ever flee to it for solace in their sorrow. That true friend of the coloured races. Bishop Selwyn, now Bishop of Lichfield, is reported to have uttered these solemn words, at a missionary meeting in Manchester:—
"He had spoken of the seeming failure of the work in New Zealand. He had to tell them of one of its causes. The people of the New Zealand race stood out for many years against the temptation to intoxication, but if the native people of New Zealand had given way to the sin of intoxication, from whom would God require an account of their sin? It was not a sin of native growth; it was an imported, an exotic, sin. They stood against it for a time, but as their faith failed they gave way to the temptations forced upon them by their English brethren. They had heard it said, and they were fearful words, that it was the law of nature that the coloured races should melt away before the advance of civilization. He would tell them where that law was registered, and who were its agents. It was registered in hell, and its agents were those whom Satan made twofold more the children of hell than himself. He from the bottom of his heart urged them to do all they could to discountenance the use of spirituous liquors."
In another work I have portrayed some mournful illustrations of the effect of drink on the Aborigines of New Holland, particularly on women. By it the latter were seduced into abhorrent vices, by it they contracted a horrible disease, by it they raised the anger and murderous blow of husbands and brothers, by it they degrade and kill the tribe.
The Corio tribe, living in the Geelong neighbourhood, were, at the time of my going to the south, a powerful body. A recent number of the Geelong Register has this paragraph, which tells of drink and decline: "The Corio tribe is nearly extinct, as King Jerry and one male companion are all that are now known to reside in the district. The last-named is far from well, and both are evidently shortening their existence by their habits of living." The physical and moral declension of the Aborigines by drink has tended to disgust the decent colonist, who wishes them out of his presence. The Adelaide Observer, like almost all the Australian papers, has uniformly taken the side of virtue, and maintained humane and generous principles, but could not forbear giving up all hope from the increasing drunkenness of
