a General Passport under my Hand and Seal,—arrangements for which form a part of the intended negotiation.
"Given under my Hand and Seal, at Government House, Hobart Town, this fifteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight.
George Arthur.
"By His Excellency's command,
God Save the King."
One cannot forbear smiling at this very intelligible address to the hunted savages. The composition is strictly legal, for its author is the Attorney-General As British subjects they are presumed to be well acquainted with the forms of British law. It is true that the Proclamation is written for those who never read, and is indited in a language with which they are not acquainted. It may remind one of an English country notice on a board, at the end of which the wayfarer was admonished that, if unable to read, he was to inquire of the blacksmith over the way. The pain of forcible expulsion will be endured without the consciousness of the offence of trespass, and the "consequences necessarily attendant" will be fatally experienced, although innocent of the official poster on the gum-tree. It was not very probable that they would become acquainted with the occasion for a passport to go to the coast,—that they would venture among their enemies to apply for this permit, and that the gentle shepherds of the interior would respect the parchment and seal.
Sir George Murray, in acknowledging the despatch containing his proclamation, tells Colonel Arthur, "I cannot omit to impress upon you my most earnest desire that no unnecessary harshness may be exercised in order to confine the coloured inhabitants within the boundaries which you have fixed."
As the first proclamation was attended with no beneficial result, as the Whites still persisted in murder, and as the Blacks still wandered over their own soil at large, another proclamation was issued on November 1, 1828. It was prefaced with the false announcement that "every practicable measure has been resorted to for the purpose of removing the Aborigines from the settled districts of the colony; and for the putting a
