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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TC.O. 882
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ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
SIR,
APPENDIX.
I.-COPY OF MR. SALMON'S LETTER.
THE Government of this great and "rich" Colony is in the hands of the Colonial Office, Downing Street, and is therefore amenable to the control of Parliament. Need- less here to enter into details to show how the local council is unrepresentative, and is entirely controlled and manipulated by the salaried officials of Government.
For about 30 years the condition of the native population has been known to the responsible rulers, the officials of the Colonial Office." Many a time and oft, by means of the press, publications of the Cobden Club, and local agitation in the island itself, conclusive and irresistible proofs have been given to show that the fiscal laws passed by the Government have led in the past, and must lead in the future, to chronic famine and starvation.
If your readers will consult the "Ceylon Mail" of 2nd March and anterior numbers, they will see an elaborate and clear exposition of the position. One thousand and forty-eight villagers, evicted by Government for non-payment of grain tax, died of starvation almost within sight of the sanitarium where our Governors and high officials resort for health and lawn tennis. This is only one instance. There are others equally awful spread over the interior of the island, and it will be seen that all this has been going on for years and years.
Mr. George Wall, an Englishman whose name has been a household word in Ceylon for over 30 years, who has been President of the Chamber of Commerce and a Member of the Council of Government, is the editor of the "Ceylon Mail." In 2nd March's issue he says:" Legislative enactments have brought about the existing misery; it can "only be remedied by the same means.
Laws that crush out the chief sources of the staple food and consign the native agriculturist to destitution, disease, crime, and death, cannot, must not, be endured."
Cannot! Must not! But, sir, the people are helpless; no local self-government here; no, not even its shadow! Governors come and make satisfactory speeches and go away again, but it is always the bureaucrat who rules, and the iniquitous and life-crushing taxes on the food of the people remain. A heavy tax is imposed on imported rice and on all food-stuffs imported. A yet more heavy tax is imposed on native-grown rice- the food of the people-by Free Trade England. And the people die for lack of food in thousands, and thousands more of them are reduced to skeletons in the squalid huts, and are thence evicted, and their dwellings and lands are sold by a paternal Government because this grain tax cannot be wrung from their bones.
Yours, &c. (Signed) C. S. SALMON.
II. COPIES Of Correspondence with the Editor of the "CEYLON MAIL." The Hon. R. W. D. MOIR, Government Agent, Kandy, to Mr. G. WALL, Editor of the
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'Ceylon Independent."
Kandy Kachchéri, June 1889.
(No. 13,971.) SIR,
HAVING been called upon by Government to report on a letter from Mr. C. S. Salmon, late Chief Civil Commissioner of Seychelles, to the "Manchester Guardian," which has been copied into the local papers, in which that gentleman stated that 1,048 villagers evicted by Government from their lands for non-payment of grain tax died of starvation in the immediate vicinity of Nuwara Eliya; and as this statement is asserted to have been made on your authority, I have the honour to request that you will oblige me by informing me how these particulars reached you, in order that I ascertain precisely the names and residences of the persons said to have died of starvation consequent upon their eviction from their lands.
may
1 am,
&c.
(Signed)
R. W. D. Mora,
Government Agent.
SIR,
Mr. G. WALL, Editor of the "Ceylon Independent," to the Hon. R. W. D. MOIR, Government Agent, Kandy.
In reply to your letter No. 13,971, of June 1889,-
Colombo, June 18, 1889.
I find it stated in the Administration Report on the Nuwara Eliya district for 1887 that "between 1882 and 1885, 2,889 paddy fields were sold for default of payment of the paddy tax," and "that in the case of the fields so sold 1,048 of the late owners had died." That fact is not disputed. The only question is as to the cause of
death.
This seems to me to be sufficiently obvious, but is plainly suggested in the opening paragraph of an appeal on behalf of the Bódi-ela scheme, of which the author of the foregoing statement is the prime mover, as follows:-" During the years from 1882 to "1885 large numbers of Kandyan villagers in the Nuwara Eliya district were ejected " from their ancestral holdings by the sale of their paddy lands for default in the payment of paddy tax, to lead a vagabond life and eke out a miserable existence by pilfering in the villages, migrate to towns, and swell the criminal population of the "country, or, as was often the case, to die of sheer starvation in the jungle."
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Here the evicted villagers are divided between those who migrated and those who died of sheer starvation. The former are lost sight of, and some of them may also be dead for aught that is known.
The case, simply stated, is that the Government rendered destitute a large number of persons, of whom 1,048 died. Is it rational to dispute that they died of destitution? Or, would the Government escape any part of its responsibility for the fatal issue, even if it could be shown that fever, dysentery, and cold lent their merciful aid to curtail the agony of sheer starvation?
I regret to say that I see no room for doubt as to the cause of death, or I would gladly give the parties concerned the benefit of it.
GEORGE WALL.
P.S.-I suppose there could be no objection to my publishing your letter and my reply.
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Ceylon Mail."
G. W.
The Hon. R. W. D. MOIR, Government Agent, Kandy, to Mr. G. WALL, Editor of the
No. 755/13,971.
Kandy Kachchéri, June 21, 1889.
SIB,
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated the 18th instant. The information before me at present does not enable me either to admit or to deny that 1,048 owners of land, whose fields were sold for default of payment of grain tax, have since died. But as it appears it was from the Administration Report of the' Assistant Government Agent of Nuwara Eliya that you took these figures, I shall lose no time in seeking further information on the subject from him.
I know of no objection to your publishing this correspondence.
am, &c.
R. W. D. MOIR,
Government Agent.
III. COPIES OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE Assistant Government Agent, NUWARA ELIYA.
The Hon. the Government AgeNT, Kandy, to the Assistant Government Agent, Nuwara Eliya. No. 569.
Kandy Kachchéri, June 12, 1889.
SIR,
I HAVE the honour to forward the enclosed paper, and to state that my attention has been drawn to Mr. Salmon's letter, and, in reference to the bracketed passage therein, and to the underlined portion of the extract from your statement at the meeting
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