murdered in turn. This custom necessarily induces a constant state
of warfare. Now it is very right that all these barbarous and
unchristian practices should be put an end to; but, whilst
endeavouring to suppress them, we ought to remember that they are
part and parcel of the long-established laws of this rude people, and
that it is not possible all at once to make them forego their ancient
institutions and customs. The settlers would gladly see punished all
acts of violence committed among the natives in their neighbourhood.
Were they permitted to inflict such punishments as are best suited to
the limited ideas and moral thraldom of the Aborigines, these,
without cruelty or injustice, might gradually be brought within the
pale of civilization; but when the law declares it to be inevitable
that every British subject who is tried and found guilty of having
speared his enemy shall be hanged without benefit of clergy, the
colonists out of sheer humanity and pity for the ignorance of the
culprit, refrain from bringing him to trial and punishment -- a
proceeding which, by the way, would cost the colony some fifteen or
twenty pounds -- and thus he goes on in his errors, unreproved by
the wisdom or the piety of the whites. Sometimes, however, it
happens that the officers who exercise the calling of Protectors of
the Aborigines, anxious to prove that their post is no sinecure, make
a point of hunting up an occasional law-breaker, who, being brought
to trial, is usually found guilty upon his own evidence -- the
unfortunate culprit, conscious of no guilt in having followed the
customs of his ancestors, generally making a candid statement of his
offence. The sentence decreed by the English law is then passed upon
him, and he would, of course, be duly subjected to the penalty which
justice is supposed to demand, did not the compassionate Governor, in
the exercise of the highest privilege of the Crown, think proper to
step in and commute the sentence to perpetual imprisonment. As it