CO885-(1-2) — Page 149

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

885

1 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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

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your Majesty, is the true situation of Mauritius, one of your Majesty's most beautiful and most valuable colonies. Notwithstanding the acknowledged intel- ligence of its inhabitants, their great industry, the almost boundless means they have had at their dis- posal-its beautiful climate and rich soil-inconsi. derate legislation and a total disregard of the urgent representations of the inhabitants by the Local Government have involved it in ruin.

14. Your petitioners humbly represent that, in addition to the Bill of 1846, other causes have ope- rated within the colony, towards producing the pre- sent prostration, which still continuing, prove insur- mountable obstacles to the cheap production of sugar and consequently to the recovery of the colony from its misfortunes.

1. The large and altogether extravagant expen- diture of the Local Government and the consequent taxation which has so absorbed the resources of the colonists that they are no longer in a position to meet it.

"That no further proof of this is required than the Colonial Budget of the year 1848, wherein the expenses of the Government, including immigration, were estimated at 324,0977. 17s. 6d.

Whilst the value of the present crop, calculated at 45,000 tons at 141. per ton net average price, is only 63,0001, st. including a taxation of no less than 51 per cent. on the whole produces of the island.

"2. The grievous and excessive expenses to which your petitioners are at this time exposed in obtaining justice before. the local courts of the Island, resulting principally from the Rules of Pro- cedure late promulgated by the Court of Appeal; the consequences being that many of your petition- ers, are at this moment of their distress, compelled either to forego their just claims as creditors, or their legitimate defence against unjust demands: and that from their inability to meet the excessive attendant charge, which your petitioners consider as one of the greatest grievances and calamities to which they are exposed.

;

3. The rigorous application of the standard value of silver as compared with gold, as adopted in England, which has proved during many years a cause of serious injury to your petitioners. The low value fixed by the Imperial Government on the

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rupec, which forms for the most part the circulating medium of the island, checking the importation of that coiu, and rendering it impossible to maintain

it in circulation; from whence it arises that your petitioners are compelled to adopt one value for the rupee in their commercial dealings and transactions, whilst the Government insists upon another; thus creating great confusion and embarrassment. Whilst the supply of coin fluctuates in such an extensive degree in consequence, that your petitioners have been left on several occasions without the means of paying their labourers or even of purchasing the necessaries of life. That this great calamity of an insufficient circulating medium, caused by the exportation of rupees, is now adding to the afHictions

of your petitioners, which combined with the scarcity of capital and absence of credit, has raised the inter- est on money for agricultural purposes to the onerous rate of 25 and even 30 per cent. per annum.

"15. That your petitioners, being deprived of any participation in the government of the colony, either by means of an elective representative assem- bly or any sort of municipal institutions, are unable to control the public expenditure, so as to reduce it in conformity with the resources of the colony, and

to what is strictly required for an effective Govern- ment on a rigidly economical footing. Whilst public meetings or associations being prohibited by recent penal laws, unless with the sanction of the Governor previously and specially obtained, the colonists are deprived of all sufficient opportunity of freely dis- cussing matters of vital public interest, and of for warding to your Majesty general and faithful petitions against those measures of the Imperial Legislature or Local Government which have brought them to their present distressing condition.

16. That your petitioners are debarred from obtaining cheap or satisfactory labour, by the haras- sing and vexatious special laws which regulate emi- gration from India, and the relations between mas- ters and servants in the colony; from which it results that, in the absence of any real competition for employment, the colonists are compelled, not only to feed, clothe and lodge their labourers, finding them medical attendance, but also to pay them high wages in money, monthly, which the provident amongst them are enabled to save in toto, a state of

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things unknown in any other part of the world, and which at present renders competition, with slave-pro- ducing countries by the Mauritius planters impos- sible.

"17. And lastly, that in consequence of a rupture with the Queen of Madagascar, all communication with that island has been cut off since the month of June 1845, whereby your petitioners have been deprived of their supplies of cattle, for food, and labour, and which were paid for principally in British manufactures-the price of meat having risen in consequence four-fold, whilst draft-oxen on which the planters are dependent for the cheap working of their estates, are not to be procured to replace the large numbers destroyed by murrain. A lucrative trade being at the same time lost to your petitioners and to the manufacturers of England. Whilst a source is also closed to your petitioners from whence effective free labourers might be obtained at a moderate rate.

"YOUR PETITIONERS

"Therefore humbly pray that in relief of their sufferings as now sets forth, your Majesty will be graciously pleased to order,—

"1. That, with a view to self-government, an Elective Legislative Assembly be granted to the inhabitants of Mauritius, with power to regulate the colonial expenditure and raise the necessary taxes, and that no taxes be imposed but with the consent of that Assembly.

2. That a municipal corporation be granted by royal charter to the town of Port Louis, with such powers as are possessed by similar corporate bodies in Great Britain-and that municipal institutions be granted to each of the country districts of the island.

3. That the existing penal laws restricting public meetings and associations be abolished.

4. That the Colonists be relived from the ex- penses of the fortress and garrison; and that these and other charges not strictly Colonial, be con- sidered as national, and for the future be provided for by the Imperial Government.

5. That a commission be appointed, composed of competent persons, to examine, with the least pos- sible delay, the present state of the legal procedure of the Local Courts, and to point out the most