PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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coffee gardens had failed, and labour had ceased to be procurable on the plantations. When we come to deal with the second part of our analysis, namely, the condition and resources of the people, we shall conclusively show that they had no other alternatives than those above specified, and that many hundreds, if not the exact number of 1,048, Succumbed to positive starvation, after a more or less protracted struggle for dear life.
The history of this particular number, 1,048, must not be overlooked. It appears to have been taken from statistica "obtained for the information of H. E. the Governor, "and that they should be as accurate as possible a special officer was detached to go "through the villages and ascertain what sales had taken place, what the population then was, and what had become of the original owners" (Appendix, p. 20, A. G. A. to G. A., June 17, 1889, paras. 4 to 8). These statistics were "the result of months of patient and laborious inquiry," but are now lost. Hence, it became necessary to collect the information afresh, alter the lapse of several years, when much of the evidence must have been unprocurable. Nevertheless, in the letter of the A. G. A. to his chief, just five weeks later (page 23, para. 4), he sent lists of 981 persons who have died of want and destitution, and the diseases consequent thereon, in this district after the "sale of their lands for default in the payment of their grain tax." There the cause of death is explicitly stated, as well as the names of the persons, all of whom had been evicted. This is the evidence of the officer in charge, who had been an eye and ear witness of the proceedings during the first and final years of the period whilst distress and starvation had been doing their work under the combined influence of providential causes and a policy of unexampled cruelty on the part of the Government. No manipulation, however ingenious, can weaken this simple and explicit official statement. The starvation factor of the mortality is ineffaceable. The list is expressly composed of its victims and of them only. Our readers, who we trust will comprise the great majority of the members of the House of Commons, will receive it as it emanated from ite responsible author.
Here we cannot refrain from remarking that the original statistics, which are now lost, were prepared for II. E. the Governor. Nor are they the only ones supplied at his request; for we possess a statistical table of earlier date, which was prepared for him in March 1884, only four months after his arrival in the Island. H. E. was therefore anxiously concerned about the proceedings, and by no means indifferent to the facts at the time when they were transpiring. Why he did not intervene, but suffered the policy, of which we hereafter are to speak, to pursue its cruel course, remains to be scen when he is called upon, as he undoubtedly will be, to explain his conduct. No one who knows his sympathy for the poor can doubt that he will clear himself and show good reason why he did not stop those sales, and why, when they had done their ghastly work, he patronised a private scheme for arresting the further mortality of the victims, of whom some were still on the verge of the fate to which so many had already slowly Succumbed.
The Bodi Ela scheme was a standing proof that a fatal process of starvation had been and still was going on which it was intended to arrest. Yet Mr. Moir would fain have us believe by the concluding paragraph of his report that starvation was little more than a fiction. What was that scheme for, if not to arrest a terrible mortality that had already been too long a scandal.
Why, we ask, does Mr. Moir bury the local deaths in a provincial return where they nre swamped, in place of quoting the house-to-house return of unimpeachable accuracy, which was supplied to him in evidence, see the table* on page 16. This shows that, whereas in those ordinary times, from the census of 1871 to that of 1881, the population of The particular villages had increased by 9 per cent., it had decreased by 18 per cent. in 1889, instead of increasing as it had formerly done. Here was a clear special decline of 25 per cent. at the least, in the affected locality, and we have it on the evidence of a European who had resided 11 years in the district, that there was no particular epidemical fever to account for it. This is stated in Mr. Whitefoord's letter to the "Observer” of the 17th June last, and is also admitted in the report (para. 12+). The only general cause of death prevailing in the district therefore was starvation and the diseases consequent thereon, of which 981 victims are specified by name in the lists furnished in evidence. We are by no means favourably impressed with the laboured treatment of these lists in the report. The result is that the 981 cases explicitly described as of persons who had died after the sales of wont and destitution are mixed up in the report with some other lists of 1,123 who had died (page 12). Of these, 40 are described in Mr. Moir's analyses on pages 4, 5, and 6 as having died before the sales, leaving a residue of 1,085 deaths in the year of sale and succeeding years. Had the mere fact of the sales been in question, without regard to the general policy, there might
• This table is not printed.
↑ See page 8.
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have been a certain degree of force in this distinction, but in this report it seems to betray a spirit of special pleading, especially when the children born after the sales are also deducted from the return. Seeing that these were born of starving parents, they would be the first, most helpless, and most certain victims of the circumstances in which they were born,
The parents had a chance of prolonging life by means of charity, or
the salés.
by feeding on unwholesome roots or leaves, like the girls described by Mr. Cross (pp. 12 and 13), but the children born to parents in distress and want had no chance. Their deaths ought surely to be included, and doubtless were so, in the 981 evicted persons reported by the Assistant Government Agent as having died in destitution after Why, again, is credit claimed for the deaths of those who died after lands were redeemed? When were they redeemed? Even if this occurred within a year, the lands could not at once give relief to people who had been in a starving condition for years previous. And as regards lands restored in 1887, in the jubilee year,
which were probably sold four or five years previously, of what immediate avail were they to people who by a unanimous consensus of evidence were shown to have been in extreme poverty, distress, and want?
The honourable author of the report, after all his dissection of figures, has still a fearful residuum of 573 deaths (page 12) after excluding the children born to almost inevitable starvation, and all those who upon any pretext could be credited to the Government account. How, we ask, does this special pleading affect the total of the decrease of the population by 25 per cent. ?
We think our readers will agree with us that Mr. Moir showed very scant courtesy to Mr. Whitefoord, and dismissed his testimony without the respect due to an eye-witness of the condition of the people. In the same off-hand manner he assumed that we ourselves had no original information, though he must have known that during several years of the period in question we personally visited and traversed those very districts professionally four times a year.
Mr. Whitefoord's information was that of a resident, and though he could not say he had felt the last pulse of each dying sufferer, his evidence of the prevailing destitution and mortality was not only original, but most weighty. His means of information were unofficial, whereas those of the Assistant Government Agent were of servants of Government. Moreover, he had attended several of the sales personally. It is in evidence that he had personal knowledge of large numbers of his native neighbours, whom he frequently employed on his estate; and Mr. Moir ought to have felt the terrible force of his statement that of 73 of the destitutes who once came to him for employment seven only were fit to work.
Nor can we pass without notice the treatment accorded to the case of the poor woman who died close to his court at Maturata. The case, even as described by Mr. Moir at page 15, is illustrative of the facts that lands had ceased to be worth cultivating under the heavy assessments, and that Government dispossessed the owners even where the lands would not command so much as a bid. The wornan had tried to work, and had even earned a little pittance, but was evidently emaciated and unable to work. She had lost her lands, and had made a long struggle for life by other means, and died at last of exhaustion and mal-nutrition. The case is eminently illustrative of the condition of the people and of the severe struggle they waged with adversity. The account of the case in the " Independent was true, and was almost a transcript of the evidence at the inquest. Let the reader take Mr. Moir's own account of the case, and then say whether the "recovery of grain tax "had nothing to do with it. What else made her lands worthless and brought them, in one way or another, to the hammer? The policy of the Government in over assessment and evictions was, we affirm, the main cause of the general distress. The people would have recovered from the providential causes, but when the ruin so commenced was completed and rendered irretrievable by the action of the Government the pre-existing poverty was converted into utter destitution, and the only alternatives were beggary, crime, or starvation.
"
It will be observed by reference to paragraph 3 of the Assistant Government Agent's letter on page 31 that every person examined without exception gave the tales for default as the reasons for the number of deaths from want.
Condition and Resources of the People.
In the absence of the lists originally compiled with special care for his Excellency the Governor, it was not to be expected that there would be precise numerical
H 4
agreement