other points connected with the natives to which I will
briefly advert: the one, relative to the language in which the school
children are taught, the other, the policy, or otherwise, of having
establishments for the natives in the immediate vicinity of a town, or of
a numerous European population.

With respect to the first, I may premise, that for the first four years
the school at the location in Adelaide was conducted entirely in the
native tongue. To this there are many objections.

First, the length of time and labour required for the instructor to
master the language he has to teach in.

Secondly, the very few natives to whom he can impart the advantages of
instruction, as an additional school, and another teacher would be
required for every tribe speaking a different dialect.

Thirdly, the sudden stop that would be put to all instruction if the
preceptor became ill, or died, as no one would be found able to supply
his place in a country where, from the number, and great differences of
the various dialects, there is no inducement to the public to learn any
of them.

Fourthly, that by the children being taught in any other tongue than that
generally spoken by the colonists, they are debarred from the advantage
of any casual instruction or information which they might receive from
others than their own teachers, and from entering upon duties or
relations of any kind with the Europeans among whom they are living, but
whose language they cannot speak.

Fifthly, that, by adhering to the native language, the children are more
deeply confirmed in their original feelings and prejudices, and more
thoroughly kept under the influence and direction of their own people.

Among the colonists themselves there have scarcely been two opinions upon
the subject, and almost all have felt, that the system originally adopted
was essentially wrong. It has recently been changed, and the English is
now adopted instead of the native language. I should not have named this
subject at all, had I not been aware that the missionaries themselves
still retain their former impressions, and that although they have
yielded to public opinion on this point, they have not done so from a
conviction of its utility.

The second point to which I referred,--the policy, or otherwise, of
having native establishments near a populous European settlement, is a
much more comprehensive question, and one which might admit, perhaps, of
some reasons on both