Sydney Morning Herald (36)
MELBOURNE , JUNE 28
Up to the morning of Monday the only subject of interest to us was the dissolution and the consequent forthcoming general election. But on a sudden the news of the Kelly outrage and the destruction of the gang have taken the place of the political complications. There is, therefore, nothing but Kelly on everybody's lips to-day. Every two persons you meet in the street are speaking of the Kellys; in railway carriages the conversation is entirely Kelly; the children prattle to each other of Ned Kelly, and the talk on 'Change, on block, and by the fireside very much Kelly. There is a strange feeling of relief in men's minds that, at last, we have got rid of a reproach. There has always seemed such a preposterous disproportion between these outlaws and the means taken to extirpate them. It has looked like four men defying a million. Of course, it has been always proper to bear in mind both the nature of the country selected by these villains for their fastnesses, and the extent of confederation which served them as entrenchment- But by strangers these circumstances could not be well understood.
I lately spoke to a gentleman travelling through these colonies, and he told me the people in England, or at least those who condescended to trouble themselves with our affairs, sneered at us a good deal for not being able to hunt down four bushrangers within a week. And it must be confessed, there has always been a spice of the absurd in the situation, and even at the very last, the conclusion of the game has required a very large number of candles. It is certainly a pity the whole four could not have been taken alive. Considering the money and irritation, not to say the loss of life, this Kelly maraud has cost us, it is but poor satisfaction to be able to show only three cinders and a bullet riddle as the returns. And if Ned Kelly should die before there is time to hang him, there will be still further occasion of regret. All we can do is to hope that the resources of surgery may be equal to preserving so criminally valuable a life.
Everybody is glad that Superintendent Hare has had the glory of being in command in the final onslaught on these scoundrels. For he is one of those thoroughly manly men whom everybody likes, and, therefore, everybody hopes he will have a very substantial acknowledgment of the service he has rendered. And when all the excitement attendant upon the extinction of the gang is over, it is generally hoped there will be a searching investigation into the whole police system of this colony, for there is a prevalent belief that, if there had been less red-tape and pipeclay in the regulations, the Kellys would, long ago, have become only execrated memories. And it is also felt that something ought to be done in the direction of uprooting bushranging as a system, for nobody believes that, because the Kelly gang is now extinct, Kellyism is destroyed. It is well understood that, during all the time these brigands have held possession of the country where they reigned, they have excited and kept alive in the minds of the young men of the district a feeling of spurious emulation, and that, therefore, from their ashes may spring up a whole race of robbers and murderers. How this bad element in society is to be extirpated it may be difficult to say.
In any despotic country there would be no difficulty about it at all. For the friends and sympathisers of the outlaws, being all known, they would simply be ordered to remove themselves to variously distant parts or the country, or they would be invited to go out of the country altogether. But as we live under responsible government, this ready method of ensuring the safety of society is not here possible.
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