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STATE OF OUR RELATIONS 
is not asserting too much to say that in such a case 
the country would be raised in a hue and cry, and 
the intruder would meet with the fate that has 
sometimes befallen the traveller or the colonist 
when trespassing upon the dominions of the savage. 
In the present lamentable instance, however, the 
natives could not have acted under the influence of 
an impulse like this. Here the Europeans had 
been long located in the neighbourhood, they were 
known to, and had been frequently visited by the 
Aborigines, and the intercourse between them had 
in some instances at least been of a friendly character. 
What then could have been the inducement to 
commit so cold and ruthless an act ? or what was 
the object to be attained by it? Without pausing 
to seek for answers to these questions which, in the 
present case, it must be difficult, if not impossible, 
to solve, it may be worth while to take a view of 
the conduct of the Aborigines of Australia, generally, 
towards the invaders and usurpers of their rights, 
setting aside altogether any acts of violence or 
injury which they may have committed under the 
influence of terror, naturally excited by the first 
presence of strangers among them, and which arise 
from an impulse that is only shared by them in 
common with mankind generally. I shall be borne 
out, I think, by facts when I state that the Abori- 
gines of this country have seldom been guilty of 
wanton or unprovoked outrages, or committed acts 
of rapine or bloodshed, without some strongly 
