Note 213 — TRANSPORTATION (continued 4)

"The Rev. Dr. Bedford, in the course of his remarks, stated that his duty had imposed upon him the painful task of attending between three and four hundred executions, and that more than nineteen-twentieths of the unhappy men who had thus miserably perished, had been brought to this end by the effects of drunkenness."—Courier; Speech at a meeting of the first Temperance Society at Hobart Town, 1832.

"It has fallen to our lot to be present at the executions of a large proportion of the malefactors who have suffered the extremity of the law in Hobart Town, and the apparent apathy with which the unhappy men met their fate, was always to us the most humiliating part of the spectacle. Their lips would utter with apparent sincerity the invocations prompted by the clergyman, but the heart, that should have given them expression, was too plainly wanting. They were empty sounds—the soul was gone. The main part of the executioner's duty was performed to his hand; the kernel was already consumed.... They sung psalms, ate a hearty meal: they heard the summons of the sheriff; their arms were pinioned; the halter was put about their neck; the cap was brought over their eyes, and they dropped into eternity with more indifference than the ox goes to the slaughter."—V. D. Land Annual; edited by Dr. Ross, 1833.