the kangaroo hops over his grave; his name
would never, probably, have found a place
in print, even in the Biographia Flagitiosa, had
I not the other day stumbled across a
passage in an old book that led me to ask myself
the question, whether he may not have been
the FIRST DISCOVERER OF THE GOLD FIELDS
OF AUSTRALIA! In page thirty-six of a quarto
volume, published fifty-one years ago, entitled
" An Account of the English Colony of New
South Wales," by Lieutenant Colonel Collins,
I find the following passage:—-

"The settlement of Sydney Cove was for
some time amused with the account of the
existence and discovery of a gold mine; and
the impostor had ingenuity enough to impose
a fabricated tale on several of the people for
truth. He pretended to have discovered it
at some distance down the harbour; and
offering to conduct an officer to the spot, a
boat was provided; but immediately on landing,
having previously prevailed upon the
officer to send away the boat, to prevent his
discovery being made public to more than
one person, he made a pretence to leave him,
and reaching the settlement some hours
before the officer, reported that he had been
sent up by him for a guard. The fellow knew
too well the consequences that would follow
on the officer's arrival, to wait for that, and
therefore set off directly into the woods, but
being brought back was punished for his
imposition with fifty lashes. Still, however,
persisting that he had discovered a metal, a
specimen of which he produced, the governor
ordered him to be taken again down the
harbour, with directions to his adjutant to land
the men on the place which he should point
out, and keep him in sight; but on being
assured by that officer, that if he had
attempted to deceive him he would put him
to death, the man confessed that his story of
having found a gold mine was a falsehood
which he had propagated in the hope of
imposing upon the people belonging to the
Fishbourn and Golden Grove Storeships,
from which he expected to procure clothing
and other articles in return for his promised
gold dust; and that he had fabricated the
specimens of the metal which he had
exhibited, from a guinea and a brass buckle;
the remains of which he then produced,
and was rewarded for his ingenuity with a
hundred lashes. Among the people of his
own description there were many who
believed, notwithstanding his confession and
punishment, that he had actually made the
discovery which he pretended, and that he
was induced to say it was a fabrication
merely to secure it to himself, to make use
of it at a future opportunity: so easy is it to
impose on the minds of the lower class of the
people."

Easy it is, indeed, to impose on the minds
of this same lower class: the imposition has
been tried on the largest scale, and with the
most enlivening success during a long series of
years; yet the judgment even of the superior
orders is occasionally fallible, and the great
ones of the earth sometimes make fools oi
themselves. Fifty-one years ago unfortunate
James Daley was flogged, threatened with
death, and sneered at by lieutenant-governors,
judge-advocates, soldier-officers, overseers, and
free settlers. Only a few convicts, miserable
and despised as himself, believed in him
and his gold mine: he got not his deserts,
yet 'scaped he not the whipping; but in this
day and hour how many of the superior
classes will be bold enough to aver that
the wretched, contaminated, brutalised,
crime-stained, flagellated Irish convict may
not have discovered gold—may have been
within the arcana of Mammon—may have
stood on the shores of that wonderful Pactolus
to whose golden sands myriads of men and
women are rushing now in frenzied concupiscence
of wealth!

I am fond of believing strange things, and
I therefore register my opinion that Daley
did, if not actually discover gold, know of its
existence somewhere in the vicinity of Sydney.
I think the guinea and brass-buckle story
was a blind; that the lower class of people
were right in their estimation of their
comrade's character; and that unfortunate James
Daley, after his one imprudent avowal that
he had a secret, determined to keep it
thenceforward unrevealed, because he hated his
masters in his heart, and loathed the idea of placing
wealth at their command. The monkeys, they
say, have the gift of speech, but will not use it
lest man should set them to work; unfortunate
James Daley, perhaps, kept mute for a
parallel reason. "Here I am," he may have
said, "lagged—a lifer. I have found gold.
What good will it do me to tell the
lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate where
to find it too? I shall get a ticket-of-leave,.
perhaps, and a few guineas; and I shall get
drunk, and knife a man, and be lagged again,
or scragged; while the lieutenant-governor
goes home to be made a lord of, and the.
judge-advocate is thanked by the parliament-house." So, James Daley held his tongue,,
and was rewarded for his ingenuity with a
hundred lashes.

His ultimate reward on earth, and one that
fairly earns him the title of unfortunate, was
yet to come. He is flogged at page thirty-six
of the book I have quoted; at page forty-one
he is hanged. In the case of the
unfortunate Miss Bailey, the captain who behaved
so ill to her was, I believe, an officer in the
Marines. In the case of the unfortunate
James Daley, the judge who sentenced him
to death was also in the Marines — Lieutenant
Colonel Collins, judge-advocate of the colony.
Bailey was throttled in her garters; Daley
in an orthodox halter. Here is the entry of
the discoverer's crowning reward:

"In December, James Daley, the convict,,
who, in August, pretended to have discovered
an inexhaustible source of wealth, and who