CO882-(2-3) — Page 3

Sir,

12

No. 2.

Circular addressed to the Officer Administering the Government of

Downing Street, March 16, 1871. IN the revised Immigration Ordinance, No. 13 of 1870, passed by the Legislature of Trinidad, it is enacted (section 67) that "where it shall appear to the satisfaction of the Agent-General of Immigrants that on any plantation the deaths among the indentured immigrants who have not completed an industrial residence of five years shall, during the twelve months ending on the 31st of December next preceding, have exceeded a per-centage of seven persons in the hundred, it shall not be lawful for the Agent-General to allot any immigrants to such plantation in the year succeeding such 31st of December, nor, unless the Agent-General shall be first satisfied that such allot- ment may be made with a due regard to the health of the immigrants in any subsequent

year.

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And Earl Granville, in a despatch to the Governor of British Guiana (192 of the 29th of March, 1870), instructed him not to allot fresh immigrants to any estate on which the mortality in the preceding year had been both double the average mortality throughout the Colony for the same year of coolies between the ages of 16 and 50 years, and also double the average mortality throughout the Colony for five years of coolies between the same ages.

I desire that you will adopt whichever of these two plans you consider convenient to be enforced.

Earl Granville also instructed the Governor of British Guiana that coolies on an estate which had exhibited such excessive mortality should have the option of being removed to an estate where the five years' average had not been exceeded.

Sir,

I have, &c. (Signed)

KIMBERLEY.

No. 3.

Circular addressed to the Officer Administering the Government of

Downing Street, May 24, 1871. YOU are aware that the question of the proportion of women to men to be maintained amongst emigrants from India to the Colonies, has been for some time one of great and increasing difficulty. It is often found next to impossible to induce respectable women to emigrate in the prescribed proportion of 40 to each 100 of male emigrants, and thus the Emigration Agents are under a strong inducement to fill up the prescribed complement with women of a degraded class and impure life.

The importation of women of this description into a Colony must in any case be of questionable advantage, and must often be productive of much evil. It is, indeed, considered by many that the frequency of murders of coolie women is attributable not so much to their paucity of numbers, as to the contempt in which they are held by the men with whom they live.

In a despatch dated 18th December, 1868, Sir F. Hincks, then Governor of British Guiana, stated that there was less indisposition than formerly among Creole women to form connection with Indian and Chinese immigrants. If such connections were to become common, the necessity of introducing a large proportion of Indian women would to a great extent be removed. I shall be glad, therefore, to know whether the change indicated by Governor Hincks has, in your opinion, taken place to any extent in the Colony under your government. I regret to perceive that Sir F. Hincks' opinion is not shared by the Commissioners of Enquiry into the treatment and condition of the coolies in British Guiana, who have reported in a contrary sense.

I have, &c.

(Signed) KIMBERLEY.

13

No. 4.

Governor the Hon. Sir A. Gordon to the Earl of Kimberley.--(Received July 1.

*

(No. 70.) My Lord,

I HAVE had the honour to receive your Lordship's Circular despatch of the

Mauritius, June 1, 1871. 16th March, in which it is suggested that an amendment should be made in the Immigration Law of this Colony, either by the adoption of that provision of the Trinidad Immigration Ordinance of 1870, which enacts that new immigrants shall not be allotted to an estate on which the mortality has in the previous year exceeded 7 per cent., or by the enforcement of the rule which Lord Granville directed to be observed in British Guiana, that coolies should not be allotted to estates on which the mortality had been both double the average mortality of adult coolies throughout the Colony during the same year, and also double the average mortality of that class during the five years preceding.

2. Either of these provisions would effect the object which it is desired to obtain. The former was proposed by myself; I have, however, no partiality in its favour. It has certainly the merit of simplicity, but Lord Granville's rule is less likely to press with undue hardship on exceptional cases, and is, on the whole, perhaps fairer in its general application. It is, therefore, this latter plan that I would wish to see brought into operation.

3. Your Lordship is probably aware that, under the existing Labour Law of Mauritius, immigrants are not allotted in the Colony by the Government, but are engaged in India for particular estates, to which they are forwarded on their arrival in the island.

4. Neither the Governor nor the Protector of Immigrants has any discretion either as to the transmission to India of a requisition for immigrants, or the allocation of such immigrants on the estates for which they have been engaged, when they reach Mauritius.

Provided the guarantee of the proprietor for the repayment of his share of the expenses of introduction be satisfactory, the requisition must be forwarded, no matter how great the mortality on the estate, or what the neglect, harshness, or injustice with which the immigrants upon it may have been treated by their employer.

5. Casca have come to my knowledge in which proprietors have been legally convicted of conduct towards their labourers which, in the West Indies, would not only have precluded them from any allotment of immigrants during the succeeding year, but would also have involved, certainly, the withdrawal of all indentured servants from the estate, and probably an order from the Secretary of State to exclude that estate from any future distribution. But such proprietors, here, are enabled by the existing law to require compliance with their requisitions, and continue to receive immigrants exactly as before their conviction. Nor does excessive mortality on any estate offer the smallest legal or practical obstacle to the engagement for it of fresh batches of new immigrants.

6. Some such alteration in the law, therefore, as suggested by your Lordship, is manifestly much required; but I must confess that I am not sanguine as to my ability to comply with your Lordship's directions to adopt one or other of the courses pointed out by the despatch of of the 16th March.

7. It must be borne in mind that, during the last few years, the number of the unofficial members of the Council of Government has been gradually increased until they outnumber the official members in the proportion of nearly two to one. It must be further remembered that these gentlemen are all either planters or intimately connected with the planting interest. Whether, under these circumstances, they are (except under the very strongest pressure) likely to assent to a measure which would authorize any discretionary action on the part of the Government in forwarding requisitions for labour, and render compliance with them less absolutely certain than is at present the case, I may safely leave it to your Lordship to determine.

8. The Colonial Secretary, on whose knowledge of the composition of the Council and the feeling of its members I have the fullest reliance, informs mo that it would be hopeless to anticipate support to such a proposal, and that the production of the despatch would cause much irritation, and without leading to any useful result.

I have therefore determined for the present to refrain from laying the despatch before the Legislature,

I am the rather disposed to adopt this course because, when your Lordship bas

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