PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference -
TTTCO.882
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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with the delays now before the Stipendiary Magistrate of Pamplemousses, in which sixty-seven Indians complain against their master, Mr. Poulin. The following are the items of the complaint, as read in Court, 29th May, 1871 :—
1. Waking them up at 2 o'clock a.. to be sent to work, and keeping them at work until half-past 6 r.M., and thus obliging them to reach their camp at 8 P..
2. When absent from work one day, their week's rations are cut off.
3. When sick, and after medicine has been given to them, they are not allowed to remain in hospital, and are sent to work with the bullocks.
4. When they do not appear at pay-day to receive the wages due to them, the same are forfeited; and it is only when they re-engage that the said money is refunded to them.
5. The amount of pioches and other tools given to them to work on the estate is reduced from their wages.
6. Two rupees were forcibly cut off from their wages for the Ghoon, but the money was used for that religious ceremony.
7. For the use of the water from the well, a dollar is cut off every year from their
wages.
8. Whenever they are caught picking up dry wood, ten rupees are asked from them, and when they refuse to pay that amount they are sent to the Police.
9. When the task work is not finished at 5 o'clock P.M. their wages are cut off. 10. They further claim two months' wages for March and April, 1871.
Of the merits of this case I can say nothing, because it is still pending, but the attendant circumstances are fully sufficient to show, as has been before asserted, that justice to the Indian labourers must be the rare exception. This case has been going on for two months; M. Poulin has stated that he will keep it going two years; and this seems to be no idle boast, for if he is allowed to continue his cross-examination at the same length as hitherto, and then to bring his other labourers into Court, the case might very well last even longer.
But if this is the length to which a planter can protract the proceedings in a com- plaint made by his labourers, on the other hand, he can bring a complaint of his against his labourers to a speedy conclusion; for, since the complaint against M. Poulin began, he has had some of the complainants twice arrested, and on each occasion has procured the condemnation of some of them in the other Court of Pam- plemousses, the district Court, to imprisonment, for having met together on the estate and persuaded their comrades to go with them to the Magistrate to make the above complaint.
While the complaint against M. Poulin drags on its slow length, the complainants are at the Depôt, having refused to return to the estate, but their wives are there still, and subject to whatever influence may be brought to bear on them.
It must be evident to any one that such delay as this in the affair of sixty-seven Indians v. Poulin, amounts very nearly to a denial of justice; and the case is the more significant that the Governor has instructed the Substitute Procureur-General to conduct it on behalf of the Indians. If this is the result now, what would have been
the fortunes of the Indians had not his Excellency interfered ? And lest it should be thought that the fact of this complaint having been brought shows that the Indians can prosecute their complaints without let or hindrance, be it known that these Indians, as their last hope, went in a body to Réduit, the country residence of the Governor, and obtained his Excellenoy's special protection.
In spite of the hardships they endure, and this is the point insisted on by those who would defend the present system, a certain per-centage of labourers immigrate to Mauritius a second time. What are the reasons of this?
First. There are many planters who treat their labourers with consideration and justice to these the labourers will gladly return, and these are not the persons who either benefit by or desire the oppressive labour laws, since they would in no case fail to find labourers.
Secondly. There are some 200,000 Indians already in Mauritius who have come in ignorance of the laws, or before they had attained their present severity, and whose relations are here under engagement, or not possessed of the money to pay their return passages to India; for they are not provided with return passages, sa I have seen it erroneously stated in Indian publications, the truth being that old immigrants are compelled to return in such vessels and at such times as the Protector appoints, but must pay their own passages, often more than it would cost them if they could choose their own vessel.
Thirdly. Many of the immigrants who return to India still practising the Hindu
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rites, are adjudged to have lost their caste; and it not unfrequently happens that, unless they have both the means in money and the will to redeem it, the influence of the priests is sufficient to make them outcasts in their native village; and in such cases they return as immigrants, either alone or with other members of their family.
Lastly. If poverty alone, or superadded to any of the above causes, induces them to return, that is no reason why they should be ill-treated, nor can it disprove positive facts; it can only show, at most, how much their misery makes them willing to undergo.
Again, it may be urged that the new labour laws have already been four years in existence, and that, when made, they received the nearly unanimous assent of Council. This was almost inevitable, seeing that the official members, from whom alone any opposition to the planters could be expected, very rarely venture to vote against a Government measure. But for the honour of human nature I am glad to state that, in 1867, when the new labour laws were under discussion, one Member of Council was honest enough to oppose them. This was the Honourable Mr. Kerr, the Treasurer, a gentleman of long experience in the Colony, and, in consequence, well qualified to form a correct opinion concerning the proposed labour laws, and the real motives for their introduction. He was mercilessly ridiculed by the Governor, by his colleagues, and by the public prints. The following are extracts from a letter on the subject by the late Mr. Draper Bolton, taken from the "Commercial Gazette” of 15th November, 1867.
With respect to the speech of the Honourable Mr. Kerr, he says:- "Your article of this morning, in which the Honourable the Treasurer is held up to public ridicule for his recent speech in Council, did, I must most frankly confess, astonish me; for, in my opinion, there was a deep foundation in truth in all the remarks of the honourable member, however unpalatable the remarks evidently
were.
"
"Mr. Kerr has laid down, and this is the sum total of his offending, but three propositions; and let us see whether they are right or wrong, they are :——
"1st. That the Indian is illegally arrested.
"2nd. That there is no cause for fear of insecurity from the present liberty of the Indians.
"3rd. That the Indian is bought and sold like cattle, is a slave in fact."
Speaking of the arrestation of Indians, he says, "When conveyed to prison, be he now or old immigrant, and let us suppose it be only for loss of papers, what may be his lot? The fact of his having no papers results in his incarceration, and no defence is listened to; I have seen Mr. Ormsby myself condemn ten men in less minutes, because they had no papers.
"And when at the Vagrant Depôt, in the quasi-civil capacity of a mere contravenant of the law, not a criminal nor misdemeanant, what happens? If the poor devil cannot work, he is tied up like a criminal and licked to extenuation with a cat-of-nine-tails, plied in Captain Anson's time, and, I defy contradiction, by a muscular boatswain of a man-of-war.
"Don't let us talk of Mrs. Fry nor of other prison philanthropists, let us nót throw ridicule on persons well intentioned, and who, not being planters, not living on the labourer's toil, can have none other than pure motives for their remarks, but let us set aside all passion, and calmly place ourselves in the position of the poor and humble, in the position of those against whom we legislate."
And ridiculing the idea of insecurity arising from the liberty of the Indians, he says:-
"What are the objects of burglaries here? In Port Louis a few verandah chairs and canary cages left outside to take care of themselves, in the country a few turkeys and chickens left unprotected. And by whom are these unlawful crimes committed P I, as a great victim
can tell you. By Creoles, against whom as 'enfants
du sol' it has not been thought expedient to legislate at all!'
And finally, in speaking on the third, point, he says, "Again, how many tickets have been issued to men, years in the Colony, saying that they had five years to serve, although the law says no man's industrial residence shall be called into question for any period beyond three years before his arrest."
These then, the Honourable Mr. Kerr and Mr. Advocate Bolton, are the only persons by whom the Labour Laws have been opposed; but their treatment was sufficient to deter others from following their example. That they should convert the planters to their way of thinking was about as probable as the success of any one who, in the days of undisguised slavery, should have asked them to liberate their Africans. Redress can only be had from England; to obtain it here is absolutely impossible.
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