Equals of the white man: Prosecution of settlers for violence against aboriginal subjects of the crown, colonial Western Australia

Abstract

“Crime is a great leveller,” stated Western Australia's The Inquirer in October 1853. “Policy requires that we should convince the native population that in our Courts of Justice they really are what we profess and tell them they are—the equals of the white man, whatever they may be elsewhere.” The Inquirer was responding to a case that had just come before Perth's Quarter Sessions, in which John Jones was tried for the murder of Neader in the colony's southwest. Jones was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to transportation for life. Given that Australia's colonies were notable for their failure to bring settlers to trial for violence against Aboriginal people, it is significant that The Inquirer's editor did not regard Jones' conviction and sentence as a sign that the Courts of Justice were working as they professed to do. The charge was one of wilful murder, and the evidence indicated that “if ever a foul and deliberate murder was committed, it was on the occasion which led to this trial.” The verdict that Jones was guilty only of manslaughter, he continued, was indicative of the jury's disregard of the law's impartiality when a white man was on trial for the murder of an Aboriginal man. If the law was to make a distinction between white and black, “let it be declared: but to say there is none, and to act as if there were, is a mockery.”