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existence of a betting system as demordising as any lotteries
which ever were held. It is true that there are laws against
betting in public, which mve the national conscience in some
degree; but overyono is aware that the nation deliberately
ignores the existence of betting rings among its own aristocratic
governors, and does not make earnest efforts to suppress
the practice.
The English feel their superior virtue, again, in the matter
of slsvery. They set the world the example of abolishing
this odious thing; ths very name of slavery cannot be endured
in England. When it becarno known ‘that certain South Sea
Islanders were being kidnapped occasionally, and carried into
some sort of slavery in Queensland, the Government took
prompt and effectual measures against this abominable practice;
but when it was stated that the Australian aborigines
in the north of Queensland were being shot like kangaroos, or
poisoned wholesale by strychnine, one solitary member of parliament
wont so far as to ask the Government whether this was
true. The Government replied that they did not know, but
would make inquiries, and nothing more has been heard of the
matter to the present day. Accounts which I have heard of the
proceedings in the border districts of Queensland are simply
droadful. These accounts may or may not be true,* and I
should not like to vouch for them; but the point is that
English society, though it runs wild about surrendering a
fugitive slave, has never cared cvcn to ascertain whether or
not scores of the Australian natives are shot like kangaroos,
or poisoned by strychnine, like the native dogs.
The most remarkable, however, of all such cases of dis-
Since writing the above I have found that these statements are
to e great extant confirmed in a work just published npon Qneenslend,
Med ‘I The Queen of the Oolonies.” A squatter destroyed a whole
tribe! of blsoks by giving them a bag of flour poisoned by stryohnine.
This crime is comparable with that of Thomassen. No attempt was
made to punish him. Another case, in which two blacks were intentionally
poisoned by strychnine, is also mentioned. The shooting and
poisoning of natives &re mid to have ceased in the last few years ; but
ought we to be ~atiafied by vagne and unsupported assertions in a
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