232 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



benefiting the aborigines. He went on to express his own opinion 

 that the course pursued by the Protectors had been from the begin- 

 ning one of feeble action and puling complaint, and that while 

 they had been endowed with power to command the respect of the 

 settlers and the confidence of the natives, they had entirely failed 

 to do either. Lord Stanley replied in an able despatch on 20th 

 December, 1842, and after carefully weighing all the evidence which 

 had been submitted to him, came to the conclusion that the failure 

 was mainly due to the want of sound judgment and zealous activity 

 on the part of the Protectors, and he left it to Sir George Gipps to 

 take such steps as might be locally approved, either for dispensing 

 with them altogether, or modifying their powers and duties as he 

 should see fit. 



By the time this decision was arrived at the power of the 

 natives for any aggressive injury was practically gone. After 1844 

 there was no serious trouble with them in any part of Victoria. 

 There were two factors in bringing the war of races to an end, 

 both of which lay outside the provisions made by the Government 

 for the protection of the natives. In the first place, disease, drink 

 and slothful habits of mendicancy had, with terrible rapidity, de- 

 creased the numbers and crushed out the spirit of independence in 

 the aborigines. Their nine years' experience of the white man had 

 taught them, whatever the law might proclaim, that a tenfold retri- 

 bution was generally exacted for every outrage committed, and that 

 punishment, which only stopped a little short of destruction, was in 

 store for them if they indulged in aggression. They ceased to risk 

 the consequences of stealing or killing the settlers' sheep when 

 they found that by hanging about the Mission Stations and Protec- 

 tors' reserves they could get food and covering without submitting 

 to regular work or permanent domicile. 



But the other, and perhaps more important, cause was that 

 under the stimulus of immigration the colony was rapidly being 

 populated, and by a far superior type of man to the prison waifs 

 and hardened ruffians who had in the earlier years been to the 

 aborigines the representatives of civilisation. During the first de- 

 cade of the settlement the old, bad element gradually died out, or 

 reverted to its former condition under lock and key, and the new 



