CONFINED TO THE NATIVES. J 57 
Let us now inquire a little, upon whose side fight 
and justice are arrayed in palliation (if any such 
there can be) of deeds of violence or aggression on 
the part of either. 
It is an undeniable fact, that wherever European 
colonies have been established in Australia, the 
native races in that neighbourhood are rapidly 
decreasing, and already in some of the elder settle- 
ments, have totally disappeared. It is equally in- 
disputable that the presence of the white man has 
been the sole agent in producing so lamentable an 
effect ; that the evil is still going on, increased 
in a ratio proportioned to the number of new set- 
tlements formed, or the rapidity with which the 
settlers overrun new districts. The natural, the 
inevitable, but the no less melancholy result must be, 
that in the course of a few years more, if nothing 
be done to check it, the whole of the aboriginal 
tribes of Australia will be swept away from the face 
of the earth. A people who, by their numbers, have 
spread around the whole of this immense continent, 
and have probably penetrated into and occupied 
its inmost recesses, will become quite extinct, their 
name forgotten, their very existence but a record of 
history. 
It is a popular, but an unfair and unwarranted 
assumption, that these consequences are the result 
came to the knowledge of Mr. Protector Parker. For particulars 
vide Papers on Aborigines of Australian Colonies, printed for the 
House of Commons, August 1844, p. 318. 
