PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:
TC.O. 882
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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disruption of the Empire, takes his revenge in spreading disloyalty towards the Crown among a conquered people.
G. DE CORIOLIS, Member of the Council of Government
for Port Louis.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
The Right Hon. the Secretary of State
for the Colonies.
No. 31.
GOVERNOR SIR J. POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G,, to THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD STANHOPE, M.P. (Received October 22, 1886.)
SIR,
(No. 400.)
Government House, Mauritius, September 29, 1886.
WITH reference to my Despatch of the 10th of May, forwarding a memorial, to Lord Granville from some of the elected members of the Council of Government and Lord Granville's despatch in reply thereto, I have the honour, at the request of the memorialists, to transmit to you their rejoinder to his Lordship's reply in which they profess to set forth what they conceive to be particular instances of my maladministration.
2. Though these gentlemen constitute a minority of the unofficial members of the Council of Government, they were well aware that their colleagues and I had afforded them and would continue to afford them the fullest opportunity of discussing their grievances in the Council Chamber instead of thus appealing to Lord Granville and
to you.
3. One of the reasons why I recommended Her Majesty's Government, a few years ago, to grant a more liberal form of government to Mauritius was that with their extended powers, independence, and increased numbers the Members of Council would be able publicly to expose in the Legislative Assembly any administrative abuses, and that the proposed change would so far relieve the Secretary of State.
4. Unfortunately the minority who now address you seem to consider the Secretary of State as a Court of Appeal from the Council of Government.
5. The greater part of their printed letter of the 23rd instant is taken up in repeating the arguments and requoting various quotations already used by them in the Council of Government when submitting motions that were rejected by two to one of the unofficial members, and generally by about 20 to five of the whole Council. The three last pages of their letter will be found, almost word for word, in the speeches made by one or two of them on the 29th of June and 20th of July. They do not approve of my having carried out the policy embodied in the Report of the Royal Commission of 1874 (on the treatment of the Indian immigrants in Mauritius) with respect to hawker's licenses. It was then pointed out that those hawkers were nearly all Indians, and that the police supervision of their licenses led to abuses, in some cases to oppression, by the police of an industrious and quiet class, and the abolition of the licenses was recommended. On my proposal, in 1883, the majority of the Council of Government abolished those licenses, mainly on the ground that it was desirable to relieve the Indian hawkers from the irksome and even corrupt police supervision involved in compelling them to carry these trade permits.
6. When the question was raised by the chief memorialist, Mr. Antelme, on the 29th of June last, in the motion quoted by the memorialists in their letter now enclosed, all the statements as to an alleged increase of crime that they now put before you were then used by them. Their stateinents were fully answered by the Procureur General. The Council, having heard the arguments at each side, rejected Mr. Antelme's motion by
19 votes to four.
7. So far from concealing what then passed from Her Majesty's Government, I transmitted, in my Despatch of the 2nd August, the whole of the speeches then made by Mr. Antelme and the few who supported him. The speeches that I then transmitted to Lord Granville are now reproduced almost word for word in the letter Mr. Antelme and his three or four supporters address to you. Instead, however, of answering those speeches again, I venture simply to refer you to the enclosure in my despatch of the 2nd of August, which contains the speech of the Procureur
↑ No. 17.
↑ Not printed.
• No. 8.
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General in reply to Mr. Antelme, the admirable speeches of Sir Virgile Naz and Mr. Louis Rouillard in support of the Indian hawkers, and some remarks of my own ou the subject.
8. In the enclosed letter the memorialists make some general assertions unsupported by a single particular instance. They say my intervention in reducing or remitting "the penalties awarded by the magistrates has had the most deplorable effects." Also, that "the action of the police has been so repeatedly thwarted and the penalty inflicted so desultory (sic) that every one is under the impression the police show the greatest "slackness." In another passage, they say: "May we not infer that some of the "ridiculously trivial penalties pronounced by certain district magistrates were the result "of ennui or fatigue, or perhaps arose from the fear of incurring the displeasure of the "Chief of the Colony."
9. If there was any real ground for such general accusations against the Governor and the district magistrates, it would have been very easy for the memorialists to quote some of the actual cases in which I improperly reduced or remitted a penalty. But they do not give a single instance in support of their general statement. If the "penalty "inflicted is so frequently desultory" (whatever that may mean) and if certain inagis- trates, owing to ennui, pronounce ridiculously trivial penalties, why have not the memorialists mentioned a solitary case? Why have they not referrred to some charge or conviction that has been followed by a ridiculously trivial penalty?
10. Her Majesty's Government are aware that the accused persons who, is thus said, are treated too leniently in Mauritius are mostly Indians. I admit that the Mauritian magistrates are generally of a lenient disposition, and in my despatch of the 27th of January 1884, recommending that the Mauritians should have a more liberal constitution, I quoted a statement made in an official report to the Secretary of State in 1881 that the district magistrates showed "great leniency," this charge being laid against them to induce the Secretary of State to consent to the Forest Laws of 1881, which contained very severe penalties that the magistrates had not the option of reducing. I transmitted an official return to Lord Derby showing that in the year 1882 the total amount of fines inflicted under those Forest laws amounted to one hundred and eight thousand five hundred and forty-four rupees, of which sum about five thousand had been remitted by the Lieutenant-Governor, and about five thousand paid, leaving over ninety-eight thousand rupees of fines to be worked out in prison.
11. In my despatch of 10th September 1883,* I referred to the large number of prisoners I found crowding the gaols of Mauritius on my arrival, a considerable proportion of these so-called criminals being persons imprisoned for inability to pay fines under the Forest Laws of 1881. My attention was drawn to the subject from Indian immigrants complaining of the daily injustice to which they were being thus subjected.
12. I found that, for having in his possession a tooth-pick, being a piece of brushwood a few inches long, an Indian had been fined fifty rupees or ten days' imprisonment. Another Indian complained that having a small bundle of such portions of twigs in his possession, the total value of which was under a shilling, he had been fined a thousand rupees or two hundred days' imprisonment. Other petitions were from Indians who had, in cutting grass to feed their cattle, unintentionally cut a little brushwood, and who were condemned to pay for each twig a fine of fifty rupees, though the twig may not have been worth one farthing.
13. On referring the petitions to the magistrates for a report, I found in every case the magistrate stating that the law compelled them to impose those enormous penalties, of which they entirely disapproved. ascertained that the enactment passed in August 1881 gave a definition of the word tree so as to include the ordinary tooth- pick that every Indian uses, and that the discretion as to the amount of the fine was deliberately taken away from the magistrate.
14. Those severe penalties had been passed in the old Council, mainly by the influence of Mr. Antelme, who was then charman of the Forests Board. I am happy to say they were repealed by the old Council in spite of Mr. Antelme's protests in their favour. In a letter he printed in the local papers in the month of May last, he thus referred to the members of the old Council:-
"When the Governor, yielding to I do not know what Asiatic fanaticism, accused the old Council of having made cruel laws against the Indians, did your friends raise their voices to protest? They all bowed their heads and received the box on the cars without saying a word."
He concluded his letter thus:-
"When the independence of the Council was attacked in my person about Mr. Henniker Heaton, did I find any assistance in defending it? No, a thousand times
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