Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
Do they know, that when these holy and victorious men have thus
conquered all the difficulties they calculated upon, and seen, by
God’s blessing, the savage reclaimed, the idolater convinced, the
wilderness turned into a garden, and arts, commerce, and refined
life rising around them, a more terrible enemy has appeared in the
shape of European, and chiefly English corruption? That out of
that England—whence they had carried such beneficent gifts, such
magnificent powers of good—have come pouring swarms of lawless
vagabonds worse than the Spaniards, and worse than the Buccaneers of
old, and have threatened all their works with destruction? Do they
know that in South Africa, where Smidt, Vanderkemp, Philip, Read,
Kay and others, have done such wonders, and raised the Hottentot,
once pronounced the lowest of the human species, and the Caffre, not
long since styled the most savage, into the most faithful Christians
and most respectable men; and in those beautiful islands that Ellis
and Williams have described in such paradisiacal colours, that
roving crews of white men are carrying everywhere the most horrible
demoralization, that every shape of European crime is by them exhibited
to the astonished people—murder, debauchery, the most lawless
violence in person and property; and that the liquid fire which, from
many a gin-shop in our own great towns, burns out the industry, the
providence, the moral sense, and the life of thousands of our own
people, is there poured abroad by these monsters with the same fatal
effect? Whoever does not know this, is ignorant of one of the most
fearful and gigantic evils which beset the course of human improvement,
and render abortive a vast amount of the funds so liberally supplied,
and the labours so nobly undergone, in the cause of Christianity.
Whoever does not know this, should moreover refer to the Parliamentary
Report of 1837, on the Aboriginal Tribes.
The limits which I have devoted to a brief history of the treatment
of these tribes by the European nations have been heavily pressed
upon by the immense mass of our crimes and cruelties, and I must now
necessarily make a hasty march across the scenes here alluded to; but
enough will be seen to arouse astonishment, and indicate the necessity
of counter-agencies of the most impulsive kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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