Dr. Jeanneret refers to the treatment of the Aborigines' wives as "evils aggravated by their entire inability to comprehend how to obtain redress and protection."
It was a remarkable acknowledgment of Governor Arthur's, in a despatch home in 1835: "On the first occupation of the colony, it seems a great oversight that a treaty was not, at that time, made with the Natives, and such compensation given to the chiefs as they would have deemed a fair equivalent for what they surrendered."
A few illustrations of the practical working of the law may be cited. When Jack Congo was tried in 1836 for the murder of Jabengi, the plea was entered, "An Aborigine, and not subject to law, as not recognising law or king." The Chief Justice turned to the Attorney-General, and asked what he would do. The other replied that he did not know, and must consider of it. When Mr. Martin Montgomery, the distinguished writer, spoke of the execution of Black Tommy at Sydney, in 1827, he said, "I believed the man to be innocent, and I, therefore, attended his trial to aid in the defence of a man who knew not a word of our language, and owed no obedience to our laws." Several Blacks, known to be murderers of parties in Van Diemen's Land, were not tried for their crimes when captured, and removed to Flinders Island. It was felt, rather than declared, that the crime was not murder in our accepted sense of that word.
The Report of the Colonization Commissions in 1840 to the House of Commons contains this sentence: "To subject savage tribes to the penalties of laws with which they are unacquainted, for offences which they, very possibly, regard as acts of justifiable retaliation for invaded rights, is a proceeding indefensible, except under circumstances of urgent and extreme necessity." The strong language from the pen of Mr. Howitt would have lost its sting had this act of justice been performed. "We have actually turned out the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land," quoth he, "because we saw that it was a 'goodly heritage,' and have comfortably sate down in it ourselves; and the best justification that we can set up is, that if we did not pass one general sentence of transportation upon them, we must burn them up with our liquid fire, poison them with the diseases with which our vices and gluttony have covered us, thick as the quills on a porcupine,
