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Melbourne Port Phillip
15th October 1839

Sir,
In accordance with your Honor’s
desire I proceed to make a few remarks
relative to my late employment as
Government Agent for the civilization
of the Aborigines

Your Honor I believe is
already acquainted with the nature of my
Instructions as received from Sir Richard Bourke,
it is therefore unnecessary for me to dwell
upon them further than to remark that Sir
Richard’s ultimate view appeared to be (had
his plan in embryo at all promised success)
the intermixture by marriage of the Aborigines
among the lower order of our Countrymen as the
only likely means of raising the former from their
present degraded and benighted state. Utopian
as this scheme now appears to me I must confess
I was sanguine enough to contemplate in prospect
the final realization of such hopes with this
difference, that whilst the Governor forbid the

To His Honor
C J La Trobe Esre

[Annotation: top]

No 39/96
19th October 1839
Mr. Langhorn
The aborigines

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slightest restraints to be placed upon the movements
of the Natives the children not excepted, I contended
that the only likely mode under God of effecting
the desired object, would be to promote with some
degree of compulsion if necessary, the partial migration
of the Natives from one district to another so distant
as to leave faint hopes of return and thus oblige
them to have recourse to their white friends for
protection, and render them more available, to the
Missionary or Instructors, who should be placed
among them.

On arriving at Port Phillip
in July 1837 the spot where I am at present
resident was approved of by His Excellency
Governor Bourke as suitable for Missionary purposes
and although I have from time to time pointed
out the unfitness of the situation from its vicinity
to the Township of Melbourne & proposed removal,
I never was able to obtain permission to that effect.
I do not indeed attribute the failure of the Mission
to this cause, because I am now entirely of opinion
that a fixed Establishment for the civilization of
the Aborigines in their Native districts - where their
wandering and unsettled habits are so diametricelly
opposed to [crossed out: the so] civilized life, cannot possibly
humanly speaking meet with success. That they
have Intellect which when released from the shackles
of a Savage life is equally powerful with our own few
will deny - So the fact that many of them evince a