PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
ETC.O.882
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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all sympathy. But if legally he stands at some disadvantage, he has therefore a claim on my forbearance and protection, and on yours. I cannot overrate my anxiety for the continuance of immigration. It is a system full of mutual advantage to employer and employed, and one I have striven to maintain and to extend. But would it be the part of a true friend to say smooth things softly, leaving abuses to fester and to rot, instead of pointing out and removing what seems objectionable. Gentlemen, the only way to escape the dangers which attend dependence on imported labour is to leave no joint in your harness, no spot of rust on your cost of mail. I have never on the one hand, since I became acquainted with it, ceased to insist on the imperfection of the law, or on the other hand to assert my belief in the present general absence of abuses in practice. This distinction I have from the first strongly maintained. So long ago as the month of July, I addressed a letter to my Honourable friend the Protector of Immigrants, in which I drew a comparison between the labour laws of Mauritius and the West Indies, shorter but substantially the same as that in the Memorandum lately laid before the Board. I there enumerated some of the reforms I should like to see effected, and those which seemed to me immediately indispensable. That letter was, I know, shown to all the Members of the Immigration Committee, and I believe to other leading Members of the Agricultural Body. It contains so clear a statement of my views, that having first asked and obtained my Honourable friend's permission to do so, I will venture to read its most import sentences. (Here his Excellency read the letter.)
This view, thus proclaimed, I have ever since repeated. In my Speech on the 15th of November before this Board I said that it would be idle to affect to deny that the law is in this Colony wanting in many checks on possible abuses, which have been provided elsewhere.
In December I repeated this opinion, and it was again enunciated in my Message
of the 12th instant.
Nor is the expression of my opinion as to the general absence of abuses less explicit. What I said in my letter to the Protector you have just heard. In my Memoranda, in my Speeches, in my despatches, I have always drawn the same strong distinction, and you have no doubt perceived that Parliament has lately been informed by Her Majesty's Government that I have reported very favourably on the condition of the immigrants in this Colony as being well cared for and well treated.
Again, I have invariably insisted on the great importance, over everything else, of inspection, so much so, that I thought it to be sufficient in itself, in the first instance. I was anxious that, as far as possible, the Colony should itself have the satisfaction of voluntary action with regard to these reforms, but I could not with truth, or consistently with my duty to the Government I serve, conceal what I thought defects when called on to report them.
It would not be difficult for me to live here a life of slothful ease, to shut my eyes to obvious imperfections, to repeat, parrot-like, assurances which I had not proved; but though it might make my life here easier for the moment it would be a reproach to my self-respect for all my remaining years. In spite of much prejudice which it was not easy to overcome, and much personal animosity, as to which I was very indifferent, I was ultimately enabled to introduce into the West Indies, with some modifications, the wise provisions of the Mauritius law with respect to the rationing of immigrants, By so doing I have no doubt that many lives were saved. It is a part of my career on which I look back with the utmost satisfaction, and if here in Mauritius I can equally introduce some salutary changes, I shall feel that I have not been wholly useless, and may well be indifferent to a momentary unpopularity.
I say a momentary unpopularity, for cannot think that proposals, which when rightly understood are so natural and obvious, should earn for me the lasting opposition of any body of men, or that they should ultimately fail to perceive that the interests of every class are vitually concerned in the removal of every blemish from our system, which may discourage the immigrant from coming here or induce him to turn his eyes to other quarters. Nor do I despair of leading you to adopt my views. I appeal to your candour and your good sense.
Το you,
Planters, I look for aid in removing every hindrance to immigration, and in promoting the welfare of those whose welfare, I know, you have at heart. To you, Lawyers, I look for aid in applying the gifts of your profession to remedy defects your acuteness must perceive. To you, Merchants, proud of the fairness and justice of your own dealings, I look for aid in removing every trace of inequality in the bargain between the Colony and the immigrants. To you all, as Legislators for this Island, I appeal to not without regard to preconceived opinions, to remember that the interests of all are
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eqally our care, and that employer and employed, Indian and Creole, stand or ought to stand on one footing before one Tribunal.
There is an ancient city in a distant land, which was long ago a proud and powerful Republic. There, a small aristocracy ruled, and ruled well; there too was a mass of humanity which worked and toiled. They sometimes jarred upon each other, but on the whole it was well recognized that the craftsman's cunning, the labourer's strength, and the sailor's daring contributed as largely to the prosperity and power of the common-wealth as the wealth and learning and valour of the great. And there, where in the gay and busy market place, in all the pomp of richest architecture and all the luxuriance of medieval ornament, they built the noble palace which served them as a common hall, they graved deep upon its walls a sentence which was to govern their deliberations and their policy. Those pinnacled walls, studded thick with statues, were then white and now; they are grey and crumbling now, and all their sharp sculpture has rounded and perished under the hand of time; but, as the sun lights up the mouldering letters, the words they placed there long ago may still be read-the words of the wise King of Israel:-"The rich and the poor have met in the way together. The Lord God is their one maker. The rich and the poor have met in the way together. The Lord God is their one light." Here too, the rich and the poor have met in the way together; here they sometimes jostle and their interests seem to clash, but here, too, what is for the good of one is for the good of both. Here, too, each is essential to the other, the employed to the employer, the employer to the employed, Let us bear these words in mind, and in this one high function, the highest perhaps that is assigned to man,-that of making laws to bind our fellow-man, let us guide ourselves by that serene and piercing light where passion and meanness cannot abide, and from which every evil thing that loves the twilight flutters away ashamed; but which is at once the source, the strength, and home of equity and truth.
No. 80. \
Governor the Hon. Sir A. H. Gordon, K.C.M.G., to the Earl of Kimberley.—(Received June 4.) (No. 150. Legislative.) My Lord,
Mauritius, May 2, 1872. I HAVE the honour to inclose an Ordinance, No. 7 of 1872, entitled an "Ordinance to amend the Law relating to the signing of Contracts of Service, and the delivery of copies thereof," together with the report thereon of the Acting Procureur and Advocate-Genral.
I have assented to this Ordinance, and am not prepared to recommend that it should not receive Her Majesty's sanction, although it seems to me a somewhat clumsy device to remedy the effects of prospective, not past, irregularities; and although I strongly object to the practice, to which this Ordinance gives an additional sanction, of permitting the Magistrate's clerk to supply the place of the Magistrate in the important duty of explaining and passing contracts of engagement; and am inclined to agree with the Protector of Immigrants, who has expressed it to me as his opinion that "nine-tenths of the abuses which exist are due to the provisions of the contract not having been properly explained to the immigrant." But a remedy for the effects of the Magistrate's possible neglect of duty is certainly required, and pending the general revision of the Immigration Law, which will probably result from the labours of the Royal Commission, I do not object to the temporary adoption of that whích has commended itself to the unanimous approval of the Council of Government.
I have, &c.
(Bigned) ARTHUR GORDON.