Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be truly friends of his.  They would give him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal, they had no sympathy with him, he could not have married a white woman, he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, he never could have been either a husband or a father if he had lived apart from his own people; where amongst the whites was he to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? what white man would have been his brother? what white woman his sister?  He had two courses left open to him:  he could either have renounced all natural ties and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites, ever a servant, ever an inferior being; or he could renounce civilization and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his youth.  He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done the same.

SUGGESTIONS ON THE MEANS OF PROMOTING THEIR CIVILIZATION.

The information I had collected regarding the Aborigines of Western Australia encouraged me to address a report to Lord John Russell, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, embracing the general principles which I considered would best promote the civilization of the race.  This report having been approved, copies of it were sent to the Governors of the Australian and New Zealand settlements, and with a transcript of it I shall now conclude my work:*

(Footnote. [This letter has subsequently been printed for Parliament at page 43 of the Sessional Paper Number 311 of 1841, the Colonization of New Zealand.  ED.])

Mauritius, June 4 1840.

MY LORD,

I have the honour to submit to your Lordship a report upon the best means of promoting the civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, which report is founded upon a careful study of the language, prejudices, and traditional customs of this people.

Feeling anxious to render this report as complete as possible I have delayed transmitting it to your Lordship until the latest possible period; portions of it have in the interim been laid before some of the local governments in Australia, and a few of the suggestions contained in it have been already acted upon.

But as so small a portion of Australia is as yet occupied, and the important task of so conducting the occupation of new districts as to benefit the aborigines in the greatest possible degree yet remains to be performed, I have thought that it would be agreeable to your Lordship to be put in possession of all such facts relating to this interesting subject as are at present known.

None but general principles, equally applicable to all portions of the continent of Australia, are embodied in this report; and I am particularly solicitous that that portion of it which commences at the 21st paragraph should receive consideration from your Lordship, as the whole machinery required to bring this plan into operation now exists in the different Australian colonies, and its full development would entail no expense whatever upon either the Home or local Governments.