Page:The progress of the colony of Victoria.pdf/3

 the blacks. Doubtless this hostility was owing, in the first instance, to the white man's aggressions on their territory, and to the violence and injustice with which the settlers often acted towards them. It is hard to say how far civilized nations are justified in the means they take to establish their authority in barbarous regions; but wherever the white man plants his foot, a baptism of blood is almost sure to follow before he establishes his claim to possession. The quarrel in Port Philip soon became a struggle between pillage and murder on the one hand, and ruthless barbarity and cold-blooded massacre on the other. Bread poisoned with arsenic was purposely left in the way of the blacks—the waterholes near which they were likely to congregate were poisoned in the same deadly manner,—regular parties were made up to shoot them. The rifle, the poison, and the rum of the white man, were more than a match for the wooden weapons and the cunning of the black; and, within the precincts of the colony, the aboriginal inhabitants are now a broken-spirited and degraded race.

In 1836, the Port Philip district was in such a flourishing condition, that the New South Wales government did it the honour of annexing the territory to their own, and sent a magistrate to assert their supremacy, who called a meeting of the inhabitants, at which the sites of Melbourne, Williamstown, Geelong, and Portland were confirmed.

In 1837, the population amounted to three thousand; and Sir Richard Burke (the greatest and best of all the Australian governors) paid the colony a visit. He further confirmed the selection of sites for townships, and directed that their sale should commence immediately. Melbourne was laid out, surveyed, and divided into allotments, which were put up for sale. A reign of ruinous speculation in land now commenced. With an unlimited extent of land at its disposal, the government sold it only in small quantities at a time. These were speedily bought up by speculators, by whom they were sold and resold many times; so that an allotment which in 1837 had sold for £50, rose to £4,000 in 1839. The titles fell into inextricable confusion; and the whole proceeding ended in a commercial crisis and a general crash in 1840. Land fell to one-tenth of its former price; and many were ruined by this