Extract from the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette,
Friday, October 3rd, 1856.
A New York paper mentions the arrival at Havana of four British ships with cargoes of Coolie labourers. One of the ships, the Duke of Portland, is reported to have sailed from Hong Kong with 500 of these people on board, out of which number she has landed but 202: 130 are said to have died by natural death upon the voyage, and the residue to have drowned themselves. Another vessel, the John Calvin, lost 110 by "natural death and suicide," in a passage of 85 days - making a total loss in both ships of 240 Coolies. If the information in our American contemporary be correct, the affair demands the prompt attention of the Foreign Office.
The unfortunate survivors were, it appears, at once drafted upon estates or contracts of eight years' service. We take it for granted that these poor people were voluntary emigrants, and that they simply fell victims to brutal treatment on the voyage. But even this aspect of the affair, if correct, is bad enough, for more reasons than one. Great efforts have been made, more especially of late, to procure a supply of labour for our West India Colonies. The scarcity of that commodity lies at the root of the West Indian difficulty. It is advisable by every means to encourage immigration from the East, or from any other quarter where it may be legitimately procured.
In a recent Article we dwelt at some length upon the efforts which have been made to procure an adequate supply of labour, more especially in British Guiana on the results which have followed those efforts - and on the interest attending the discussion of the labour question throughout the West India Islands. It is of the last importance that emigration to the West should not get into disrepute with the labouring classes of British India and China, from which countries large supplies have been heretofore drawn; and nothing is more likely to discourage it than the barbarities which seem to have attended the transport of these recent cargoes to the shores of Cuba.
But what if it turns out that they were cargoes of veritable slaves, captured or kidnapped in the Bay of Bengal or the Bay of Hong Kong, instead of in the Bight of Benin or the Mozambique Channel, and convoyed by British vessels to the slave mart of Havana? So valuable is the trade which the Cuba Planters are now driving at the expense of our Colonies, that they can afford to pay almost fabulous prices for labour, and would risk almost anything to procure it. We take the report we have referred to for as much as it is worth, but we shall watch the progress of the necessary inquiry respecting it with some interest.
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