Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/200

 obvious as to make it, in my mind, quite out of the question.

The second is to allow them to remain in their present wild state, and so to modify the English law as to make it more suitable to the circumstances in which they are placed. Such modifications to include the securing to them the benefit of legal assistance upon their being brought to trial—the doing away with the necessity of proving their capacity to understand the proceedings of the court, and to exercise their right of challenge—the making their evidence receivable in a court of justice, without proof of their belief in a future state of rewards and punishments —the declaration that they should only be held responsible, either as regards the settler or each other, for those offences against the laws of England, which are also offences against the law of nature, or clearly incompatible with the welfare of society, and which should be clearly and simply defined—and lastly, the denying them, under certain restrictions, that indulgence, with respect to their persons, to which (according to my view of English jurisprudence) they have not entitled themselves.

The law which I should propose on this latter subject would be something of this kind, that, where a company of armed natives are carrying off sheep or cattle, and immediate pursuit is made by the owner and his servants, they should be at liberty to fire on them, in