The Aborigines of Australia

by R.N. Richard Sadleir

These missionary colonies should be placed at 100 miles in advance of the white population, in suitable situations, and large blocks of country should be reserved for the natives, forming territories of refuge for them. The white population pressing upon them would help to force the natives into these reserves; and those portions of land would also prove places for those within the pale of civilization to be either translated or transported to.

These missionary establishments, like those of the Moravians, should embrace within themselves all the means of protection, as well as the means of colonization, and would no doubt be supported to a great extent by the religious community at Home. They may have sheep, cattle, husbandry, trades, &c.

In America and Canada such a principle has been acknowledged as that of reserving portions of land. The Indians have their own places of worship, schools, saw-mills, farms, &c.; also in Upper Canada the Indians on the Grand River are settled on a block of land, and in a state of civilization; and in South America, we are aware that the Jesuits pursued a somewhat similar system of colonization; with marked success.

That much can be done by moral and religious influence alone on savages, we have the evidence of William Penn, of the Missionary Societies, amongst the Esquimaux, Hottentots, &c.; and though hitherto, the progress of civilization has proved the destruction of savage nations, yet this is no proof that such is the decree of Providence, but rather, that the system of colonization has hitherto been unjust, selfish, and unchristian.

The expense of all this machinery is a matter of importance, though in comparison with the destruction of life, the demoralizing influence of the present state of things, it scarcely deserves attention; yet, to provide for this, I would venture to propose what I conceive would not be felt as a very heavy tax: that the rent of lands be doubled, from £1 per section to £2; that the minimum price of land sold be advanced 6d. or 1s. per acre; that town allotments in the interior be raised £1 each; that the penalty on drunkards be increased from 5s. to 10s. or £1, according to the circumstances of the individuals.

The natives ought to be compensated out of the land fund, the land being their property until usurped by us; likewise, those crimes most destructive to them, such as drunkenness, &c., should be heavily taxed, with the hope to check them. Persons selling them spirits may be likewise fined.

The whole amount required would not in all probability exceed £10,000, with aid from Home, and if we deduct from thence, the destruction and insecurity of life and property, the expense which from time to time has been incurred by the hostility of the natives, the necessity of a police force on the outskirts, which has been computed at the increased expense of £15,000 this year, the actual increase of expense would be but very small.

As many prejudices prevail to the injury of this people, and many arguments have been advanced against their moral and intellectual qualifications, it may be well briefly to remark, that the trials to civilize and christianize them have hitherto been made, without exception, under either mistaken principles or great disadvantages. The idea entertained in establishing the Blacktown School, that the females, being civilized, would be the means of civilizing the male population, still savage, went upon a principle directly opposed to what our knowledge of the savage character teaches, namely, that the female has scarcely any influence over man in his uncivilized state, and the result proved the absurdity of the theory; for after all the pains, and the proof that the natives are susceptible of at least intellectual if not moral improvement (many having been taught to read, work, draw, and sing, &c.), the act of uniting or marrying them to the unreclaimed natives defeated the objects of the institution, for they were carried into the bush, and there speedily relapsed back again into their savage habits; while, on the other hand, all the establishments (even that recently formed at Port Phillip) have been, by some strange fatality, placed either close to towns or in the very heart of a dense white population,—an oversight most fatal to their success.

That little good has resulted from such attempts, is therefore not to be wondered at, but that these several attempts have not been without their benefit, is a fact too often overlooked; they have proved beyond the possibility of contradiction, that the natives, however despicable they may be in the estimation of phrenologists and others, are capable of intellectual improvement. Sir G. McKenzie, a celebrated phrenologist, having received a skull from Patrick Hill, Esq., speaks of their intellectual abilities as by no means despicable. The insurmountable difficulty hitherto has been, not that of teaching them, but that of locating them—their propensity to wander breaking through all restraint; wherefore the necessity of removing them to a distance from their native place.

The charge of laziness, likewise so often preferred, is no more peculiarly applicable to them than to other savages, all of whom are given to extreme indolence, but whose energies are more or less drawn out by climate, physical peculiarity of country, and other circumstances calculated to develop character, which do not exist in this Colony; while the opinion too generally received, that they possess no religious notions or belief, and therefore are not susceptible of moral impressions, is also, I conceive, most unfounded. Their ceremonies, superstitions, and belief of a future state, exclusion of women from many of their rites, and their belief in evil spirits, all tend to show the unreasonableness of such a conclusion.