CO885(3-4) — Page 189

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

PELLICO. 885

4 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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remonstrate and to make representations to you and your predecessors-in the Mauritius, the Pacific, and other parts of the world. We think the case in Jamaica is peculiar from this circumstance, that the cost of the immigration has almost entirely, with very little exception, been defrayed by the peasantry of Jamaica. I think you will have seen in the Memorial that we have stated some strong facts in proof of that allegation. In respect to Jamaica, of all our Colonies, I think there has been less occasion or less ground for advocating immigration than in almost any other, as there is there a large and abounding population, rapidly increasing, and quite sufficient for all the cultivation and all the wants of the island. There is no question that in certain districts of the island there has been a want of labour for this reason.

You are, happily, not so old as some of us, and cannot remember the state of things at the time of the emancipation. I hold in my hand a letter, which only turned up the other day, written a few days before the extension of the apprenticeship system came into effect, and there are a few lines in it which will throw strong light upon the fons et origo mali of the whole question in Jamaica. It was written in July 1838.

The writer says:-"By the papers I perceive that, in St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, the planters have come to the resolution to pay the apprentices but half a dollar for five days' labour, to be regulated by the master; but, except their house and ground and medical attendance, no other indulgence is to be allowed. The folly and tyranny of

such a combination is obvious."

Well, my Lord, that is the system which unhappily prevailed to a very considerable extent. It produced its natural results, and caused a considerable exodus from those parts of the Island; and it would be difficult, no doubt, in those districts, except by a rather tedious process, to restore the labouring population. But then we see side by side with these events, which are occurring in one or two districts, that where the planters were resident and the people regularly paid, or where the planters were non- resident, but represented by men who worthily fulfilled their duties, an abundance of labour was always accessible; and when we consider that at that period and for years afterwards, the planting interest had to contend with the abolition of all protective duties, they themselves having been nursed in a system of protection, I think it is obvious that the question of labour did not necessarily enter into the question of the protection of sugar. There is another cause to which I will allude, about which there are one or two gentlemen here, I believe, who can speak to the point, and that is this: it, unhappily, is a consequence of the old régime which existed in Jamaica on so many sugar estates, that the more respectable part of the working population will not let their families work on those estates, they considering the system demoralizes. I will not apply this term to all of them, but it does apply to a large number. A point on which you will observe considerable stress is laid in the Memorial is the question of the cost being so largely and almost entirely defrayed by the working population.

In the list of the revenue of the Island, which I have here before me-some- thing over 500,0001. a year-and I think you may say on going over the list that a very infinitesimal proportion is derived from taxation of property. A large amount -it cannot be less than 80,0001. a-year-is derived from the taxation on flour, salt, fish, and the most necessary provisions of the people, and, consequently, they are the largest contributors by far of the taxation of the island. There is one observation I would just make in connection with the first two paragraphs of the Memorial, and it is this, that you will hardly be surprised at the considerable amount of dissatisfaction which has arisen on this question, which has naturally, given rise to an agitation for the restoration of representative Government. Your Lordship will not be surprised, under the strong feeling which such measures have engendered, that its legislation is dictated by the interests of the planters rather than by the welfare of the people, that an agitation should exist for the restoration of representative Government. While I think we have succeeded in conveying our own convictions to most of our friends that such a change at the present moment would not conduce to the better government of the Colony, and would disappoint some of its supporters, at the same time we are bound to say that we are by no means prepared to recognize the uncon- trolled administration of the Crown as the perennial Government in our tropical colonies. I am happy to say, however, that the measures which have been taken, and with so much success, for the extension of education, in happy contrast to those of which we have to complain, are laying the most durable foundations and the most hopeful expectations of a change in the future, and for the resumption of representative Government in Jamaica at no remote period, but until that representation can be safely laid on a basis sufficiently wide, we think a change would be for the worst, it would but prove the government of a class by merely the ruling of a clique, of which

your Lordship has just seen the disastrous result in the Island of Barbados during the past year.

The Reverend E. Hewitt.-My Lord, there is no doubt that the difficulties of the question in gard to labour, arose in the first instance from the conduct of the planters in regard to their relationship to the emancipated peasantry. In 1838, and onward to 1842, the people were driven off wholesale from the estates, their houses were torn up by the cattle, their breadfruit trees chopped down, and they literally driven in hundreds from the different properties on the sugar estates on which many of them had been born and many had laboured from childhood. In consequence of this unfortunate, in my estimation, action, the people sought the means of obtaining a home, and in very very large numbers indeed, they soon found access to lands lying back in the mountains. At the present time, perhaps, there were no fewer than 175,000 to 180,000 freeholds in Jamaica, those freeholds having connected with them and of an average of five acres in extent to each. A very large number of those settled upon those freeholds will never return back to work on the estates, simply because they can get a better living at home on the property they have purchased by their own industry, than they can by going back to work upon the estates. But, notwithstanding this, there are a very large number of people who are prepared to work upon the estates under certain conditions, that is to say, when they can get fairly paid, honestly treated, and justly dealt with. I have no hesitation in saying this, and my experience has been rather large and wide in Jamaica, that there are still thousands and tens of thousands of individuals who might be induced to return to work on the estates, if sufficient inducements were held out to them to do so. In proof of this, I may mention that a large number of our young men have left Jamaica in search of work, and have gone down to Panama, and the railway at Panama was built mainly by labourers from Jamaica, and more recently still a large number of our labourers have gone to Leeman Bay. Some of them have been unfortunately unable to return; I think they made a mistake in going, but it shows there is a floating population ready to work if sufficient wages are offered to them. Whether the planters can give them sufficient to induce them to leave their homes and go down to the estates to work, it is not for me to say, but there is no doubt the peasantry of Jamaica have just cause to complain, because their money is being used for the purpose of introducing a class of persons to take the bread out of their own mouths.

When Sir John Peter Grant assumed the Governorship there was a debt of 450,000, if I remember rightly, that had been contracted for immigration purposes. That debt is now the debt of the island, and that debt the people have to pay through the taxes levied upon them; and I say from conversation I have had with them, and the opportunities I have enjoyed of intercourse with the people, they feel it most bitterly that they should have to pay for the immigrants who have come to the country and literally taken the bread out of the mouths of themselves and their families. They also feel deeply that they should now be indebted. I refer to another and a new debt which has been contracted of 150,000l. within the last few years. This debt does not rest entirely upon the people, but everybody in Jamaica belieres that it will eventually come upon the general revenue of the Island. In regard to the coolies, I have known a good many of them. I have come very much in contact with them; they are a most unfortunate class of persons. In physical capacity weak and inefficient, they can do only a certain proportion of the labour work on the estates-the lighter work. As to digging cone-holes and doing the heavier work, they cannot do it; they are totally unfit; they do lighter work, whilst the Creoles, whose money has been spent to bring them out, do all the heavier work.

I ought, perhaps, to modify what I said just now with regard to the labour at the conmand of the planters. At a certain season of the year planters have a difficulty simply on this ground, that the crop-time occurs just when the planting season of the people occurs, and at that period of the year in certain portions of the country there are difficulties occurring in consequence of the absence of labour. But if a different system were adopted altogether by the planters, if they could pursue a plan similarly to that adopted by farmers in this country, and could employ labourers all the year round, giving them work on fair wages, I think that difficulty might be met. With regard to the introduction of the coolies, it is the introduction of a very serious and, in the opinion of many of us, a disastrous element. It is the introduction of a heathen element amongst acpartially civilized community, and the immoralities of those coolies are not to be mentioned in decent society. The number committed to prison is to be found in the official returns; and, as compared to the Creoles, I believe they are ten to one. In consequence of this and the character of the individual brought into the

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