before being permitted freedom by the females. A payment has elsewhere been enforced, as a recognition of the principle. It has been said with derision that the formality was of so trifling a nature that the virtue must be weak indeed. To this it may be replied, that the Scotch law of marriage, at least, is not very formidable in provisions, and yet satisfies an otherwise particular people. It is neither safe nor kind to pronounce upon the relative chastity of countries, until we know the principles upon which they form their moral code. That which was quite correct in the days of the patriarchs would subject one to legal penalties in Europe. The debasement of the fair sex, in all periods and climes, has made the question of chastity one of grave difficulty. In almost all places and times it is only a question of agreement between parents, and the rate of barter.
As the Tasmanians had no elaborate ceremonies before marriage, and as their women were, as in Europe, the property of the men, we must be discreet in our judgment of their acts. The Frenchmen of 1792 and 1802 found them proof against their seductions, and deaf to their voice of love. In this respect they were, as the Papuan race generally upon first acquaintance with the Whites, different in their grade of virtue to the more civilized South Sea Islanders. The shyness of the tribes, their early suspicion of the colonists, their speedy experience of the heartless cruelty and selfishness of such associations, tended to discourage contact and diminish vice. But as some, by the force of circumstances, were brought in proximity with settlers, the barrier was occasionally broken down.
In the chapters of "Cruelties" and "Sealers," some details may be read proving force to have been one prominent means, employed by unscrupulous men to overcome the virtue of the women of the forest. But desire for the curious and palatable food of the new-comers, or for the bright and pretty things they possessed, exercised a charm over feminine fancy in Van Diemen's Land as similar temptations do elsewhere. A third and more humiliating cause of these alliances may be found in the enforcement of the rights of property; for husbands, after the degradation of a pseudo-civilization, are sometimes found ready to barter the virtue of a wife for a piece of tobacco, a morsel of bread, or a silver sixpence. This is well known to residents even now in the vicinity of European settlements in
