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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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Page 18, Report.

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Magistrate, Mr. Farquharson, who had made an inquiry into the case at the request of the Procureur-General, and who informed the Commission" that the main facts of the woman's complaint were justified." The Commission having thus before them the Magistrate's statement were quite entitled to comment upon it.

In the third paragraph Mr. Fraser gives, as further reason for dissenting from the conclusions of the Report, "because the Report appears to me to contain much inac- curacy, insinuations are made and conclusions arrived at which I consider at variance with the evidence produced, while matters of importance are omitted."

Mr. Fraser is certainly entitled to hold a different opinion from that expressed by the other members of the Commission on the various articles he enumerates, but it would have been more satisfactory had he given his reasons for such difference of opinion than to have merely included them all in so sweeping a condemnation as that he expresses against Article 57 and the Articles following. And whether the Royal Commission will have, for effect, to make the Report of "small" importance, is no justi. fication of his opinion.

In one of the Articles of the Report he has selected to comment upon, Mr. Fraser complains that in dealing with the 18 Old Immigrants' Petition, the Commission has eluded that charge, which says that, "in addition to arrest, they were subject to hard labour.'

The fact of the Commissioners having merely expressed that men had been arrested under the circumstances mentioned, cannot fairly be taken as having cluded noticing the allegation in the Petition as to the hard labour, as they have elsewhere Page 78, Report. remarked that the statements in the Petition were in an exaggerated form.

The imputation thrown on the Commission in the comment on Article 118, as to having, by the introduction of the word "probably," "wilfully insinuated in a covert manner that the Indian constable had committed perjury," is, I think, imputing a most unreasonable and unworthy action to the Commission, and for which no motive existed. Mr. Fraser has here taken up the case of the police constable; but there is really no question of accusing the man, and the probabilities are quite as much one way as the other.

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Art. 157.-Mr. Fraser has taken exception to the words "on this occasion" and "a similar occasion" not being borne out by the evidence, the distinctive feature of one occasion" being that the police sergeanta and constables were drunk, and that Inspector O'Connor does not hear out the conclusions of the Commission, and is in contradiction as to the populousness of the locality. Mr. Fraser cites the exclamation of Mr. O'Connor that "No! an Englishman is incapable of such conduct."

It is allowed that the Englishmen and constables were drunk, therefore Mr. O'Con- nor's rather theatrical exclamation is not of much value; in fact it was laughed at when made before the Commission. Inspector O'Connor speaks of an occurrence which happened in 1860, on the occasion of a vagrant hunt, but he knows nothing about Dilloo's case, or that of his children's arrestation, as this was in 1868, and they were taken to Moka and not to Pamplemousses. The "similar occasion " Mr. Fraser takes exception to seems here fully accounted for, and the words taken by themselves are not used in the first instance as referring to the arrestation of children, but dis- tinctly says, "and took the inhabitants prisoners," while the second instance of such a proceeding or "a similar occasion," has reference as well to the arrestation of Indo- Creole children and their parents, and is cited as showing the system practised by the police.

Again, the reasons for such arrests "were not mere assumptions on the part of the Commission," for Mr. O'Connor told us he did so by direction of the then Inspector- General, and there can be no doubt that the drunken sergeants and constables exceeded the orders given to them. As regards the arrest of Dilloo and his children, Ramleechun, and others, the proceedings taken before the District Magistrate at Moka clearly show for what these men had been brought before him by the police.

The place called Nouvelle Découverte is not only well known to the police as being populous, but also personally to several members of the Commission.

I think it unnecessary to dwell longer on these exceptions to the Report. Arts. 71 and 76.-I do not find in Article 74 of the Report the conjunction “if” that Mr. Fraser objects to; it does, indeed, occur in Article 76, but is used relatively as to Budha and the others arrested with him. As to not citing here Article 53 of Ordi- nance No. 31 of 1807, the Commissioners no doubt imagined that by indicating the unlawfulness of the proceedings, as they had done in Article 75, that they had made the matter sufficiently clear.

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I am at a loss to perceive any discrepancy between the recommendation of the

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Commission in Article 259 of their Report and the rubric of Article 44; the first is s recommendation to repeal or amend, and the latter the Article to be repealed or amended, and a casual reader must be obtuse not to perceive this,

Arts. 136 and 252.-It is to be regretted that Mr. Fraser, who was present at the examination of the witnesses whose depositions on this subject caused the Commis sioners to arrive at this conclusion, did not then communicate his opinion to his colleagues; as it is, it is merely his personal opinion as to the inexpediency of the measures proposed in the latter Article as to the not receiving moneys at the depôt, and the suggestion in Article 185 is shown to have been well founded, from the recommendation of the Commissioners having been complied with by the Protector. Mr. Fraser has lost sight of one object the Commissioners had in view, viz., to remove from the minds of Indians that the immigration depôt was a place other than a Protectorate.

Art. 248.—The Indiana Sugun, Boodhun, Mohur, Parchand, Parbata, Codabaocos, Rajoo, and Ramen all complained of not having return-passage granted them,--some of them founding their claims to such on promises made to them in India before they emigrated. On referring to the depositions of these and of the other Indians examined before the Commission it does not appear that the statement made in the latter part of Article 248 of the Report can only be taken as comprehending among other subjects of complaint that of return-passage.

As regards the Indian Parchand, if the promise of a return-passage had been made to him in India, by a person competent to do so, to induce him to emigrate, no doubt his claim to such would be taken into consideration, notwithstanding his possessing cows worth 401.

Art. 160.-No doubt the expression of its being "impossible" to follow up the individual cases of hardship seems strong language, but it resulted from the impression left on the minds of the Commission by the several cases of individual hardship brought under its notice; and there can be no doubt that the framers of the Law, Ordinance 31 of 1867, under which these cases occurred, never contemplated the restrictions imposed by the several amended Regulations on the old immigrant population.

Art. 198.-It may be that immigrants are not settling down to habits of order and industry," but the Report does not assert that they are, it merely says that there having been a steady demand acting upon the reduced population, and thus both wages have increased and time has been gained for the settling down of the immi- grante into habits of order and industry," but this does not assert that they have settled down.

Art. 271.-I cannot see any contradiction in the concluding words of this Article with those of Article 197, the first says that under these circumstances, i.e., increased demand for labour and increase of wages, we should have expected crime to show a diminution. In Article 189 it is stated "it is notorious in the Colony that crime has not decreased,”—where is the contradiction between these two Artioles ?

I am of Mr. Fraser's opinion that the question of return-passage herein mooted did not come within the Governor's instructions to the Commission, but at the same. time I do not well see how the Commission soted wrong in suggesting what would tend in their opinion to remove or remedy an existing evil.

I do not think it necessary to follow Mr. Fraser into the other parts of his objections to the Report, as no doubt they have been fully gone into by my colleagues.

In conclusion, I may observe that had the Honourable Mr. Fraser been present at the discussions of the several Articles of the Report which he now finds fault with, and dissents from, I am persuaded that he might have been induced to modify the dissent which'in some instances he has so forcibly expressed, without being in presence of the reasoning and motives which actuated the Commissioners in adopting their Report.

Respectfully submitted to his Excellency the Governor.

(Signed) J. A. ROBERTSON,

September 12, 1872.

Senior District Magistrate.

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