APPENDIX No. 7.
Note.-No Coolies are shipped as boys, nor are women allowed on board either as emigrants or passengers if known. LIST of Coolies, Emigrants from Macao during the season of 1868 of the undermentioned dates, &c.
Flag. Name of Master. Date of Departure. Name of Vessel. No. of Coolies. Port bound to. Remarks. France Captain Outre Jany. 9th Aurora ?? Hong-Kong America 11th Teresa 44 ?? Kele Lu Lo Feby. 3rd Arow 44 Missouri 14th Alta Graca Guantanema 20th Eugene-e-Adello 23rd Tres Bentos March 8th Incaraneion 18th Alavasa 25th Suami 31st Cataloona Spain Y. Riberre April 8th Pratalonga 15 Lima Graseres 23rd Rep. Sa Labrador 64 Havannah Russian H. Ferraros May 27th 300 Havannah on fog Spanish Bollo 21 Italian Traletta Collao 13 Havannab Dubois Landa 11 Fietk Lima 466 Havannah Jany. 2nd Malabar 302 5th Esparanza 418 525 Lima 51 LIS 464These Emigrants left Macao in full and perfect health, Copied from Her Majesty's book by W. A. Read.
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APPENDIX No. 8.
COOLIE EMIGRATION.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,
This Memorial Sheweth That the fact that the Colonial legislation affecting Chinese Emigration is undergoing improvement, appears to us to present a fitting opportunity whereon to lay before you certain sentiments and views relative to one branch of that Emigration, which we have for a length of time past entertained.
2. We admit that the Ordinance just passed in Council tends to ameliorate the condition of the Coolie Emigration, and that it is a valuable supplement to Ordinances No. 11 of 1857, and No. 6 of 1859, which regulate the Coolie trade, and we feel satisfied that so long as the administration, which has recently very greatly lessened crime and increased protection for life and property in the Colony may continue, all the protection with which it is possible to surround the Coolie in Hong-Kong, will be afforded. But we still feel constrained to wholly and loudly condemn the conveyance from China of Coolies under contracts for service abroad for terms of years. This system is so inherently bad, and is so dependent upon crime and wrong for its existence, that we pray the day may come, when by the common consent of civilized nations, its prosecutions shall be rendered penal; and in the meanwhile, we beseech your Excellency to free Hong-Kong from the stain of participation in it, and to enact that no vessel whatever shall clear from Colonial waters with Chinese on board held to service or labour abroad by contract for a term of years, and that no such Contractors, no matter how or where entered into, shall be valid in the Colonial Courts.
3. We do not require to relate in detail to Your Excellency the grounds which lead us to thus strongly deprecate what is commonly known as "Emigration," and to pray that any promotion of it, within Colonial waters at least, may be made illegal. You are well aware that, assertion and evidence, so-called, to the contrary notwithstanding, few Chinese peasants enter into contracts for service or labour abroad, possessed of any clear, intelligent sense of what they are doing. Too often the miserable wretches doomed by this dreadful traffic to a life-time of exile and slavery (for although the trade has now existed for years, few, if any, of its victims have returned to China) are torn by violence from their friends and homes, or have been obtained by means of deception and misrepresentation; it being notorious to all persons acquainted with Chinese character, and manner of thought, that none of these people would consent to quit their native land, did they thoroughly understand the nature of the lives which even in the most favorable localities, say the British and Dutch West Indian Colonies and the Hawaiian Islands, lie before them.
4. We are aware that in the case of vessel lying in this harbour for hired emigrants, it is nearly certain that our Colonial laws, earnestly, righteously, and rigidly administered as they would be, are sufficient to protect the liberties of the Chinese, as long as these remained within our jurisdiction; but the ship once despatched from Colonial waters, if her flag were non-British, Your Excellency might be constrained to witness all the beneficial regulations so carefully enforced set at naught, and crowds of emigrants, in addition to those obtained here, shipped within a few miles of this harbour, in defiance of all Colonial enactment. Upon this ground alone, we would consider the legislative remedy which we have asked for above to be imperatively required. But when we further remember that none of the classes of Chinese from which hired Emigration is drawn, are to be found in Hong-Kong at all, that this miserable system which we condemn cannot be justified even on the poor ground that it relieves us of pauperism or of crime, and that the only effect of its legalization is to allow the island to be used as a depôt for the collection of unhappy wretches, who know neither what they are doing, nor what is being done with them, we feel that we can scarcely urge our desire in language too strong for the occasion. For the reputation of the Colony, therefore, for the sake of example, and for the honour, in so far as it is given to Your Excellency and to ourselves to uphold the same, of the British Flag we call upon you to solemnly condemn by Colonial legislation this trade in human bodies, which, bearing the impress of misery wherever it is carried on, culminates at our very gates into the hideous form of slavery. It is because we are well assured that whenever a ship takes away hired labourers from China she is made an instrument of fraud and oppression, and because we desire to protest in the most solemn, public, and efficacious manner against the crimes and barbarities of which at least one locality at the mouth of the Canton river is the daily theatre that we urge your Excellency to take a step, which, we hope, will arrest the attention of the civilized world.