THE NATIVES. 
169 
his oppressors? The wonder rather is, not that 
these things do sometimes occur, but that they 
occur so rarely. 
In addition to the many other inconsistencies in 
our conduct towards the Aborigines, not the least 
extraordinary is that of placing them, on the plea of 
protection, under the influence of our laws, and of 
making them British subjects. Strange anomaly, 
which by the former makes amenable to penalties 
they are ignorant of, for crimes which they do not 
consider as such, or which they may even have been 
driven to commit by our own injustice ; and by the 
latter but mocks them with an empty sound, since 
the very laws under which we profess to place them, 
by their nature and construction are inoperative in 
affording redress to the injured.*' 
* “ To subject savage tribes to the penalties of laws with 
which they are unacquainted, for offences which they, very 
possibly, regard as acts of justifiable retaliation for invaded 
rights, is a proceeding indefensible, except under circumstances 
of urgent and extreme necessity.” — Fourth Report of the 
Colonization Commissioners, presented to the House of Commons, 
29th July, 1840. 
“ The late act, declaring them naturalized as British subjects, 
has only rendered them legally amenable to the English criminal 
law, and added one more anomaly to all the other enactments 
affecting them. This naturalization excludes them from sitting on 
a jury, or appearing as witnesses, and entails a most confused 
form of judicial proceedings ; all which, taken together, has 
made of the Aborigines of Australia a nondescript caste, who, to 
use their own phraseology, are 4 neither black nor white.’ 
St.rzelecki's N. S. Wales. 
