Page:Australia an appeal.djvu/7

Rh situation and that of the Persian queen, is great and striking. Esther, in attempting to save the lives of her people, had to approach the ensign of mercy and vengeance at the risk of her own life: but you wield the sceptre. The means, too, are simple. They involve no burden on your subjects, no injury to their interests, and consequently cannot excite the opposition or disapprobation of any. You have only to command the salvation of Australia, and it is done. May I ask, whether would you wish on the last day to blush, when standing beside the Persian Queen, or receive the grateful smiles and glowing benedictions of innumerable tribes, saved by your benevolence, amidst the plaudits and greetings of admiring worlds? The event will decide and time will tell, whether an interesting race, plundered of their patrimonial inheritance, are also to be proscribed and exterminated; or allowed to live, to sojourn in the land of their fathers, and joyfully triumph in the knowledge of a Redeemer, under British sway.

There may be, even in the court of St. James, those that would ridicule the perusal of such a work as this; but angels will rejoice when they behold the daughter of Japheth in the north, with the diadem of empire upon her head, reading; and, while she reads, dropping a tear over the miseries of the descendents of Shem in the south.

individually address the members of a family whose name has been, for generations, associated with the glorious work of the Reformation, the destinies of the British empire, and the best interests of mankind, in order to interest them in the salvation of a recently discovered world, would be superfluous. The best wine flows from the grape with the gentlest pressure. The finest fruits require no force to gather them. In an appeal to the princes and princesses of the house of Brunswick, in a cause interesting to angels, neither embellishment nor argument is necessary. Australia, terrified at the sight of her species, fleeing before her spoilers, abandoning her very offspring, and bathed in tears, shall therefore herself relate her wrongs and sorrows. Listen to the sad tale. The story of her misfortunes, enough to melt a stone, cannot but command the sympathy of the generous—the feeling heart.