State Library of NSW
[page 7]
In introducing to the notice of my readers the Customs and Manners of the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land as set forth in the advertisement of the 28.th of July last it may not be thought improper here to offer a few preliminary observations in connexion[sic] with a subject which must prove as interesting to the English as it is to the Colonial Leader. I do not recollect another instance upon record where a whole nation carrying on for a series of years an interminable warfare with the inhabitants of a British colony and then finally, as if by magic, surrendering themselves into the hands of the government.- The philanthropist will regret the necessity of a measure which went to deprive the aboriginal tribes of this island of their independence and consign them to a more remote place, but common justice and a concern for the national honour of our mother country induces me to set the matter before the public in its just position, and the grounds which compelled our late Governor Sir George Arthur to consult the safety of the Colonists in putting an end to these outrages which for several successive years inflicted inexpressible injuries of on the white as well as black inhabitants of the colony. Nothing but absolute necessity can excuse the violation of a territory seemingly settled by the hands of the creator on some aboriginal race, but it is a standing and unerring maxim that necessity is to all intents and purposes part and parcel of the law of nature, and it cannot be supposed that providence would decree any country,
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