BRITISH GUIANA. exception of a few hundreds, were males. From 1843 to 1849, the number of immigrants imported into the same colony, was 81,170, viz., adult males, 66,627; females, 9,710, and children 4,833. The number of immigrants imported into Guiana and Trinidad up to 1849, was 70,259, the proportion of the sexes about the same as Mauritius, that is to say, 85 per cent. of males, to only 15 per cent. of females. So great a disparity of the sexes, independently of any other consideration, would render a continuous immigration absolutely necessary; but when we add to this disparity, the frightful mortality which ordinarily occurs, and the periodical departure of the survivors, it is clear immigration must be kept up so long as resources can be found to meet the expenditure, or the cultivation must decrease, unless some wiser and better measure of securing labour can be found as its substitute. Fourthly. Whilst it is apparent that immigration has not benefited the communities at large, who have had most of it, it is equally apparent that it has not benefited the immigrants themselves, except in comparatively few instances. They have been imported into countries far distant from their own, separated from their dearest connexions, and ordinary occupations. Ignorant of the language and the laws of the people among whom they were placed, they have been, in a multitude of cases, the dupes of designing men; and have not discovered their mistake until they found themselves in circumstances for which there was no remedy. Opposed in sentiment, habit, and religion to their masters, they have received but little sympathy or attention from them. Their object has been to obtain the largest amount of labour at the least possible expense, and to enforce their claims for labour by appeals to the law and the infliction of its penalties. No wonder, that under these circumstances, a large proportion of the immigrants should get home-sick and heart-sick; that they should become the victims of despair, disease and death. Many, when sick, incapable and destitute, have been driven from the estates to perish by suicide, or to linger out a wretched existence under circumstances of the most revolting nature, and to perish on the highways or open streets of the colonies. But, it may be said, that those who have survived and returned to India, have taken with them considerable sums of money. An instance is given in the case of 7,017 Coolies, who were sent home from Mauritius in 1849; of 6,811 12 of them are said to have taken away from 50 to 400 rupees each, and one 900 rupees; the remaining 206 are stated to have taken with them, on an average, 207 rupees each Now, when it is known that some of these people become petty bankers, and charge exorbitant rates of interest on their small advances to their fellow immigrants, and others become headmen or drivers on the estates, and were particularly favoured; and others, after quitting the estates, became hucksters, spirit dealers, and petty tradesmen, it cannot be surprising that they should take away the sums specified above; but how few are these fortunate individuals compared with the thousands whose savings were below 50 rupees during the whole period of their service in Mauritius. It is, in the judgment of the committee, a mere delusion to suppose that such statements as these, can balance the deception, the toil, the misery, the disease and death to which their less fortunate and sorely tried brethren have been subjected. It is their deliberate opinion, that if the facts connected with immigration were fully known to the British public, and the British Legislature, it would not be suffered to continue, unless it were placed on such a basis as to be creditable to the country, and really useful to the colonies. The committee forbear touching on the moral aspects of immigration as hitherto conducted. The sensualism and idolatry which it has introduced into the colonies, are of the grossest nature, degrading and corrupting all who have come within the sphere of their direct influence. Nevertheless, the committee sensibly feel that this is one of its features which ought not to escape notice, and which demands the most serious attention. But, had the Government steadily adhered to its original propositions on the subject of immigration, few, if any, of the evils which have flowed from it, would have existed. For instance, had the Government insisted that no immigrants should be imported, but at the cost of the parties wanting their labour; that there should have been an equality of the sexes; and that the Order in Council of the 7th of September 1838, adjusting the relations between masters and servants, should be maintained intact, neither the waste of the public money, nor the waste of human life, nor the loss of Creole labour, which all must deplore, could have happened. A regard to personal and temporary interests, rather than an enlightened view of the permanent prosperity of the colonies, has led to the abandonment of wholesome restrictions on immigration; and to the mischievous and deplorable results which have followed. Having made these preliminary remarks, the committee now proceed to call your Lordship's attention to the Ordinances which have recently been passed, in great haste, in Guiana and Trinidad, to promote Coolie and African immigration into these colonies. The Bill to regulate and encourage the immigration of Coolies into British Guiana, provides that all parties to whom they may be allotted, shall enter into contracts with them for a period not exceeding five years; that every contract, unless it be otherwise provided, shall operate as an engagement by the immigrant, to work for his employer nine hours of each day, Sundays and the usual holidays excepted; that all Coolies imported since the 4th of March 1848, shall be subject to the provisions of the Ordinance, and be compelled to perform five years industrial service; that all who where introduced previously to this period, shall be be compelled for the residue of their term, to perform industrial service, the former to BRITISH GUIANA. be called "new," and the latter "old immigrants;" that exemption from this industrial residence under contract, can only be secured by the payment of a monthly tax in advance; that no immigrant who does not fulfil the conditions of his industrial residence or pay the monthly tax, shall be entitled to a free passage back to India, except incapacitated from labour by infirmity, accident or other cause, in which case the Governor may grant a free passage home; that any immigrant who has not fulfilled the conditions of his industrial residence, but wishes to leave the colony, must take out a passport paying for the same at the rate to be fixed per annum, for any number of calendar months wanting to make up the term of his industrial residence; that every immigrant not under contract, and not having paid the monthly tax in advance, shall be liable to be taken up wherever found, and upon failing to pay the same immediately, or to show cause of exemption, shall be committed to prison with hard labour for a term of 14 days for every sum of (amount not specified in the Bill) of such monthly tax; that any immigrant under contract found at a distance of more than two miles from the estate on which he shall be engaged to labour, except on Sundays, without a written ticket of leave, may be apprehended by his employer or servant, or any member of the police force, or constable, and be taken back to the estate. that any immigrant absenting himself without leave, shall forfeit his claim to rations and wages during his absence, and shall further pay to his employer for every day of such absence, the sum of (amount not fixed in the Bill) when not subject to any other penalty, that is to say, when not subject to the discipline of the penal gang, for alleged violations of his engagements; the committee do not consider it necessary to enumerate the stringent regulations of the Bill against all parties employing and harbouring the immigrants without licenses, or payment of the monthly tax, or to enumerate the extensive powers given the police, &c. to enter upon premises, and to take into custody all immigrants suspected of evading the law, because it follows, that if the principle of the law be right, the necessary means of enforcing it should be granted; but they feel that the principle of the law cannot be justified, because it violates all rights, and therefore, they enter their protest against it, and respectfully beg your Lordship's attention to the grounds upon which they do so. First. The Bill is retrospective in its character, it not only enacts that all immigrants who may be induced to come into the colony, with a full knowledge of its provisions, and of their liabilities under it, but that all who have been introduced into the colony, since the 4th of March 1848, shall be subject to its several enactments; the number of Coolies affected by this arrangement amounts to 3,545; it goes further still, and brings within its grasp 7,496 who had been imported previously to that period, for different terms of industrial residence, that is to say, they must enter into contracts to labour on the sugar estates, or in the event of their being otherwise employed, they must pay a monthly tax in advance; now, the bare statement of this fact, stamps the Bill with a character of gross injustice; it certainly ought to be sufficient, the committee think, that the provisions of the law should apply to those who knowingly and voluntarily bring themselves under their power; but to extend them to those who entered the colony under wholly different arrangements, and with a totally different understanding, is, in the judgment of the committee, to violate all that is honourable and equitable; they would hope, therefore, that this portion of the Bill, at least, will not receive the sanction of the Crown. Secondly. The Bill provides for contracts of five years of industrial residence to one employer; your Lordship, although opposed to long contracts, is understood to have agreed to contracts for three years, provided that either party should have the power, upon due notice being given, to terminate such contracts when one year should have expired; but no such provision has been made in the Bill; it is exclusively directed to protect the interests of the employer, and that employer a planter; it guards and fences his acquired power by stringent regulations and severe penalties; but no care whatever is taken of the interests of the immigrants, so far as they are concerned, the Bill is a mere nullity; they are left completely at the mercy of their employers, for whatever they may choose to give or pay them for their services; surely so great an omission as this will not be allowed by your Lordships. Thirdly, the Bill, in effect, hands over all the Coolies who may be induced to resort to the colonies, to the planters; now the committee cannot consider this arrangement to be either reasonable or just; these immigrants are to be brought into the colony at the public expense; the public, therefore, have a right, without distinction of class or occupation, to derive such advantages, as they may from engaging them; to allow the planters exclusively this privilege, is to inflict a wrong on the community at large, who really import them. Opposed, as the committee have always been, and are on principle, to the application of the public funds, whether colonial or imperial to purposes of immigration, they respectfully maintain that if the public at large are compelled to contribute to it, they ought to enjoy its advantages, whatever they may be; nothing but a one-side policy, or an unfair preference can decide otherwise; and such policy, they believe, will, in the end defeat itself, while in the meantime it cannot fail to breed discontent. Fourthly. The Bill restricts the just rights and privileges of the immigrants; it takes from them the option of choosing their own employers and employments; it leaves them in the hands of the Agent-general to be allotted to whomsoever, being planters, and in whatever number he please. It is easy to perceive that those who have the most power or the BRITISH GUIANA. most influence, may appropriate the larger number of the immigrants, or even take them altogether; and that, under a variety of pretences, the smaller proprietors may be deprived of their fair proportion. There is no enactment to prevent this; all is left to the discretion. of the Agent-general or with those who can direct his movements. Again, the immigrants are to be restricted to the estates to which they may be allotted, and they dare not leave them without a pass or be found beyond two miles from them at any time, Sundays excepted, without being liable to be taken up and forced back to the estates. They may have just cause of complaint against their employers; they may be defrauded of their rations, their clothing or their pay; they may be assaulted or coerced to their labour, but they dare not leave the estate without a written ticket of leave from their employer or his servant even to lodge a complaint with the nearest special justice. Your Lordship will also perceive that the immigrants, under this measure, are denied all access to the markets, and that, consequently, they are made dependents on their employers for all they may require, which is, in point of fact, to place them under the truck system in its most objectionable form. To the committee this appears tantamount to a complete denial of justice, and they consider that such a restriction as this is wholly unnecessary, inasmuch as the Bill effectually provides that the interest of the employer shall not be injured by the absence of the immigrant, and gives ample powers to the special magistrates to protect them from all damage that may accrue therefrom. The committee earnestly protest against a British subject, under any circumstances, being compelled to obtain a ticket of leave. It is debasing, and cannot but beget a servile disposition. Fifthly. The Bill places the whole time of the immigrant at the disposal of the employer, except Sundays and four holidays, throughout the year, by giving him nine hours daily, for six days in the week, of labour. Now, my Lord, those who have a practical knowledge of the colonies, particularly of Guiana, know that so great an amount of toil as this enactment necessarily involves, must operate most injuriously on the health and happiness of the immigrants. To those who live in these colder latitudes, nine hours of labour may not seem too much, but it is quite another thing in the tropics, especially when it is considered, that daylight scarcely occupies more than 12 hours on any day throughout the year, and that the going to and returning from the scene of labour with their implements of husbandry, often occupies from one to two hours. The committee are persuaded that under such an arrangement as this, severe toil will be exacted and much suffering endured; they consider therefore, that the amount of a day's work ought to be clearly defined; to be paid for at the current wages of the district; that the truck system should be utterly forbidden on the estates, and that a portion of every Saturday should be allowed the Coolies for going to market and for the cultivation of plots of land for their own advantage, otherwise they plainly foresee that they will be reduced to the condition of serfs on the plantations, with no other privileges than their masters may choose to give them. They venture to press this subject the more earnestly on the attention of your Lordship, because in a recent case it will be seen that the amount of labour exacted from immigrants in Guiana, as a day's work, could not be performed, and that, as a consequence, the wages said to be paid for a day's work were merely nominal, not more than one-half being earned usually by the labourers, who were besides placed under the truck system.-Parliamentary Paper, No. 643, 1850, p. 175. Finally, the Bill provides that no immigrant who has not performed his five years of industrial residence on an estate, though he may have paid the monthly tax, shall be allowed to leave the colony without a passport, for which he must pay a certain sum, to be regulated by the time he may have yet to remain in the colony to complete five years of residence. Now such an arrangement as this, in so distant a colony as British Guiana, is tantamount to a refusal to an immigrant to return home however urgent the necessity, and, generally, there can be no doubt the provisions of the Bill will have the effect of preventing the greater portion of the immigrants from ever securing to themselves the privilege of a free passage home, and, therefore, their emigration to Guiana will amount to a perpetual exile. The ways in which an Ordinance founded on this Bill may be worked in the interests of the employer and against the labourer are manifold, and believing that if it should become law it will re-enact a modified system of slavery, the committee earnestly protest against it, and trust your Lordship will never be persuaded to give it your approbation or secure for it the sanction of the Crown. The arguments by which Governor Barkly attempts to sustain, in opposition to your Lordship, the system of long contracts, are such only as befit a planter; they will not bear a rigid examination; and to say nothing of their being at utter variance with the free spirit of British laws and institutions, they can only engender, when practically applied, despotism on the part of the master, and a crouching servile spirit on the part of the labourer. The Act of Emancipation is passed, and there can be no return to the law of slavery either in form or in fact. The committee regret that any British Governor should attempt to justify a system of coercion on the plea that the immigrants, in their own country, were not in the full enjoyment of their liberty; yet Mr. Barkly does this in his despatch to your Lordship dated 1st February 1850: he says, "It seems to me, indeed, an important element in the consideration of this question of contracts, that all classes of immigrants conveyed here, whether Africans, Coolies or Madeiranese were brought up under institutions more or less servile in their nature, and have been subject all their lives to labour of a far more compulsory character than it has ever been attempted to impose upon them them in British Guiana." If, my Lord, the principle which this extract involves, is to be BRITISH GUIANA. the principle on which legislation in Guiana is henceforth to be based, we may bid farewell to freedom. It is of the essence of British law that it recognizes the personal, social and civil liberty of all beneath its sway; and the committee cherish the hope that that will ever be the rule of all legislation sanctioned by the Crown in all the British colonies and possessions abroad. They do not, however, admit the assumption of Governor Barkly to be true; neither the Hindoos nor the Madeiranese are subject, in their own countries, to laws which infringe their freedom, or compel them to toil for others; but if it even were so, that could form no justification for treating them with rigour or depriving them of rights in the British colonies. The Trinidad Ordinance for the promotion of the industry of the captured Africans imported into that colony, provides that the Governor for the time being shall have power to assign any such African above 17 years of age for 12 months to any planter, on such terms and conditions, and for such wages, as he may see fit; that such African shall be bound to labour on the plantation to which he may be assigned, during nine hours a day for the first five days in the week, and until noon on Saturdays for his employer; the rest of those days to be given to instruction; that it shall not be lawful for such African to absent himself from the estate without some lawful excuse, without a pass or license in writing from his employer or agent, except in going to and returning from Divine Worship on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas-day, or to and from school on Saturday afternoon; that at the expiration of every year's contract, the African immigrant shall either renew with the same or some other planter, a contract for 12 months, and so on from year to year, for a period of five years; the special justice of the district shall then have the power to fix the amount of wages and terms of service; and that every African immigrant, whilst not under such contract to a planter, shall pay a monthly tax of 5 s. in advance, until he consent to re-engage with a planter. In principle this Ordinance is similar to that of Guiana, and consequently the observations which the committee have already submitted to your Lordship on that enactment will apply to this. There are, however, some special points in the Trinidad law which deserve attention: (1.) The liberated African, unlike the Indian Coolie, is not introduced into the colony at the expense of colonial funds, but at the cost of the Imperial treasury. (2.) The liberated African is not introduced for a term of five years, at the expiration of which he is to be entitled to a free passage back to his native country, but for life; and, (3.) The African immigrant is not, like the Indian Coolie, to have any voice in the management of his own concerns in relation to wages, clothing, rations, lodgings or amount of labour to be performed by him during the long period of five years; and no matter whether male or female, or whatever his inaptitude to agricultural labour, or aptitude for other employments, he is to be restricted during that period to incessant toil for the benefit of the planter, or be compelled to pay a monthly tax of 5 s. in advance, or suffer the penalty of the law, imprisonment with hard labour, as though he had committed a misdemeanor. Such arrangements the committee cannot but regard as most oppressive and tyrannical. Even with the best intentions on the part of the public officers, it is impossible to do justice in the commonest matters to the African immigrant under them, for practically, they will be in the power of their employers. The committee can imagine that the liberated Africans on their arrival in Trinidad would be unable to discriminate between one employer and another, and that, therefore, a discretionary power lodged in the hands of a responsible and competent person might be exercised to their advantage in framing contracts for them, with such stipulations as to labour as should not be oppressive, and for such wages as should be reasonable and fair; but they are utterly opposed to the idea of placing their interests in the keeping of special justices, until the termination of the fifth year of their residence in the island, during which the Ordinance, as it at present stands, gives them absolute power to fix the amount of wages, and the terms of service of the inimigrants. The committee are decidedly of opinion that, except in the case of Africans under 14 or 16 years of age, all should be free, after the first year's contract, to choose their own employers, and make their own arrangements. The experience they will have gained during the year will be amply sufficient to guide them in their choice, and be the best guarantee the Government can impose on the planters, to treat them with humanity and justice; the committee are, moreover, of opinion that the immigrants should have power, during any period of their contracts, upon giving sufficient notice, to terminate them. This right ought to be secured to them; and therefore, secondly, the committee except against the impost of a monthly tax being levied on the Africans, when not under contract to a planter, for it is clear that no African can void his contract so long as this impost stares him in the face, whatever grounds he may have for doing so. To make him pay a tax of 5s. a month, because he will not engage to work for a planter, is the height of injustice, and to enforce the payment by penal labour, is to add cruelty to wrong. The liberated African has been torn from his native country by the ruthless slave-trader, and has fallen into the hands of the British Government by capture. By them he is transferred to the British colonies, at the expense of the Imperial treasury, and as the planter has not the shadow of a claim to his services, the Government is bound to protect his interests in every way; whereas, if the present law goes into effect, he will be a slave to all intents and purposes for five years, and though he may not be sold in the market-place, he may be transferred, under certain circumstances, from one estate to another at the discretion of the authorities. The immigration Ordinance sentences him, in effect, to five years' toil on a sugar plantation, on such terms as the Governor or the special justices may see fit to BRITISH GUIANA. appoint; he has no power to relieve himself; and for every infraction of the compulsory contract, he is subject either to fine, or to imprisonment with hard labour; he cannot even leave the estate to which he is assigned, no, not even on Sundays, without a pass. It would be difficult, the committee conceive, to frame an Ordinance more nearly approaching a system of slavery than this; and yet this monstrous departure from the principle of a wise and just legislation is attempted to be justified by the Governor of Trinidad: Lord Harris, in a despatch, dated 5th September 1849, referring to the treatment of the liberated Africans, says, "In fact, compulsion there must be somewhere." And he adds, "I imagine that if the matter were fully explained to them, they would prefer invariably to return to their own country than to be brought to these islands." Undoubtedly this would be the case, and it therefore becomes a serious question whether, as the principle of free labour cannot be maintained, it does not follow, according to your Lordship's own view of the case, that immigrants of these classes, Africans and Coolies, should not be introduced into those places or colonies where this is the inevitable alternative." Other colonies, besides Guiana and Trinidad, would be willing to take the liberated Africans on terms honourable to themselves and favourable to these people. The experience of many years shows that the planterlegislators in the Crown colonies are determined to have their own way; and though, one after another, their oppressive Ordinances are either suspended or disallowed, those Ordinances serve their purposes for the time being; and it is found invariably that neither instructions from the home Government, nor considerations of justice, avail to prevent the re-enactmect of disallowed Ordinances, with additional and often obnoxious features. The committee have no hesitation in saying, that the present immigration Ordinance is worse, in many of its features, than any which have been disallowed by the Crown. The immigrants are neither slaves nor convicts; they enter the colonies as freemen, and their freedom ought and must be maintained; but the legislative bodies of Guiana and Trinidad, assisted by the Government functionaries, some of whom are directly interested in plantation property, as are the Governor, Attorney-general and High Sheriff of Guiana, and others connected with the planting interest by family connexions, as are the Governor and Attorney-general of Trinidad, avoiding a direct enactment of a system of slavery, take advantage of the ignorance or helplessness of the immigrants, to pass laws of a complicated character, the practical operation of which is to reduce them to a servile condition, but little removed from absolute slavery. The facts in proof of this are too many and too palpable to be overlooked or set aside. The committee most earnestly entreat your Lordship to interpose the just authority of the Crown by peremptorily disallowing the measures to which your attention has now been called, and to insist upon it as a rule in future, that no legislation affecting, in the remotest degree, the rights and privileges of the emancipated classes, or the immigrant labourers, shall receive the sanction of the Governor of any emancipated colony, unless it contain a suspending clause, providing that it shall not have the force of law, or be allowed to go into operation, until the pleasure of the Crown has been taken thereon. P. S. Since the preparation of the foregoing memorial, the West India Mail has arrived, and brought with it from Guiana copies of Ordinances relating to immigrant Coolies and Africans, in some respects more stringent than the measures upon which the committee have already commented; they are unwilling, however, to delay the transmission of the memorial to Earl Grey, but will take an early opportunity of calling his Lordship's attention to the new matter inserted in these Ordinances. - No. 43. No. 43. Earl Grey to 1 November 1850. Page 189. (No. 265.) COPY of a DESPATCH from Earl Grey to Governor Barkly. Sir, 23 October 1850. of a letter addressed to this department by direction of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and I have to convey to you the requisite authority for drawing upon their Lordships for such sums in bills at 30 days' sight, not exceeding 50,000 ., as may be required for the purposes of the Demerara Railway. You will not fail to give due advice to the Lords Commissioners of your having drawn such bills, in order that their Lordships may be prepared with funds to meet them. I have, &c. (signed) Grey. Enclosure |