on spirits, though it may be assumed that the greater part of it represents duties on spirits. I might add that in the first four months of the present year, the quantity of spirits imported was 218,959 gallons as compared with 524,348 gallons in the corresponding period of last year.

AFRICAN LIQUOR CONTROL COMMITTEE.

24th July.

Mr. AYLES asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can see his way to enlarge the African Liquor Control Committee by giving représentation to temperance organisations interested in the promotion of temperance among native races?

Mr. LUNN: The functions of the Committee in question are merely to advise upon the quality of gin when it is sought to add any particular brand to the approved Schedule of admissible brands of patent-still gin, and in the circumstances it is difficult to see what advantage would be gained by adding representatives of organisations which can have no practical experience of gin manufacture or marketing. I might add that the Committee now very rarely meets, as applications for adding any new brands are infrequent.

Mr. AYLES: Is my hon. Friend aware that in 1920 there were 125,000 gallons of spirits imported into the Gold Coast and that in 1928 there were 1,164,000 gallons imported, and does he not consider that an unsatisfactory state of affairs?

CEYLON (CHILDREN, DOMESTIC SERVICE).

23rd July.

Sir H. CAYZER asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the cases of Ceylonese parents selling their children for domestic service and the alleged cruelty and ill-treatment to which these children are subjected; and, if so, what action he proposes to take?

Mr. LUNN: The attention of the Secretary of State has been drawn to certain allegations of this nature, and the Governor of Ceylon has been asked for a report in the matter. A statement on the subject was made by the late Secretary of State on 29th April last.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies when the Report of Sir Samuel Wilson on the agreement reached by him at Nairobi regarding constitutional changes in East Africa will be published; whether these proposals have received the support of the Governors of Tanganyika and Uganda, as well as of the Acting-Governor in Kenya; and when the policy of His Majesty's Government in regard to these proposals will be declared?

Mr. LUNN: My Noble Friend is not yet in a position to say exactly when Sir Samuel Wilson's report will be made public, but he hopes that

it will be possible for it to be published early in September simultaneously in this country and in East Africa. The right hon. Gentleman will no doubt agree that pending publication it would not be appropriate to reply to the second part of the question. A statement as to the action which His Majesty's Government propose to take will be made in due course after the publication of the report, but my Noble Friend is not able at the moment to give a more definite reply.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Am I to gather from the last part of the reply that this statement of the Government's intentions will be made in Parliament, or outside?

Mr. LUNN: I am not in a position to give a definite statement, but I think I may say that it is likely to be made in Parliament.

Mr. CHARLES BUXTON: Is it not the fact that the ex-Secretary of State for the Colonies said in this House that Sir Samuel Wilson had no power to reach any agreement whatever regarding constitutional arrangements?

Mr. LUNN: I do not think I have said anything contrary to that opinion in my reply.

KENYA (COMMON ELECTORAL ROLL).

25th July.

Major POLE asked the Secretary of State for India whether the Government of India has made any representations to the Imperial Government in regard to the statement of Sir Samuel Wilson to the Indian deputation in Kenya, led by Pandit Hridayanath Kunzru, that the question of a common electoral roll in Kenya could not be reopened? Mr. BENN: I am not aware that Sir Samuel Wilson made any such statement.

DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

THE debates in the House of Commons on the Colonial Development Bill in July, gave opportunity for several members to raise questions connected with the labour of natives in Africa.

Mr. CHARLES RODEN BUXTON, who, in the Debate on the Address, urged our responsibility for the vast number of subject peoples of the Empire who have no means of speaking for themselves, has spoken more than once on Colonial development in relation to native welfare. He urged that enquiry should be made before labour is sought for great public works like those of building railways and bridges, in order to avoid interference with native economic life and anything like forcing them out to work, and expressed satisfaction at a later stage at the restrictions inserted in the Bill for the protection of native populations.

Mr. LUNN, speaking for the Government, gave an assurance which we think it well to quote verbatim:

"It is not the intention of His Majesty's Government that any degree of compulsion should be brought to bear on the.native population to furnish the

labour necessary for the carrying out of any schemes under this Bill. All possible precautions will be taken to ensure that recourse will not be had to forced labour of any kind and that the amount of labour drawn from any one tribe is not so large as to have a detrimental effect on tribal life.

Mr. BROCKWAY and other members spoke on the same subject, and Colonel WEDGWOOD later on in the debate drew a vivid picture of labour in tropical Africa, which is said to have deeply moved the House. He said:

་་

In tropical Africa the problem is not how to find work, but how to get work done. The problem there which has been bothering both employers and statesmen for the last twenty years has been how to get labour, and how much labour can be spared from the native's own cultivation in order that they may work for somebody else. Committees have gone through Africa looking at this question. It has been shown in the careful inquiry which was held in the Belgian Congo that twenty-five per cent. of the able-bodied males was all that could be spared from the reserves to work outside. It has been shown in the report of the Chief Native Commissioner that in Kenya, where so much of this money is to be spent, there are 407,000 men between the ages of fifteen and forty, and forty per cent. are normally working within the reserves. In other districts the proportion goes up to as high as seventy-eight per cent. Then the problem of these poor blacks is not how to find work, but how to escape it under the present industrial system, and it is a tragedy to me that the first act of a Labour Government is to make these poor devils work harder.

"I have seen this work, and I will tell you what it means. Making a railway in Africa does not mean using machinery. There is no comparison between making a railway in this country and making a railway in Africa. It is like a mass of brown ants, all of them filling baskets with earth and carrying them on their heads or on their backs, and dumping it down-a continuous stream of coloured humanity labouring like the beasts of the field. That is what it means to provide work in East Africa. These people are recruited in all sorts of ways. Nominally, there is no forcing, but through the pressure of taxation, the pressure of the Government, and the pressure of the chiefs, they have to work two months of the year to earn the money for the tax. I have seen the labour; they are vast colonies of workers, not as here in this country going back to their homes at night, but taken away from their homes and families, without anybody in charge who can enter into their feelings, and hardly speaking their language, except to give orders, no hospitals, and not even a missionary to look after them. They suffer from horrible diseases, parasites bore into their feet, they die of dysentery like flies, they suffer from the cold far worse than we do, their clothes get wet through in the rainy weather, and they have to sleep in their clothes. They are not naked, and the first thing that a native in Kenya does when he has any money, is to buy an umbrella with which to keep the rain cff his clothes.

"

'These people have been working and working, carrying loads on their heads, ever since we got into East Africa. That is all that civilisation has done for the coolies. The population is dying out. They have not enough men to till the fields, and the women have to work in the fields because the men are taken away, with one child on the back, and the other dying in the womb. That is what you are doing for the natives in East Africa. Suppose they want to leave the job, they cannot do it once they are recruited. If they get unfairly treated there is no redress and no escape; for their period they have to continue to serve. If they do, there is an Act which will punish them as criminals for having left their job. Under that Act they will not be sent to prison--oh dear no-but to

labour camps where they do the same work as before under rather severer discipline. This is labour in East Africa. When I was in East Africa I saw 90,000 of these wretched devils die carrying those loads for us. It is not so bad now. Those were only men. Now men and women have been driven into the labour market

in Kenya.

"

It is not as though those people could read or write. The man leaves his home and goes out to work in a strange country. He cannot write and the wife he has left behind cannot write. They know nothing of what is happening to each other. The wife does not know whether the man is alive or dead. No notification of his death goes to the wife. The first news she will get of his almost certain death, in the long run, is when her relatives gather round to separate her from her children, to sell the widow to one relation and her children to another. This is what you are accentuating. You are all supporters of this Bill. I am not. To me it is the creation of more slavery, more labour and more horrors in East Africa. There is no hope of stopping it now; but I would beg hon. Members, when they think of what they have done for East Africa, to remember that they have added to the curse of Adam on the entire population.

Sir OSWALD MOSLEY, on behalf of the Government, said he did not think it was fair to say the measure added to the burden of the African natives; it made notable advance in regard to their conditions. The Bill, he declared, embodied the most specific safeguards in regard to native labour ever contained in any statute.

Girl Slavery in Hong Kong.

It will be seen from the questions that have been put in the House of Commons that the question of the Mui Tsai in Hong Kong is being actively followed up. The present position is that the promised report of the Governor has been received by the Government and is under consideration. We regret to see, from Mr. Lunn's reply of the 23rd July, that the Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, "with full knowledge of the problem," is convinced that registration and regulation of the wages of the girls could not be made effective under present circumstances. We learn from Hong Kong that the Anti-Mui Tsai Society is working hard to secure registration and they consider that their position is stronger than before owing to "the untiring efforts" of the friends of the Mui Tsai in this country.

Several cases have been heard in the Courts of ill-treatment and overworking of Mui Tsai, and fines have been imposed. The following letter from the Colonial Office relates to one of these cases about which the Society had made enquiry.

It appears that an Ordinance to amend the Offences against the Person Ordinance of 1865 is shortly to be introduced into the Legislative Council, in order to enable adoptive parents of children and Mui Tsai to proceed against kidnappers.

SIR,

LETTER FROM THE COLONIAL OFFICE.

Downing Street,

3rd September, 1929.

I am directed by Lord Passfield to refer to the letter from this Department No. 62838/29 of the 23rd May regarding an alleged case of cruelty to a "mui-tsai" in Hong Kong and to inform you that the report of the Governor upon the case has now been received.

The Governor reports that the facts are as follows:

On the 26th March, 1929, a woman Wu Kwai-hing went to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs and complained of the treatment to which her daughter, Chung Kei, had been subjected by the person under whose control she had come. The usual statements were at once taken from as many of the persons connected with the matter as could be found; the child was medically examined for signs of ill-treatment by a Government Medical Officer, with negative results, and all this evidence was then referred for advice as to the prospects of successful prosecution to an officer of one of the legal departments, who gave it as his opinion that on the evidence submitted there was no hope of a conviction for assault. The matter was then referred to the Governor and after he had consulted the Attorney General and further statements had been taken, he directed the Secretary for Chinese Affairs to institute a prosecution for common assault. But in the meantime the child's mother had returned to her home in the interior of China, taking the child with her, and it was thus. impossible to proceed with the prosecution, which would otherwise have taken place. The Governer added, however, that in the face of the Medical Officer's report, which was to the effect that the girl was wellnourished and bore no definite marks of ill-treatment, the prospects of a conviction were not great.

As a sequel to this case the Governor issued instructions on the 23rd April, 1929, that a prosecution is to be attempted in all similar cases, where any witnesses at all are available, whether or not there is any prospect of securing a conviction, provided that the charge is not obviously malicious or untrue. He hopes that the publicity so obtained may act as a deterrent.

I am, Sir, etc.,

WALTER B. ELLIS.

The Times of September 20th contained an important article from its correspondent at Hong Kong on the Mui Tsai System and the Failure of the Penal Ordinance which, it declares,

"made no attempt to free the then existing mui tsai, except by declaration and reassurance of their rights. It provided tentatively for registration of them, and prohibited the enslavement of any more, but it has remained a dead letter. The clause providing for registration has never been put in force. Cases of cruelty have been