treated a young lady to whom he was en was thrown into a ferment. Watt defied it, gaged to be married. She died, and Dillon and lived in open violatioh of the law. Ef was sentenced to be hanged. Through the forts were made to bring him to justice influence of his friends the sentence was again; one authority after another was ap commuted to transportation for life, and the pealed to, but the very chiefs of police wenafraid of him. Placed on his trial at length, gay young devil was shipped to Botany Bay. He had money in his pocket, and for several • the magistrates assembled on the Bench threw up the case in disgust after a seven weeks he was allowed to walk about Sydney days' hearing, satisfied there was no convict at his own discretion. Then he was sent to ing a felon who was proved in court to have the luxurious Wellington Valley, and here in a short time he received a conditional par had the secret countenance of a principal le don, which made a convict in almost every gal officer of the Crown, and even of the gov respect a free man. Returning to Sydney, ernor himself. Watt at this time boasted he became one of the best known men about that he ruled the colony, and it is certain that town, and the companion of gentlemen hold he assisted in procuring the removal from ing high rank in the colony. the commission of the peace of thirty-three Even more typical than Dillon's was the of the independent territorial magistrates case of the ticket-of-leave man, James Watt. who had been so presumptuous as to suggest Watt was originally a clerk in the office of that New South Wales was becoming con a Writer to the Signet in Scotland. Charged vict-ridden. Strangers visiting Sydney at this period with some grave delinquencies, he fled to learned with astonishment that the handsome England, and was proclaimed an outlaw by the law of Scotland. In London, however. carriages which rolled through the mam he obtained a situation in a commercial streets were the property of "émancipants,'" or of convicts who had been assigned to their house in Fore street, where he remained un til the discovery of a fresh series of frauds wives; that the rakish-looking gentleman put him to his heels again. He was taken at with the diamond rings driving that smart last, and sentenced to fourteen years' trans cob was Mr. W. Sykes, of whom an Old portation. But the Botany Bay of fifty Bailey judge had said five years previously years ago was a veritable Tom Tiddler's that "hanging was too good for him"; that ground for rogues of this quirk, and Watt the handsome, keen-faced man riding his made splendid weather of it there. At this well-shaped hackney was an ex-attorney's date there was no necessity to employ either clerk of Bedford-row, who had been in some convicts or emancipated felons in the public little trouble about a forged will, but was offices, but the Government of the day stuck now one of the most prosperous solicitors to that infatuated policy, and Watt, the thief in Sydney; that the brilliant madam in the and forger, instead of being sent to the roadcurricle was the once-notorious Mrs. Mary gang and lodged in gaol, was at once en Flanders, whom the golden youth of London gaged as a civil servant. After a length of remembered to their cost; and so on. time he was assigned to the proprietors of a The depravity of morals was all but uni leading Sydney journal. An emancipated versal. A negro had come to the colony as convict edited this organ of colonial opinion, some gentleman's servant. He had been which, as may be imagined, had nothing un his master's faithful and trusted retainer for kind to say about the ladies and gentlemen years, but in Sydney he robbed him. He languishing in the silken bonds of antipodean stood his trial at the quarter sessions, and captivity. Soon, however, the irresistiblewas asked by the judge if he could produce Watt got the upper hand, and "Mr. Editor a witness as to his character. The blackie shook his head mournfully. "No, Massa! Watt," to the scandal of the decent settlers, became a person to be reckoned with in the Poor Jaccho hab no character now! When colonv. The whole of the free community Jaccho came a Sydney, Jaccho berry good
