CO129-122 - Sir MacDonnell - 1867 [5-6] — Page 323

"Emigrants in Chinese

" Passenger Ships Charing

S

"from Hong Kong" and

also enclosing a memorial, against all hired

emigration signed by

The Thief Justice of Itong Kong and M: Whittall

Jan se J. F. Ee

To His Excellency Sir RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL, C.B.,

Governor of Hongkong and its Dependencies.

May it please your Excellency,

THIS MEMORIAL SHEWETH—

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That the fact that the Colonial legislation affecting Chinese Emigration is undergoing improvement, appears to us to present a fitting opportunity whereon to lay before you certain sentiments and views relative to one branch of that Emigration, which we have for a length of time past entertained.

2. We admit that the Ordinance just passed in Council tends to ameliorate the condition of the Coolie Emigrant, and that it is a valuable supplement to Ordinances No. 11 of 1857 and No. 6 of 1859, which regulate the Coolie trade, and we feel satisfied that so long as the administration, which has recently very greatly lessened crime and increased protection for life and property in this Colony, may continue, all the protection with which it is possible to surround the Coolie in Hongkong, will be afforded. But we still feel constrained to wholly and loudly condemn the conveyance from China of Coolies under contracts for service abroad for terms of years. This system is so inherently Fad, and is so dependent upon crime and wrong for its existence, that we pray the day may come, when by the common consent of civilized nations, its prosecution shall be rendered penal; and in the meanwhile we beseech Your Excellency to free Hongkong from the stain of participation in it, and to enact that no vessel whatever shall clear from Colonial waters with Chinese on board held to service or labour abroad by contract for a term of years, and that no such Contracts, un matter how or where entered into, shall be valid in the Colonial Courts.

3. We do not require to relate in detail to Your Excellency the grounds which lead us to thus strongly leprecate what is commonly known as "Coolie Emigration," and to pray that any promotion of it, within Colonial waters at least, may be made illegal. You are well aware that, all assertion and evidence, so called, to the contrary notwithstanding, few Chinese peasants enter into contracts for service or labour abroad, possessed of any clear, intelligent sense of what they are doing. Too often the miserable wretches doomed by this dreadful traffic to a lifetime of exile and slavery (for although the trade has now existed for years, few, if any, of its victims have returned to China) are torn by violence from their friends and homes, or have been obtained by means of deception and misrepresentation; it being notorious to all persons acquainted with Chinese character, and manner of thought, that none of these people would consent to quit their native land, did they thoroughly understand the nature of the lives which even in the most favorable localities, say the British and Dutch West Indian Colonies and the Hawaiian Islands, lie before them.

4. We are aware that in the case of vessels lying in this harbour for hired emigrants, it is nearly certain that our Colonial laws, earnestly, righteously, and rigidly administered as they would be, are sufficient to protect the Liberties of the Chinese, so long as these remained within our jurisdiction; but the ship once despatched from Colonial waters, if her flag were non-British, Your Excelleney might be constrained to witness all the beneficial regulations so carefully enforced set at naught, and crowds of emigrants, in addition to those obtained here, shipped within a few miles of this harbour, in defiance of all Colonial enactment. Upon this ground alone we would consider the legislative remedy which we have asked for above to be imperatively required. But when we further remember that none of the classes of Chinese from which hired Emigration is drawn, are to be found in Hongkong at all, that this miserable system which we condemn cannot be justified even on the poor ground that it relieves us of pauperism or of crime, and that the only effect of its legalization is to allow the island to be used as a depot for the collection of unhappy wretches, who know neither what they are doing, nor what is being done with them, we feel that we can scarcely urge our desire in language too strong for the occasion. For the reputation of the Colony, therefore, for the sake of example, and for the honour, in so far as it is given to Your Excellency and to ourselves to uphold the same, of the British Flag, we call upon you to solemnly condemn by Colonial legislation this trade in human bodies, which, bearing the impress of misery wherever it. is carried on, culminates at our very gates into the hideous form of slavery. It is because we are well assured that whenever a ship takes away hired labourers from China, she is made an instrument of fraud and oppression, and becauKA we desire to protest in the most solemn, public, and efficacious manner against the crimes and barbarities of which at least. one locality at the mouth of the Canton river is the daily theatre, that we urge Your Excellency to take a step, which, we hope, will arrest the attention of the civilized world.

5. For our ultimate aim is the entire suppression of this modern form of slavery and the conseqpient extinction We do not desire to reflect upon the Government of the cruelties uninterruptedly carried on at its bead-quarters. from whose waters are steadily despatched ships conveying crowds of ignorant Coolies to lives of unremitting toil, and in most instances, to miserable deaths. We will give that Government credit for thoroughly good intentions, and we are anxious to admit that the letter of their legislation in connection with "Coolie Einigration" is very near perfection, and is such as would make it appear to the distant reader that under its provisions, not only need no Chinaman quit his native land unless he be minded so to do, but that jealous care is taken by the Authorities in question that he be neither intimidated nor entrapped into a consent which he really did not mean to give. We, who dwell upon the spot, know too We desire, however, to record our belief that the Authorities well how wide of the truth such an impression would be, we refer to are deceived by formal compliance with their ordinances even as other governments might be similarly juggled ; but we do not require to tell Your Excellency that these very regulations, said to be designed to protect the Coolie against fraud and restraint, are, with detestable ingenuity, converted into meshes whereby to entrap him more securely. These regulations are of no utility whatever; they serve but to cast dust in the eyes of the world; they afford no protection to the Coolie. On the contrary, they extend direct encouragement to the Man-stealers who infest the Coast of China from the Gulf of Tongking to that of Pechili, because, so soon as their letter is complied with, they shift the responsibility of the miserable Coolie's detention from the shoulders of his kidnappers to those of Official Authority.

We

Ka

use the designation "kidnappers" without reserve, and Your Excellency will not fail to consider us justified in doing when you recall to mind the detestation in which all Chinese connected with the Coolie Trade are held by their own Authorities and countrymen, who hasten to destroy the miscreants if detected in the pursuit of their nefarious vocation, Nor in further justification of our language will Your Excellency fail to remember the cases, recently brought to light.

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