By the 1830s concern was building in Britain about the treatment and welfare of indigenous people in British colonies. The Colonial Office received worrying reports of violent conflict on the frontier in Australia, particularly with the Black War in Van Diemen’s Land, and sketchy accounts of events from Governor Benjamin D’Urban in the Cape Colony which downplayed mistreatment of San and Khoekhoe people and threats of war with the Xhosa. These reports caught the attention of a network of activists often described as humanitarians, or evangelicals. This network had been active in the earlier movement around the abolition of slavery, which was achieved in 1833. The activists were evangelical Christians or Quakers, and one of their prominent leaders was the parliamentarian Thomas Fowell Buxton. Attwood describes him as “the lynchpin of their network” and points to his close personal connections with the Colonial Office, in particular with the consecutive ministers in the period, Thomas Spring Rice, Lord Glenelg and Sir George Grey (Attwood 2009, 62-3). The humanitarians obtained key information about activities in the colonies through their well-placed contacts among missionaries working in the colonies, many very critical of the mistreatment of indigenous people that they observed in remote parts of the empire.
61
Buxton and his supporters successfully agitated for a parliamentary inquiry into the treatment of indigenous peoples in the colonies, known as the Select Committee on Aborigines (the Buxton Committee). This inquiry has received considerable attention in historical accounts of colonial policies towards Indigenous Australians in recent years (eg Reynolds 1987) but historians of the period increasingly emphasise that the Buxton Committee was not representative of the British policy over the longer term, and was in fact the product of a unusual confluence of personalities and events (eg Attwood 2009 and 2013; Elbourne 2003 and 2009). As Elbourne observes, “The 1835-36 Select Committee was the contingent product of political circumstances that would not again align in the same manner, as the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 abolition of slavery, among other things, created a window of opportunity for well-connected abolitionist leaders, such as Buxton, with a perceived populist base, briefly to influence colonial policy towards indigenous peoples” (Elbourne 2003, 8). The inquiry nevertheless provides a significant insight into the frames which were emerging around indigenous rights and welfare at a critical point in British colonial history, and these frames proved to be more durable in the Australian colonies than they were perhaps in London.
The Select Committee on Aborigines received evidence in 1835 and reported in 1836 and 1837. A total of 46 witnesses gave evidence before the committee, though very few of these were from Australian colonies, and none of these were indigenous. Buxton and his associates did receive personal advice from influential colonial figures from colonies on the eastern side of the Australian continent, such as attorney Saxe Bannister, missionary Lancelot Threlkeld and Governor Arthur. Membership of the committee included a number of sympathetic humanitarians, including allies and relatives of Buxton, notably his son-in-law Andrew Johnston and another relative by marriage Joseph Pease (Elbourne 2003, 9; Laidlaw 2004). Despite Buxton’s role as the public face of the committee process, he was actively but secretly supported by several women in Buxton’s immediate family, notably his daughter Priscilla and his cousin Anna Gurney. These women were instrumental in the agitation for the inquiry, writing parliamentary speeches, and maintaining regular correspondence with informants in the colonies. During the inquiry itself, they assisted with writing questions, conducting background research, selecting witnesses, and writing the final report (Laidlaw 2004, Elbourne 2009). Their strong Christian beliefs, and experience in supporting the earlier anti-slavery campaign as well as campaigns to support the poor in Britain, very much shaped their approach and conclusions with respect to indigenous people in the far-flung colonies.
As an evaluation of colonial policy and implementation, the Buxton Committee was clearly driven by the values and concerns of its instigators, in particular a Protestant Christian concentration on the importance of conversion as essential to the salvation of indigenous peoples subjected to the degradation of colonialism (Elbourne 2009). As the title of its report indicates, the report expressed
62
the policy objectives for indigenous peoples as being “due observance of Justice and the protection of their Rights; to promote the spread of Civilization among them, and to lead them to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian Religion” (cited in Elbourne 2003, 10).
This evangelical focus on conversion was aimed at both Aboriginal people and settlers, including the convicts and working class sailors, whalers, and others whose morality was deemed to be wanting. O’Brien (2011, 1) uncovers the “mixture of religious impulses that informed humanitarian thought: exhortation to justice, charity, restitution, atonement and edification were entwined with biblical narratives of banishment, judgement and the doctrine of the elect”. Many of the ideas had been earlier applied to the British working classes, and the poor, by the humanitarians in the campaigns around the amendments to the Poor Law in 1832, with the shift towards “indoor” rather than “outdoor relief”. As Amanda Barry observes, the humanitarians had been concerned with “civilising and ‘improving’ projects amongst British working classes in the midst of the Industrial Revolution… As these policies were transferred to colonial locations, similar anxieties about morality, decency and Christianity characterised discussion of Indigenous ‘problems’ as had attended debates about Britain’s working class” (Barry 2008, 412).
This attitude within the humanitarian network points to its very specific social class origins, which also affected the values and remedies considered in the inquiry. Elbourne notes the class-based assumptions which underpin the Buxton Committee inquiry and report, and observes that “extensive white settlement compelled upper-class bureaucrats and activists to think about whether working- class settlers were adequate agents of colonialism” (Elbourne 2003, 7). Laidlaw (2004) describes the Buxton family as “middle class and comfortably off, though not extremely wealthy”, but observes their engagement in philanthropic causes, benefiting from relatively high levels of education and access to information and campaign activities with others of similar class and religious backgrounds. The physical and social distance between those evaluating colonial policy and those implementing it and affected by it was profound, and this certainly affected the report’s reception in the colonies.
The Buxton report linked moral failures of individuals, settlers or colonised, on the empire’s frontier to the virtue of the British nation as a whole. In the view of the report’s authors, Britain had a particular duty to exercise virtue in expanding its empire. As the report argues:
The British empire has been singly blessed by Providence, and her eminence, her strength, her wealth, her prosperity, her intellectual, her moral and her religious advantages, are so many reasons for peculiar obedience to the laws of Him who guides the destinies of nations. These were given for some higher purpose than commercial prosperity and military renown. (Select Committee 1836 p76)
63
As with many evaluation exercises, the Buxton Committee was obliged to take into account political interests and government receptivity in drafting its final report. The Committee was initially very critical of the behaviour of colonial officers in the Cape Colony, having received its evidence from missionaries, rather than colonial authorities, but it was forced to delay, and amend, its report in order to take into account additional official evidence from the Cape. The Colonial Office was also reluctant to accept embarrassing criticisms of the government at a time of political instability, with King William IV on his deathbed, and the most strident criticisms of the Cape policies were removed in order to avoid controversy (Laidlaw 2004, 5). It is clear that the British government was under considerable pressure also as a result of lobbying by private companies and individuals seeking to profit from colonising new territories in Australia and New Zealand, unhindered by undue moral concern over the welfare of the indigenous people (Hunter 2012, 82). As Laidlaw explains, “the final report did represent a compromise, its recommendations accordingly too vague and too general for the government to feel obliged to implement them” (Laidlaw 2004, 19-20).
The Buxton Committee made a number of recommendations which are relevant to the policy around Indigenous land. Firstly, the Committee noted the clear conflict of interest between settlers and local indigenous populations with respect to the protection of the indigenous population. It therefore suggested that this responsibility should fall to the executive (the Governor of the colony, under the direction of the Colonial Office in London) rather than the local parliament, as it would not be “ministering to all popular prejudices” (Select Committee 1836, 77). This was in fact already “official practice of the time”, with the strength of metropolitan control from the Colonial Office through the Governors in the colonies (McHugh 2004, 132). It would certainly have been a recommendation which suited the Colonial Office, especially in the context of their dissatisfaction with the performance of D’Urban in the Cape Colony. The centralised control was ceded within two decades, however, due to costs and perceived failure in effectiveness, and in Australia most of the colonies were granted self-government in the 1850s (McHugh 2004, 133).
The Buxton Committee also argued that attempts to purchase land or formulate treaties with indigenous people should be avoided, as such agreements were compromised by the unequal power relations between the two parties (Select Committee 1836, 80; see also Attwood 2009, 98). Allowing such agreements would also be tantamount to retrospectively recognising the sovereignty of indigenous inhabitants of all British colonies, and this would jeopardise the status of all existing colonies established under the authority of the British Crown (McHugh 2004; Banner 2007; Attwood 2009). This policy had already been adopted by the Colonial Office with respect to John Batman and his attempt to sign a treaty with the Kulin people in the Port Phillip colony in 1835, and was also applied in the new colonies in South Australia and Western Australia. The signing of the Treaty of
64
Waitangi with Maori leaders in New Zealand in 1840 was an exception rather than an example to be followed.
Significantly, the Committee recommended that a sufficient portion of the revenue of all colonies be dedicated “to provide for the religious instruction and for the protection of the survivors of the tribes to which the lands comprised in that Colony formerly belonged” (Select Committee 1836, 79). The Committee based this recommendation on the observation that:
Although it be true that the land in our Colonies has derived the greater part of its exchangeable value from the capital and the labour employed in the cultivation of it, yet, even in its most rude and wild state, that land is demonstrably worth a very large amount of money… It requires no argument to show that we thus owe to the natives a debt, which will be but imperfectly paid by charging the Land Revenue of each of these Provinces with whatever expenditure is necessary for the instruction of the adults, the education of their youth, and the protection of them all. (Select Committee 1836, 79) This explicit recognition of the prior indigenous ownership of the land has created considerable interest among historians. Reynolds (1987) uses the report to argue that Indigenous rights to land were recognised from the earliest stages of colonisation, implying a cause for compensation and restitution in the present. However, there is little consensus on this aspect of the Buxton report among historians. Attwood observes that Buxton’s overriding interest was in protecting the civil rights of indigenous people, rather than conceding their ownership of the land, and he thus placed a much stronger emphasis on the duty of the British settlers to spread civilisation and Christianity as a means of protecting their welfare (Attwood 2013, 59-60). Such an approach not only reflected Christian and humanitarian values; it would provide longer-term security for the settlers, and would protect the reputation and image of the British Empire.
This approach is also consistent with McHugh’s depiction of the notion of Crown guardianship as a key element of legal doctrine during this period. As he explains, “imperial officials believed that governmental power was to be exercised as to protect and guard the non-Christian people until such time as they could achieve full political equality with the Crown’s natural-born subjects. In the meanwhile… these vulnerable people were under a special species of Crown protection or guardianship” (McHugh 2004, 131). Having conceded collective ownership over the land, the appropriate response from the Buxton Committee’s perspective was thus not to restore land to those who had lost it, but to assert the Crown’s exclusive and closely supervised prerogative to purchase land in future, and to protect the natives by assisting them to make the transition to “civilisation” and Christianity, through instruction and education. The assimilationist assumptions, combined with an obvious paternalism, are easier to understand when contrasted with the only
65
other alternatives which seemed available to the colonists at the time, slavery or complete extermination (Hunter 2012, 95).
The meaning given to prior ownership of the land was also limited, and this is best understood in the context of the theory of stadial history, widely accepted in that period, which depicted human progress through stages of development, “hunting, pastoralism, agriculture and commerce”, giving increasing importance to property and exclusive ownership (Attwood 2013, 57). McHugh (2004, 122) observes the prevalence of stadial thinking in the witness statements to the Buxton Committee, as witnesses sought to position the indigenous people in the various colonies at different points on the inevitable progression, justifying their treatment in terms of the progress they had made, or were making. Stadial theory was also widely accepted in Australia as a dominant “colonial ideology” (Belmessous 2011, 12). The colonists then based their justification of their usurpation of the indigenous lands on the idea that property ownership was irrelevant to an economy based on hunting, where all land was deemed to be common land. Attwood quotes the South Australia Commissioners (of the Colonisation Commission) who expressed a widespread view to the Colonial Office that “In the colonisation of Australia, it has been invariably assumed as an established fact that the unlocated tribes have not arrived at that stage of social improvement in which a proprietary right to the soil exists” (Attwood 2013, 71). Their lands were thus labelled “waste and unoccupied”.
This understanding of stadial history informed the pragmatism with which the Buxton Committee and the Colonial Office viewed the ongoing dispossession of indigenous people. Implicit in the Buxton report is the recognition that the colonisation of the new territories in the British Empire was not going to be rescinded. The potential economic value of the land and its produce for the Empire was clearly enormous. Furthermore, the colonies had been established with a founding principle of Crown ownership of all land, or pre-emption, and settler grants or purchases were to be made with respect to the Crown alone. As Attwood observes, the path dependency here was already strong, with many vested interests involved: “By the time the British approved the founding of a colony in South Australia in the mid-1830s it had been acting for nearly fifty years as though it was the only owner of the land. This was the basis of every settler’s title, and it would have been extremely difficult to overturn this arrangement” (Attwood 2013, 82; see also Banner 2005). Colonial Secretary Glenelg recognised this in his dispatch to Governor Bourke in 1836 concerning his reluctance to allow treaties to be negotiated as Batman had attempted in Port Phillip (Hunter 2012, 171). The second Governor in Western Australia, John Hutt, who was noted for his sympathetic attitude towards the Aboriginal people in the colony, drew similar conclusions, as Hunter recounts: “while there was an awareness that indigenous people had their own proprietary rights divested of by the British
66
government, there was no going back to review the matter, just as the Buxton Committee had decided. The threat to British sovereignty and control was too great” (Hunter 2012, 175).