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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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the Returns of 1870 are compared with those of years previous to 1867, it will be seen that there is no greater difference in numbers than may be accounted for by the decrease in population.

Lastly, they refer to the Stipendiary Courts alone, and do not include the convictions before the District Courts, such as those for larceny of grass, wood, &c., referred to in my despatch No. 13 of the 21st September. Neither do they include convictions for vagrancy.

Since the passing of the law of 1867, many of those who would previously have been prosecuted for desertion are now prosecuted for vagrancy, and consequently do not appear in these returns.

The number of convictions for this offence alone, between the 1st January, 1870, and the 1st June, 1871, was 8,133.

11. On the subject of suicides I have already reported at length in a separate despatch and will not now return to it. The number of suicides committed during the first half of the present year amounts, according to the Civil Status Returns, to 36.

12. But the most important part of the Protector's Report is the 49th paragraph, in which he advocates the modification of the Regulations of 1869, by which the treatment of old immigrants is now governed.

I find, upon inquiry, that although these Regulations must no doubt have been forwarded to the Colonial Office along with the Minutes of the Executive Council for that year, they have never been transmitted separately or formed the subject of a despatch.

I regret this, not only on account of the intrinsic importance of these regulations, but, also, because from never having been so forwarded they never appear to have been brought under the attention of Her Majesty's Land and Emigration Commissioners. At least I find no allusion to these regulations in any of their Reports, and as the law of 1867 was, in their Report for 1869, characterized by them as one of "an unusual and stringent character, subjecting old immigrants, not employed on estates, to a control which, in this country, has been applied only to men under ticket of leave.” I can hardly suppose that they would have failed to take some notice of regulations which certainly materially increase the stringency of that law, and one provision of which, whilst certainly unusual, is also, I am disposed to think, of somewhat question- able legality.

By the 54th Article of those Regulations & new tax is virtually imposed. The Article contains a direction that no police pass shall be issued to any old immigrant who lives by daily labour of whatever kind, unless he has previously taken out a license at the Magistrate's Court, for which he is required to pay 17. renewable every year. The consequences of being unprovided with a police pass are so serious that this renders it practically compulsory on every Indian living by daily labour to take out this license.

The Regulation goes on to say that not more than a certain number of these licenses are to be issued in each district, and that those who hold them are to be bound to work at fixed rates of remuneration.

Let us see what that means. A, an Indian, who has worked as, say a journeyman carpenter, or mason, thinks he has a turn for the trade, and wishes when released from his first five years' indenture as an agricultural labourer, to prosecute it. The difference between his position and that of a white man or a Creole working along with him, and receiving the same wages as himself, is that they receive for their own use the whole of those wages, whilst he has to pay 11. a-year out of them for his license. But it is improbable that he will get the same wages, for, if the regulation were strictly enforced, whilst his companions may bargain for what wages they can obtain, whatever may be his skill in the trade, the regulation provides that he must work at the rate fixed for him beforehand by a Tariff published by authority.

This is certainly a grave theoretical and might be a grave practical hardship, though it is right to add that the Tariff in question has never as yet been promulgated, and I confess I have no great confidence in the legality of the rule; for the Article 75 of the law which empowers the Governor in Executive Council to make regulations and fix fees for the delivery of tickets and other documents by the Stipendiary Magis- trate, was meant, I presume, to include only documents to which the Ordinance had reference, not others unmentioned therein, and gave no authority to impose a new and exceptional tax on one portion of the population alone.

12. The regulations which restrain the free movements of old immigrants also in some respects act rather harshly.

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Let us suppose that an immigrant and a negro each set up business as hawkers or shopkeepers in a village near the boundary of a district. The negro can cross this boundary whenever he pleases, either to procure supplies or retail his goods. The immigrant cannot do so much, of course to the disadvantage of his trade.

The stringency of these regulations is best marked by the severity even of those by which the Protector proposes to replace them, as being far more indulgent. That it should be a concession that an old immigrant, who, be it observed, when he has completed his industrial residence is theoretically a free man, should be allowed forty- eight hours to declare a change in his abode even within his district; and an indul- gence that he should be allowed to quit his district for ten days to see his friends, or transact business without a pass, implies a previous stringency of regulations rather hard to understand, more especially as the last concession is quite illusory, for if taken without a pass out of his district, it would be quite impossible for the police to know, unless he had some document similar to a pass to prove it, whether he had or had not been more than ten days absent, and he would probably spend a large part of his excursion in gaol whilst inquiries about him were being made.

The proposed regulations are, however, a great improvement on the old ones, and with some modifications I propose to suggest their adoption by the Executive Council should your Lordship approve of my so doing. The day-labourers' license, however, appears to me of such dubious expediency and legality, that I should prefer entirely abolishing it, to merely reducing the fee as suggested by the Protector.

I have not the smallest objection to a very stringent vagrant law; in fact, I believe

it to be a necessity in such a community as this, but I see no reason why it should be confined in its operation to the Indian population; the Creole and negro are neither less idle, vicious, or lawless than the Indian, and I am decidedly of opinion that such a law might be most beneficially applied to them. That it should affect one section of the population only, and that the most industrious, appears to me unjust, and almost unintelligible.

I have, &c.

Sir,

(Signed) ARTHUR GORDON.

Inclosure 1 in No. 20.

The Protector of Immigrants to the Colonial Secretary.

Immigration Office, October 30, 1871. I HAVE the honour to forward herewith, for submission to his Excellency the Governor, a digest of the Stipendiary Magistrates' Returns for the half-year ended 31st June last.

2. Its tardy presentation is due to my having had to wait until now for various rectified statements, which were indispensably wanted from some estates, and for the new returns of deserters. These returns were called for with a view of obtaining more precise information regarding desertions.

Although the last half-yearly reports of the Magistrates had represented the total number of unarrested deserters to have declined from 2,370 at the end of 1869 to 1,643 at the close of 1870, still, nothing in these reports showed what proportion of the remaining number consisted of new deserters. Information as to this was therefore applied for through printed forms addressed to all the planters.

The results elicited shall be referred to in that part of this review in which I shall have to allude to the desertions mentioned in the Magistrates' Reports.

8. The total number of estates was 214 instead of 215, as it stood at the end of 1870. The changes within the half-year were as follows:-

At Pamplemousses the Adrienne Estate has been annexed to a neighbouring estate.

At Black River the Palmyre Estate has been added to a former list.

At Plaines Wilhems the Vaucluse and Belle Terre Estates were united; and called the Highlands.

4. The total number of male adults engaged to proprietors fell from 65,193 to Decrease of number 63,279. The decrease is due to the following causes-Arst, to the job contractors of labourers having engaged a larger number of labourers, as is shown in the margin;' next, to the engaged to planters

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1 Number of men engaged by job contractors in December 1870, 5,050; ditto, June 1871, 5,619: Increase,

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