. Handt to have made but little progress, as
neither children nor adults can be persuaded to stay for any length of
time; while that at Lake Macquarie had, at the date of your despatch,
ceased to exist, from the extinction or removal of the natives formerly
in its vicinity. The Wesleyan Missionaries at Port Phillip,
notwithstanding an expenditure in 1841 of nearly 1,300 pounds, acknowledge
that they are 'far from being satisfied with the degree of success which
has attended our labours,' and 'that a feeling of despair sometimes takes
possession of our minds, and weighs down our spirits,' arising from the
frightful mortality among the natives.

"In the face of such representations, which can be attributed neither to
prejudice nor misinformation, I have great doubts as to the wisdom or
propriety of continuing the missions any longer. I fear that to do so
would be to delude ourselves with the mere idea of doing something; which
would be injurious to the natives, as interfering with other and more
advantageous arrangements, and unjust to the colony, as continuing an
unnecessary and profitless expenditure.

"To this conclusion I had been led by your despatch, No. 50, but
anticipating that the protectorate system would promise more beneficial
results, I postponed my instructions in the matter until I should receive
some further information.

"Your despatches of the 16th and 20th May have furnished that further
information, although they contradict the hopes which I had been led to
entertain. After the distinct and unequivocal opinion announced by Mr. La
Trobe, supported as it is by the expression of your concurrence, I cannot
conceal from myself that the failure of the system of protectors has been
at least as complete as that of the missions.

"I have no doubt that a portion of this ill success, perhaps a large
portion, is attributable to the want of sound judgment and zealous
activity on the part of the assistant protectors. Thus the practice of
collecting large bodies of the natives in one spot, and in the immediate
vicinity of the settlers, without any previous provision for their
subsistence or employment, was a proceeding of singular indiscretion.
That these people would commit depredations rather than suffer want, and
that thus ill-blood, and probably collisions, would be caused between
them and the settlers, must, I should have thought, have occurred to any
man of common observation; and no one could have better re