April 27.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Daring to criticise British policies
“...that unfortunate race, who have no other crime (except they were born in the Country, which we have taken from them)…”
The Quaker missionary James Backhouse left Australia early in 1838. On the voyage from Swan River to Mauritius he met fellow passenger Dr Louis Giustiniani. When he arrived in Port Louis he was introduced to Robert Menli Lyon who had left Western Australia a year or two earlier and was the professor of Greek and English at the Royal College. Backhouse took an interest in the two men because they had promoted the Aboriginal cause in the Swan River colony. Both had suffered as a consequence and were in a sense political exiles. In a letter to the great British humanitarian Thomas Buxton, Backhouse mentioned their experiences and explained how both men had been subjected to 'great contumely' because of their views. [1]
...Giustiniani [was] an exotic – a sophisticated Italian convert to Anglicanism who was denounced for daring to criticise British policies and manners...he became involved in the colony's petty politics, siding with the democratic faction associated with the Swan River Guardian, in opposition to the oligarchs and their mouthpiece, the Perth Gazette. He became a marked man...The editor of the [Swan River Guardian] observed that the government officials and their allies 'yelp after Dr Giustiniani like a pack of hounds'. [2]
When Giustiniani took up the Aboriginal cause the denunciation intensified. He began his crusade when early in 1837 the editor of the Perth Gazette declared that it was a prevalent opinion that 'forcible measures' would be required to subdue the clans resident in the York district, that 'a second Pinjarra' was called for, evoking memories of the bloody punitive expedition of October 1834. In a letter to the Guardian Giustiniani declared that what the opposing paper was advocating was 'an entire extirpation of that unfortunate race, who have no other crime (except they were born in the Country, which we have taken from them)'. [3] He challenged his opponents to read and accept the principles which the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, had laid down in a dispatch to Governor D'Urban of the Cape of Good Hope in January 1836 dealing with conflict between settlers and indigenous tribes. 'Whether we contend with a civilized or barbarous enemy' Glenelg declared, 'the gratuitous aggravation of the horrors of war, on the plea of vengeance or retribution, or on any similar ground, is alike indefensible'. [4] It was a particularly pointed text to deliver in Australia in the 1830s.
Extracts from the Letters of James Backhouse, 2 vols, 3rd ed, London 1838, 2, part v, p.55.
Swan River Guardian, 12 Jan. 1837.
ibid., 2 Mar. 1837
ibid., 27 Apr. 1837
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Whispering In Our Hearts, pp. 70, 84-85, 257 n.1, 258 n. 33, 34, 35.
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Wide reporting of Indigenous attacks but downplaying of European aggression and poisoning.
If European aggressions on Yorke Peninsula were reported in Adelaide newspapers, they were downplayed while the ‘deeply provocative’ acts of ‘the blacks’ were emphasised. Similarly, the murders of colonists James Beevor and Mrs Easton on Eyre Peninsula in May 1849 were widely reported while the (earlier) poisoning of at least five Aboriginal people in the same district by shepherd Patrick Dwyer was not brought to the public’s attention until months later.
Acknowledgment: Skye Krichauff, “The murder of Melaityappa and how Judge Mann succeeded in making ‘the administration of justice palatable’ to South Australian colonists in 1849”, Aboriginal History, Vol. 41 (2017) p. 28.