THE NATIVES. 
203 
had been at the time of the attack on the flock, and 
state who were the guilty parties. 
“ For those who have had an opportunity of ob- 
serving the Aborigines in their original state, it is 
not very difficult to distinguish the guilty from the 
innocent, for they are a simple-minded race, little 
skilled in the arts of dissimulation. 
“ It is bad enough that a great part of the colo- 
nists are inimical to the natives ; it is worse that the 
law, as it stands at present, does not extend its pro- 
tection to them ; but it is too bad when the press 
lends its influence to their destruction. Such, how- 
ever, is undoubtedly the case. When Messrs. Bid- 
dle and Brown were murdered, the newspapers 
entertained their readers week after week with the 
details of the bloody massacre, heaping a profusion 
of vile epithets upon the perpetrators. But of the 
slaughter by the soldiers, (who killed no less than 
four innocent natives, while they captured not one 
guilty party), among the tribes who had had 
nothing to do with the murders — of the treachery 
of attacking in the darkness of the night, a tribe 
who had the day before been hunting kangaroo 
with their informers, when one of the former guides 
to the magistrates’ pursuing party was killed 
amongst others ; of the wanton outrage on the mu- 
tilated body of one of the victims; — of these things 
the press was as silent as the grave.” 
Without attempting to enlarge more fully upon 
the subjects entered upon in the preceding pages, I 
