Responding to the rising panic, Arthur on 29 November 1826 issued a government notice setting out the legal conditions under which the colonists could kill Aboriginal people when they attacked settlers or their property. The notice declared that acts of aggression could be repelled "in the same as if they had proceeded from an accredited State". Though the notice was greeted by the Colonial Times as a declaration of war on Aboriginal people in the Settled Districts, and some settlers saw it as "a noble service to shoot them down", Clements believes that the legality of killing blacks was never made clear to colonists and historian Lyndall Ryan has argued that Arthur intended nothing more than to force their surrender.[29][30]