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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. LONDON
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"In reply to your letter having reference to wages due by Mr. de Courson, of Riviène La Chaux Estate, in this district, to Seewopaul and others, I have the honour to inform you that a Judgment was rendered by this Court in June, 1864, against Mr. de Courson for the sum of 9,106 dollars 94 cents. for wages due to his fabourers. Mr. de Courson having failed, a copy of Judgment was transmitted by me to the Honourable Procureur and Advocate-General for production before the Supreme Court.
"The sum of 1,960 dollars 75 cents was paid in June, 1867, accruing from land purchased from de Courson by Government for railway purposes, which sum was proportionally paid over to the labourers.
"The balance still remains unpaid, and I am fearful will remain so. "I have, &c. (Signed)
"E. S. MESSILER, Stipendiary Magistrate."
"Minule of Assistant Colonial Secretary.
"I am afraid there is no remedy. The estate has passed into other bands, and I presume Mr. de Courson has passed through the Bankruptcy Court."
4
May 7, 1871."
(Initialed)
"H. W. M.
I need hardly observe that such an occurrence would have been impossible had the labourers been paid weekly, as in Demerara, or fortnightly, as in Trinidad. But even when not attended with such consequences, the results of long-delayed payments cannot fail to be injurious, both to the employer and employed. In the event of any dispute it is almost impossible for the immigrant, four or five months afterwards, to prove whether he was or was not at work on a particular day, and if there be any disposition to dishonesty on the part of an employer, manager, or overseer, the temptation must be greatly strengthed by the knowledge that if a false entry of "absence "be made in the books, its detection is practically impossible. But even where there is no dishonesty, the result is bad :—the immigrant, who probably has a wife and children to provide for, either borrows money at a usurious rate of interest of some sirdar, and becomes practi- cally his slave (a state of things really dangerous to the good order and discipline of an estate), or falls a victim to a system of truck by running into debt to the shop of the estate-a shop in which, though the practice is clearly forbidden by law, the employés at least of an estate not unfrequently have a real if unavowed interest.
20. At all events I am very sure that your Lordship will not agree with an eminent lawyer and member of the Council of Government who, if I am correctly informed, recently argued before the Supreme Court that long arrears were desirable in order to enable the proprietor to exercise pressure in inducing labourers to re-engage with him who might not otherwise be inclined to do so; and this brings me to another peculiarity of the Mauritius law which is liable to very grave abuse, the facility, namely, given to the re-indentures of immigrants before their term of service is expired. The labourer with six months of his indenture still to run is virtually not a free man, and he knows that if he refuses to re-indenture when called upon to do so by his master, he may be exposed to many acts of petty tyranny during the rest of his engagement.
Of course there are many employers-I believe most--who would not adopt such courses; but the Indian is suspicious, and not prone to attribute good intentions or benevolence to others. He knows the master may abuse his power, and rightly or wrongly he imagines that his master will do so if he does not yield to the pressure put upon him, and consent to a re-indenture.
I think that here, as in the West Indies, no re-engagement should be allowed until the expiration of the previous indenture, or at all events that, if re-indentures are previously permitted, the cancellation of the original contract should always precede, by forty-eight hours, the conclusion of a new one, that the papers and certificate of discharge should be given into the hands of the immigrant on his release from the first engagement, which is not now the practice.
21. The next point which appears to be of immediate importance is the want of power in the Executive to deal summarily with cases of manifest abuse. However sparingly it is exercised (and the more sparingly the better) the existence of such a power as exists everywhere but in Mauritius of refusing to allot or of withdrawing immigrants, acts as a most salutary check, and I certainly think that some discretion should be given to the Governor or the Protector, or both, as to the forwarding of
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requisitions to India, and the allotments of immigrants to estates, if not a power of withdrawal.
In the case I have already alluded to, as it was thought that nothing could be legally proved in the La Rosa case, although the moral proof was clear, the case was not brought before the Magistrate, the contracts of the labourers imprisoned were not cancelled, and they were advised by the Protector "to resume their work quietly," and promised that "they should receive all due protection against further ill-usage." In the West Indies every man would have been withdrawn from the estate, and not improbably the Governor would have been directed by the Secretary of State not to allot immigrants to it in future.
In the indisputably proved case at Beau Fond, the proprietor was prosecuted before the District Magistrate, Mr. Dupuy, and sentenced by him to a period of imprisonment, of which, however, he actually underwent only a small part.
Your Lordship will find it recorded by Sir II. Barkly that this Judgment led to such a state of relations between Mr. Dupuy and the Planters of the district as ultimately, in my predecessor's opinion, rendered it expedient to remove the former to another sphere of duty.
22. As I am anxious to avoid the introduction of any charge against individuals or classes, I have preferred to take an instance of a past time, and which had been adjudicated on by Courts of Law, but to show that the want of a more speedy mode of dealing with complaints is still felt, and that more summary powers in the hands of the Immigration Department are still needed, it would be sufficient to go back to only a very recent period, and to refer to cases which have come under my own personal observation.
Considerable delays often occur in the consideration of complaints, and cases after being referred by my orders to the Protector, by the Protector to the Stipendiary Magistrate, and by the Stipendiary Magistrate to the District Magistrate may, even when there is no doubt that serious violence has been committed, be dismissed for want of sufficient evidence as to the parties by whom the injuries had been inflicted, and which might might in the first instance have been forthcoming. In the West Indies one of the Inspecting officers would have visited the estate on the day following the complaint, and would have undoubtedly discovered its truth or falsehood.
23. It is also possible to protract, in a very objectionable manner, the proceedings before the Stipendiary Court. A case is now pending in which serious complaints have been brought against a Planter, in which the defendant has carried on his cross-examination, tc., for a period of four months, and has not yet concluded. Of the merits of the case I say nothing, but it is clear that, however well founded a complaint may be, immigrant labourers can by such proceedings be tired out by the longer purse of the master, assisted by judicious prosecutions before the District Court, for the trifling offences which, though ordinarily condoned, become formidable engines in the hand of a master against any labourer who has displeased him. I allude to the prosecution for cutting grass, or gathering fire-wood, which they are usually allowed to take, but which, of course, really belongs to the owner of the estate, and the taking of which is technically a theft from him, though a theft never prosecuted except under circumstances such as those I have indicated.
21. I think, too, such a discretionary power should be lodged in the hands of the Executive here as they possess elsewhere, because I think it would be looked on with more confidence by the immigrants than they are inclined to accord to the Stipendiary
Courts.
This question, involving as it does the position of the Stipendiary Magistrates, I touch on with great reluctance; the Magistrates are, I have no reason to question, as a rule conscientious, and some are able men, but many of them are nearly connected with planters and the planting interest, and one at least is along with his brother, him- self the owner of a large sugar estate, employing several hundred indentured Inbourers. It is difficult to believe that persons in such a position will not be biassed, however unconsciously, in favour of their own friends; but even supposing them to be superior to all the ordinary weaknesses of human nature, I am, at all events, very sure that it is impossible to expect the labourers themselves to have confidence in the decisions of inen who they know to be themselves either the employers of labour or the relatives and friends of those who are.
25. I have, I fear, already taken up too much of your Lordship's time, and will only very briefly recapitulate the reforms on which I should be disposed to insist. They
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