THE ABORIGINES’ PROTECTION SOCIETY AGAIN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 475, 2 May 1867, Page 3

THE ABORIGINES’ PROTECTION SOCIETY AGAIN.

(From the Daily Telegraph.)

There are wheels within wheels, even ' within the wheels of a travelling cara- i van. Is it altogether impossible that i “ The Aborigines’ Protection Society” has a pecuniary interest in the success 1 of the “Piussian Circus?” Thatesta- ! blishment was, we believe, first men- , tioned in our columns as far back as i September, 1863 ; it was then per- ! forming at Margate, and was described 1 in a “ Note by the Way ” as a circus , “ with wild men from Yesao, in Japan, ■ who, unlike other ’eathens. worship i the helements, and speak no known ! language, certainly none known in J Heastern Hazier.” It now appears , that the five performers “ dressed in , furs, and only uttering a savage yelp,” 1 who struck our sceptical correspondent 1 as mere mountebanks, have excited ! the intense sympathy of “ the Abo- j rigincs’ Protection Society.” That ! hilarious institution “ endeavoured to discover legal means of releasing five j human beings from ‘ cruel oppression’ ” , —the “ cruel oppression ” being that, j towards the close of each performance. I the “ wild men,” some of whom are 1 said to have borne a suspicious resemblance to the circus i-iders, were shut , up in a cage, where they danced about ■ and shrieked. They were, we admit. ■ just the kind of performers to excite a 1 certain kind of sympathy amongst a ; certain sort of people ; though “ man- i ners they had none, while their customs were beastly,” they were apparently ignorant of English, and the : colour of their faces at the time of exhibition was rather black than white. Accordingly, the society got hold of a real native of Japan—at any rate, wc will believe so—and this gentleman, calling himself “ Mr Wooyeno Riotaro ” —not at ail a bad name for a pantomime—endeavoured to converse with the prisoners. The “ prisoners,” somehow or other, managed to keep from laughing in Mr Wooyeno Riotaro’s face, and they only replied to him by “ a succession of short, sharp yelps or barks.” If Mr Wooyeno Riotaro had looked upon them a few Lours afterwards, when the “ prisoners,” having washed their faces and taken off their furs, were probably enjoying a thoroughly Oriental supper of boiled tripe and onions, he might have found them more communicative —not perhaps in Japanese, but in a dialect intelligible to an English ear. The society, however, felt that it bad a Duty—with a capital D—to per form, and a Mission —with a capital M—to fulfil. It appealed to the Home Secretary ! It said iu its memorial that “such exhibitions tend to perpetuate the pernicious ideas of the natural inferiority and irreclaimable barbarism of the weaker races of mankind which have unhappily become too prevalent in this country.” To our thinking, “ the weaker races of mankind which have unhappily become too prevalent in this country” must be a paraphrasis for the members of the Aborigines’ Protection Society. Mr Secretary Walpole answered bis correspondents in a most gentlemanly letter, full of quiet little satiric touches which bis namesake Horace would not have disowned; but the satire, we imagine, will be quite thrown away.

.\t any rate we feed brand to call the attention of the society to certain cruelties which are habitually cun milted at the West-eud of London upon some unhappy naMves of Ethiopia, who are brutallv comoel'eJ to sir!"' ir

public at a time when, perhaps, tlu-i; Hearts are breaking at the very thought of dear, dear old Africa—per haps