1. That provision of land should be made for the exclusive use of
the existing tribes; but this, by itself, would be simply preserving
their barbarism for the sake of preserving their lives. And the
question naturally occurs whether Moravian settlements or settlements
conducted on entirely similar principles, under whatever Christian {17}
denomination, might not be introduced for the purpose of wisely and
gradually winning the people to higher and better habits.
2. A good government which really understood its responsibilities would
put down with any force requisite that most accursed of all British
habits, the sale of intoxicating drinks to those who never knew them
before. On the heads of these traffickers rests the blood of thousands
of their fellow men.
3. Although a large proportion of children have died while under
school instruction, there is no proof that education, if properly
conducted, tends to extinguish races. And it _is_ possible that by
educating outcast native children, these tribes, with whatever mental
constitution endowed, may be spared to contribute their quota to human
knowledge and advancement.
4. The school diseases, however, indicate that education should be
conducted in a very different manner from what it is in England.
Physiology would teach us that it is not safe to take the child of
uncivilized parents, and to submit it all at once to the restraints of
civilization. What is wanted is a careful study of what can and what
cannot be done with safety. Time would seem to be a great element in
the education of these children. There should be as little interference
as possible with their born habits and customs. And that interference
should take place gradually and wisely. The probability is that if
children could leave school in health, with sufficient training to
enable them to enter the pale of civilization, their children would be
the more able to bear the required development of the mental faculties.
In any case, physical training, and a large amount of out-door work,
are essentially necessary to success.
5. We all know how difficult it is to preserve health among dense
populations in our houses at home. We may hence infer how much more
difficult it is to draw together numbers of uncivilized or partially
civilized people, within the same boundary, or under the same roof,
without great risk to health and life. Bring a healthy family from the
open country into a narrow crowded London alley, and the little ones
will die, the elder ones will be sick for, perhaps, the first time of
their lives, and the parents will fall into confirmed ill health, to
say the least of it.
Our home experience hence teaches us the extreme importance of
favourable sanitary conditions, whenever an {18} attempt is made to
bring the uncivilized within the pale of civilization.
Every society which has been formed has had to sacrifice large
proportions of its earlier generations to the new conditions of life
arising out of the mere fact of change. Only by the greatest care and
by the adoption of every requisite improvement can London itself bear
the rapid increase of its population without danger from pestilence.
This destroying principle is now at work in the colonies where races
are decaying. And its results can only be diminished by assimilating
the new conditions, involved in the change, as nearly as possible, so
far as healthiness is concerned, to the open air activity to which the
people have been for generations accustomed.
These are the results of this inquiry. Defective in many particulars
though they be, they are still sufficient to prove that, on the local
authorities of the colonies, there rests a responsibility in the
face of public opinion in Europe, of the very gravest kind. It is a
matter for state interference. It is impossible to stand by, while
races are disappearing, of whom it can be said that the “Australian is
the finest model of the human proportions in muscular development,”
that his “head might compare with an antique bust of a philosopher,”
that his “perceptive faculties are peculiarly acute,” that he is an
“apt learner,” and “possesses the most intense desire to imitate his
more civilized brethren in almost every thing;” that the Australian
aborigines are “possessed of mental power on a par with their brethren
of the other races of man; that they are perhaps superior to the Negro
and some of the more inferior divisions of the great human family;”
that they have “keen perceptive faculties, with a considerable
deficiency in their reflective faculties, and a certain want of
steadiness of purpose in their characters which appears the great
obstacle to be overcome in reclaiming them and bringing them within the
pale of civilization and Christianity.”
These statements are from a report on the subject, made by a select
committee of the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858–9. In this
report occurs the following passage, with which I conclude on account
of its authority, appealing from its facts to the better feeling of the
colonies, with the hope that the time is not far off when such a stigma
as it affixes to the empire may be wiped away.
“The great and almost unprecedented reduction in the {19} number
of the Aborigines is to be attributed to the general occupation of
the country by the white population; to vices acquired by contact
with a civilized race, more particularly the indulgence in ardent
spirits; and hunger, in consequence of the scarcity of game since the
settlement of the colony; and, also in some cases, to cruelty and
ill-treatment. The great cause, however, is apparently the inveterate
propensity of the race to excessive indulgence in spirits, which it
seems utterly impossible to eradicate. This vice is not only fatal,
but leads to other causes which tend to shorten life.
“Mr. Thomas, the guardian of Aborigines, states in evidence, that
one morning he found five drunken blacks lying buried in the mud at
the Merri Creek, which being followed by pulmonary attack, death, as
is invariably the case, ensued. It may be remarked, that consumption
forms a fruitful cause of mortality amongst them, in addition to the
other causes enumerated.
“It would appear that they have materially degenerated since the
advent of the whites, as Mr. Thomas has said ‘the young die two to
one in proportion to the old; I have some old people yet.’ The rapid
settlement necessary upon the country being occupied by flocks and
herds was more unfavourable to the Aborigines than if it had only been
gradually taken up for agricultural purposes.
“Your Committee are of opinion that great injustice has been
perpetrated upon the Aborigines—that, when the Government of the
colony found it necessary to take from them their hunting grounds and
their means of living, proper provision should have been made for
them. Had they been a strong race, like the New Zealanders, they would
have forced the new occupiers of their country to provide for them;
but being weak and ignorant, even for savages, they have been treated
with almost utter neglect.
“With the exception of the Protectorate, which was an emanation of
the Imperial Government, and which seemed to have been only partially
successful, little or nothing has been done for the black denizens of
the country.”
Every colony where the native races are declining could furnish some
such report as this. The injustice has been a common one, and so should
be the remedy. {20}