168 
WRONGS OF 
plication to a race outcast or degraded, although 
originally in a condition fitted to appreciate them, 
to benefit by them, and reflect their benefits upon 
others ; impatient at this difficulty, the delay it may 
occasion, and the shelter from ultimate punishment, 
the temptation will ever be strong to revert to 
summary methods of proceeding ; and thus, as in a 
circle, injustice will be found to flow reciprocal 
injury, and from injury injustice again, in another 
form. The source of all these evils, and of all this 
injustice, is the unreserved appropriation of native 
lands, and the denial, in the first instance of coloni- 
zation, of equal civil rights. To the removal of 
those evils, so far as they can be removed in the 
older settlements, to their prevention in new colonies, 
the friends of the Aborigines are invoked to direct 
their energy ; to be pacified with the attainment of 
nothing less ; for nothing less will really suffice.” 
Can it be deemed surprising that a rude, uncivi- 
lized being, driven from his home, deprived of all 
his ordinary means of subsistence,* and pressed 
perhaps by a hostile tribe from behind, should occa- 
sionally be guilty of aggressions or injuries towards 
* “ If you can still be generous to the conquered, relieve the 
hunger which drives us in despair to slaughter your flocks and 
the men who guard them. Our fields and forests, which once 
furnished us with abundance of vegetable and animal food, now 
yield us no more ; they and their produce are yours ; you prosper 
on our native soil, and we are famishing/ 5 — Strzelecki’s N. S. 
Wales , p. 356. 
