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SHALL WE ADMIT THE BLACKS?
[COMMUNICATED.]
THE above question has caused a considerable ferment in the public mind of Bowen of late, and it may be interesting to look at the pros and cons of the case, to enable us to arrive at some conclusion in the matter. From the first opening of this port to the present time the severity with which the aboriginals have been treated has been a subject of universal regret, and although many have justified the course adopted by an illegally constituted and almost irresponsible body as one absolutely necessary, yet now and then stories, whispered in an under breath, crop up of the Native Police, supplemented, if not outdone, by the philanthropic efforts of humane volunteers, whereby whole hecatombs of able-bodied blackfellows, dishonoured lubras and fatherless picaninnies have been summarily sent, without benefit of clergy, where they will tell no tales, their bodies left to putrefaction, their bones buried by the floods, until brought up as fossil remains of an extinct race by some future generation. But general as these whispers are, and authentic as many of them are known to be, the Government will not hear, the public will not have its peace disturbed (why should they for all the blacks in Queensland?) private individuals have little inclination and less time to right the wrongs of the aboriginal community, and so things must take their course. But unfortunately for such calculations the blacks suddenly presented themselves at the doors of the municipality a few days ago, made their salaam, and, without leave of liberty (who ever heard of such a thing!) walked in, and after having made their first entry into polite circles showed a decided penchant for civilized society. A small number of our townsmen raised a cry that our morals were in danger, that decency would be outraged, that timid women, if they did not die beforehand of fits in their beds, would soon be saved the trouble of dying at all, that loafers (for which Bowen was always renowned) would increase, that the bottle would destroy what the rifle had spared, and that, nolens volens, the Bench, whom they petitioned, must see with them, drive the blacks out of the town, make them go the road their predecessors had gone, and furnish game for the white man's gun as long as one should be left alive. They had well nigh carried the day, had not a few equally well-intentioned individuals had the misfortune to take a diametrically opposite view of the case. They visited the blacks in question, and saw a mournful sight --- about thirty male survivors out of all that tribe, which not long ago could be numbered by hundreds, and dates back the days of its misfortunes and decimation to the introduction, not of the bottle, but of the rifle (which is the quickest?) when the Native Police, to use the words of an eye-witness, visited the public house after their work at the shambles, "the heels of their boots covered with brains and blood and hair." They thought it a cruel persecution to drive the suffering widow and the fatherless whom we had orphaned from our doors to slaughter or be slaughtered. They said we admit the Polynesians, and (the Vagrant Act notwithstanding) allow them to become loafers amongst us; the Chinese (whose morality is not of the highest order), East and West Indians, Hottentots and Kaffres if they like have the run of our country and our towns too, but those to whom the country of right belongs, and who are guilty of no crime beyond calling Australia their fatherland, must be shot or ignominiously driven from our doors, denied even the credit of feeling dulce est pro patria mori; that no injury was to be apprehended to public morals, seeing that some of them are superior to ourselves, and that if they should contract some vices through intercourse with the whites this has been ever the necessary result of contact of a lower with a higher degree of civilization, and they must take their chance. Why should they be debarred from learning the usages of our society, from acquiring our language, and for taking the place Providence designed for them as assistants to the pioneer settlers of this new country? Why should they be driven out to wander where only to be seen is a crime, where they ruin the squatters and are exterminated by them in return? That their gentlemen do not appear clothed in Parisian fashion, some of them using as their sole article of attire a collar, not of snowy whiteness, and that their ladies dispense with the cumbrous paraphernalia of the modern boudoir, without any care of becoming "beautiful for ever" is most true; but then it is alleged they are not wanting in intelligence, and soon will learn all this (cui bono?) and why should we not share with them our superfluities? Their culinary delicacies --- such as rats and snakes --- we surely might allow them to exchange for
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bread and beef, and then we may aim at higher things, for in the detection and prevention of crime they will prove most useful allies in proportion as they become more civilized. Suffice it to say the Bench dismissed the case "without prejudice," and therefore we inform our readers that, if so inclined, they can admit them; but let them, should they do so, try to keep them from the evils to which as a necessary consequence they must, especially at first, become exposed.