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PROCLAMATION OF OCTOBER 1ST. 1830.
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"altogether despaired" of future friendly relations with the wild men who viewed them as intruders.
The Proclamation of October 1, 1830, advances us another stage in the Black War. Driven from the Settled Districts by the provisions of the Martial Law, the Aborigines were now to be allowed no place of retreat, no city of refuge. There is no peace to be made with them, as they are supposed relentless as wolves, and they must, like those blood-mouthed marauders of the woods, be driven from their dens. A new and more stringent Martial Law is to be proclaimed.
Whereas, by my Proclamation, bearing date the first day of November, 1828, reciting, among other things that the Black or Aboriginal Natives of this island had for a considerable time carried on a series of indiscriminate attacks upon the persons and property of His Majesty's subjects, and that repeated inroads were daily made by such Natives into the Settled Districts, and that acts of hostility or barbarity were thus committed by them, as well as at the more distant stock runs, and in some instances upon unoffending and defenceless women and children, and that it had become unavoidably necessary, for the suppression of similar enormities, to proclaim Martial Law, in the manner hereinafter directed, I, the said Lieut.-Governor, did declare and proclaim that from the date of that my Proclamation, and unto the cessation of hostilities, Martial Law was, and should continue to be, in force against the said Black or Aboriginal Natives within the several districts of this island, excepting always the places and portions of this island in the said Proclamation after mentioned; and whereas, the said Black or Aboriginal Natives, or certain of their tribes, have of late manifested, by continued repetitions of the most wanton and sanguinary acts of violence and outrage, an unequivocal determination indiscriminately to destroy the white inhabitants, whenever opportunities are presented to them for doing so; and whereas, by reason of the aforesaid exceptions so entertained in the said Proclamation, no Natives have been hitherto pursued or molested in any of the places or portions of the island so excepted, from whence they have accordingly of late been accustomed to make repeated incursions upon the Settled Districts with impunity, or, having committed outrages in the Settled Districts, have escaped to those excepted places, where they remain in security; and whereas, therefore, it hath now become necessary, and because it is scarcely possible to distinguish the particular tribe or tribes by whom such outrages have been in any particular instance committed, to adopt immediately, for the purpose of effecting their capture, if possible, an active and extended
