Brutality at Swan River, 1837

It is a truth which is painful to relate, that in the 19th Century Englishmen and protestants, shall be so cruel and hunt after the aborigines like after a game, the innocent child is not spared; they are shot in the night time when peaceably asleep in their huts; when seeking food for their children, in one word the Monks of the Middle Age would blush if they would be accused of such cruelties which some of the settlers perpetrate.

Dr L Guistiniari to London Missionary Society, 26 October 1837, quoted, FG Clarke, The Land of Contrarieties: British Attitudes to the Australian Colonies 1828-1855, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1977, p. 114)

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