So much importance am I disposed to attach to this point that I do not hesitate to assert my full conviction that, whilst those tribes which are in communication with Europeans are allowed to execute their barbarous laws and customs upon one another, so long will they remain hopelessly immersed in their present state of barbarism: and, however unjust such a proceeding might at first sight appear, I believe that the course pointed out by true humanity would be to make them from the very commencement amenable to the British laws, both as regards themselves and Europeans; for I hold it to be imagining a contradiction to suppose that individuals subject to savage and barbarous laws can rise into a state of civilization which those laws have a manifest tendency to destroy and overturn.
9.

I have known many instances of natives who have been almost or quite civilized being compelled by other natives to return to the bush; more particularly girls who have been betrothed in their infancy and who, on approaching the years of puberty, have been compelled by their husbands to join them.
10.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact effect the institutions of a country produce upon the character of its inhabitants; but it may be readily admitted that, if two savage races of equal mental endowments, and with the same capacity for civilization, were subject to two distinct sets of laws, the one mild and favourable to the development of civilization, the other bloodthirsty and opposed to it, the former race might gradually be brought to a knowledge of Christianity and civilization, whilst precisely similar efforts made with regard to the latter might be attended with no beneficial result.
11.

Again, it would be unfair to consider the laws of the natives of Australia as any indication of the real character of this people; for many races who were at one period subject to the most barbarous laws have, since new institutions have been introduced amongst them, taken their rank among the civilized nations of the earth.
12.

To punish the aborigines severely for the violation of laws of which they are ignorant would be manifestly cruel and unjust; but to punish them in the first instance slightly for the violation of these laws would inflict no great injury on them, whilst by always punishing them when guilty of a crime, without reference to the length of period that had elapsed between its perpetration and their apprehension, at the same time fully explaining to them the measure of punishment that would await them in the event of a second commission of the same fault, would teach them gradually the laws to which they were henceforth to be amenable, and would show them that crime was always eventually, although it might be remotely, followed by punishment.
13.