PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
c.o.
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885
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
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the projected Government Bank and the issue of its notes in the form of advances upon sugar as con- templated by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State.
12. The second, the immediate partial cessation and general reduction of the taxation which now weighs in a destructive form upon the colonists.
13. First-The Government Bank. "This establishment your petitioners would respect- fully remind your Excellency was specially intended by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State as a measure of relief at a moment of urgent distress.— It was announced as such to the Loudon Mauritius Association and gratefully acknowledged by them to the Imperial Government-the Currency Commis- sioner charged with the details of the plan was hastily dispatched in order to avoid any delay in the execution, and your petitioners are convinced that nothing could be considered as more certain than was the establishment of this Bank by the Right Honourable Earl Grey, and they as firmly believe that his Lordship will deplore the consequences which have resulted from your Excellency having decided upon withholding it.
14. They would respectfully submit to your Excellency that the conditional abandonment by the Commercial Bank of its right to issue notes made solely dependent upon the decision of the Secretary of State, appears to them to have afforded every guarantee that your Excellency could reasonably wish to possess-that the conditions attached to the establishment of the Government Bank could be fulfilled.
15. That the establishment of this Bank would act as an immediate relief to your petitioners at this time of sad anxiety and suffering.
16. The planter being enabled to realize his sugar at a reasonable rate (inasmuch as the merchants would use the Government advance as au augmenta- tion of their present means) would at once pay his labourers and restore order on his estate.
17. From the same source the tradesmen would
be paid their claims, and commerce would in some degree resume its activity; whilst the present usu- rious rates of interest would be reduced in presence
of a permanently increased circulating medium.
"18. Secondly,-
TAXATION.
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AN IMMEDIATE REDUCTION OF
Your petitioners having represented to your Ex- cellency that the labourers' wages in the colony are generally unpaid; that commercial engagements of all kinds are, with the exception of a very few favoured signatures, either in suspenseor un available
to those who hold them;
"That the price of sugar taken in the whole does not repay the cost of production:
That the cultivation of sugar as a general rule
is only maintained from month to mouth by loans of money at a rate of interest which must ere long prove the ruin of the borrower;
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"Do not hesitate to declare their conviction, that this colony cannot during the year 1849 possibly pay
to the Colonial Treasury, taxes amounting in one form or another to nearly 300,0001.
pro-
"19. The total net value of its exports will bably not exceed 600,000l.; and your petitioners desire to convince your Excellency of the impossi- bility of deducting therefrom, directly or indirectly
no less than 50 per cent, without scaling the ruin of Mauritius.
"20. Your petitioners would anticipate the objec- tion that the public buildings now in progress must
be completed; that the garrison must be paid their colonial allowances. and the present Imperial scale of the Government offices kept up until reference be made to England.
21. They entreat your Excellency in an hour of extreme necessity and acknowledged public calamity, to take at once vigorous and decided measures with the view of rescuing the colony from destruction.
22. Under such circumstances your petitioners humbly represent that all public works not of urgent necessity should be suspended even at the risk of some damage or loss, that the garrison should receive
its colonial pay from the Imperial Treasury; and that the civil establishment of the Colonial Govern- ment should undergo an immediate reduction.
“23. The reserve now in the Colonial Treasury exceeds, your petitioners are led to believe, 100,000L. They ask of your Excellency to apply that reserve
at once to the rigorous wants of Government, which with the half of the present amount of taxation will enable your Excellency to proceed until that entire
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change in the scale of expenditure of the Local Government be established, which has been acknow- ledged both by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State and all reflecting persons both in and out of the colony, to have become imperatively neces-
sary.
24. Your petitioners therefore carnestly and respectfully pray that your Excellency in relief of their distress will be pleased to order :-
"1. That the projected Government Bank of Issue be immediately established in order that ad- vances on sugar be furnished without delay by it, to merchants and planters as contemplated.
"2. That the export duty on sugar of ninepence hundred pounds weight which may be shipped be- tween the present date and the 31st December next be given up.
"3. That from and after the 1st January, 1849, the whole taxation of the colony, whether in the form of customs duties, internal revenues, immigration taxes or sugar export duty, be reduced by one-half, as being the utmost amount which it will be possible
for this Island of Mauritius to contribute for the support of its internal Civil Government for the future.
And your petitioners will ever pray. "Port Louis, November 1848."
The Committee then applied for permission to hold meetings in the country for the purpose of getting signatures to the petitions. The Governor answered that as the petitions had been printed in the newspapers, parties could sign them without holding public meetings for the purpose; never- theless, he would not object to such meetings, if the inhabitants wished for them.