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Rh sharing the plunder we have taken from the aborigines. Let us at once do away with all pretence of treating the outside blacks according to European law, for it is not practicable to do so. And then we may set about devising some better scheme for subduing them if we can. I do not think that substituting white police for black would mend matters. White men of the class you propose would never submit to the stern discipline so absolutely necessary in a force of the kind while on the war path. I believe it would be impossible to devise a more efficient system than that of black troopers with white officers. The "fiendish ferocity" which you attribute to the former is the very quality we want, and which is so valuable when under the direction and control of an efficient officer. But then the officers must be men of high standing and character to be entrusted with such important duties. You say the employment is at present degrading. I cannot see why it would be less so with white troopers. Could we not make the post less degrading than we do? We send an officer into outside country with no authority to treat the blacks otherwise than according to English laws, when we know that they are utterly impracticable, and we tell him be has to keep the blacks quiet. Is not this telling a man to make bricks without straw with a vengeance? If our officer is careful not to commit himself, and keeps within the law, the blacks soon begin to kill cattle, and then men—and he is "inefficient." If on the other hand, he essays to keep the blacks in order in the only way we know it practicable for him to do so, at every step he places himself in the power of any unscrupulous white man, and runs perhaps a narrow escape of the gallows, while he is howled at by a "certain section of the community" and branded with such epithets as "degraded," "inhuman," &c. Is it to be wondered at that some Native Police officers have failed to preserve their self-respect under this treatment? Let us then tell our officers plainly what they may do and what they may not do. "Oatis" shows us how the Native Police prisoner "never comes in at the next stage." What in the name of goodness does "Outis" expect? Why, if the law had to be put in force with every black criminal in the same manner as with a white man the colony would be bankrupt in a year. Does "Outis" really think it to be the duty of the Native Police officer to take every prisoner down to, say, Rockhampton? And does be not know that it would be impossible to get legal evidence against one wild blackfellow in ten thousand?

With regard to what you say in the last Queenslander I have seen (May 29) about the South Australian system, it is no wonder that it does not cost so much as ours, for, practically, they have no police in the bush. And if you lived over the border, Mr. Editor, you would not say so much about their keeping their hands clean. No, sir, the South Australians have to pay the same penalty that we have, and the only difference in the dealing with the blacks across the border is that the station holders do their own police work. They arm themselves and their boys and are notoriously more severe than our own Native Police. And it is only natural that they should be so, as, having no police protection, they are more at the mercy of the blacks. And the South Australians certainly carry hypocrisy to a slightly more absurd extent than we do by occasionally making a pretence of justice, and carrying a blackfellow a long way to goal, as if hundreds were not shot without trial for each one that is so treated.

"Outis" gives us a touching picture of himself sitting with a mob of blacks round a back waterhole on the Diamantina while he explains to them the goodness and piety of the "big fellow master belong a paper." But should you, Mr. Editor, ever find yourself in collision with the same blacks I am afraid you would find your reputation for goodness and kindness of heart would be of very little service to you, unless backed by the knowledge that you were a firm man and a straight shot. And in spite of "Outis'" outside experience, and the intimate knowledge he displays of the blacks' language, I think he is far from having arrived at a true estimate of their character when be argues that because his system has been successful with the Ceylon coolies therefore it would be successful with our aborigines; for I suppose it would be hard to find two races presenting greater contrasts in all their characteristics and habits. And here, by the way, let me ask, why does "Outis"—whose tone is so business-like and straightforward on his own scheme—why does he think it necessary the moment he touches on the recent system to rush into the "penny dreadful" style? And what would "Outis'" scheme amount to if carried out in the manner he advocates? Slavery pure and simple, and on a scale the most gigantic perhaps the world has ever witnessed. We are to coax what blacks we can into making agreements for a term of years to work in another part of the colony, and all those who will not work willingly are to be forced to work. But why go further into the details of a scheme so wildly impracticable that it is hard to believe the projector can have been really sincere in putting it forward?