Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/503

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In June 1814 Macquaria notilied his regret at un- happy conflicts at Bringelly, Airds, Appm, and the mountains; . . . *'the first personal attacks were made on the part of the settlers and of their servants/' He had strong assurances from natives, "that unless they be shot at or wantonly attacked (as in the case which occurred lately at Appin, wherein a native woman and two children were in the dead hour of night, and %Yhilst sleeping, inhumanly put to death), they will conduct themselves in the same peaceable manner as they had done previous to the present conflict." The Governor would protect and decide between alL The Order was to he read in the churches. Macquarie's appeal was vain. If he had acted as it was in his power to act he might have given effect to his wishes. In 1814 John Macarthur was kept in exile from Australia by the desire of the government, and in 1817 Macquarie himself sent away a Roman Catholic priest because he could not produce a written permission to immi- grate to the colony. The deportation of those who butchered children at Appin would have been a less startling exercisa i of power than the imprisonment and deportation of the priest. Macquarie did not conceal the facts from the Secre- tary of State, He wrote (May 1814) » that in consequence of ** an aggression in which one soldier and tliree other Europeans were killed — '*! despatched a amaU niilitary party to the disturbed diatritit, oa whose approach the natives retired without Iwiiig attacked or sufl'eriag in any degree for their tetnerity. In the courae of this business I have caused Ltiqniry to be made into the tnotivea that might have produced it, and from thence I have learned that gome idle and ill-dispoaed Eyro£jean» had taken liberties witJi their women, and had alao treacherously attacked a woman and her two child reo whdat sleeping, and thia un- provoked cruelty produced that retaliation whereby persons perfectly inno- cent of the crime lost their lives. Having had their revenge in the way they always seek for it, I am not at all apprehensive of their making any further attacks on the settlers, nnlesa provoked as before by insults and cruelties." In a later despatch (Oct. 1814) he enlarged upon the good qualities of the natives. They had never been cannibals, and he was anxious to establish an inBtitutioo for their benefit. While Marsden was on the sea (bearing a ^YwA"&TCi.'^lv:5^^^ trom Macguarie denouncing all wrongB dou^ .q X^^^fcK>tve*