" PEACE, PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY " 229 



the rest were dismissed to their homes. From this crowd it was 

 learned that Byrne had been killed by the first volley of the police, 

 and that the only remaining occupants were Hart and Dan Kelly. 

 Although the fire of the outlaws had ceased, and there were now 

 about sixty apparently resolute men around the building, no attempt 

 was made to take it by storm. Yet it would not have been a 

 supremely dangerous task, for the aim of the outlaws, encumbered 

 by their ponderous armour, had been notoriously bad, only one of 

 the attacking party, Superintendent Hare, having been seriously 

 wounded. Subsequent evidence indicated that Kelly and Hart 

 were helpless, if not actually dead, by this time, both having been 

 wounded early in the day. With a caution bordering on timidity, 

 it was considered wiser to set fire to the hotel rather than risk the 

 sacrifice of more lives. This it was contended would at least pre- 

 vent the desperadoes escaping under cover of the approaching night. 

 There was no attempt at such escape, even when the building burst 

 into flames, and a subsequent inspection of the debris discovered the 

 ghastly remains of the two men encased in their iron shrouds. From 

 their position there was little doubt that they were dead before the 

 fire reached them. With his capture and the death of his three 

 companions in crime, all the braggadocio of Ned Kelly rapidly 

 evaporated. He was as abject a specimen of the detected criminal 

 as could be readily found, and when the judicial end came it was 

 with difficulty his spiritual adviser could enable him to stand erect 

 under the gallows. 



It was a humiliating reflection for the Victorian colonist that 

 the whole machinery of Government, the apparent zeal of a well- 

 disciplined and costly police service, the stimulus of enormous 

 rewards, and an expenditure of fully 100,000 were, for two whole 

 years, insufficient to check the predatory career of these four reck- 

 less dare-devil boys. For they were little more at the time of their 

 outlawry for shooting Fitzgerald. Ned Kelly was twenty-four, but 

 his brother was only seventeen, and both Hart and Byrne were 

 under age. They were products of the soil, all born in the infected 

 district. The fact that the territory that bred them held scores of 

 active and avowed sympathisers with their lawless career gave 

 cause for anxious reflection as to how deep the taint of imported 



