farmers; both judge and jury were churchmen of the
prevailing type. The judge summed up as follows: "Not for
anything that you have done, or that I can prove that you
intend to do, but for an example to others I consider it my
duty to pass the sentence of seven years' penal
transportation across His Majesty's high seas upon each and
every one of you."

#Suffer Little Children#

The founder of Christianity was a man who specialized in children. He
was not afraid of having His discourses disturbed by them, He did not
consider them superfluous. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven", He
said; and His Church is the inheritor of this tradition--"feed my
lambs". There were children in Great Britain in the early part of the
nineteenth century, and we may see what was done with them by turning
to Gibbin's "Industrial History of England":

Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the
manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory
district, and there keep them, generally in some dark
cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill owner in
want of hands, who would come and examine their height,
strength, and bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave
oweners in the American markets. After that the children
were simply at the mercy of their oweners, nominally as
apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no
wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and
clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places
could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the