Page:Australia an appeal.djvu/49

48 A wolf and a lamb, it is said, once happened to meet at a stream, where they both came to drink. The former accused the latter of muddying the water, and rendering it offensive to his taste. In vain did the innocent lamb point out the impossibility of sustaining the accusation, by remarking that the water did not flow from him to his accuser, but from his accuser to him. The wolf, determined upon a quarrel, was regardless of the truth or falsehood of the charge. The complaint was a mere pretence to palliate the determination of falling upon his victim. The simile is strikingly illustrative of the conduct of the British in Australia.

Punic faith was the proverb and the watchword of Rome, when she wished to crush her rival. But had the annals of Carthage—or that of those who shared her fate—escaped the storm which razed her walls and laid her prostrate in desolation, Roman perfidy would have been as proverbial as Punic faith. The history of exterminated nations may perish with their names. It matters not. A chronicle of the ills and wrongs inflicted upon the unfortunate, though lost on earth, will one day be found in the records of heaven.

It may be farther remarked, that when one state resolves on the conquest or destruction of another, the cry is raised: A breach of treaty, unreasonable demands, unprovoked aggression, or an insult offered to the national flag; and the affair is painted in the strongest colours in order to justify an appeal to arms. Nothing of this kind being chargeable on the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, who were not even aware of the existence of the British isles till British arms gleamed on their shores, those who advocated the adoption of an hostile position towards them, were driven to the alternative of inventing some view of the case that would justify such a line of conduct. The plan hit upon was to render them odious to the public at home, by representing them in the worst light. Nor were facilities wanting for misrepresentation. The main body of the settlers, located in the capital or at the port where they landed, and often afraid to go a mile from either, knew nothing whatever of the people whose country they came unceremoniously to occupy. Conscious that they were aggressors, their imaginations conjured up a thousand frightful ideas respecting the rightful owners of the soil, and what they had to expect at