CO882-(2-3) — Page 398

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO |

Annexure F., Para. 1, dated

29th January, 1868, signed P A. Mac-

lean.

P. C. R. 151.

P. C. R 255.

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authorities, the men on duty (changed every two hours) did not know, in fact could not know the military officers' private servants, and, therefore, did not admit them into barracks in accordance with garrison orders, Annexure F, paragraph 1, 29th January, 1868, neither does the law, and if not the law, certainly not an ordinary policeman, recognize a letter being a warrant for an Indian to be out of his district. The charge, moreover, is the unsupported opinion of a subaltern of artillery, and cannot be deemed the "opinion of officers or non-commissioned officers of police" (151). Should obstructiveness be the gravamen of this charge the records of my Department, and further inquiry, if needed, will show it is not against the police such an accusation would rest.

8. The attempt in paragraph 151, therefore, to make the police convict themselves has, I trust, been refuted to your satisfaction, while the justification by my general orders of acts of " excess of zeal" or of "arbitrary conduct " (paragraph 255) attempted to be set up is answered, I hope, by the fact that only such orders as could lead to such an inference and tell against the Department, were made known to the Commissioni (vide Annexure A), all of other tendencies, though attention was drawn to them by A. 523, 526, 570, Inspector Bell, Answer 201, being withheld (vide Annexure E). 571,573,574.

A. 201.

552, 1493, 2139, 2140, 2149, 2150, 1696, 1689.

P. C. R. 206. 1732.

A. 1870, 1871.

9. Having examined the answers on which the charge is based, I would, on the other hand, beg to draw your attention to the universal opinion of the Magistrates, than whom no one could be better judges, to the Report of the Honourable C. Antelme (paragraph 42), who concludes his remarks on the Department with "Si quelque chose m'étonne ce n'est pas qu'il y ait eu quelques abus, mais qu'il n'y en ait pas eu d'avan- tage, et que les hommes chargés de diriger la police aient réussi avec des instruments si mal choisis à rendre en peu de temps l'ordre et la sécurité à la Colonie, sans causer à aucune classe de la communauté des maux intolérables;" to the Honourable E. Icery, and Dr. T. L. D'Arifat, large employers of labour, gentlemen natives of the island, of great experience both as planters and medical men; to the answer of the Honourable T. A. Chateauneuf, who, besides a long residence in India, has been employed in the 1922 of petitioners. Immigration and Poor Law Departments here; to the evidence of the Rev. F. Roy, an educated native of India, who, as a minister of religion, has the best opportunities of judging of his countrymen; to the statements of Bev. P. Ansorge, Rey. S. Hobbs, two clergymen whose long residence in the Bengal and Madras presidencies, render their testimony of much value, and to the evidence of most of the native witnesses themselves.

1943.

1537.

1688, 1677.

1557, 1569, 1386,

Also see P. 261,

266, 266, 272, 273, 273, 273, 273, 274, 274, 276 (for 8 mon).

P. C. R. 332.

59.

A. 780.

327.

10. Deeming it best to remove, if possible, the personal actions insinuated by the Report, made during my absence, first from your minds, I shall now proceed to remark on the observations in the case of Dilhoo's children (page 23), who were stated to have been arrested twice; once during a vagrant hunt in July 1868 (vide ongo attached to petition), a statement which has been admitted by the Commission, though indignantly contradicted by Inspector O'Connor, Answer 332 (a question of the value of testimony that I leave to your appreciation); and, secondly, in September 1869, when returning from Flacq.

11. In the Report, paragraph 59, you will observe "Dilhoo has stated his story, &c., the policeman acted most arbitrarily in entering this man's hut" (N.B.-at "la Nouvelle Découverte," in Moka or Pamplemousses District) "and arresting his minor children." If the arrest was illegal the man had his remedy under the law, or by reporting the individuals departmentally for excess of duty. He had, moreover, Mr. de Plevitz, 780, whose zeal in his behalf cannot be doubted, but who did not attempt to stop the arrest by enlightening the police as to the status of the lads. If the occasion was that quoted by Inspector O'Connor, the records of the Department show the severe penalties that the misconduct of the men entailed. What "connection with the case" (page 23), however, this has with a general order issued a year after- ad August, 1869. wards I confess I am unable to observe. It cannot be the second arrest that is alluded to, first, because the second arrest took place in Flacq, and no infraction of domicile in Nouvelle Découverte could possibly have occurred, while, secondly, there was no attempt to set up the claim of a pseudo father; the real aim, therefore, of this general order is non inventus, and its misquotation evident. I, however, gladly here take the opportunity of explaining the object of the order in question.

G. O. No. 55.

12. The Legislature of the Colony having passed a law, No. 1 of 1867, establishing a reformatory, it was, up to June 1888, almost a dead letter owing to there being no place fit to detain boys in and attempt the work contemplated-hence, to prevent the contamination that must necessarily have occurred, had they been kept in large num- bers at the Vagrant Depôt, to which a few were committed, and where no proper accom- modation existed for keeping them separate from the adult prisoners, the police were

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discouraged from taking up lads, why though vagabondising, were considered to be in a better moral atmosphere than a prison.

13. When, however, the reformatory was established, and accommodation was provided for more boys (as it was notorious that they were about in large numbers committing depredations all over the Colony, as in fact the subsequent convictions Amply proved), I, on the case of a fictitious adoption being brought forward, issued the order in question, little I confess imagining that promulgated a year subsequently, in the interest of the neglected native children, for whom I had done so much, it could be thus interpreted and cited by a public Commission as a cloak for acts of oppression admitted to be previously executed by the police, or of accusations against an absent

man.

14. For any one unacquainted with the state of the Colony, and its laws relative to the Indian immigrant population, to form a just idea of this Island in 1867, I consider impossible. The necessity for special legislation having, therefore, been considered paramount by the Secretary of State and the local Legislature, a necessity Annexures G. H. I. that supported by the opinions of the late lamented Honourable 8. Douglas and Mr. T. Prince, as well as those of Messrs. O'Connor, Rice, and Bell (Inspectora of Police, the two former previously members of the Home Constabulary, and the latter an officer who served nine years in the East India Company's army, and had passed in the languages), hereto annexed, opinions in which I fully concurred, as soon after my arrival, as I became acquainted with the state of the Indian population, nothing remained for the police but to give the law its full force.

Mr. Barrister New- ton, p? 168,

p. 219, ans. 1844.

15. Gang robberies were rife, and were committed mainly by Indians to the Mr. Ball, ans. 190, detriment of their fellow-countrymen, living usually in districts foreign to the residence 191, p. 27. of the thieves, and misery in its most frightful form of pauperism, sickness, and destitution was rampant in a Colony where communities of every class, colour, or race, ans. 1075, 1078. were utterly disorganized by the fearful epidemid, which in this small Island in that Dis. Mag. Didier, year carried off 41,201 persons. Every police station was a dispensary, private as well p. 187, 88. 1160. as public charity was stretched to the utmost, and society was so disorganized that Mr. R. Leblanc, vagrancy was greatly increased, the lawless preying on the helpless, the sick being picked up everywhere, and conveyed to the so-called Vagrant Depot, which became & vast hospital, the able-bodied vagrants barely being sufficient to bury the dead, in fact, I believe I am not, both as Inspector-General of Police, and a member of the General Board of Health, over stating the case if I say that the working of the extra-mural cemeteries and other urgent sanitary requirements absolutely necessary to the public health, were constantly retarded, and at a stand-still, hired and prison labour being alike unattainable owing to the virulence of the fever.

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16. If all classes of the community, therefore, thus suffered, it was not to be supposed that the police escaped the epidemic; on the contrary, perhaps the accom- panying figures will show that it was in our ranks its greatest violence was felt. Every officer in the force was constantly down, and hardly a single man was free, while to ffl Ameture 3.

the many casualties, I was forced to take all who offered, men who were necessarily put on immediate duty, but who, both during this period and during the fearful hurri. cane of March 1868, I feel sure there is ample proof to show did their duty. It is, therefore, fair, five years afterwards for those who mainly were personally ignorant of the 'then state of the island (for out of the Commission there were but two members, or at most three, who were in the Colony at the time, two of whom are far from cen- suring this Department) to thus advance such sweeping condemnations ?

17. From my experience, during seventeen years and a-half of India, where I passed the examinations required for the Staff in Hindustani, &c., and of Ceylon, a Colony in which a large Indian immigrant population exists, from my many conver sations with Indians, who, talked to in their own language, are more prone to speak without reserve than in a foreign tongue, from the fact of the numbers of men who return to the Colony, from the fact of the large sums of money they take back with them to Hindoostan or invest in the bank, in shope, in hiring land, or in the purchase of live stock here, and from their general cheerfulness and the attention they meet with on the estates, I have no hesitation in saying the honest Indian who will work is

far better off in Mauritius than in his own country; has been greatly protected by the Ordinanes 21 of recent legislation, and enjoys to a greater extent advantages usually not obtainable in 1867. his own land, while allowing for difference of habits, race, &c., I conceive he favourably with the labouring population of Europe.

A. 399, 1873.

compares

18. It may be taken as an axiom that no man (the restless excepted) emigrates who can do well at home; when to this is added the prejudios of caste, and the great aversion that Indians, natives mostly of inland countries, 'have to cross the sea, so well