1830 - 1860 Worse Than Slavery Itself By 1830 there had been a dramatic moral shift in Britain as the British public were stirred by an anti slavery campaign. Missionaries and humanitarians began to take up the cause of native peoples in the Empire. The official message to Australia was that Aborigines had legal rights as subjects of the crown. However this new mood did not go down well on the frontier and horrific massacres took place in the bush. When seven white killers were arrested, tried and hanged the sustained white backlash exposed the humanitarian mood as fragile and short lived. By 1860 a new, more ruthless, more secretive wave of killing had started.