better than to class our own flesh and blood with dingoes, the other enemy of the pioneer squatter, to be shot where met with? I believe that it would pay us to import from India or Ceylon some gentleman who has had experience of coolie labor there. Let him model a system, and as far as possible let him be untethered by red tape. Surely those in authority would not mind the absence of red tape in this matter. They have shown clearly by their actions in the past that so far as the blacks are concerned they don't care in the slightest. Their only care is that there should be as little fuss as possible. This very commendable spirit of making little fuss permeates the whole Native Police force downwards. The police never murder a black quite close to a station unless under very exceptional circumstances. They first arrest their prisoner—maybe at the camp by the waterhole near the homestead—and he is duly taken away, guarded by an armed mounted trooper on each side. He never comes in at the next stage with his captors; he has always "been shot while attempting to escape." The old, world-old, story—one sin leads on to another; and we cannot expect a man whose orders are to murder (English for "disperse") sticking at an odd lie or two.
With the utilisation of the blacks the occupation of the black troopers would be gone. Their removal would make room for a better state of things. Your correspondent "Never-Never" pooh-poohs the idea of getting good bushman to enter any police force that would succeed the present one. I fancy that, were the experiment tried, "Never-Never" would be found to be as wrong in this particular as he is misguided in the whole spirit of his letter. Only let the pay be better than that given to stockman on outside stations, and the Government could have the pick of the best and hardiest bushman in the colony. If blacks are used as police at all they should never be allowed 1o carry arms—a savage can never be expected to exercise discretion in metting out justice, should the "short shrift" "Never Never" speaks of ever be necessary. Let the white police have black servants, to be employed as grooms, trackers, &c., when necessary—much as is now the case in the West, where nearly every stockman keeps his own blackboy. Should the expense of keeping a white police be a strain on our finances I do not think the colony would grudge it. Let us remove the present blood guiltiness that weighs upon us each individually as colonists, and whatever the price the result will be cheap at the money. Is there no member of Parliament who will take this question up—are all so overburdend by the cares of the squatters, or diggers, who comprise their constituencies that they cannot spare the time to consider and devise a remedy for "the poor old nigger"? Can nothing be done for their physical welfare? Must we look calmly on at the work of the Police Department, combined with disease of the most loathsome types, and Mackay rum, and say it is "Kismet"? Would it not be well, putting aside for a time the hope of ever Christianising our blacks, to try in an honest manly way what can be done towards making them less undesirable citizens than they at present are? Sir, as I before said, I have lived in the outside country among the blacks, and, were I there again now as I write, I should sit down among them and explain how, far away "along a big fellow water, that one big fellow master belong a paper" was trying to do his best for them, so that if they would only be good "that one coola (hostile) fellow policeman" would never again come to their camp.
Sir, in the name of a most unfortunate and ill-starred race, I thank you for your powerful interference in their behalf.—Yours, &c.,
—Queenslander, May 22, 1880.
Sir,—Being still troubled by that "obtuseness of my moral nature," would you mind my expressing my sense of surprise at the singular course adopted by the Queenslander in starting what I presume I may call an atrocity column. In the first place, if, overcome by a deep sense of its responsibility as the leading journal of the colony, the paper raises its voice against our treatment of the natives, and the issue thereof is a atrocity column, may I ask why its conscience has slumbered so long? Why, through all the past years of black dispersion has it not done what it professes to be about to do now? Why have left it until this the eleventh hour? When a paper presumes to be so well posted up in the subject as to know of all these massacres, and deal them out dressed up in a sentimental suit of catch terms for the edification of sensation-loving readers, and yet has through all its previous existence as a journal remained comparatively silent on the subject, I beg leave to doubt the honesty of its purpose and the sincerity of it own belief in the deeds it is now
