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so often danced in wild and grotesque but innocent mirth, uncontaminated with the Bacchanalian fume or the lascivious waltz; those stars, which have so often guided them in their trackless path through the lonely desert; yon Sun, who has so often called them from the unfurnished bower, where, mantled by the shades of night, they enjoyed a healthful repose, to the ramble and the chase; the sea, whose roaring billows, revelling from age to age in solitary grandeur, have poured shoals of provision into their rivers; the lakes whose shaded shores have bred, and whose placid bosoms have borne for them myriads of gamboling fowl; the hills that have echoed to their song, the valleys that have sheltered them from the howling tempest, the plains over which they have attempted to flee, and on which they have fallen under the fire of the pursuing foe,—all nature, Rachel-like weeping for her children, will at the last day proclaim your guilt amidst assembled worlds. But dream not of concealment till then. The fate of Cain will be yours, Ye may enjoy the blood-stained spoils of an innocent, unoffending people; but ye cannot bury the crime ye perpetrate in the graves of your victims, nor escape the eyes of Him who has drawn the lines of demarkation around the inheritance of every nation. Your fallen countenances will betray you. The voice of your brother's blood will cry from the ground where it is shed. The land of your fathers will abhor you; and the page of history will brand you to the latest posterity with the guilt of the unparalleled deed.
Choose for yourselves. If ye determine upon a war of extermination, civilized nations will be mute with astonishment at the madness of a policy so uncalled for, so demoniacal. Spain, throughout the wide desolations of her American empire, will groan forth a warning note; even the merciless Turk will point the finger of scorn at you; and Greece and Rome will rise from the tomb to sit in judgment upon you. When your doom is passed, your own children, for whose sakes ye have invaded the country, will join with the disinherited offspring of those ye have slain to pour a flood of curses on your memory.
If ye have any feelings of compunction, before the die be cast, let the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia live. Ye have taken from them all they had on earth. Be content with this, and do not add to the crime of plundering them that of taking their lives. Let them live that they may be put in possession of a title to a better country—a country where the invading foe dare not enter.
But if ye have steeled your hearts against remonstrance—if, in contempt of the most touching reflections and reckless of
