Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/374

Rh Mr. Protector Robinson often felt the want of a code suited to the Aborigines. In 1843, he asserted that "the destruction of the aboriginal native has been accelerated from the known fact of his being incapacitated to give evidence in our courts of law. I have frequently had to deplore, when appealed to by the Aborigines for justice in cases of aggression committed on them by white men, or by those of their own race, my inability to do so in consequence of their legal incapacity to give evidence."

Among other expressions of opinion this is that from Mr. Eyre, afterwards Governor of New Zealand, and lately Governor of Jamaica:—

"It is true that they do not cultivate the ground; but have they, therefore, no interest in its productions? Does it not supply grass for the sustenance of the wild animals upon which in a great measure they are dependent for their subsistence? Does it not afford roots and vegetables to appease their hunger, water to satisfy their thirst, and wood to make their fire? or are these necessaries left to them by the white man when he comes to take possession of the soil? Alas! it is not so. All are in turn taken away from the original possessors."

To show that the Native has no home, let the judgment of Judge Willis, of Melbourne, be cited: "I have," said he, "on a recent trial stated my opinion, which I still maintain, that the proprietor of a run, or, in other words, one who holds a lease or licence from the Crown to depasture certain crown-lands, may take all lawful means to prevent either Natives or others from entering or remaining upon it."

The Aborigines, therefore, are pronounced by the laws of civilized England to be without right or title to the land they have first occupied, and occupied as a people for some thousands of years; they are forced into the condition of subjects to the Crown, without the recognition of civil rights; and they are, furthermore, admitted to have no claim to rest their foot upon the soil which they had supposed their own. It was reserved for modern Christian civilization to advance, and act upon, a theory, which ancient heathen philosophy would have declared inhuman and unjust.