“He says that the intermarriage of a certain class of European settlers with the native women would be ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished,’ and that this should be encouraged in every possible way. In the rougher parts of the colonies a European woman is out of place as a settler’s wife. She becomes more or less debased, and cannot, upon a return to civilization, so readily resume the more artificial style of life as can her husband.
“Native women, on the other hand, make first-class wives under such circumstances, and the resulting half-caste progeny generally make useful members of society in those cases where they have a fair chance afforded them of doing so.
“He then goes on to point out, by means of numerous examples, how offshoots from various European nations have derived renewed physical vigour from crossing with the dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants of different parts of the world, and gives instances of men who, belonging to families which exhibited those infallible signs of a decaying race, failing teeth and hair, have, by marrying with Australian and New Zealand native women, become the parents of children of splendid physique and good mental powers. ‘Spain,’ he says, ‘threw away the chance that Providence once gave her of becoming perhaps the mightiest nation upon earth, when she destroyed, instead of intermarrying with, the natives of South America, who had a superior civilization to that of their conquerors.’
“Now for the plan I propose to adopt:—
“I shall endeavour, for a commencement, to work through the machinery of Missionary and Aborigines’ Protection Societies already existing. In such cases where I find officers of the Black Police drawing salaries as ‘Protectors of Aborigines,’ I shall endeavour to draw the attention of the public to the grim joke thus perpetrated, by means of newspaper articles and pamphlets, to thus get other persons appointed.
SLAVE MAP OF MODERN AUSTRALIA.
“From my uncle’s and my own observation, the weak point in the present missionary system, as carried out in Australia, is the fact that, after the raw material—the native children—have been converted, by education, into an article worthy of a place in the civilized world, there is really no market for it.
“As a rule, the girls begin life as servants, are led astray, and finally become prostitutes, or the concubines of settlers or squatters. The boys generally are relegated to the black camp with their uneducated brethren.
“I therefore propose to endow each native girl with land and capital, upon her passing a certain time and standard in one of the farm schools I shall establish in various parts of the country.