Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/186

 surprised in the fact. When, however, the increase oft population, and the growth of commerce and manufactures, had rendered frequent travelling necessary, and the improvements of modern invention had made it easy, and it was found that the vagrant laws had become inapplicable to our complicated social system, and totally ineffectual as a measure of police, a new check was adopted, and a numerous police force organized, as well for the prevention, as for the detection of crime.

But when, without any of the safeguards which made it tolerable in England, this principle comes to be acted on, with regard to the black population in New South Wales, it operates as a complete protection to them in all their aggressions on the settlers. We will suppose that a hut has been robbed by the natives, the hut-keeper and shepherd surprised, and either killed or wounded, and a flock of sheep carried off. The settler arms some of his other servants, and pursues them immediately. They come up with them, and recover such of the sheep as have not been killed. The natives are of course anxious to escape, and to wait for some other opportunity of effecting their purpose; for it forms no part of the tactics of savages, when they have a chance of escape, to stand up in fair fight, unless they have an overwhelming force. If, under these circumstances, the settler and his servants fire upon and kill any of them, they make themselves amenable to a law, by which they may be hung or transported for life. If, on the contrary, they abstain from this course, in compliance with the English law, and relying on the protection which the government is bound to afford them, the result is, that in the first place, the natives get clean off; the