more anomaly to all the other enactments affecting them. This
naturalization excludes them from sitting on a jury, or appearing as
witnesses, and entails a most confused form of judicial proceedings; all
which, taken together, has made of the Aborigines of Australia a
nondescript caste, who, to use their own phraseology, are 'neither black
nor white.'"--Strzelecki's N. S. Wales.]

If, in addition to the many evils and disadvantages the natives must
necessarily be subject to from our presence, we take still further into
account the wrongs they are exposed to from the ill feeling towards them
which has sometimes existed among the settlers, or their servants, on the
outskirts of the country; the annoyances they are harassed by, even where
this feeling does not exist, in being driven away from their usual haunts
and pursuits (and this is a practice often adopted by the remote grazier
as a mere matter of policy to avoid trouble or the risk of a collision);
we shall find upon the whole that they have often just causes of offence,
and that there are many circumstances connected with their crimes which,
from the peculiar position they are placed in, may well require from us
some mitigation of the punishment that would be exacted from Europeans
for the same misdeeds.

Captain Grey has already remarked the strong prejudice and recklessness
of human life which frequently exist on the part of the settlers with
regard to the natives. Nor has this feeling been confined to Western
Australia alone. In all the colonies, that I have been in, I have myself
observed that a harsh and unjust tone has occasionally been adopted in
speaking of the Aborigines; and that where a feeling of prejudice does
not exist against them, there is too often a great indifference
manifested as to their fate. I do not wish it to be understood that such
is always the case; on the contrary, I know that the better, and right