necessity of removal to Barnes Bay, and, as he stated in his official letter, "care should be taken that they have no correspondence with the white heathen."
The evil continued. The gins left the depôt for the favourite company of the sailors, and introduced contention and disease into the camp. Mild expostulations and angry denunciations were alike of no service, and Robinson wrote almost despairingly about the moral pestilence. The Colonial Secretary (Mr. Burnett), in reply to a request that the Port-officer be ordered to keep off the whalers, emphatically wrote: "The Port-officer is quite satisfied that it is altogether impossible to prevent communication between the native women and the whalers, as they appear in all cases to prefer them to men of their own tribes, whom they usually treat with great contempt after they have been for a short time associated with the whalers." This, alas! was a sad truth, and similar results have elsewhere appeared with a so-called partial civilization. The worthy Governor took a desponding view, and declared, "It is lamentable that nothing can be done in this matter."
But the storm of war was rising. Outrages and cruelties increased. The Whites became more infuriated, and the Blacks more determined. The latter saw no hope, and resolved to die spear in hand. With another people, this would be heroic. We readily agree with Dr. Johnson, that a man's patriotism must be quickened at the sight of the plains of Marathon. We sympathised with Abd-el-Kader's struggles in Algeria, and Exeter Hall memorialised the French Government upon the treatment of the Tahitians. But when our own colonists are brought into collision with the races whose lands they have seized without compensation or inquiry, the feeling is otherwise; the heroism of the foe is lost in the mist of our own selfishness. Louis-Philippe, therefore, could not more effectually silence the clamour of England against his operations in the South Sea Island, than by his quiet reference to the operations of British forces at that very time against the Maories, quite as Christian and as noble as the Tahitians themselves. The resolution, therefore, of the Tasmanians to make no peace with the possessors of their hunting-grounds excited the indignant displeasure of the colony. It was then that Mr. Robinson, sick of his miserable failure on Bruni, and conscious of his power to do something more effective
