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Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 1022, 4 November 1871, Page 2

Sydney Smith used to say if you want reform make a bishop the victim, and the truth has unfortunately come home to us in a truly literal sense. Ever since Captain Towns commenced to import cheap labor, or in other words "slaves," into North Queensland, the evil has been growing in all sorts of forms. We have been told about the sufferings of the poor blacks, and the horrors of die 3lave trade on the West Coast of Africa, which culminated in the St. Domingo insurrection and the massacre of the French settlers. By the force of circumstances and the efforts of Clarkson and Wilberforce, attention was directed to the above trade, and Great Britain, with the concurrence, of the European Powers, with the exception of Spain until recently} pledged itself to put down the slave trade. This, to a certain extent, killed " the business in niggers," till at last black flesh became an expensive luxury, and the late American War put in force in real earnest the celebrated prinoiple of the American Declaration of Independence, " That all men should be free and equal/ 1 practical^ abolishing the sltvj

trade to the great mart. Bui it was little expected that the traffic which had cost Britain millions to stifle, besides numbers of lives, would crop up in her Majesty's dominions. But as great philosophers tell us, "history repeats itself," and as slavery has existed from the commencement of the world, so will it continue to the end when man's gain is concerned ; but then slavery will h&ve its victims, and ' one of the latest is the talented and estimable Bishop Patteson. Slavery in the Australian Colonies commenced with the introduction of "native labor" into 1 Queensland some years ago, and in spite of all remonstrances from home, nothing effectual was done to atop the traffic. "It paid," and here we have the sum total of the argument ; and so does Coolie or Chinese labor ; but though natives may be induced to make war on one another — though they maybe "gulled" into "shipping for a term," there is such a thing as an understanding, or "a freemasonry," even among savages, by which they can convey intelligence tp their kindred of how they have been tricked, and this feeling having been once aroused in the breast of the savage we know by sad experience m New Zealand it is very;difficult to allay. Native labor " in which the natives perfectly understand the nature of the contract" has been going on for some time to Queensland, Fiji, and if we credit Mr Parker, M.H.R., to Tahiti for sometime, and the "natives are perfectly satisfied with their condition ;" but somehow, on the other hand, their friends and relatives at home don't see it in the same light, and. accordingly, it appears, they have made up their mind to make reprisals. We know how white men have escaped even when tried by tribunals of their own countrymen. The case of Hugo Levinger to wit ; but as the old sacred poet says all these things will come into judgment, and come at last it has with a vengeance. Savages like other men have the feelings of men, or as Terence, the Greek, himself a slave, sa ya ; — « I am a man with feelings alike common to any other man," only we must remember that the feelings of a savage in the matter of revenge is intensified—and therefore nursed. Bishop Patteson was on his usual visit of love, preaching "good- will to all men ;" but alas, others had been there before him, teaching that the word of a white man and a Christian was "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." We have a record before us of massacres, murders, assassinations, &c, of men engaged in this trade, and can it be wondered at that feelings of: revenge are excited. Bishop Patteaon, in the course of his duties as Bishop of Melanesia, vißited the island of Nukapu, one of the Swallow Group, lying between the Solomon Islands on the North, and the New Hebrides on the South, immediately north of the Island of Santa Cruz. The Group is perhaps better known by its native name of Matena, and is the centre of the cluster where kidnapping has been carried on in its greatest perfection. What is the result—feelings of revenge having been excited, the first boat of white men, although they came on a mission of Christianity, is sacrificed, for how can blacks be expected to discriminate. Perhaps this may put a stop to the traffic, and therefore Sydney Smith may be right after all. The Right Rev. John Coleridge Patteson, D.D., who has come to such an untimely end in the faithful discharge of his missionary labors, was the son of the late Sir John Patteson. He was born in 1827, was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and became Fellow of Merton. He was consecrated Bishop of Melanesia, in the South Pacific Islands, in 1861.