BLACK AND WHITE.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 297, 20 June 1895, Page 2

BLACK AND WHITE.

The process of civilising the aboriginals of Australia off the face of the earth, goes merrily on. A correspondent of the Mataura Ensign, writing anent the West Australian blacks recently wrote to the following effect : " The natives here are very numerous, and they are as ugly as sin and very treacherous. In fact thoy are not like human beings at all. When the diggers go out prospecting they are armed, and they shoot tho aborigines like rabbits, and think nothing of it. None of thera will work. They go in tribes "throughout the country, i I don't know how they live. All they can get is kangaroos." • >5o much from his standpoint, but one would like to hear what the unfortunate natives havo to say on the subject from their point of view. The men may possibly find their wives beautiful, and tbe wives think their husbands manly and brave, although neither may be haudsome according to the more refined taste of the gallant diggers who " shoot them down like rabbits and think nothing of it." When there is a collision reported betweeu the whites and the blacks, we generally find that the latter while beiug very much in the wrong suffered heavy loss from the superior arms used by the former, who by the way, as a rule, manage to escapo with the fright and a few trifling spear wounds. It appears that theso natives are not allowed to have any rights at all on the land which is theirs by birth* ight, nor is any effort or proposal made to compensate them in any way fui* confiscating their land, by the rulers and governors of tho several English colonies established thereupon. Of course wo quite recognise that the whites are only obeying what appeirs to be a natural law, but at the tame time we c .intend the means are some what too abrupt, anrl sivour somewhat strongly of the blotdtliirstiness which is begotten by fear. A murder is a murder even if committed on the person of a black-man. On the whole wo think it would be more in accord with tho professions of Christianity made by tho English as a people, if these unhappy c. lorel races were allowed to bo extinguished by the vices and dissases introduced by *' immigration " and not put to a violent, if less painful, death.