Jerilderie Letter Jerilderie Letter

would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying It takes a rogue to catch a rogue and a man that knows nothing about roguery would never enter the force an take an oath to arrest brother sister father or mother if required & to have a case & conviction if possible Any man knows it is possible to swear a lie & if a policeman looses a conviction for the sake of swearing a lie he has broke his oath therefore he is a perjurer either ways, a Policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him, in the first place he is a rogue in his heart but too cowardly to follow it up without having the force to disguise it. next he is traitor to his country ancestors and religion as they were all Catholics before the Saxons and Cranmore yoke Held sway since then they were persecuted massacred thrown into martyrdom & tortured beyond the ideas of the present generation. What would people say if they saw a strapping big lump of an Irishman shepherding sheep for fifteen bob a week or tailing turkeys in Tallarook ranges for a smile from Julia or even begging his tucker, they would say he ought to be ashamed of himself and tar-and--feather him But he would be a king to a policeman who for a lazy loafing cowardly bilit left the ash corner deserted the shamrock, the emblem of true wit and beauty to serve under a flag and nation that has destroyed massacred & murdered their fore-fathers by the greatest of torture as rolling them down hill in spiked barrels pulling their toe & finger nails and on the wheel, & every torture imaginable more was transported to Van Diemand's Land to pine their young lives away in starvation & misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself all of true blood bone and beauty, that was not murdered on their own soil, or had fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day, were doomed to Port Mcquarie Toweringabbie norfolk island and Emu plains and in those places of tyranny and condemnation many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke, were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains but true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddys land What would people say if I became a policeman and took an oath to arrest my brothers & sisters & relations and convict them by fair or foul means after the conviction of my mother & the persecutions and insults offered to myself & people Would they say I was a decent gentleman, & yet a police-man is still in worse & guilty of meaner actions than that The Queen must surely be proud of such heroic men as the Police & Irish soldiers as It takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in Melbourne