of the Melbourne Argus, which rather too extravagantly reviewed the Flinders Island system, but which expresses the sentiments of not a few colonists:—
"Look at the means had recourse to in the case of the remnant of the aboriginals of Tasmania! They were beguiled to the number of some hundreds from their native haunts, and transferred to an island in Bass's Straits, where a system of restraint and plodding methodised daily pursuits was imposed upon them, which would be perfectly unbearable to our own people, and has terminated in those savages pining away, and dying en masse. They were, in the most literal sense, 'civilized off the face of the earth' by that process of 'vegetable existence' which the European finds too irksome to subscribe to himself, but which he thinks quite good enough to be the preliminary step for introducing and reconciling the wild denizen of the woods to the new condition proffered to him—proffered in so uncongenial, or rather absolutely revolting, a manner that it is impossible of acceptance."
The "Penny Cyclopædia" has no friendly notice of the civilization of Flinders Island. This is the article:—
"It would be tedious to detail the features of the 'civilizing' system pursued there. It is sufficient to mention that every habit and amusement peculiar to the Aborigines has been discouraged; the cumbrous and uncongenial forms and incidents of advanced civilization have been enforced in everyday life; the native language has been as much as possible suppressed; native names have been made to yield to those of the Cæsars, the Hannibals, and the Scipios; a disposition to indulge in the pleasures of the chase has been recorded as a delinquency; and the verbal repetition of the Commandments and the Catechism is alleged as the evidence of religious progress, and a confutation of all disbelief as to the capacity of uncivilized races to appreciate the doctrines of Christianity."
There is no doubt that the over-sanguine mind of Mr. Robinson, his intense energy, and his overwhelming will, did multiply tasks ad nauseam, and expect the barbarism of thousands of years to be exorcised by his own word. Too much exultation was manifested at exterior change, and too high an estimate was attached to learning by rote. But it is not less true, that a decided improvement was conspicuous in the tribes that had
