Australia, Cape Colony, and America. The laws of civilized and Christian nations acknowledge the abstract principle; as in England, a husband cannot punish a man who has desecrated his domestic hearth, and cursed him and his children with a life-long sorrow, otherwise than by charging the villain with injuring his property, and so procuring damages for loss in his goods! When woman has her real rights in Britain, men may speak more freely in condemnation of customs elsewhere.
The character of the union between the two races influenced the morals of the parties in question. A mésalliance without respect to residence is never one calculated to do otherwise than deteriorate; but that attending habitual companionship, though for no determined period, is deprived of much of its wrong, at least; and in certain instances may be the occasion of even the moral elevation of a person. But it is not merely a question of the moral state of the individuals, but of effect upon the offspring. The fruits of concubinage are not to be envied anywhere. The experience and poems of Savage illustrate the sad tale. The sins of the fathers have been bitterly visited upon the children. The unknown author of the apocryphal "Wisdom of Solomon" declares that "the imperfect branches shall be broken off, their fruit unprofitable, not ripe to eat, yea, meet for nothing. For children begotten of unlawful beds are witnesses of wickedness against their parents in their trial." Elsewhere he refers to such seed, and exclaims, "Horrible is the end of the unrighteous generation." Alas! this is the cry of the historian when he speaks of the Tasmanian half-castes.
These unhappy products of intercourse in the Bush, the marriage of the hour, if permitted to see the light, seldom lived long in the tribe. The mother, to conceal her shame, or repenting of her act, would often prevent the birth by abortion; or, if unsuccessful, would destroy the infant upon its entrance into the world. If the philoprogenitive instinct led her to spare her child, the husband or brother might avenge the family wrongs by a fatal blow.
Dr. Broca is mistaken in thinking that "the murder of the Australian mulattoes is a vulgar tale," and that the destruction of half-castes by the Natives is unnatural. Dr. Story tells me that he never knew a half-caste in the tribe with which he was acquainted in Tasmania. So others have said of the wandering
