How infamous is our conduct in the Southern hemisphere. We take forcible possession of Australia and slay her inhabitants. Polynesia, to terminate the horrors of internal war and escape foreign aggression, earnestly solicits the protection of the British flag, and is refused. The interests of our manufactures, shipping, commerce, and the opportunity of establishing an empire in the Pacific, teeming with benefits to mankind, are all disregarded, and the people are either murdered or cruelly exposed to the buccaneering attacks of that Jesuitical production of the French revolution Louis Philip. An upstart who is indebted to England for his life, his crown, and his kingdom, openly insults her with impunity by making war upon her very missions to the heathen. Well did the, Most High say: "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice;" for when left to themselves, or abandoned to the counsel of the wisest of their subjects, they err lamentably. Revelation is set at nought and nations bleed.
Is there to be no end to the wrongs inflicted upon Australia? Is there to be no change in the blundering policy of the British Cabinet? Is the mistress of the ocean, with the empire of India and the destinies of the world in her hand, to be forever doomed to an imbecile ministry?Sydney, Nov. 8, 1839.
TO THE READER.
You live probably at the rate of £50, £500, or £1000 per annum; or you spend £500, £10,000, or £50,000 per annum. The writer, therefore, in asking you to buy a copy of this appeal, the profits of which are to be devoted to the cause he pleads, is only soliciting one of he least of the crumbs that fall from your table, on behalf of Him who is daily loading it with all the luxuries of life. Perhaps you are heaping up riches to be squandered in dissipation by others when you are gone to another world, to account for the disposition you made of your wealth, as well as your time and every other talent entrusted to your care, in this. In a dying hour or at the day of judgment, you may bitterly repent of the manner in which you now spend your money; but the devoting of a few hundred or a few thousand pounds of it to the service of Him that died to rescue you from endless woe, will form no source of regret to you, either at the close of life or the termination of time—that solemn period that will usher in the interesting, awful, and stirring scenes of eternity.
The writer is determined to live on bread and water till the salvation of Australia be accomplished. Assist him in the great work, if you can; but waste not your time in trying to gratify a vain curiosity by idle conjectures respecting his name. Let it suffice that you hear "The voice of one crying in the 'Australian' wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
