Padre, whom that historian describes as "at all times ready to lift up his voice against the cruelty of the conqueror, and the no less wasting cupidity of the colonist; and when his remonstrances, as was too often the case, have proved unavailing, he has still followed to bind up the broken-hearted, to teach the poor Indian resignation under his lot, and light up his dark intellect with the revelation of a holier and happier existence."
Who ever heard of the English missionary to the poor Tasmanians? We threw him a crust, or sent him a bullet; we laughed at his corrobory, or carried off the wife of his home; but we never thought of his soul. It is true the church bells toned in his ear; but they pealed not for him. The robed teacher addressed the Deity; but the prayer was not for him. Men wept for the votaries of Boodh, and sighed for erring Israel; but no tear fell for him. Entrenched in the pride of their spiritual citadel, Christians had no sympathy for the dark, opossum-rug clad wanderer, over whose plains their flocks browsed, and in whose rich vales their corn waved.
We have not the miserable satisfaction of feeling, in the decline of the Tasmanians, that our motives in the occupation of their country, and the consequent exile of their race, were influenced by the elevating thoughts of the Spaniards of the sixteenth century. They dealt with millions, we with straggling hordes. Their desolations formed no part of their policy, but were none the less terrible for the race. Las Casas declares that from twelve to fifteen millions of American Aborigines disappeared before the Spaniards in forty years. Hayti had a million, but became extinct of aboriginal life in 1729. When men felt they were but the instruments of God, they knew no pity, they had no remorse.
But we need be as much ashamed of our own countrymen in the New World as of the Spaniards. Our colonists met with no vast numbers in the field, but warred with what there were. In the "History of Connecticut" it is said that 180,000 Indians perished there. The historian shows further that the Puritans, persecuted in England, forgot the instincts of mercy in their new home. They carried their Old Testament proclivities thither, and, regarding themselves as favoured Israelites in the Promised Land, proceeded to exterminate a people whose "iniquity was full," like so many Heaven-commissioned Joshuas. Even the
