Having thus been engaged in the removal of the last of the natives to Flinders Island, I feel that it is incumbent on me to give a short account of the causes which led to it.  In the first place, history teaches us that whenever civilized man comes in contact with a savage race, the latter almost inevitably begins to decrease, and to approach by more or less gradual steps towards extinction.  Whether this catastrophe is the result of political, moral, or physical causes, the ablest writers have not been able to decide; and most men seem willing to content themselves with the belief that the event is in accordance with some mysterious dispensation of Providence; and the purest philanthropy can only teach us to alleviate their present condition, and to smooth, as it were, the pillow of an expiring people.  For my own part I am not willing to believe, that in this conflict of races, there is an absence of moral responsibility on the part of the whites; I must deny that it is in obedience to some all-powerful law, the inevitable operation of which exempts us from blame, that the depopulation of the countries we colonize goes on.

WAR OF EXTERMINATION.

There appear to me to be the means of tracing this national crime to the individuals who perpetrate it; and it is with the deepest sorrow that I am obliged to confess that my countrymen have not, in Tasmania, exhibited that magnanimity which has often been the prominent feature in their character.  They have sternly and systematically trampled on the fallen.  I have before remarked that they started with an erroneous theory, which they found to tally with their interests, and to relieve them from the burden of benevolence and charity.  That the aborigines were not men, but brutes, was their avowed opinion; and what cruelties flowed from such a doctrine!  It is not my purpose to enter into details; I will only add that the treatment of the poor captive native by her inhuman keeper was in accordance with the sentiments prevailing, at one time, in the colony, and would not have received the condemnation of public opinion.

The natural consequence of such conduct by the whites, commenced in the very infancy of the colony, was a system of frightful retaliation on the part of the natives.  These led to counter-reprisals, every year accumulating the debt of crime and vengeance on either hand, until the memory of the first provocation was lost, and a war of extermination, the success of which was, in the end, complete, began to be carried on.

ATTEMPTED CAPTURE OF NATIVES.

It was not until exasperation, on either side, rose to its highest, that measures were taken to prevent the complete destruction of the aborigines.  The first method selected was not characterized by prudence; being the result of the passionate counsels of the great body of colonists, who were smarting under evils entailed upon them by their own violent conduct.  As is natural in all these cases, they looked only