The facts appear to point to such remedial measures as the following:—
- 1. That provision of land should be made for the exclusive use of the existing tribes; but this, by itself, would be simply preserving their barbarism for the sake of preserving their lives. And the question naturally occurs whether Moravian settlements or settlements conducted on entirely similar principles, under whatever Christian {17} denomination, might not be introduced for the purpose of wisely and gradually winning the people to higher and better habits.
- 2. A good government which really understood its responsibilities would put down with any force requisite that most accursed of all British habits, the sale of intoxicating drinks to those who never knew them before. On the heads of these traffickers rests the blood of thousands of their fellow men.
- 3. Although a large proportion of children have died while under school instruction, there is no proof that education, if properly conducted, tends to extinguish races. And it is possible that by educating outcast native children, these tribes, with whatever mental constitution endowed, may be spared to contribute their quota to human knowledge and advancement.
- 4. The school diseases, however, indicate that education should be conducted in a very different manner from what it is in England. Physiology would teach us that it is not safe to take the child of uncivilized parents, and to submit it all at once to the restraints of civilization. What is wanted is a careful study of what can and what cannot be done with safety. Time would seem to be a great element in the education of these children. There should be as little interference as possible with their born habits and customs. And that interference should take place gradually and wisely. The probability is that if children could leave school in health, with sufficient training to enable them to enter the pale of civilization, their children would be the more able to bear the required development of the mental faculties. In any case, physical training, and a large amount of out-door work, are essentially necessary to success.
- 5. We all know how difficult it is to preserve health among dense populations in our houses at home. We may hence infer how much more difficult it is to draw together numbers of uncivilized or partially civilized people, within the same boundary, or under the same roof, without great risk to health and life. Bring a healthy family from the open country into a narrow crowded London alley, and the little ones will die, the elder ones will be sick for, perhaps, the first time of their lives, and the parents will fall into confirmed ill health, to say the least of it.
Our home experience hence teaches us the extreme importance of favourable sanitary conditions, whenever an {18} attempt is made to bring the uncivilized within the pale of civilization.
Every society which has been formed has had to sacrifice large proportions of its earlier generations to the new conditions of life arising out of the mere fact of change. Only by the greatest care and by the adoption of every requisite improvement can London itself bear the rapid increase of its population without danger from pestilence.
This destroying principle is now at work in the colonies where races are decaying. And its results can only be diminished by assimilating the new conditions, involved in the change, as nearly as possible, so far as healthiness is concerned, to the open air activity to which the people have been for generations accustomed.
These are the results of this inquiry. Defective in many particulars though they be, they are still sufficient to prove that, on the local authorities of the colonies, there rests a responsibility in the face of public opinion in Europe, of the very gravest kind. It is a matter for state interference. It is impossible to stand by, while races are disappearing, of whom it can be said that the “Australian is the finest model of the human proportions in muscular development,” that his “head might compare with an antique bust of a philosopher,” that his “perceptive faculties are peculiarly acute,” that he is an “apt learner,” and “possesses the most intense desire to imitate his more civilized brethren in almost every thing;” that the Australian aborigines are “possessed of mental power on a par with their brethren of the other races of man; that they are perhaps superior to the Negro and some of the more inferior divisions of the great human family;” that they have “keen perceptive faculties, with a considerable deficiency in their reflective faculties, and a certain want of steadiness of purpose in their characters which appears the great obstacle to be overcome in reclaiming them and bringing them within the pale of civilization and Christianity.”
These statements are from a report on the subject, made by a select committee of the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858–9. In this report occurs the following passage, with which I conclude on account of its authority, appealing from its facts to the better feeling of the colonies, with the hope that the time is not far off when such a stigma as it affixes to the empire may be wiped away.
“The great and almost unprecedented reduction in the {19} number of the Aborigines is to be attributed to the general occupation of the country by the white population; to vices acquired by contact with a civilized race, more particularly the indulgence in ardent spirits; and hunger, in consequence of the scarcity of game since the settlement of the colony; and, also in some cases, to cruelty and ill-treatment. The great cause, however, is apparently the inveterate propensity of the race to excessive indulgence in spirits, which it seems utterly impossible to eradicate. This vice is not only fatal, but leads to other causes which tend to shorten life.
“Mr. Thomas, the guardian of Aborigines, states in evidence, that one morning he found five drunken blacks lying buried in the mud at the Merri Creek, which being followed by pulmonary attack, death, as is invariably the case, ensued. It may be remarked, that consumption forms a fruitful cause of mortality amongst them, in addition to the other causes enumerated.
“It would appear that they have materially degenerated since the advent of the whites, as Mr. Thomas has said ‘the young die two to one in proportion to the old; I have some old people yet.’ The rapid settlement necessary upon the country being occupied by flocks and herds was more unfavourable to the Aborigines than if it had only been gradually taken up for agricultural purposes.
“Your Committee are of opinion that great injustice has been perpetrated upon the Aborigines—that, when the Government of the colony found it necessary to take from them their hunting grounds and their means of living, proper provision should have been made for them. Had they been a strong race, like the New Zealanders, they would have forced the new occupiers of their country to provide for them; but being weak and ignorant, even for savages, they have been treated with almost utter neglect.
“With the exception of the Protectorate, which was an emanation of the Imperial Government, and which seemed to have been only partially successful, little or nothing has been done for the black denizens of the country.”
Every colony where the native races are declining could furnish some such report as this. The injustice has been a common one, and so should be the remedy. {20}