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sense of moral courage, as to refuse to do evil at the expense of ridicule; for, in common with those barbarians of another colour, who practice manslaying, these lawless savages would also be considered highly dishonorable characters, and cowards too, if they declined a meeting.
The Aborigines have so far advanced in the scale of civilization, as to choose employments most congenial to their own habits and tastes, in order to supply their scanty wants. In town they readily engage in fishing, shooting, boating, carrying wood and water, acting as messengers or guides, in which services, their numbers being so few, they find full and constant employ; so much so, that now the difficulty is to find a Black when required.
The survivors of the tribe of the Lake have taken up their abode for the present at Newcastle, leaving at this place not a single resident tribe; and we are only now occasionally visited by the small remnant of the Lake.
In a very few years the race of the Aborigines within the limits of this Colony, will be seen only in he same proportions, or less than the Gipsey race in Great Britain, abating therefrom the women and children!
Of those in the interior it is difficult to form a judgement, but it may fairly be presumed that the numbers are considerably over rated, because, whenever the Blacks assemble to retaliate for some injury, real or supposed, which they conceive that they have received from Europeans, their numbers seldom are rated at more than a hundred or two, or four or five hundred at most: when it is certain that all their forces are accumulated. It occupies days and weeks to convey intelligence to, and collect the scattered people by their messengers, and when they are assembled, their means of subsistence (hunting) compels them speedily to separate, unless they supply themselves, from the flocks and herds in the vicinity, with animal food. 
The decided steps taken by Her Majesty's Government to afford mutual protection, and to prevent the complete extirpation of the Blacks, in punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent, whether Aborigines or Europeans, may check for a season their extinction, and prevent the continuance of the bloody warfare; but there is much to do, and much to suffer on both sides, long before peace can be permanently established. Nor is it possible for savages to know by intuition, the good intentions of Great Britain towards them, unless there be Institutions established, into which the Blacks may be invited, where occular demonstration will manifest in the treatment used towards them, that when they ask for bread, they will not receive poison; or for their own women, and be answered with a musket ball.
The present state of excited feeling on the part of those individuals who have suffered in their sheep and cattle, attended with the loss of human life, in the attempt to extirpate the Aborigines from their sheep and cattle runs, in the interior, is principally confined to one class of the Colonists, the graziers, who suffer most the consequences of our National measures; nor can the Aborigines be absolutely condemned for their resistance, they being placed by Britons precisely in a similar positions as Ancient Britons were, who acted upon the same principles of resistance to all-conquering Rome, whose claim to the British Isles, was just and right in principle as that of Great Britain is to New South Wales.
But heathen Rome had her laws of war and peace, and would have blushed at the cold hearted, bloody massacres of the Aborigines in this Colony by men called Christians, and at those who could boast of their exploits in "popping off a Black the moment he appeared," without regard to his innocence or guilt.
The indiscriminate slaughter, which has blotted the Colony with the foul stain of innocent blood, has been committed in open defiance of the Laws of Nations, or of the more high authority, the Law of God; and the gallantry displayed in the engagement with rude barbarians had better been displayed in the field of honor, with more equal enemies, and in a much more noble and righteous cause.
On reference to the Minuted of Evidence laid before the Committee of the Legislative Council, on the Aboriginal question, at page 44, the list given in consists of fifteen Europeans killed by the Aborigines from 1832 to the present year, 1838; a period of six years, making an average of not three persons a year, who have unfortunately been deprived of their lives, whilst a secret hostile process has been encouraged and carried on against the Blacks by a party of lawless Europeans, until it gained confidence, and unblushingly and openly appeared, to the loss of upwards of five hundred Aborigines within the last two years!! including the numerous massacres of men, women, and children, and the two or three hundred, said to be slaughtered in the engagement which it is reported took place betwixt the Horse police, commanded by Major Nunn, and the Aborigines in the interior.
If inquiry be instituted concerning the occasion of those fifteen murders, certain causes would no doubt be found, to shew they were not occasioned by mere wanton attacks of the Aborigines, which in that case deserve severe punishment, according to their own principles and practice, but arose from circumstances whic would account, in some measure, for such lamentable transactions. For instance, it is reported, that ot one of the placed mentioned, a Black was taked as a guide, it being a new station about to be formed, the Black was ordered to do something which he did not seem
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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