Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manne by Edward John Eyre
page 145 of 434 (33%)
page 145 of 434 (33%)
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occasionally be guilty of aggressions or injuries towards his oppressors?
The wonder rather is, not that these things do sometimes occur, but that they occur so rarely. [Note 45: "If you can still be generous to the conquered, relieve the hunger which drives us in despair to slaughter your flocks and the men who guard them. Our fields and forests, which once furnished us with abundance of vegetable and animal food, now yield us no more; they and their produce are yours; you prosper on our native soil, and we are famishing." --STRZELECKI'S N. S. WALES, p. 356.] In addition to the many other inconsistencies in our conduct towards the Aborigines, not the least extraordinary is that of placing them, on the plea of protection, under the influence of our laws, and of making them British subjects. Strange anomaly, which by the former makes amenable to penalties they are ignorant of, for crimes which they do not consider as such, or which they may even have been driven to commit by our own injustice; and by the latter but mocks them with an empty sound, since the very laws under which we profess to place them, by their nature and construction are inoperative in affording redress to the injured. [Note 46: "To subject savage tribes to the penalties of laws with which they are unacquainted, for offences which they, very possibly, regard as acts of justifiable retaliation for invaded rights, is a proceeding indefensible, except under circumstances of urgent and extreme necessity."--Fourth Report of the Colonization Commissioners, presented to the House of Commons, 29th July, 1840. "The late act, declaring them naturalized as British subjects, has only rendered them legally amenable to the English criminal law, and added one |
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