This destroying principle is now at work in the colonies where races are decaying. And its results can only be diminished by assimilating the new conditions, involved in the change, as nearly as possible, so far as healthiness is concerned, to the open air activity to which the people have been for generations accustomed. These are the results of this inquiry. Defective in many particulars though they be, they are still sufficient to prove that, on the local authorities of the colonies, there rests a responsibility in the face of public opinion in Europe, of the very gravest kind. It is a matter for state interference. It is impossible to stand by, while races are disappearing, of whom it can be said that the “Australian is the finest model of the human proportions in muscular development,” that his “head might compare with an antique bust of a philosopher,” that his “perceptive faculties are peculiarly acute,” that he is an “apt learner,” and “possesses the most intense desire to imitate his more civilized brethren in almost every thing;” that the Australian aborigines are “possessed of mental power on a par with their brethren of the other races of man; that they are perhaps superior to the Negro and some of the more inferior divisions of the great human family;” that they have “keen perceptive faculties, with a considerable deficiency in their reflective faculties, and a certain want of steadiness of purpose in their characters which appears the great obstacle to be overcome in reclaiming them and bringing them within the pale of civilization and Christianity.” These statements are from a report on the subject, made by a select committee of the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858–9. In this report occurs the following passage, with which I conclude on account of its authority, appealing from its facts to the better feeling of the colonies, with the hope that the time is not far off when such a stigma as it affixes to the empire may be wiped away. “The great and almost unprecedented reduction in the {19} number of the Aborigines is to be attributed to the general occupation of the country by the white population; to vices acquired by contact with a civilized race, more particularly the indulgence in ardent spirits; and hunger, in consequence of the scarcity of game since the settlement of the colony; and, also in some cases, to cruelty and ill-treatment. The great cause, however, is apparently the inveterate propensity of the race to excessive indulgence in spirits, which it seems utterly impossible to eradicate. This vice is not only fatal, but leads to other causes which tend to shorten life.