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Cominons. This pamphlet is simply a republication of articles which have appeared from time to time in the "Ceylon Independent," but if circulated in the manner alleged, it is more than probable that the assertions made will be repeated, and the arguments therein contained employed in the House of Commons by some member in want of a subject to ventilate, or sincerely persuaded that he has found a grievance to redress.
2. I have there ore thought it desirable that your Lordship should be put in posses- sion of authoritative answers to Mr. Wall's crude and reckless accusations, and I have the honour to enclose copies of a paper prepared by my direction by Mr. A. R. Dawson, First Assistant Colonial Secretary, which I venture to think contains a complete and triumphant reply to Mr. Wall's charges, and affords a crushing exposure of the careless and ill-considered manner in which accusations of neglect of duty in the first instance, and deliberate misrepresentation at a later date, have been brought against the Government by that gentleman.
3. In considering these papers, the two questions of the operation of the Grain Tax Ordinance of 1878, and the distress in Walapane in 1882-85, must be kept carefully apart. If all the deaths from starvation, supposed by Mr. Wall to have taken place, had really occurred, not one of them could have been attributed to that Ordinance, for it was not in force in the district. The grain tax question is now being dealt with by a committee of the Legislative Council, which, I understand, is now preparing its report. The question of the amount and causes of the distress in Walapane has been investi- gated by one of the clearest and coolest headed men in the Ceylon Civil Service, and to suggest that his report has been written to order, and as a means of defeating inquiry, is not only a most gratuitous insult to the Ceylon Government, but shows a most ludicrous incapacity for understanding or appreciating Mr. Moir's character and temperament.
I have, &c. (Signed) A. GORDON.
The Right Hon. Lord Knutsford, G.C.M.G.
&c.
&c.
&c.
Enclosure 1 in No. 9.
REPLY to the OFFICIAL REPORT on the ALLEGED DEATHS BY STARVATION in the NUWARA- ELIYA District of CEYLON; being a Series of Editorial Articles Reprinted from the "Ceylon Independent," for the information of the Members of the House of Commons.
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3rd, the policy pursued by the Government in the treatment of the people and the sales of their property and lands for default of payment of the paddy tax.
We feel deeply sensible of the critical nature of the present inquiry, and of the vital issues that depend upon it. The case of distress, destitution, and mortality, now in question, is no rare thing. It concerns not only the consequences of 2,889 sales for default in the Nuwara Eliya district, but in the adjoining province of Uva over 9,000 sales have taken place even more recently. Other cases of local distress due to the paddy tax, some greater and many less than the one now under consideration, have been, during the last 30 years, submitted by us personally to the public view ineffectually; and now, at length, having by chance succeeded in attracting attention to the subject of the paddy tax, we feel a profound sense of obligation to present the case truly and faithfully to the impartial judgment of our countrymen and their representatives in Parliament. We are admonished, in certain quarters, to put the case mildly, for fear of damaging our cause by exaggeration, and we would gladly be mild if we could be also true, but if truly told the facts have no element of mildness in them, and alas! are hardly susceptible of over statement. We solicit the indulgence of our readers under these pressing circumstances to give us a patient hearing.
As a preliminary, we must demur to Mr. Moir's remarks on the term " We contend that our use of it is strictly correct.
eviction." The word signifies "to dispossess by due course of law." And this is precisely what the Government did, and what the people suffered. In all cases where the huts of the natives were upon their lands, they were sold with the lands, and the owners were dispossessed of them, i.e., evicted. If haply the buyers allowed the evicted people, in some cases, to occupy the huts, it was because they were more mindful of mercy than the natural protectors of the people were of their duty. In some instances, where the huts were not upon the lands sold, the materials, or any things in them that could find a bidder, were sold, pots, pans, tools, and movables included. In fact, many of the evicted owners were made houseless and homeless, as well as destitute, Mr. Moir's statement to the contrary notwithstanding. So resolutely was the policy of eviction carried out, that many lands were kept out of cultivation, because they were not saleable without a crop on them, and the owners knew that to cultivate them was to make them saleable, to cause their being sold, and therefore to ensure their own eviction.
We shall now proceed to review the evidence under the three heads already specified.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
PC.O. 882
سلسلا
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
THE ALLEGED STARVATION IN CEYLON.
Editorials reprinted from the "Ceylon Independent" (and
The Appendix to the Hon. Mr. Moir's Report.
"Mail").
HAVING examined the evidence taken by the Hon. Mr. Moir, as contained in the appendix to his report, previously issued, we think that it does not bear out the conclusions he has drawn; that he has omitted all mention of certain important parts of the evidence; and that his report contains erroneous statements of some facts before him, which seriously affect the issues.
In thus stating our dissent from the report we feel bound to acquit the author of any conscious partiality, as we know him to be a man of high principle, and we regret sincerely having to differ from him so widely. We think he was placed in a false position, secing that the inquiry necessarily involved the policy of the Government of which he is a devoted servant, and the personal adininistration of his immediate predecessor in office.
Considering the vital public interests involved in this inquiry, and the divergence of our conclusions from those recorded in the report, we deem it necessary to review and analyze the evidence, in the interest of the native agriculturists of the Island, as well as to justify the allegation which prompted the investigation.
The evidence in the case relates to three principal points, namely: lat, the deaths by starvation; 2nd, the conditions and resources of the people in the affected districts; and
Starvation.
The indictment which aroused our local Government to an attitude of self-defence in Mr. Salmon's letter to the Manchester Guardian" is in these words: "One
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thousand and forty-eight villagers evicted by Government for non-payment of grain tax died of starvation." The authority on which he wrote them was that of the "Ceylon Mail," our weekly issue, of March 2 and anterior numbers.
Our own words in the "Ceylon Mail" were as follows: On February 14th we wrote that "of the unhappy villagers who were dispossessed of their lands, 1,048 were already dead in 1886, "and 382 were missing;"-Again on the 27th idem, It is simply appalling to read and on the 9th of April we mentioned
of the actual deaths of 1,048 evicted villagers; "the deaths by starvation of several hundreds of villagers who had been deprived of "their lands." It will thus be seen that Mr. Salmon's words were not literally aud precisely what we had stated. If therefore the case had turned upon a few victims inore or less; if, that is, it would have been vitiated by any nice distinction of terms, we might have relieved ourselves and delighted the enemies of our cause by throwing the responsibility on Mr. Salmon, but we did no such thing. On the contrary, we recognised in his words a natural and not untrue construction of the facts, and which could only be disputed by one disposed rather to quibble than to speak plainly. Mr. Salmon's words express the substantial fact, and the reader will find them fully verified by the evidence elicited on the inquiry. Indeed, the author of the report himself admits, in the concluding clause of his 2nd paragraph, that "if the lands of "which the villagers were dispossessed were their only source of existence, it was not unreasonable for the Editor of the Ceylon Mail' to conclude that the 1,018 deaths specified by the Assistant Agent in his administration report were to be attributed to We are therefore entirely justified, for we challenge the Hon. Mr. Moir to show that the people had any other resources except beggary and pilferage to save them from starvation when, as is repeatedly stated in the evidence, their
"the sale of the fields."
H 3