chronicling. Surely such a tenderly-sensitive journal could not have gone on all these years believing in the existence of these outages, and yet—beyond an occasional leader when hard-up for a subject—never crying out against them. It seems to me very like raking up something startling to pull through a dull time till Parliament commences.
In the name of everything sensible, what good end can be gained by manufacturing sensational stories by the column to prove—what? To prove that here, as in all other new countries, men who are ruffians and bullies naturally gather about our frontiers, where law is lax and restraint almost unknown. No one ever doubted it yet the Queenslander, by its present course, is endeavoring to slander the majority of our outside men for the acts of the minority, and on what authority? Take the very first yarn recounted. A white man, presumedly educated and acquainted with the laws of this country, goes out intending to shoot a quiet black boy, and takes with him another white man as a witness, who might at any time turn Queen's evidence and hang him. If the hero of this story did this he was a lunatic, and was not responsible for his actions; if he didn't, the story is on internal evidence—false. And again, why drag in mock sentiment to bolster up these charges? In the last yarn retailed, capital is made out of the fact that a man despatching some wounded blacks knocked them on the head instead of shooting them. Really it might be from moral obtuseness, but, putting aside the necessity or not of killing these blacks, I cannot see why it was more sinful to knock them on the head than shoot them. A blow from a heavy nulla would be quite as quick and easy a death as a bullet from a pistol; and if pistol cartridges were scarce, as often they are in outside country, it was a very sensible thing to do. I should feel just as much horror if I read that they were shot.
Possibly the Queenslander aims at supplying a want in our Brisbane literature. It aspires to fill the place of the Newgate Calendar or Police Gazette, and is really making a very creditable attempt. I can see how, under its tuition, our youngsters may grow up to emulate the actors in the Queenslander atrocity column, even as the apprentices of old sought to follow in the footsteps of Jack Sheppard and Dick Tarpin, after revelling in an account of their lives. If the Queenslander were honest in its purpose, one or two well-authenticated specimens would serve the end as well as a hundred. We can enjoy a little devilled kidney, or hot curry, but we don't like a surfeit of such dishes. In publishing these hypothetical narratives, duly embroidered for the occasion, the Queenslander violates good taste, and almost common decency. I maintain that half these yarns are fabrications, and that the rest are exaggerated. I never witnessed one such case myself; I never heard but of one in any district I was in, and that rested on poor foundation. I am equally certain that in all parts of this colony men would be found prompt and ready to stop such deeds by force, if necessary. Again, I know and can affirm that black protection is often only another name for immorality, and I would far rather call that man my friend who rigorously, if wrongfully, kept all blacks off his run, and allowed no intercourse with them, than he, who under the excuse of protecting them allowed them in for the sake of picking out the best looking gins in the tribe.
Beyond branding a certain portion of the community as worse than murderers, the Queenslander has as yet left the main question untouched; therefore, beyond putting in this protest, there is nothing I can remark on, and must await further utterances from the oracle.
—Queenslander, May 29, 1880.
Never Never.
Sir,—Much has been written on the subject of our treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, and many schemes, distinguished for the most part by their absurdity and impracticability, have been put forward with a view to saving the race from utter annihilation.
That the race is doomed is admitted by all who have studied the subject, and those who know the nigger best feel most the impossibility of doing much to ameliorate his condition or protract the existence of his race.
This callousness as a rule arises from no lack of sympathy with the blacks, but from a firm conviction that their stage of civilisation is too many hundred or perhaps thousand years behind our own to allow their race to thrive side by side with ours.
I have not the slightest doubt that there are many to be found in the bush who would willingly contribute towards the support of any project which offers a reasonable chance of ameliorating the condition of the expiring race of men whose brothers
