that we are IN JUSTICE BOUND
to supply him with food in any of those parts of the country that we
occupy, and to do this, too, WITHOUT demanding or requiring any other
consideration from him than we have ALREADY received when we TOOK FROM
HIM his possessions and his hunting grounds. It may be all very proper to
get him to work a little if we can--and, perhaps, that MIGHT follow in
time, but we have no right to force him to a labour he is unused to, and
WHICH HE NEVER HAD TO PERFORM IN HIS NATURAL STATE, whilst we have a
right to supply him with what he has been accustomed to, BUT OF WHICH WE
HAD DEPRIVED HIM--FOOD.

If in our relations with the Aborigines we wish to preserve a friendly
and bloodless intercourse; if we wish to have their children at our
schools to be taught and educated; if we hope to bring the parents into a
state that will better adapt them for the reception of christianity and
civilization; or if we care about staying the rapid and lamentable
ravages which a contact with us is causing among their tribes, we must
endeavour to do so, by removing, as far as possible, all sources of
irritation, discontent, or suffering. We must adopt a system which may at
once administer to their wants, and at the same time, give to us a
controlling influence over them; such as may not only restrain them from
doing what is wrong, but may eventually lead them to do what is right--an
influence which I feel assured would be but the stronger and more lasting
from its being founded upon acts of justice and humanity. It is upon
these principles that I have based the few suggestions I am going to
offer for the improvement of our policy towards the natives. I know that
by many they will be looked upon as chimerical or impracticable, and I
fear that more will begrudge the means necessary to carry them into
effect; but unless something of the kind be done--unless some great and
radical change be effected, and some little compensation made for the
wrongs and injuries we inflict--I feel thoroughly satisfied that all we
are doing is but time and money lost, that all our efforts on behalf of
the natives are but idle words--voces et preterea nihil--that things will
still go on as they have been going on, and that ten years hence we shall
have made no more progress either in civilizing or in christianizing them
than we had done ten years ago, whilst every day and every hour is
tending to bring about their certain and total extinction.