September 28.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Ethical issues
Moral questions to consider.
Major moral questions underlie the history of Australian colonisation -
Were the Aborigines the true owners of Australia?
If so, were the British justified in taking possession of the continent?
Was it legitimate for them to use force when they met resistance?
Should they have provided compensation for those they dispossessed?
They are questions which still concern us. They were there in the beginning.
They concerned James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton and President of the Royal Society between 1764 and his death in 1768. He played a major role in promoting Cook's voyage into the southern oceans. On 10 August 1768 he wrote a long list of 'Hints offered to the consideration of Captain Cooke, Mr Bankes, Doctor Solander, and the other Gentlemen who go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour'. He paid particular attention to the 'natives of the several Lands where the Ship may touch' and offered advice to the mariners, exhorting them:
To exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the Natives of the several Lands where the Ships may touch.
To check the petulance of the Sailors and restrain the wanton use of Fire Arms.
To have it still in view that shedding the blood of those people is a crime of the highest nature: - They are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent Author, equally under his care with the most polished European; perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favor.
They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit. No European nation has a right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them without their voluntary consent.
Conquest over such people can never give just title: because they could never be the Aggressors.
They may naturally and justly attempt to repel intruders whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country.
Even if conflict broke out the native people should be treated with 'distinguished humanity' and considered as 'Lords of the Country'. [1]
T.C. Beaglehole, The Journals of Captain James Cook, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,, 1955, p.514.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp. xi-xii, 253 n.1.