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We republish in another column a letter originally printed in the Cooktown Courier. The writer lays bare a painful sore in our system of colonisation of which few of us are not conscious, but which we are apt in sheer disgust to ignore altogether. He uses strong language, but not stronger than that which is forced from every man who retains the ordinary feelings of humanity when brought in contact with the sickening and brutal war of races that is carried on in our outside settlements, especially those in the North. And there are special reasons why this subject should be again brought under public notice, so that we may at last adopt a line of conduct in dealing with the wretched aborigines of the colony which may reflect less disgrace on the community, and be more successful in saving our outside settlers from molestation.
It is necessary, in order to make the majority of the community understand the urgent necessity for reform, to dispense with apologetic paraphrases. This, in plain language, is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the aboriginal inhabitants are treated in exactly the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there. Their lives and their property, the nets, canoes, and weapons which represent as much labor to them as the stock and buildings of the white settler, are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice of the white men. The least show of resistance is answered by a rifle bullet; in fact, the first introduction between blacks and whites is often marked by the unprovoked murder of some of the former—in order to make a commencement of the work of "civilising" them. Little difference is made between the treatment of blacks at first disposed to be friendly and those who from the very outset assume a hostile attitude. As a rule the blacks have been friendly at first, and the longer they have endured provocation without retaliating the worse they have fared, for the more ferocious savages have inspired some fear, and have therefore been comparatively unmolested. In regard to these cowardly outrages, the majority of settlers have been apparently influenced by the same sort of feeling as that which guides men in their treatment of the brute creation. Many, perhaps the majority, have stood aside in silent disgust whilst these things were being done, actuated by the same motives that keep humane men from shooting or molesting animals which neither annoy nor are of service to them; and a few have always protested in the name of humanity against such treatment of human beings, however degraded. But the protests of the minority have been disregarded by the people of the settled districts; the majority of outsiders who take no part in the outrages have been either apathetic or inclined to shield their companions, and the white brutes who fancied the amusement, have murdered, ravished, and robbed the blacks without let or hindrance. Not only have they been unchecked, but the Government of the colony has been always at hand to save them from the consequences of their crime. When the blacks, stung to retaliation by outrages committed on their tribe, or hearing the fate of their neighbors, have taken the initiative and shed white blood, or speared white men's stock, the native police have been sent to "disperse" them. What disperse means is well enough known. The word has been adopted into bush slang as a convenient euphuism for wholesale massacre. Of this force we have already said that it is impossible to write about it with patience. It is enough to say of it that this body, organised and paid by us, is sent to do work which its officers are forbidden to report in detail, and that a true record of its proceedings would shame us before our fellow-countrymen in every part of the British Empire. When the police have entered on the scene, the race conflict goes on apace. It is a fitful war of extermination waged upon the blacks, something after the fashion in which other settlers wage war upon noxious wild beasts, the process differing only in so far as the victims, being human, are capable of a wider variety of suffering than brutes. The savages, hunted from the places where they had been accustomed to find food, driven into barren ranges, shot like wild dogs at sight, retaliate when and how they can. They spear the white man's cattle and horses, and if by chance they succeed in overpowering an unhappy European they exhaust their savage ingenuity in wreaking their vengeance upon him, even mutilating the senseless body out of which they have pounded the last breath of life. Murder and counter murder, outrage repaid by violence, theft by robbery, so the dreary tale continues, till at last the blacks, starved, cowed, and broken-hearted, their numbers thinned, their courage overcome, submit to their fate, and disease and liquor finish the work which we pay our native police to begin.
This is the ordinary course of events, but occasionally a variation occurs, and the process of quieting the blacks is unusually prolonged. This is particularly the case in the North, where the blacks are more determined, better armed, and have more mountain and scrub retreats than in other parts of the colony. In the Cape York Peninsula the race conflict has hardly diminished in intensity since the whites began it by robbing and shooting the blacks on the occasion of the first rush to the Palmer. The struggle has been obstinate and fierce, and although an unusually large and costly body of police has been for years engaged in exterminating the aborigines, and few whites miss a chance of shooting any they may encounter, the strength of the tribes has not been broken. No doubt their numbers have been greatly thinned, but they have not been cowed. Consequently there is no part of Queensland in which more European lives have been lost, or where the bush is so thoroughly unsafe for the single traveller. it is difficult to estimate the extent of the loss that has been directly incurred, and still more difficult to calculate the indirect injury suffered by the district. Prospecting for minerals could only be carried on by well armed and equipped parties—and this in itself has been a serious drawback to the European miners. But the heaviest loss is being experienced now that the mining excitement has subsided. For, as the writer to the Cooktown paper says, there is plenty of good soil inviting settlement; but how many men dare fix their home in the bush when they know that neither their property nor their lives will be safe from the attacks of desperate savages, whose natural cunning has been intensified by their long struggle for life with the whites. Evidently settlement must be delayed until the work of extermination is complete—a consummation of which there is no present prospect—or until some more rational and humane method of dealing with the blacks is adopted. It is surely advisable, even at this the eleventh hour, to try the more creditable alternative, and to see whether we cannot efface some portion at least of the stain which attaches to us. We shall recur to this subject, and indicate what in our opinion that alternative ought to be.—Queenslander, May 1, 1880.
Reverting to the subject of the treatment of native blacks by outside settlers and the Native Police, we propose now to indicate the manner in which a reform could be effected. Before doing so, however, we must notice the letter of a correspondent who, under the signature of "Never Never," writes to justify the conduct of the whites. The letter is valuable, because the writer, putting his thoughts on paper, in a frank spirit, proves the accuracy of the description we gave of the attitude assumed by the whites towards the blacks. We compared the spirit in which they acted to that which animates men in dealing with the brute creation. Our correspondent, quite unconsciously, illustrates our meaning when he says of the natives, "And being a useless race, what does it matter what they suffer any more than the distinguished philanthropist who writes in this behalf cares for the wounded half-dead pigeon he tortures at his shooting matches." It never seems to strike him, any more than it apparently strikes hundreds of men accustomed to deal with blacks, that the fact that they are men and women and not pigeons should influence their conduct. And this extraordinary obtuseness of the moral sense is fostered by the employment of a force like the Native Police, which is used to hunt down these human beings as if they were dingoes. The bushman who shoots a blackfellow to try the range of his rifle—as was done by members of the early exploring parties who searched Trinity Bay for a road to the Hodgkinson—has little remorse for doing that which the Government maintains and pays a force to do. No wonder our correspondent complains of our "vilification" of the outside settlers when we apply the term murder to such an act as is described above. We recognise the wonderful effect of custom on the moral sense, and we no more expect a bushman, accustomed to "dispersals," to understand the feeling with which the deed is regarded by most civilised men than we look for an expression of' pity from a terrier engaged in torturing a wounded rat. Such men have lost the great lesson of civilisation which teaches us that there is some other law than that of brute force, and that the weakness of any race of our fellow-men does not justify us in dealing with them as the mere caprice of the moment dictates.
However, these generalisations are only useful in so far as they serve to point out to the great bulk of the Queensland colonists the real nature of the system which they, through their Legislature, sanction and uphold. They have not descended to the moral level exemplified in the letter from which we quote, and we have little fear that we shall fail in enlisting their sympathies when we convince them of the reality of the evils which we desire to check. We cannot of course argue first principles over again, and we shall assume that murder, rape, and robbery are crimes whether the victims be black or white. And, that being understood, we must explain further that we entertain no such preposterous idea as that the settlement of the colony is an evil deed which ought to be undone. Nor do we wish to be understood as objecting to the slaying of blacks in defence of the lives or property of settlers. We acknowledge that in many cases the occupation of a tract of country by the white cannot be effected except at the cost of a struggle with the aborigines, and wherever that is the case the shooting of blacks is inevitable. But we maintain that the struggle might be prevented in most cases, and might be diminished in all, if entered upon in a more rational and humane fashion. We assert that the unchecked license indulged in by some of the white settlers, and the systematic barbarities practised by the Native Police intensify the resistance of the blacks into a struggle of absolute despair, and that in the conflict the white man sinks to such a level that he only outshines the black savage by the greater ferocity he displays. And this conduct is as foolish as it is criminal, for the blacks speedily discover the superiority of the whites, and would, if permitted, in most cases be willing enough to submit to their occupation of the country, and careful to avoid meddling with them. But they are goaded to such a state of desperation by the promiscuous massacres perpetrated by the police, and the outrages of some of the settlers, that despair lends them the courage to continue the hopeless war, and they go on spearing cattle and clubbing solitary travellers because they find that they have nothing to hope for by abstaining from such practices. The reform to be effected would be the abandonment of the irrational method we now pursue. For the Native Police we would substitute a force composed mainly of white men, assisted by black trackers. The change is necessary, because one great cause of the atrocities committed by the force is due to the fact that the trained savages who compose it are let loose to gratify their thirst for blood and cruelty in the presence generally of only one white man, who having no European witnesses of his conduct hounds on his men, and often joins in the perpetration of their most revolting cruelties. The tone of our correspondent's letter gives an inkling of how an ordinary white man's conscience may be seared and his nature hardened by familiarity with the scenes of bloodshed in the bush. But it can give no idea of the awful depth of brutality to which even an educated European can descend when engaged in a business which keeps him mainly employed in superintending massacres perpetrated by armed savages on mobs of nearly helpless men and women, away from any control or witness, and free to obey the dictates of the worst passions of human nature. The white police, consisting, of course, of good bushmen, should be employed in country where the blacks and whites are, or are likely to be, in conflict. Their duty should be to repress any outrage by the blacks, and for that purpose they should have the same license that is accorded to any hostile force in time of war; these efforts being directed in the first place to the capture and punishment of offending individuals among the blacks, and, if that prove impossible, the punishment of the guilty tribe. But the officers in command should be compelled to report their operations, and they should rigorously abstain from touching or molesting blacks who are quiet and do not meddle with the whites; and they should be further required to protect the blacks from unnecessary molestation by the whites, and be armed, if necessary, with special powers for the purpose.
Such a force might be more expensive than the present one, but it would cost the country indirectly less, for it would speedily pacify whole districts in which constant and heavy losses are being endured by the settlers. We must leave the explanation of minuter details to another occasion, but we have said enough to indicate the broad nature of the reform we advocate. That its expense will be no bar to its adoption we feel convinced, if the bulk of the colonists come to realise the nature of the system they now adopt in all its naked horrors. Our correspondent remarks, "Our policy towards the blacks is bad, but it is only the game played all over the world." We deny his statement; but, even if it were so, it would still leave us in a unique position. No other settlers have to deal with a race of savages so thoroughly helpless in face of the white man's weapons as our blacks. The Dutch Boer may deal cruelly with the Kaffirs who surround him, but at least he defies the assegais of a valiant race of barbarians who can wage war with him on something like equal terms. He may be cruel, but at least he is not a coward. There is an irresistible tendency in human nature to regard with a deeper contempt the criminal who takes a cowardly advantage of his victim, than the one who risks his own skin in open conflict. Few readers of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" have not felt that the most contemptible figure in the group of thieves to which they are introduced is the wretched sneak on the "kinchin lay," who confines himself to robbing little children too feeble to resist and too simple to seek for assistance. If we are told that the cruelties practised on our blacks are merely incidents of the struggle carried on with the natives in all parts of the world, we yet plead for a reform. We are at least adding a fresh element of disgrace to the universal horror; for if all the world is practising violent wrong doing, in its dealing with inferior races, we alone have descended to the "kinchin lay" of extermination.—Queenslander, May 8, 1880.
We make no apology for returning to the subject of the manner in which the people of this colony deal with its aboriginal inhabitants. We are determined that the public shall understand what they are doing, and that if no attempt is made at a reform the refusal shall come from people who thoroughly comprehend their responsibility. As far as we are able we shall tear away the veil with which those who know what our system is have hitherto kept it covered, and remove the ignorance in which a considerable portion of the public have been content to remain.
In order to let every side of the question be thoroughly ventilated, we have thrown open our columns to correspondence on the subject, and we have put forward a basis for a reform of the police system. For this purpose we have proposed that the police employed to regulate the natives shall consist of white men, accustomed to the bush, assisted by black trackers. Their duties should be to fight the blacks while in a state of open war against the white settlers who occupy the country; to protect them from molestation by the whites when quiet, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of the many fiendish outrages committed by Europeans on helpless and unoffending blacks; and to punish with discriminating rigor injuries committed by the blacks on the settlers. So far we have not entered into details of how the work should be done; we wish first to establish the practicability of organising such a white force. A correspondent who, under the signature of "Never Never," has undertaken to justify the treatment of black human beings as if they were "pigeons," has declared that our plan is not feasible. He alleges—(1) That good bushmen would be unwilling to join such a force, one that has lately been manned by blackfellows; (2) that the idea of using white police for the purpose is "wildly absurd," and that in the generality of districts they could not follow the blacks; (3) that the expense of the force would be enormous, that it would be equal to the nucleus of a standing army, and that it would be ruined by long spells of idleness. There are some subsidiary objections which need not be noticed. The objection that a system compelling officers to report their operations, instead of forbidding them to do so as at present, would lead to disorganisation of the force, was probably a mere slip of the pen. We only propose to apply the regulation in force in every other police, quasi-military, or military body employed in the British dominions, with the sole exception of the Queensland native police.
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But we have no need to depend on theory in this matter; we have the experience of South Australia to rely on. Our neighbours in that colony have kept their hands clean, while ours are foully bestained with blood. They have their reward. In their territory very few white settlers lose their lives or property by attacks from the native blacks; our loss is enormously more heavy than theirs. Yes, but—we shall be told—the South Australians go to great and unnecessary expense in dealing with the aboriginals. That they are unnecessarily punctilious, and go further than we recommend, we are prepared to admit. They employ a white, not a black force, and they transport aboriginal offenders long distances to gaol. But, on turning to the statistics of the two colonies, the one for 1878, the other for 1878-9, the most nearly corresponding periods that we can select, we find that in Queensland the total cost of every description of police was £87,313, and in South Australia only £66,201. And this in spite of the South Australians having a larger white population to regulate, and a larger extent of sparsely occupied bush than ourselves. Evidently, the plan of employing white protectors to deal with the aborigines is not merely more effectual in securing the safety of the settlers, but very much cheaper than our plan. We have shown that the application of the plainest principles of common sense ought to dictate an alteration of our present system; we now adduce the evidence of experience to show how ineffective and costly it is in comparison with a more rational plan. We speak nothing now of humanity. We address this argument mainly to those whose sense of right and wrong has been perverted by familiarity with our diabolical customs.
In conclusion, we shall quote the testimony of the Hon. W. H. Walsh from the "Hansard," to which reference has already been made. It is valuable as that of a thoroughly practical bushman and squatter who has occupied country teeming with the fiercest blacks, and who has had to do it without any police protection at all. What he said then of the southern coast districts will apply now to the country of the north and west. He told the House that he had agitated for the inauguration of the black police system in Queensland, and agitated unceasingly till he got them in his own neighbourhood. And this was his experience as he told Parliament:—"He asserted solemnly that the number of casualties that occurred, and the number of deaths that took place from collisions with the blacks after the native police arrived in the Wide Bay and Burnett districts, exceeded three times what they had been before."—Queenslander, May 29, 1880.
We are glad to find that correspondents from different districts are taking part in the discussion we have invited on the relations between the blacks and whites in the colony. At first, of course, we had the class of writers referred to in the letter signed "Pioneer," which appears in this issue; men who dispose of the whole question by rebuking our presumption for writing on a subject with which they are so thoroughly familiar, and of which we know so little! This plan has been successful on previous occasions when the subject was under discussion, and it has been naturally enough adopted this time. But we were not to be so readily silenced; the discussion is passing into its second stage. Men well qualified by their experience to judge their value are now criticising our proposals. We did not, of course, suppose that they would be accepted without cavil, even by those who