JUSTICE DUE TO THE NATIVES. 479 
maintain that the native has a right to expect, and 
that we are in justice bound to supply him with 
food in any of those parts of the country that we 
occupy, and to do this, too, without demanding or 
requiring any other consideration from him than 
we have already received when we took from him 
his possessions and his hunting grounds. It may 
be all very proper to get him to work a little if we 
can — and, perhaps, that might follow in time, but 
we have no right to force him to a labour he is 
unused to, and which he never had to perform in 
his natural state , whilst we have a right to supply 
him with what he has been accustomed to, but oj 
which we had deprived him — food. 
If in our relations with the Aborigines we wish 
to preserve a friendly and bloodless intercourse ; if 
we wish to have their children at our schools to be 
taught and educated ; if we hope to bring the 
parents into a state that will better adapt them for 
the reception of Christianity and civilization ; or if 
we care about staying the rapid and lamentable 
ravages which a contact with us is causing among 
their tribes, we must endeavour to do so, by re- 
moving, as far as possible, all sources of irritation, 
discontent, or suffering. We must adopt a system 
which may at once administer to their wants, and 
at the same time, give to us a controlling influence 
over them ; such as may not only restrain them from 
doing what is wrong, but may eventually lead them 
to do what is right — an influence which I feel 
