e to intimidate the blacks;
but he solemnly pledged his government to equal justice, and that the
law should take its course on individuals of either race, who might
violate "the common law of mankind."

The discussions which followed, proved the division of public opinion on
the propriety of this measure. It was not clear, to many, that the
natives were legally accountable, or that their punishment was just.
Grotius and Vattel were quoted; writers, who have discoursed upon the
relations of man, and distinguished the felon from the enemy. It was,
however, simply a question between judicial and private vengeance: the
interference of the court could alone prevent a general proscription. In
the heat of anger, no provocation would be weighed--no palliative
admitted; and the innocent would perish with the guilty.[9]

The impression on the aborigines was unfavorable: they saw only the
death of an unfortunate countryman, and, perhaps, the last act of the
white man's warfare. Its moral influence was not great on either race:
it neither softened the resentment of the British, nor intimidated the
blacks: it was a mere variety in the forms of destruction. The brother
of one of these men led the Oyster Bay tribe, and prompted the murders
which, in 1830, filled the colony with wailing.

The rapid colonisation of the island from 1821 to 1824, and the
diffusion of settlers and servants through districts hitherto
unlocated, added to the irritation of the natives, and multiplied the
agents of destruction. Land unfenced, and flocks and herds moving on
hill and dale, left the motions of the native hunters free; but hedges
and homesteads were signals which even the least rationality could not
fail to understand, and on every re-appearance the natives found some
favorite spot surrounded by new enclosures, and no longer theirs.

The proclamations of the government assumed the fixed relations of the
different tribes to particular districts. Oyster Bay and the Big River
were deemed sufficiently precise definitions of those tribes, exposed to
public jealousy and prosecution. It is true, they had no permanent
villages, and accordingly no individual property in land; but the
boundaries of each horde were known, and trespass was a declaration of
war.

The English, of modern times, will not comprehend joint ownership,
notwithstanding the once "common" property of the nation has been only
lately distributed by law. The rights of the aborigines