food we eat. But we hold the man guilty of a shameful crime who in the exercise of his lawful mastery over the brutes inflicts on them unnecessary pain and suffering. And if we, by common consent, punish those who torture an animal, what plea have we to urge for the horrible brutality with which we assert our mastery over creatures lower in the scale of humanity than ourselves, but still men and women able to feel and suffer in the same manner as we do? In the form that our cruelty assumes, in our vices, we acknowledge their humanity, and yet we deny to them the plea for immunity from unnecessary suffering which we admit on behalf of the brutes. That immunity is the first claim we make on behalf of the blacks. We have argued, and our opponents have admitted, that our system of dealing with them leads to abuses of which the degree may be questioned but the existence cannot be denied. We ask for a reform, we are prepared to show that reform is possible, and there are witnesses coming forward in all parts of the colony to maintain the need for it and uphold its practicability. Is our demand an unreasonable one?
We hope that the present session of Parliament will not pass over without some practical effort being made in this direction, and some positive reform initiated. If politicians will not admit; the necessity for doing something on what some of our critics are fond of calling sentimental grounds, there is one very practical reason for action: Our whole northern coast invites settlement, and there are scores of rivers and bays where little groups of settlers might establish themselves. But everywhere the dread of the untamed blacks—almost untamable by anything short of extermination under our system—acts as a powerful deterent. Under a more humane and rational system this constant danger might be removed with comparative ease and speed. And, if neither the sentiment; of humanity nor the desire of freeing our settlers from a constant source of danger will influence our legislators, we have yet one more inducement to action to put before them. They have, we hope and believe, some regard for the good name of the colony, some desire to see it stand well in the estimation of their countrymen in the mother country. The statements we have made—the truth of which none know better than those who most loudly denounce them—have gone before the great tribunal of public opinion in the British empire. They may rest assured that those who like ourselves are determined to remove this foul blot; on the humanity of our race will not let the matter rest. Any enquiry made, except through the stereotyped official forms adopted by our police authorities to conceal the character of a branch of the service, can only result in the discovery that our allegations merely hint at the truth, which is much fouler than we have dared to depict it. This appeal to Cæsar will be pushed home, if justice and redress are denied by the Parliament of Queensland. We assure those well-meaning men who, having no personal knowledge on the subject, prefer to listen to the comforting assurances of the supporters of our system that we have drawn no exaggerated picture—that we have stated very real and shameful facts. It will be better, far better, for the neutral majority of the colonists to look into the matter for themselves, and voluntarily inaugurate a reform of the abuse, before both enquiry and reform are forced upon us by the indignation of our own people—of a nation that will not knowingly permit such wrong-doing, such base, cowardly, and brutal oppression as we practise on the aborigines of Queensland—Queenslander, July 31, 1880.
