THE BLACKS OF QUEENSLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4525, 21 September 1875, Page 3

THE BLACKS OF QUEENSLAND.

(From the Brisbane Telegraph, August 27.) Our poor blacks ! Are they human or demoniau.oracompoundof both ! When certain inflammatory elements reach their ready susceptibilities the outburst of unreasoning rage and cruelty is sudden and uncontrolled. Such civilizing processes as they have been most subjected to have seemed to inhumanize them. They are an anthropological difficulty. Will not some ethnographer define accurately their relative place in the human family ? Will not some professor of craniology give us a sket ch of their bumps, or some psychologist tell us whether there are amongst them the same mental distinctions as amongst white races, and the same discernible shades of difference in disposition and temperament ? Are they impressible in equal degrees for good or evil by external influences, or are they black all through ? Settlers, missionaries, and legislators have long tried by multiform experimental processes to answer these queries, but opinions still widely differ. Cannot science help us to a conclusion V It is not our purpose to propound any definite solutionof the difficulty. AV*e have come to this conclusion, that whatever metaphysicians may decide about the intellectual or moral status of our aboriginals, they are fully qualified to rank side by side with any Caucasian race under the sun in animal passions and in aptitude for vices that kill. If it be a natural and necessary law that as white men spread black men disappear, are we not contravening nature or frustrating Providence in any efforts or provisions that we may make for the conservation of native races 1 Some very recent episodes in aboriginal life would seem to indicate that the generosity which supplies coins to these mendicant nomads would, if moderately extended, soon exterminate them. With rope enough they would hang themselves. It is not so much charity as cruelty to comply with their clamorous demands for money. With them the thirst for grog is far more potent than the hunger for bread. If the law which prohibits the sale of drink to them be not absurd as well as inoperative, then the indiscriminate bestowment of money is worse than absurd. The law is rarely enforced. Whether it be from laxity in the vigilance of police, or laxity in the principles of landlords, it is certain that the law is habitually broken. We suppose that it would be the same with any prohibitory law. Money is often stronger than conscience. What matters it if a few blackfellows kill each other, so long as landlords get cash for new and bad spirits, which come very cheap, but which white men will not drink. So it comes to pass that alcohol fires the blood, diabolical passions are roused, and blatant jabber develops into furious words and frantic shrieks, while the nulla nulla beats murderous accompaniment on the cranium of rome sottish man or helpless woman. A paragraph calculated to make a white man's blood boil, appeared in the Wide Bay and Burnett News of the 18th iust., stating that on the previous Sunday a sanguinary fight had taken place amongst the blacks on the river bank opposite to the town of Maryborough :—" The blacks were all more or less drit7i&, and after about a half-hour's play with nullas, they took to knives, and cut and hacked each other in a most horrible manner. . . The worst of it is, the inhabitants on that side of the river, especially delicate females and children, are in terror of their lives of the savage orgies which are allowed to take place there." We suppose those blacks have no secret still on their side of the river. On the same day that this account was published a similar scene occured at Gympie, when several blacks who had been supplied with grog fought with weapons that made " ugly wounds." A gin, who seemed to have suffered a fracture or dislocation of an arm, was dragged about mercilessly by a blackfellow who claimed her, but who was unmoved by "her yells of the most hideous description." These are samples of native frolics which are by no means unfrequent. Here is a field for temperance reformers. As religion, and some forms of philanthropy, have uot succeeded to any great extent in elevating and civilising this race, is there not a fine opportunity for Good Templarism to experiment upon them? Inbibacious tastes they have equalled their exemplars and patrons. Reform them. An aboriginal lodge would be a decided triumph, and would be as great a curiosity as was an aboriginal cricketing team. It would certainly tend to prolong the species. Could the order not also organise a detective force, and show the police how to convict the landlords who, for a few paltry sixpences, break the law and cruelly illuse a race degraded enough by natural proclivities and ordinary conditions of existence without the accomplishment of civilised vices.