THE ABORIGINES’ PROTECTION SOCIETY AGAIN.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 16, 6 May 1867, Page 103

THE ABORIGINES’ PROTECTION SOCIETY AGAIN.

* (Pi'om tha Baily i elograpb.). Thees are wheels within wheels, even within the wheels of a travelling caraV an *. ? 3 it _ altogether impossible that l“ The Aborigines’ Protection Society” has a pebuniary interest in the success of the, “ Russian Circus ?” That establishment was, we believe, first mentioned .iu our columns as far back as September, 1865; it was then performing at Margate, and was described in a “ Note by the Way ” as a circus “with wild men from Yesso, in Japan, who, unlike-other ’eathens, worship r-he helements, and speak no known language, certainly none known in Heastern Hazier.” It now appears that the five performers “dressed in furs, and only uttering a savage yelp,” who struck our sceptical correspondent as mere mountebanks, have excited the intense sympathy of “ the Aborigines’ Protection Society.” That hilarious iutstitution “ endeavoured to discover legal means of releasing five human beings from•“ cruel oppression” —the “ cruel oppression ” being that towards the close of each performance, the “ wild men,” some of whom are said to have borne a suspicious resemblance to the circus riders, were shut up in a cage, where they danced about and shrieked. They were, we admit, just the kind of perfoxmers to excite a certain kind of sympathy amongst a certain sort of people; though “ manners 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, we will believe so—-and this gentleman, calling himself “Mr Wooyeno Riotaro ’’—not at all 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 Rio aro’s face, and they only replied to him by. a succession of short, sharp yelps' barks.” If Mr Wooyeno Riotaro had looked upon them a few hours 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 Euglish ear. The society, however, felt that it had a Duty—with a capital D—-to per form, and a Mission—with a capital M—to fulfil. It appealed to the Home Secretary f It said in its memorial that “such exhibitious 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 liis correspondents in a most gentlemanly iettcr, full of quiet little satiric touches which bis namesake Horace would not have disowned; but the satire, we imagine, will be quite thrown away. At any rate we feel bound to call the attention of the society to certain \ cruellies which are habitually committed at the West-end of London upon some unhappy uative3 of Ethiopia, who are brutally compelled to sing in 1 public at a time when, perhaps, their ■ hearts are breaking at the very thought of dear, dear old Africa—perhaps not.