1839, they regretted that "from the first a system had not been applied more suitable to the habits of a roving people, instead of the highly artificial one whose details have been referred to " (in Mr. Robinson's report).
A colonial writer of the period comments upon the system in 1838. "The Commandant," he writes, "has an establishment of thirty-two convicts to wait on the Aborigines, and supply the deficiency of their own labour, and is rewarded by a great deal of reading, writing, singing, rehearsal of the Catechism, tailoring, submission, attachment, decorum, tranquillity—everything, in a word, which gratifies superficial examination; and he persuades himself that he is eminently successful with them; but they have no free agency, are mere children at school, and they cannot escape from their prison. They cannot subsist at a distance from it; they must not break its rules; it must be a place of extensive ennui to them: as moral agents now, they are lower than when they were savages, and they die, I fear, the faster for this kindness. The Commandant imputes the mortality among them to the situation and climate, and wishes to transport them to the south coast of New Holland; but in six months, I am persuaded, they would be on this place happy savages in the Bush."
The more civilized they became, the more dependent were the Blacks upon their masters for supplies, and the less disposed were they to exert themselves. Listless and good, they wanted energy to pursue the bounding kangaroo, or clamber after an opossum. In Mr. Robinson's letter, March 8th, 1836, we have this announcement: "It has been intimated to the Natives that they are shortly to be supplied with fresh meat, which intelligence affords them much pleasure." It would, certainly; though it doubtless puzzled their unarithmetical heads what became of the several hundreds of sheep given to them by settlers in 1833, and increasing on Green Island, &c. Besides, the Government had sent cattle and more sheep. Before the receipt of the Commandant's letter, three hundred breeding sheep and ten cows were forwarded. And yet not once in six months did the Blacks eat of their own mutton! Some other people preferred fresh meat to salted rations. In 1838 there were still 1,800 sheep and 62 head of cattle.
Among the singular crotchets of Mr. Robinson's was that one of altering the names of the Natives. Certainly, surrounded as
