being inundated with an alien race, whose presence has already made itself felt to the detriment of the native born laboring classes, and recent legislation on the subject has evidenced how the feeling of the people inclines. We read in the latest Sydney papers that when the emigrants by the Glamis Castle arrived, they were actually stoned in the streets. Such barbarous treatment to a race of inoffensive, well-meaning beings is a disgrace to our civilisation, but it proves clearly enough the strong feeling which exists against the Chinese in the capital of New South Wales, and this feeling is a most powerful factor in the question we are now considering. The Imperial Chinese Government apparently take no interest worth naming in the immigration of their subjects, unless their attention happens to be directed to some tremendous grievance, similar to the cruelties practised against the coolies in Cuba, Peru, and elsewhere. The emigrants themselves are doubtless willing enough to try their luck in other lands, but they are of a class who cannot afford to pay for their own passages, hence the contract system, which under some circumstances is a sort of debased slavery. The prosperity of Hongkong, commercial or social, is not increased by encouraging the Chinese to emigrate to the Colonies; although no doubt, associations which exist here as well as in Sydney, for the purpose of arranging the contracts, getting the coolies from the country, and seeing them safely housed, and shipped here, and started to work on the other side, make vast sums out of the traffic. There are many sound reasons why emigration to the Colonies should not be encouraged by the English Government; and we submit that the least the Hongkong executive can do is to insist on the ordinance being carried out to the letter, and that in the case of all free emigrants, a thorough examination be instituted by properly qualified examiners, instead of the unsatisfactory inspection by the Harbour Master, and a Portuguese clerk (whose honorarium from the state hardly places him in the position assigned to Caesar's wife), which has hitherto been considered sufficient.
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