action more closely to that sanctioned by the Chinese Government in the conduct of Emigration from Chinese Treaty Ports. This would in His Excellency's opinion have been a more judicious because a more practicable object to aim at than the impossible enactment advocated in your Memorial, which by going too far misses that which may be attainable,
17. It would no doubt greatly assist His Excellency in protecting Emigrants, if he possessed a power of prohibiting the Emigration of Coolies from this Port unless the terms of their contracts afforded reasonable cause for considering them fair to the Emigrant, and a uniform form of contract might perhaps be settled on terms more just to the Planters than that adopted by the Peking Convention, which has caused nearly all honest and open Emigration to cease, and has thrown the trade into the hands of unscrupulous parties, who care nothing for the Chinese Government or their Convention, thus actually increasing the evils which it was
intended to suppress.
18. It might also be useful that the Governor here should have a power to prevent Emigrant vessels clearing for any Country where there might be reasonable ground for anticipating from past experience that the Emigrant would not meet kindly treatment or receive a fair reward for his labor-or where in fact he would probably be regarded more as a chattel or slave than as a man, possessing rights, which the laws and usages of the Country, to which he was emigrating, would enable him to enforce.
19. His Excellency therefore in transmitting your Memorial has suggested to H. M. Government, that a field for useful inquiry and reform is open in the above direction and in doing so has felt that he was really adopting the means most calculated to advance practically the interests of both laborer and employer, which in all parts of the world have so mutual a dependence on one another that any legislation, which does not take into account what is due to both, can be beneficial to neither.
20. His Excellency further believes that he has thereby adopted the only course open to him for securing the object equally desired by him and by you-namely, the greatest amount of justice and benefit attainable for the Emigrant.
I have the honor to be,
Gentlemen,
Your most obedient Servant,
(Signed) Henen Wohn Ball,
Acting Colonial Secretary.
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