PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:---
TILTIC.O. 882
ستنسا
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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the day calmly contemplated when this source, if it does not dry up and fail, will, at least, materially diminish, and we must look to other quarters for our supply of labour. But if we desire to retain as long as possible the advantage we now possess, we must give the coolie here equal advantages with those he can obtain, or which he may reasonably fancy that he can obtain, elsewhere. Some of these advantages we cannot give him; we have no space to grant him lands, and few Crown lands to grant. Some of these advantages, however, we can give him, and those in our own interest should be given. It is improbable that a man who can go to the West Indies for nominally high wages, with a right to a return passage, or at his pleasure a grant of ten acres of land, will prefer to come to Mauritius for nominally low wages, with no return passage or grant of land. Nor will they feel less reluctant to do so if they learn (as in such a case they are sure to do) that this Board has rejected the conditions which the Government of their Sovereign has declared to be "essential to the continued employ- ment of coolie labour,"
Again, it is most desirable, in a sanitary point of view, that a large proportion of those who have concluded their industrial service should be induced to leave the Colony. Already the population of this island is denser than that of Belgium. It is true that epidemics and the high rate of mortality among Indian children have kept that population from increasing at its natural rate; but it is to be hoped that these causes will not continue to operate, and in that case, unless provision be made for the return of those who desire it to India, it would become ere long a serious question whether additional thousands could be introduced into the Colony without serious detriment to its already impaired sanitary condition.
In point of economy the Colony, the Governor believes, would ultimately prove no loser, for though the cost of return passages would be not inconsiderable, it must be balanced against the amount now spent in consequence of the habits and vices of too many of this class who, not inclined to work here--which, indeed, after their first five years' contract they are not by their original engagement in Indis bound to do-find them- selves unable to return, and who either become thieves, vagrants, or habitual inmates of the gaols or Vagrant Depôt, to whom a large amount of the crime committed in the Colony is due, and whose offences and punishment constitute a heavy charge on its
revenue.
It will be seen that although some of the proposed changes are important, they are not of a fundamental character, and that they are not inseparably connected together. Some may commend themselves to the mind of one member of the Board, and some to that of another. The acceptance or rejection of one does not necessarily imply the acceptation or rejection of all."
estate.
The importance of the proposals which it has been generally understood were about to be made, has probably been greatly overrated by public rumour. They offer some further safeguards against abuse; they correct one or two apparent blemishes; but, with the exception of the proposed change as to medical attendance, there is not one that will produce any serious or perceptible change upon a well managed Such as they are, they are submitted for the careful consideration of the Board of Council.
His Excellency is anxious that on this point no misapprehension should exist. The suggestions of the Secretary of State neither imply reproach for the past, suspicion of the present, nor menace for the future. They are a counsel, not a command. They are subject to consideration, to criticism, and, it may be, to modification, by the members of this Board. At the same time they are counsels which are not lightly given, they emanate from a source which has a right to counsel with authority, and they cannot, therefore, with propriety be rejected without very strong and sufficient reasons. His Excellency has himself no doubt they will be listened to with the same deference, and probably adopted with the same ready acquiescence which many previous proposals of a similar nature have met with at the hands of the Council, and that the "the readi- Becretary of State, to use his own words, is not mistaken in relying upon ness of the Council to adopt all such alterations and amendments of the law, and procedure relating to Indian immigrants, as the experience obtained in other Colonies. has proved to be essential to their welfare.”
When addressing the Board some time ago, the Governor observed that, whilst it would be idle to affect to deny, what any one acquainted with the immigration laws of other Colonies could not fail at once to perceive, that the law was in this Colony wanting in many checks on possible abusen which had been provided elsewhere, yet that, so far as he could learn, little practical evil had resulted from their absence.
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That declaration, in both its branches, he can only now repeat. That the law contains imperfections must be evident to every one who is intimately acquainted with other labour laws than those of Mauritius. It reflects the utmost credit on the forbearance, the kindness, the prudence, and the justice of the agricultural body, that unjust advantage should not have been more frequently taken of those imperfections, but this fact does not make the law the less imperfect, or its amendment the less necessary. Whatever rests on a purely personal basis is necessarily unsafe, and the fact that no undue advantage has, with rare exception, yet been taken of the law, may only serve to blind us to the dangers of its misuse. That an imperfect law is kindly and moderately administered is no argument for its maintenance, when once these imperfections are discovered. It is an argument which might be, and in fact has been urged in defence of relations and of laws in the highest degree objectionable, and.now universally condemned.
It is, his Excellency thinks, not difficult to see why in the West Indies the law is, in some respects, in advance of what it is here. In the West Indies there are to be found numerous Colonies at no great distance from one another, and between which a constant communication is maintained, Fresh experiments are constantly being tried, now in one Colony, now in another. When these fail they are quietly laid aside and abandoned. When they succeed they are gradually adopted into the codes of all the various Colonies.
The isolated position of Mauritius deprives it of the advantages to be derived from such mutual comparison, and from the friendly emulation which leads each colony to desire its own laws to become a pattern for those of its neighbours.
But if some of the West Indian lawe may have touched on points which those of Mauritius have failed to notice, and erected safeguards against dangers which, because they have not yet occurred in Mauritius it is thought may never arise, and if such laws are, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, worthy of general application throughout every part of Her Majesty's dominions where coolie labour is employed, it must be equaily admitted that some of the provisions of the law of Mauritius might with equal advantage be introduced in the West Indies, and it may be presumed that, whilst in this Colony the West Indian laws suited to our adoption are pointed out to us by the Imperial Government, those elements in the Mauritius system in which the West Indies are deficient have at the same time been equally recommended to their consideration and are not improbably now in the course of adoption.
The Imperial Government has a right to speak with weight on such matters, and to anticipate that its judgment will be received with deference, for it stands in the position of an arbiter, not chiefly looking to the interest of the immigrant, as must be the case with the Indian Government, not biassed by local consideration, as the authorities of a Colony inevitably must more or less be, and the Governor is confident that this anticipation will not be disappointed.
It may possibly be urged that the consideration of these changes had better be postponed until the Commission, now about to be appointed, has made its Report. The Governor has fully considered this question, and though he would personally have felt no regret to arrive at this conclusion, it is impossible for him to do so. These proposals are matters to which the Imperial Government has not thought it necessary to direct the inquiries of a Commission, but upon which it has, without any such intervention, already formed a decided judgment.
On the other hand, the measures suggested will, if adopted, materially shorten the labours and reduce the expenditure of, that Commission by narrowing the field of its investigations, whilst they may be considerably lengthened by the additional inquiries rendered necessary under different circumstances.
The recommendations of that Commission may, moreover, be a very long time in being reduced to practice, nor is it expedient, should the reforms suggested appear to the Board to be in themselves desimable, that their accomplishment should be indefi- nitely deferred in order to accompany them with others which may or may not be hereafter suggested. It must further be remarked that, not only are the Governor's previous instructions left uncancelled and unaffected by those which he has received relating to the appointment of the Commission, but there is nothing in any part of his more recent correspondence with the Colonial Office to indicate any change of purpose or intention with respect to them, or to induce any supposition that it is not the intention of Her Majesty's Government that they should still be brought under the consideration of the Council. Had any such change of intention occurred he would undoubtedly have been informed that he was to suspend the execution of his instruc- tions of the 18th of December.
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