all alive, oh! and be very careful you don't hurt them, and if they should attempt to run away from you, tell them to stop or you will certainly shoot, and the bare words will arrest them, only you must first learn them the language in which it is spoken.' It is little better than idiocy to talk of surrounding and catching a group of active naked—mind, naked—men and women, divested of all burdens of all sorts," &c.
The English reader must not be harsh in his judgment upon the condition of the colonial press, after reading the paragraph just quoted, as that, in all probability, was the work of the proprietor of the paper, a political tradesman of Launceston.
The Sydney Australian of October has the following article upon that month's intended movements in the southern isle: "We call the present warfare against a handful of poor, naked, despicable savages, a Humbug in every sense of the word. Every man in the island is in motion, from the Governor downwards to the meanest convict. The mercer dons his helmet, and deserts his counter, to measure the dimensions of the butcher's beef, or the longitude of his own tapes with his broadsword. The farmer's scythe and reaping-hook are transmuted to the coat of mail and bayonet! The blacksmith, from forging shoes for the settler's nag, now forges the chains to enslave, and whets the instruments of death!! These are against savages whose territory in point of fact this very armed host has usurped!! Savages who have been straitened in their means of subsistence by that very usurpation!!! Savages who knew not the language, nor the meditations of their foes, save from the indiscriminate slaughter of their own people."
The Sydney Gazette of October 30th asks the pertinent question: "Are those who sneer at the measures adopted by the authorities of the Sister Colony, prepared to say that atrocities like these, and numerous others which the public journals record daily, should not be put a stop to?" The editor declares that our islanders were different from the Blacks of New South Wales, being "fierce and vindictive, shunning the society of the settlers, and seemingly conscious that their territory has been usurped."
But no longer to keep the particulars from the reader, the official document is herewith furnished. Its date, as has been mentioned, is September 25th, and the proceedings of the Line were to commence twelve days after:—
