182 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



to private adventurers the land of the colony ; such a concession 

 would subvert the foundation on which all proprietary rights in 

 New South Wales at present rest, and defeat a large part of the 

 most important regulations of the local Government ". The reason 

 assigned, though good enough from a politico-economic point of view, 

 is somewhat of a non sequltur, as it certainly has no bearing upon 

 the rights of the aborigines. 



The Association had, however, good grounds for anticipating 

 opposition, and had promptly despatched one of their number, George 

 Mercer, to England to fight out the question under the best legal 

 direction obtainable. Though the chances were all against him from 

 the first, the indomitable Mercer stood by his mission manfully, and 

 came up afresh after every rebuff with a pertinacity that must have 

 sorely tried the stately courtesy of the Colonial Secretary. He 

 opened the proceedings with an able letter to Lord Glenelg, dated 

 26th January, 1836, in which he claimed the favourable consideration 

 of the Crown to the application for a grant of the territory indicated 

 in the names of John Batman and Charles Swanston in trust for 

 the members of the Association. Apart from the rights supposed 

 to accrue under the conveyance executed by the " Aboriginal Chiefs," 

 he based the request prospectively upon " the formation of a nucleus 

 for a free and useful colony, founded upon principles of conciliation 

 and civilisation, of philanthropy, morality and temperance, without 

 danger of its ever becoming onerous to the mother-country, and 

 calculated to insure the well-being and comfort of the native oc- 

 cupants, the proposed system instructing and protecting, not exter- 

 minating them ". He points this moral by a pleasing fiction to the 

 effect that if the Association were disturbed in their occupation of 

 the land, ceded by the tribes under treaties tabooed with the sacred 

 symbols of their chiefs, then the simple savages would lose all faith 

 in their white invaders, and nothing short of their extermination 

 would enable any other occupiers to hold the land. 



However humane were the instincts of Lord Glenelg, he appears 

 to have braced himself up to meeting this terrible alternative, and 

 having finally come to a definitive conclusion as to the exact where- 

 abouts of Port Phillip, he briefly replied on the 15th of February 

 that the territory in question was a part of the colony of New South 



