228 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



classes of the white population, nor do memorialists conceive his 

 procedure in any degree fitted to improve the condition of those for 

 whose benefit he is understood to be stationed here." 



The Governor caused these gentlemen to be informed that, as 

 twelve months had not elapsed since the Protectors entered upon 

 their duties, both the Government and the people of England would 

 expect that the experiment should not be too hastily condemned 

 or abandoned; and he asked the support and co-operation of the 

 settlers to assist these officers in carrying out their difficult duties. 

 But in his own mind he had little hope of any beneficial result ; nor 

 did it grow with the experience of another year. On the 3rd of Feb- 

 ruary, 1841, the Governor, in a despatch to Lord John Eussell, who 

 had succeeded Glenelg, said that the correspondence connected with 

 the aborigines had increased to such a degree, since the appointment 

 of the Protectors, as to become of itself no inconsiderable evil. He 

 had formerly pointed out that the outrages which formed the staple 

 of this enormous mass of papers had arisen almost exclusively in 

 the districts under the Protectors, the remainder of the colony of 

 New South Wales being at that time generally undisturbed. He 

 enclosed a letter from Mr. Latrobe stating that the Protectors had 

 not yet found time to put themselves in communication with the 

 tribes who were constantly coming into collision with the more 

 remote settlers, and that even in the settled districts little real 

 influence had been gained by them over the native population. 

 And Sir George, after referring to the prevalent belief amongst the 

 squatters that "the presence of the Protectors is the occasion of 

 outrage, inasmuch as their appointment has tended to embolden 

 the blacks, and to render the servants of the settlers less resolute 

 than they used to be in defence of their masters' property," sum- 

 marised his own opinion in the following words : " The Chief Pro- 

 tector, whatever may be his other merits, is afflicted with such a 

 love of writing that much of his time must be spent in that way, 

 which would be much better devoted to active employment; and 

 his assistants are, I believe, even more inactive than he is. They 

 are all encumbered, as I have before had occasion to observe, with 

 large families, and seem to have come to Australia with the expecta- 

 tion of establishing missionary stations rather than of itinerating 



