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labours, should make it a ground of dissent from the Report which his colleagues had to adjust in his absence.

(3.) General inaccuracy of the Report.

The third general Reason of Dissent is, "because the Report appears to me to contain much inaccuracy. Insinuations are made, and conclusions arrived at, which I consider at variance with the evidence produced, while matters of importance are omitted," and the numbers of numerous paragraphs are here cited as instances without the objections to them being specially mentioned.

No doubt the accuracy and completeness of the Report would have been greater had Mr. Fraser been present. Indeed, in that case, it may be assumed that not even a typographical error could have been found in it. But, as Mr. Fraser had left his colleagues to complete the Commission as they beat could, he might have spared them his dissent on those grounds of inaccuracy and incompleteness which his presence, according to his own showing, would have done so much to prevent.

It remains, however, to be seen whether Mr. Fraser's special objections to the accuracy and completeness of the Report are well founded.

II. THE SPECIAL OBJECTIONS TO THE REPORT.

Art. 57, Section 8thly. The objection to this Article is, that the Commissioners eluded the most serious part of the complaint under consideration, by not dealing speci ally with the allegation that the persons were committed to hard labour-a complaint which, it is added, "there is not a shadow of proof to justify." The complaint in the Petition of the old immigrants is, that "men with their papers in order for the district in which they resided, have been committed to prison with hard labour, because the police were mistaken as to the boundaries of the district in which they really lived, and supposed them to be living in another." The remark of the Commissioners on this Article is, that it has been proved that men have been arrested under such circum- stances; and the necessary inference is, that they had not found any instance of men having been committed by a sentence of a Magistrate to prison with hard labour. The petitioners use the expression "committed to prison with hard labour," without stating by whom, and the Commissioners are careful to state that they had only found proof of arrests. It would be very hazardous to assume, however, that because the Com- missioners, from the small number of witnesses examined by them out of the 9,000 complainants who signed the Petition, found no case of actual committal by a Magia- trate in similar circumstances, that none such had occured. Mr. Leblanc, a witness by no means favourable to the immigrants, stated with regard to this very subject "The Indians formerly were obliged when they wanted to go to town to pass by Moks, instead of by Pamplemousses, which is a shorter road, and now this has been altered. They were not allowed to draw water from the Pamplemousses River, which is near their ground, without being exposed to be apprehended. This system of annoyance has ceased,

believe, since the arrival of the new Governor." If this was the spirit in which the police acted at one place where the boundaries of districts were ill-defined, it would have been very rash for the Commissioners to have taken it upon them to deny the statement in the Petition categorically,-what they did do, was to state what they had found, viz., that arrests had taken place in the circumstances complained of. As to the question of hard labour, had any men been committed to prison, there can be little doubt they would have suffered imprisonment with hard labour, for even where the law requires specifically imprisonment only, hard labour has been added by the Magistrates almost as a matter of course. Reference is made to this practice in Article 46 of the Report.

So far as regards this special Article, therefore, the Report is careful and accurate, whereas Mr. Fraser's amendments would have been inconsiderate, and calculated to mislead.

Art. 118. Mr. Fraser is equally inaccurate and incomplete in his objection to this Article. He complains that with regard to Mooblah (Mootilah) it is said that "having spent one day, and probably more under arrest;" and, again, "but the police constable, who probably did not know one word of his Mooblah's language, having asserted that he had told him quite a different story, Mooblah was sentenced to twenty-eight days imprisonment." "I have found nothing to justify," says Mr. Fraser, "the insinuation conveyed by the words 'probable' and 'probably,' or the covert accusation of perjury

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against the constable." The language here used is not particularly complimentary to the Commissioners who signed the Report; but can it be believed, that the Commia- sioner who dissents on the ground of inaccuracy, has not even read the Article to which he makes a special objection ? The expression "having spent one day, and probably more under arrest," is not used with regard to Mootilah, but with regard to the case of Dooket, belonging to the district of Grand Port, who having been arrested in the district of Plaines Wilhems on a charge of vagrancy, his papers were found by the Magistrate to be perfectly correct. 'probably" more than one day under arrest, was simply that his case was disposed of The reason for stating that he had been on the same day as that of Bhoodoo, who, having been apprehended on Friday, on a similarly groundless charge, when walking on the highway in his own village of Beau Bassin, was not released until Wednesday. If this was the case with a man who lived within a mile of the Central Station and Stipendiary Court, the delays were not likely to be less great with a stranger from a district at the other side of the island. Where the Stipendiary Magistrates do not sit every day, the probability is considerable that those arrested will be kept more than one day in custody; and Mr. Fraser knows very well that when the Courts are actually sitting, it is for the purpose of disposing of cases which are ready for trial; and that men arrested on the highway would be first taken to the nearest Police Station, which may not be the Central Station of the district, and subjected to delays of various kinds before they reached the Magistrate. The reference to the case of Mootilah by the Commissioners is sa follows: "Mootilah, on the same charge (that is, vagrancy), asserted that his papers had been robbed; but the police constable, who probably did not understand one word of his language, having asserted that he had told him a different story, Mootilah was sen- tenced to twenty-eight days' imprisonment." There is here no charge either covertly or openly against the constable of perjury, as Mr. Fraser courteously alleges, because a man who does not understand the language of another may quite honestly make a blunder, or misapprehend his meaning. The Commissioners had ascertained that the duty of arresting vagrants was most frequently performed by the mounted con- stables, who are Europeans; and they knew the Police Force was composed of very various nationalities, but not desiring to make the statement positive, they mentioned the difference of language as simply a probability. The Commissioners who adjusted the Report, did so shortly after having had the books of the Magistrates before them. Mr. Fraser, however, was not present on the occasion when this case was investigated, and must necessarily, therefore, know less than his colleagues. The points of the case of Mootilah does not lie in the words to which Mr. Fraser takes objection, which were purely parenthetical. It lies in this, that an immigrant, who having no papers, ought either to have been dealt with under Executive Regulation 42, as having no pass, or sent to the Protector of Immigrants, under Article 48 of the Ordinance of 1867, for inquiry, was condemned to the punishment of a vagrant under the Law 4 of 1864, although no evidence of his vagrancy was produced. To make one statement with regard to the papers required by the Law of 1887 to a constable when arrested, or rather to save himself from arrest, and another to the Magistrate when brought to the bar, does not constitute a man a vagrant under the Law of 1864; and surely when the allegation was made to the Magistrate that the papers had been robbed, there ought to have been further inquiry, even had the Law not prescribed an inquiry by the Pro- tector of Immigrants, before inflicting a punishment of twenty-eight days' imprison- ment, to which hard labour is added in such cases as a matter of course.

Art. 167.-The first objection to this Article is to the words, " on this occasion, as on a similar occasion, the police arrested as vagabonds Creole children in their parents houses, and dragged them off to the Police Station.”

There is, in fact, a typographical error in the sentence, the fourth word “as" being printed in place of “or." Mr. Fraser knows the difficulty in a Colony like Mauritius, where the printers are generally ignorant of the English language, to get a long Report printed with absolute correctness. There are a few typographical errors which were corrected at least three times in the proofs, and appeared at length, after all the care taken, in their incorrect form. But how rash of an experienced resident in Mauritius like Mr. Fraser, knowing all this, to base a formal dissent to a Report upon the word "as" in the body of a paragraph? Let him read "or," as it ought to have been, and his objection disappears. It is very amusing also to find Mr. Fraser quoting as conclu- sive against the evidence of Dillhoo (whose Creole children were unquestionably arrested) the exclamation of Inspector O'Connor" No, an Englishman is incapable of such conduct.* When the same witness had just told the Commissioners that the sergeants and constables from Moka and Pamplemousses, who, by a precoorted