Charles Griffith

“ But when, without any of the safeguards which made it tolerable in England, this principle comes to be acted on, with regard to the black population in New South Wales, it operates as a complete protection to them in all their aggressions on the settlers. We will suppose that a hut has been robbed by the natives, the hut-keeper and shepherd surprised, and either killed or wounded, and a flock of sheep carried off. The settler arms some of his other servants, and pursues them immediately. They come up with them, and recover such of the sheep as have not been killed. ”

“ I give the government the fullest credit for their feelings towards the natives, and believe that their conduct towards them has, all through, been dictated by feelings of the purest benevolence. I admit, too, that, if in the adjustment of this difficult question, they have leaned to one side rather than the other, they have erred on the right one; for, although it be true that the settlers have but feeble means of making their grievances heard, the natives have none. Still there is a line, beyond which, indulgence to one man, is injustice to another ”

“ Whether the fact of a small population of savages, wandering over an immense tract of country in pursuit of game, or for the purpose of procuring subsistence in some such way, gives them such an indefeasible right to that territory, that no other nation has a right to trench upon its boundaries. This is I think stating the question fairly; for if you encroach never so little, for the purpose of introducing agricultural or pastoral pursuits, the tendency is to diminish pro tanto the means of subsistence of the savage. ”

“ There can be no reasonable doubt that the persons shot were engaged in the robbery and murder of the old man Basset, their being in possession of his sheep and clothes, affording the strongest evidence of those facts, for the party first come up with were merely a look-out detached from the main body. The proof of their having been engaged in the abduction and murder of the child rests merely on native evidence. ”

“ It is no doubt its duty to endeavour, by systematic efforts, to make him, as far as he is capable, a partaker in the blessings of civilization, more particularly by attempts to educate the young, and to mitigate the evils necessarily attendant on the period of transition, by putting out of his power, as much as possible, the indulgence in vice and intemperance. ”

“ The commission to "go forth and replenish the earth, and possess it," implies something more than the mere obtaining a precarious subsistence from the casual bounty of nature; the thorn and the briar were to be rooted up, and the herb yielding food to be planted in its place; all noxious animals to be subdued, and those intended to minister to the wants of man reduced into proper subjection. These duties the savage has for centuries neglected, and thus, in my mind, abandoned his inheritance. ”

“ Whatever opinion enthusiasts may form, that which I advocate is the one which the common sense of mankind will support, and the law of nature prompt them to act upon to the end of time, as they have done since the dawn of civilization. ”

“ Exasperated by these repeated attacks, and by the want of protection by the Government, the latter have, I regret to say, been led to take the law into their own hands, and some of them I have no doubt, have been guilty of savage murders. The consequence has been mutual distrust, the natives are driven off the stations, and not allowed to approach the huts; if they see a white man they skulk into the bushes, and it is not till emboldened by superior numbers, or tempted by an opportunity to surprise, that they make their appearance for the purpose of some hostile act. ”

“ The conflict of right therefore begins the moment that the white man sets his foot upon its shore, and the question comes to this: which has the better right—the savage, born in a country, which he runs over, but can be scarcely said to occupy, the representive of a race, which for ages have left unimproved the splendid domains spread out before them, as if to tempt their industry, but of which they may be deemed to have refused the possession ”

“ It is in its present unmodified state practically inefficient to restrain aggressions on one side or the other. Even the very officers in command of the small police force which exists, must either allow the escape of persons guilty of the greatest crimes, or else, in order to punish them, violate that law which they are bound to administer;and the colonial government have to wink at that violation. ”

“ But when it was intimated to the settlers, by the government, that the natives were, in every respect, to be treated as British subjects, and that any person would be severely dealt with, who in his conduct towards them in any wise infringed the laws of England, the case became very different. Cases, such as I have described, became common, and the natives, encouraged by impunity, have succeeded in destroying an immense quantity of the property, and sacrificing the lives of many of the settlers and their servants. ”

“ Others there are of higher principles and more enlarged views, who prefer incurring all risks to violating the laws, but who hope, when the true state of the case is laid before the home government, that some attempt may be made to remedy the present anomalous state of things. But amongst all there is but one feeling of dissatisfaction, that no efficient police force has been established, to protect them in that course of forbearance so rigidly insisted on. ”

“ Can it be for a moment supposed that a large portion of the globe—yielding to few in its means of production, to none in the amænity of its climate—could have been intended by its Creator to be reserved for ever as the hunting grounds of a handful of savages? ”

“ Above all, I consider it of paramount importance, even as effecting the natives themselves, that the laws regulating their relations with Europeans, should be put upon a more equitable footing, and while I should be one of the last men to propose a system, which I thought would substantially bear harshly upon them, I at the same time equally deprecate the indulgence of a mawkish sentimentality on their behalf, at the hazard of sacrificing the lives and properties of our fellow-countrymen, who are equally entitled to the protection of the laws. ”

“ The government profess to extend to the natives that protection which an Englishman receives from the laws, but in fact afford him a complete license to rob and murder. The Englishman, in return for the security which he affords to society by a fixed residence, the possession of property, and the ties of kindred, is treated with a tenderness with respect to his person, even in his case scarcely reconcilable with good order. ”

“ After making every fair allowance for the peculiar difficulty of such an undertaking, it seems impossible any longer to deny that the efforts which have been hitherto made for the civilization of the aborigines have been unavailing; that no real progress has yet been effected, and that there is no reasonable ground to expect from them greater success in future. ”

“ If it he determined that the native should, in this respect, be put on the same footing with other subjects, let him be forced to give to society the same security for his good behaviour by a fixed residence, or, if this be impossible, let the law itself be modified, so as to prevent its being a screen to protect robbery and murder.
During the first few years after the settlement of this district, the settlers acted on the broad principle of the law of nature, intelligible alike to savage and to sage. ”

“ When, however, the increase oft population, and the growth of commerce and manufactures, had rendered frequent travelling necessary, and the improvements of modern invention had made it easy, and it was found that the vagrant laws had become inapplicable to our complicated social system, and totally ineffectual as a measure of police, a new check was adopted, and a numerous police force organized, as well for the prevention, as for the detection of crime. ”

“ This is one reason why I have thought it right to meet this question on its own ground, but there is another and more important one; for the decision of this point has an important bearing upon the practical question of, how the natives are to be dealt with, as it materially affects their relations towards us. If the white man had a right to occupy the country, the native, by opposing no vain resistance to his doing so, acquires no fresh rights ”

“ The English law has no more effect in restraining the natives from the commission of outrages on the settlers, by any fear of its sanctions, or any respect for its authority, than has the law of Confucius, of which they know about as as much ”

“ It is moreover the duty of the legislature—regarding the spirit, rather than the letter, of the English law, and bearing in mind that they are dealing with a state of society not analogous to any thing within the range of their former experience—to frame such a code of laws as may at once afford protection to the native, and security to the settler. ”

“ The English law is a connected system, which to be effectual must be enforced throughout; it is not sufficient to carry into effect one part, leaving out some other part which was intended to act as a counterpoise and check. ”

“ The origin of epidemic diseases is always involved in so much obscurity, and the mortality arising from them frequently possesses such a mysterious character, that they have in every age, from the days of Homer down, been attributed to the direct intervention of supernatural power, though probably regulated by laws capable of being as accurately defined, as those of any other phenomenon with which we are acquainted in the range of physics. ”

“ And it is of importance that the right to colonize should be settled in the first instance; for if we have no right to occupy the country, no course of subsequent dealing can, in the forum of conscience, cure the original defect of title; and the sooner that we retrace our steps, and that every European departs from the shores of Australia, the sooner shall we have shown a sincere regret for the injury we have already caused to the natives. ”

“ These tribes lived more than two hundred miles from Melbourne, and being in one of those districts where aggressions on the whites had most frequently occurred, they had had but little intercourse with the settlers. I set this down at the time merely as an occasional epidemic, but I find that one of the Commissioners of Crown Lands speaks of a similar disease having been fatal amongst the Barabool tribe, near Geelong, in 1839. I find also from a work quoted below, that a disease exactly similar had followed the appearance of Europeans, not only in New Zealand, but in the South Sea Islands. ”

“ No effectual protection, therefore, being afforded to the settlers, as far as the natives are concerned, the feeling of many of them is this, that the government, by its being so inadequate to the discharge of those duties for which all governments exist, namely, the protection of life and property, has, in fact, abdicated its office, and forfeited their allegiance ”

“ This extreme strictness would no doubt have afforded protection to a great number of malefactors, had not means been taken to counteract this effect. In the simple times of our Saxon ancestors, whilst travelling was unfrequent, and the mode of transit difficult, it was esteemed a sufficient protection to society, that every Englishman should have a fixed habitation where he could be found, and made responsible for his acts, or in his default, that a certain member of the community should be answerable for him, and make reparation for his crime. ”

“ But although I do not admit that the native can claim compensation as a right, I fully concur in the view that the providing for his welfare, as far as possible, is a charge which the English government was bound to undertake, as it has done, and that it is also bound to afford him all the indulgence which is consistent with the, welfare of its other subjects. ”

“ The natives are of course anxious to escape, and to wait for some other opportunity of effecting their purpose; for it forms no part of the tactics of savages, when they have a chance of escape, to stand up in fair fight, unless they have an overwhelming force. ”

“ If, under these circumstances, the settler and his servants fire upon and kill any of them, they make themselves amenable to a law, by which they may be hung or transported for life. If, on the contrary, they abstain from this course, in compliance with the English law, and relying on the protection which the government is bound to afford them, the result is, that in the first place, the natives get clean off ”

“ The mortality amongst the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands places them in a similar melancholy position with the aborigines of this land, and ere a few years elapse, they will become extinct or amalgamated with emigrants from European shores. ”

“ There are few men who, in such a position, would have firmness enough to control a mob, consisting of several hundreds of unruly savages, who could and would, if things had come to a rupture, have eaten the whole establishment for breakfast. A system of temporising was the natural result of this state of things. The natives speared a calf belonging to the overseer; they brought the sheep belonging to the neighbouring settlers, and ate them at the protectorate ”

“ Daring my seventeen years sojourn amongst these tribes, cruelties have not been so numerous or extensive as to account sufficiently for the decrease of the blacks, or to alter the opinion that the diminution of people, or the prosperity of nations, is from the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. ”

“ To give men the protection of laws, which they do not acknowledge, and the sanctions of which it is impossible to enforce, is a one-sided arrangement, which is likely to press heavily on the other subjects of the empire brought in contact with them. ”

“ In the first place, I think that the endeavour to civilize the natives, ought to be made in a way quite different from that hitherto attempted. Instead of collecting together the wild tribes, I would bring together a few of the most enlightened individuals of the most civilized tribes, with their families—men who had seen and could partially appreciate the comforts of civilized life. ”