CO882-(2-3) — Page 369

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

TTC.O. 882

2

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

136

led to the enhancement of the fee, although the Commissioners might easily have ascer- tained those reasons by consulting the Final Report of the Committee of 1889, which Report they had in their possession. Nor do the Commissioners acknowledge in their Report that I had distinctly informed them of my having recommended just one year before the presentation of their Report, the reduction of that very fee to half of its amount; nor that I had accompanied that recommendation with remarks clearly showing that I desired to see a considerable relaxation of the restrictions set on free labour by the Ordinance of 1867 and the regulations passed under it. Yet, in answering their questions, I had quoted those remarks from my twelfth annual Report.

52. As I had pointed out to the Commissioners all the recommendations which I bad already submitted to your Excellency for the purpose of rendering the regulations bearing on immigrants not under written contracts less stringent, by referring them to the printed Report in which those recommendations were given in detail, would it not have been only fair, in the Report which they had to frame, which was destined to be made public, to be sent to the Home Government, and which doubtless will reach the Indian Government too; would it not have been fair to represent that I had myself recognised and declared to Government that the labour-laws had in some respects over- reached their objects.

53. I here beg leave to appeal to your Excellency's memory for even more than I consider myself free to mention to the Commission. I take the liberty of appealing to your Excellency for the confirmation of the fact that, although my Report was dated 18th April, 1871, it had been under preparation for at least a month before that date.

54. To continue with the Final Report of the Committee of 1869, I beg to pass on to its Clause 15. Four measures were suggested in that Clause, in allusion to

permits to work :"

40

(1.) That each permit should be sent to the police office for a viså.

(2.) That the permit should be countersigned by the Police Inspector in the district of the domicile of an immigrant.

(3.) That the employment of an immigrant beyond the time of his permit should be made punishable.

(4.) That the permit should be made returnable by the immigrant within three days after its expiry, under a penalty.

Were these suggestions put forward with the view of rendering the system more onerous or more effective? Was the third proposal not clearly intended for the relief of the immigrant, and for the purpose of securing him against his being unlawfully employed?

go

from

55. Clause 16 suggested that holders of police passes should be allowed to one district to another, with the permission of the Inspector of Police or of the Stipen- diary Magistrate; and that licensed hawkers should be made entitled to such leave for periods of several months.

Was this not evidently intended to relieve the immigrant from some of the restrictions until then imposed? Did this tend to make the law more onerous or

less no ?

56. Clause 17 suggested that immigrants should be required to keep their tickets in their own possession, and to exhibit them on demand to any constable or officer of police.

It had been the practice until then to allow the tickets of old immigrants verbally engaged to be withdrawn from them by their employers. Hence arose many instances in which the tickets were unduly retained by employers, and this was the chief reason which led the Committee to recommend the change suggested in the 17th Clause. A penalty (not recommended by us) was attached by the Executive Council to the non- exhibition of the ticket to any constable or officer of police demanding it. Whatever the reasons may have been for the introduction of the penalty into the new Regulation by the Executive Council, is the Committee to be blamed for its having been intro- duced?

57. Clause 18 contained a suggestion unquestionably meant for the protection of the immigrant against an abuse of power on the part of his employer; it proposed that the latter should be subjected to the obligation of making a declaration at the police office on his discharging a servant. The collateral advantage was thereby secured of enabling the police to know the subsequent abode and occupation of the servant discharged, the ascertainment of which was the main object of the pass system. 58. Clauses 19 and 20 are mere explanatory of the previous suggestions.

• Bee, in Appendices to the Final Report, letters of Messrs. Messiter, Lablache, Renouf, and Bir G. Fropier, recommending that the fee be increased, and stating their reasons for that recommendation.

137

59. Now that a complete review of the whole of the final Report of the Committee of 1889, and the text itself of the Report, had been placed before your Excellency, I beg to appeal to your Excellency's own opinion regarding it, confident that the unqualified condemnation passed upon it will not be repeated, that the motives of the members of the Committee will not be impeached; nay, confident too, that your Excellency will acknowledge, as your predecessor in office impliedly did by his approval of their recommendations, that the Committee only did what, in the circumstances in which they were placed, seemed to them to be most advisable in the interest of the Colony.

60. The Report of the Police Inquiry Commission goes on to say: "The Protector appeared unaware of the number of persons who have been arrested on a charge of vagrancy, although it appears to us to be one of the duties of his office to see that the immigrants are not improperly so charged," &c. And yet I had declared to the Commissioners that the proceedings of the Stipendiary Courts were not reported to me. But they were reported, and have been reported almost ever since the institution of the Stipendiary Courts to the Procureur-General, in weekly returns, addressed to him. Was it not then clearly his duty, or that of his substitute, to see that the immigrants had not been improperly charged? Mr. Gorrie, who had himself held the office of Substitute Procureur-General till September 1870, should surely have been aware of that.

61. When Indians born in the Colony, and not subject to all the labour-laws, were reported to the Procureur-General as having been punished under laws to which they were not subject, how did neither he nor his substitute check such illegalities?

62. When improper arrests, such as those alluded to in paragraph 206 of the Report, did occur and were reported to the Procureur-General, how did neither he nor his substitute check them? Was it not their duty to do so? Why did they not inform me or the Governor that the law had been so violated ? For what purpose are the proceedings of the Stipendiary Courts reported to the Procureur-General if not to enable him to judge of their legality and to take steps for the protection or defence of those who may be wronged in those Courts ?

63. Your Excellency is aware and need not be told that long before the appoint- ment of the Police Inquiry Commission I had represented it as a highly desirable step that the proceedings of the Stipendiary Magistrates should be reported to the Protector as well as to the Procureur-General; indeed, that I had complained of my not being in a position thoroughly to protect the interests of immigrants because I did not know how they were dealt with in the Stipendiary Courts. I need not submit to your Excellency any further observations on that score, especially as, in compliance with your Excellency's orders, the Procureur-General has begun sending me the weekly returns addressed to him by the Stipendiary Magistrates.

64. In paragraph 171 it is said: "The Stipendiary Magistrates had to administer the old laws, which were not repealed, as well as the new, and, in the absence of any instructions, we can easily understand how they continued to act under the unrepealed laws of 1844 and 1884.”

Here again I may inquire whose duty it was to issue the requisite instructions. Is it not the Procureur-General who has to advise the Governor on these matters P. Did the conflict of laws adverted to in paragraph 171 of the Commissioners' Report not exist while Mr. Gorrie himself was Substitute Procureur-General ?

65. In paragraph 250 it is said, in reference to the Immigration Office: "Clerks, ignorant of the immigration law, had most responsible duties confided to them, and disposed of important questions relating to the status of immigrants without reference to the Protector." This remark is incorrect; no clerk ignorant of the immigration law is empowered or authorized to dispose of important questions relating to the status of immigrants without reference either to the Protector or to the Chief Clerk his lawful substitute.

66. Paragraph 254 says:

"We found that section 59 of the Ordinance of 1867 providing that old immigrants in want of work could repair to the Immigration Depôt had not been practically put in force," &c., and that thus the measures intended by the framers of the law had not been carried out.

This again is a complete error; immigrants in want of work are, and over have been, perfectly free to come to the Immigration Depot; but no old immigrants who have their papers and are free to take service do come into the Depot in search of employment for the simple reason that they can find employment without the help of the Depot, and prefer freely exercising their own choice. The only immigrants who come to the Depot asking for employment are deserters anxious to elude the engage- ments by which they are bound.

[134]

2 N