And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson:
“Come,
bright Improvement! on the car of Time,
And
rule the spacious world from clime to clime.”
Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her civilization, and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality profanity, and her humanizing-not-destroying machinery, and her hundred-and-eighty death-rate, and everything is going along just as handsome!
But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the business. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
“What I am concerned
about is that we as a Christian nation should
wipe out these races
to enrich ourselves.”
And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of the early prophet:
“My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this
“1. It generally
demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka,
deprives him of his
citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted
to his home.
“2. It is
felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural
laborer in Queensland,
and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there.
“3. The whole
system is fraught with danger to Australia and the
islands on the score
of health.
“4. On social
and political grounds the continuance of the
Queensland Kanaka Labor
Traffic must be a barrier to the true
federation of the Australian
colonies.
“5. The Regulations
under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are
inadequate to prevent
abuses, and in the nature of things they must
remain so.
“6. The whole
system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel requires us to help the weak,
but the Kanaka is fleeced
and trodden down.
“7. The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a black man are of less value than those of a white man. And a Traffic that has grown out of ‘slave-hunting’ will certainly remain to the end not unlike its origin.”