THE CRIMES OF COLONISATION.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2613, 22 August 1882, Page 3

THE CRIMES OF COLONISATION.

“ These are hard words,” observes the “Pall Mall Gazette,” “but who can say they are undeserved ? Not assuredly any of those who have read the accounts given by recent travellers in the Southern Seas of tho state of things in Polynesia, or tho still more terrible narratives of those who describe tbo slavery which hrs been established in Queensland, or the war of extermination which has been waged in Northern Australia. Mr John Wieker, of Melbourne, contributes to the current number of the “ Fortnightly Review ” an account of the doings of Englishmen under the Southern Ore : which would bo pronounced incredible but for the confirmation supplied by other witnesses. M. Boohefort is for ever sneering at the nation which scatters tracts over the universe, and at (he same lime mercilessly exterminates the aborigines at the Antipodes j and for once M. Boohofort's sarcasm is barbed with truth. It is in Northern Queensland and Cape Yorke that this process of colonisation by massacre is to be seen at its beat or worst. The 4 pioneers of civilisation,’ gold diggers and adventurers, with a liberal leaven of sooundrelism of two worlds, have been waging for years past an intermittent war with the blaokfellows, who, it seems, e-e stronger, braver, and more independent than the degenerate specimens of humanity who are being crowded out of existence in Victoria and New South Wales. As the pioneers took no women with them, they supplied themselves with the wives of the abo. igines. Human nature being the samo all the world over, a fierce war of reprisals began, and is kept up to this hour. Every native trouble is said to bo traceable to the same fatal cause. The black robbed of his wife slays the first white who crosses his path. The colonists combine and massacre all the blaokfellows within range of their rifles. And so it goes on. Even when there is no blood feud, pot-shots aro taken at * niggers’ as if they wore wild ducks, and their women are regarded as the common property of the first comer. Children are born of these lawless unions, but none survive. Whether their parents kill them or the hybrid lacks stamina to face the olimato remains a mystery. Every year the black man is hunted further and further back from the lands which are coveted by the white, and in northern Queensland ere long it wil be as it is now in New South Wales, where, with a territory as largo as France and England combined, 750,000 colonists protest they can find no room in which to locate the miserable dwindling remnant of the original owners of the soil. The colonists, however, do not do all the murders themselves. They massacre by deputy. Under the guise of a police force they have armed a body of blacks as savage and more drunken than their naked brethren, and these they periodically lead forth to 1 disperse ’ gatherings of the tribes. Tho story which Mr Wiikor has to tell of the state of things on tho cane plantations of southern Queensland is not loss horrible. On tho strength of official documents he mair. tains that in many cases the imported Polynesians are actually worse off than slaves. The labor traffic, despite all attempts at legislation, is, in hia opinion, little better than an organised slave trade. On paper the regulations seem to bo satisfactory. In practice they are too often nugatory. The law provides that the native shall only be engaged for three years, at the rate cf £6 a year, besides food, lodging and clothes. Tho native is paid his £lB at the end of his term of service, and is then returned to hia island. If he dies before tho three years expire, his master saves both his woges and the expense of sending him home. Tire economic problem therefore which confronts every oanc-growor is, first, how to extract from the laborer the maximum amount of labor on a minimum quantity of food ; and, secondly, how to arrange for his death as near aa possible to the close of his throe years’ service. A skilful canegrower who can nee up his laborers its two years and eleven months is S 7 10j in pocket. A clumsy hand who works his man to death in two years only gains £l2. Thus a system ingeniously devised so as to combine all the worst features of slavery and of freedom has been es'ablished under our eyes, and no one seems to cave. It is slavery plus murder. The employer is allowed to pocket his workman’s Wi»gea on condition he kills him off before the end of three years. The result is that in Queensland the death-rate of Polynesians between the age of sixteen and thirty two varies from 80 to 100 per 1000. In England the death-rate is only nine. The fact is vouched for by Government inspectors and police magistrates. We have spent millions in emancipating slaves and in crusading against the slave trade. Surely we are not going to allow without even a protest the gradual conversion of this greet colony into a slave State.”