CO882-(2-3) — Page 44

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference -

CO 882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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

Inspection of books &c., on estates.

Inspectors of immi. grants to be under

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6. The Protector of Immigrants, or any Inspector of Immigrants, shall have the right, when making such visits, to call for and inspect every book, register, roll, or other written record kept on any plantation or estate, asylum, hospital, school, camp of labourers, or other establishment of any kind in which Indian immigrants are received, except private dwelling-houses, regarding the attendances, absences, wages, hospital treatment of, or other matter concerning immigrants employed on the said estate.

7. The Inspectors of Immigrants shall be under the control and direction of the Protector of Inimigrants, and shall at all times comply with all his lawful orders; and the directions of the it shall be their duty to make reports to the Protector of Immigrants at such times and

touching such matters as the Governor may direct.

Protector of immigrants.

Ultimate abolition

of inspecting

medical officers.

Returns by employers.

Penalty for failure

to make returns.

Penalty for obstructing officers.

1. mutation of

tion.

Other penal laws waintained.

Modification of LAWS.

Ordinance to be read with Orca- nance 31 of 1867.

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8. The office of Inspecting Medical Officer created by and in virtue of Ordinance No. 29 of 1865, shall be abolished on vacancy.

9. Every employer of immigrants exceeding twenty in number shall, within the month of January, and the month of July in each year, make and transmit to the Pro- tector of Immigrants a Return, in such form as the Governor may, from time to time, approve, of all immigrants whether under written contract of service or not, in his employ during the whole or any part of the preceding six months, together with the date and number of deaths, the number of births of the children of such immigrants; of the names of all immigrants who may have ceased to be employed on the plantation or estate during the preceding six months; and also of the number of absences and desertions that have taken place on the said plantation or estate during each month of the preceding six months, together with the names and numbers of such deserters: and the Protector of Immigrants shall keep all returns, and shall, at the end of each year, make an abstract of the numbers, increase and decrease of such immigrants employed as aforesaid, births, deaths, absences and desertions.

10. Every employer of immigrants exceeding twenty in number, who shall wilfully omit to make or cause to be made by the Manager of the Plantation or Estate, the Returns herein before required, or who shall wilfully make or cause to be made, any such Returns which shall be incorrect in any particular, shall, upon conviction before any Stipendiary Magistrate, forfeit and pay such sum not exceeding 101. as the convicting Magistrate may direct

11. Every person who shalt by any act or omission obstruct the Protector of Immigrants or any Inspector of Immigrants in entering any plantation, or estate, asylum, hospital, school, camp of labourers, or other establishment of any kind in which Indian immigrants are received, except private dwelling-houses, upon which immi-

any grant under written contract of service is employed, or upon which he may reasonably suppose that any immigrant is employed under any written contract of service, or who shall fail on demand to produce to the Protector of Immigrants, or to any Inspector of Immigrants, any book or other document mentioned in Article 6 thereof, or who shall obstruct the Protector of Immigrants, or any Inspector of Immigrants in inspecting any book or other document aforesaid, or shall refuse, or neglect to bring, or cause to be brought any immigrant before the Protector of Immigrants, or any Inspector of Immigrants, at such Protector's or Inspector's request, shall, on conviction before a Stipendiary Magistrate, forfeit and pay such sum not exceeding 201., as the convicting Magistrate shall direct.

12. All informations to be laid under this Ordinance or under Ordinance No. 29 of 1865, may be laid at any time not more than six months next after the day of the offence being committed, and all such informations may and shall be laid by the Protector of Immigrants, or, as the case may be, by the Crown Prosecutor.

13. Nothing herein contained shall be held or construed to repeal, or vary, or in any manner to interfere with the Penal Laws now in force in this Colony.

14. Ordinances Nos. 16 of 1802, and 29 of 1885, and the Proclamation No. 1 of 5th January 1866, are modified only in so far as they are repugnant to or inconsistent with the provisions of this Ordinance.

15. This Ordinance shall be read and construed with the Ordinance No. 31 of 1807.

Inclosure 3 in No: 27.

HIS Excellency the Governor then addressed the Board in the following terms :--- Before this Ordinance is read a second time, it appears to me desirable to state to the Board the reasons which induce me to recommend it to their favourable consideration. The chief grounds on which my advocacy of the measure rests, are these:-That I

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consider it to be a salutary, if not an indispensable modification, of the existing law; and that it is one the necessity for which has been fully recognized by the Immigration Committee of this Board.

When my predecessor, Sir Henry Barkly, submitted for Her Majesty's approval the Ordinance No. 31 of 1867, whilst he did not conceal the fact that its provisions, if abused, might be rendered instruments of oppression, he at the same time pointed out what he considered, and, I think, very rightly considered, the main guarantees against the introduction of such abuses.

In addition to the above obvious course of an appeal to the Courts of Law, there were, in his opinion, two :--The accessibility to complaints of the Governor, who, he says, "constantly receives and invariably investigates petitions on every conceivable subject;" and the existence of a vigilant system of inspection.

The former, however, though a valuable, can never, I think, be as efficient a check as the latter.

For my own part, with the exception of one occasion, many months ago, when my honourable friend the Protector of Immigrants and I saw together a man who had been the victim of a brutal assault, and another, only last week, when we also saw one together, I have never personally received the complaint of any immigrant; not, of course, that I would make any difference, far from it, between Her Majesty's subjects of Indian origin and those of European or Creole extraction, but because, in all cases, personal interviews are, I think, apt to lead to misconceptions on their part, and are also always open to be misrepresented by them, should they unfortunately have any inclination to do so. At the same time I am far from undervaluing this right.

I should consider its exercise useful, if only on account of the strong confirmation of my belief as to the prevailing good treatment of the immigrant population, which has been afforded to me by the frivolous character of by far the greater part of the complaints made. But it must always have been upon inspection that the chief reliance for the prevention of abuses rested.

These inspections were started by Sir H. Barkly to consist of visits paid by the Protector once, and by the stipendiary magistrates twice, every year to each estate in the Colony.

But the Protector's duties have so considerably increased that he has found himself unable fully to discharge this function of his office.

During the present year he has been able to visit 13 only out of the 214 sugar estates in the island. Last year he was chiefly occupied, so far as inspection was concerned, in running after the arrears of 1869; and it is clear that, under these circumstances, his annual visits, if regularly made, could not be of a very minute or searching character.

As regards the inspections of the stipendiary magistrates, the Immigration Commttee has reported that, "in consequence of the increase of their judicial business, it is hardly possible for them to continue these inspections; that they are, more or less, incompatible with their judicial functions; that they are unauthorized by law; and that, in the opinion of the Committee, they should be discontinued." In the reasoning and in the recommendation of the Committee I entirely concur.

Further conformation of the justice of this view is afforded by a Report recently sent in by the Protector of Immigrants, from which I will quote a few words. He says, "As instances of the absolute necessity of authoritative prescriptions of law in regard to the powers of the Inspectors on the one hand, and the obligations of employers on the other, I may mention that, on the 13th September, when the last of the Stipendiary Magistrates' half-yearly Returns reached me, I discovered that, regarding five cstates, there had been no information given, because the proprietors had not yet returned answers to the questions put to them by the Magistrates, and that, with reference to as many more, the information supplied was so palpably wrong as to leave no alternative but to apply for fresh Returns. Hence the delay to which I have referred at the beginning of this Report."

We are, then, in presence of a system the inefficiency of which is admitted and the defects of which are recognized.

To remedy these defects the Immigration Committee recommended the appoint- ment of two new Inspecting Officers, to be placed entirely under the direction and control of the Protector of Immigrants.

It is to give effect to this recommendation that the Ordinance now before the Board has been framed.

But it has been objected in some quarters that the Ordinance does not, in fact,

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