Jerilderie Letter Jerilderie Letter

they paid me full value for the horses & could not have known they were stolen. no person had anything to do with the stealing and selling of the horses but me & George King. William Cooke who was convicted for Whitty's horses was innocent he was not in my company at Petersons. But it is not the place of the Police to convict guilty men as it is by them they get their living had the right parties been convicted it would have been a bad job for the Police as Berry would have sacked a great many of them only I came to their aid & kept them in their bilits and good employment and got them double pay and yet the ungrateful articles convicted my mother & an infant my brother-in-law and another man who was innocent & still annoy my brothers and sisters and the ignorant unicorns even threaten to shoot myself But as soon as I am dead they will be heels up in the muroo. there will be no more police required they will be sacked & supplanted by soldiers on low pay in the towns and special constables made of some of the farmers to make up for this double pay and expense. It will pay Government to give those people who are suffering innocence, justice and liberty. if not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victoria Police & inhabitants but also the whole British army and now doubt they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump. and that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than Saint Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland. The Queen of England was as guilty as Baumgarten and Kennedy Williamson & Skillion of what they were convicted for When the horses were found on the Murray River I wrote a letter to Mr. Swanhill of Lake Rowan to acquaint the Auctioneer and to advertize my horses for sale I brought some of them to that place but did not sell I sold some of them in Benalla Melbourne & other places and left the colony and became a rambling gambler soon after I left there was a warrant for me & the Police searched the place and watched night and day for two or three weeks and when they could not snare me they got a warrant against my brother Dan And on the 15 of April Fitzpatrick came to the Eleven Mile Creek to arrest him he had some conversation with a horse dealer whom he swore was William Skillion this man was not called in Beechworth, besides several other