daring, "with his eyes on the doom and danger," made his escape from the road party in April, 1869. He penetrated the bush to the sea, like O'Reilly; and after eleven months of privation he took refuge on board a ship at Bunbury. But he had "grasped the flower but to clutch the sting." As he reached the threshold of freedom he was snatched back. Discovered and recaptured, he was sentenced to three years of hard labor in the chain gang at Swan River, with six months' solitary confinement. The first part of the sentence is not without humor, since Hassett was serving a life sentence at hard labor when he made his escape, and there was no terror in the additional three years of servitude.
Upon the occasion of the Queen's accession to the title of Empress of India, one hundred and forty members of Parliament, including Mr. Bright, Mr. Plimsoll, Mr. Mundella, Mr. Fawcett, and many others of the ablest men of the House, presented a petition for the pardon of the political prisoners, but it was rejected.
And so perished the last hope of the friends of the prisoners of clemency from the government. "Delayed, but nothing altered, more straining on for plucking back," the friends of the prisoners, with an audacity which must be admired, determined then that they should be freed in spite of the government.