HC Deb 05 August 1881 vol 264 cc1018-27
SIR JOHN HAY,

who had given Notice of his intention to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the safety of Her Majesty's subjects engaged in commerce in the Pacific, as well as the well-being of the Native races, would be more completely attained, now that the seat of the Lord High Commissioner has been removed from Fiji to New Zealand if the duties of the Lord High Commissioner were performed by the Naval Commander in Chief in those seas, assisted by Naval Officers holding the requisite commission for this purpose; said, he did not propose to stand for any long time between the House and the Business before it in Committee of Supply; but the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Admiralty agreed with him that it was desirable that a few words should be said on the subject, even at this late period of the Session. In the numerous archipelagoes of the Pacific, none of the islanders, with the exception of those who resided in the Sandwich Islands, were in the slightest degree civilized. No fewer than 40 murders of British subjects had taken place in those islands during the past 12 months without any punishment being inflicted upon the guilty; and he had brought forward this subject in the hope that to try offences of this character some Court different from that which now sat at Fiji might be constituted. The three great Powers who had the most influence among the islanders were France, Great Britain, and the United States. France had a naval force in those seas consisting of 73 ships, manned by a force of 11,000 men, while we ourselves had a naval force in that quarter of the world consisting of 39 vessels, manned by 7,000 men, only a small proportion of which force, however, was available for service in that particular locality. The great Powers also exercized considerable influence in the islands through their missionaries and their traders. The process of obtaining the free labour of the Natives was one which had been liable to very considerable abuse. Persons whom he would call scoundrels proceeded in vessels under the pretence of hiring honest labour for the purpose of employment in French Colonies or in our own Colonies. These scoundrels were the worst description of persons who ever conducted the slave trade. Much had been done by this country to stop them; but the Native races who were so betrayed by these persons resorted to outrages, not, unfortunately, upon the guilty persons, but upon honest traders, missionaries, and other persons who were pursuing their lawful occupations and who were doing their best for civilization. The House would remember the murder of Bishop Patteson, in 1871, and, at a more recent period, of Commodore Good-enough, who, to the end of his life, did his utmost to benefit the Native races. The Pacific Islanders' Protection Act of 1872 was in a right direction. It was amended in 1875 by an Act after the Fiji Islands had become part of the territory of Great Britain. No doubt, a very eminent person, Sir Arthur Gordon, did his very best to remedy the evils that were complained of; but Sir Arthur Gordon was translated from the Government of Fiji to the Government of New Zealand, and was, therefore, at a very considerable distance from the place where the Court sat. If a trader were murdered in some outlying island in the Pacific, some naval officer at Fiji or New Zealand was ordered to go to the place where the outrage was said to have been committed, and he had to do that which he was ordered to do. Great loss of time occurred through that process. The naval officer was sent to exact retribution at some unfortunate village where, perhaps, the inhabitants hardly knew the person who committed the outrage. The Natives' means of livelihood were cut down; fruit trees were destroyed. If you were absolutely certain that persons in that village had committed a murder, and would not give up the murderer, he thought it might be a legitimate and proper punishment. The arrangement for the protection of life ought to be in the hands of the Naval Commander-in-Chief, who was on the spot, who was, no doubt, selected for his ability and discretion, and who, he thought, would carry out this duty with more satisfaction to the country than Sir Arthur Gordon, who was at so considerable a distance, could. Some legal officer would, of course, require to be associated with the Naval Commander in carrying out sentences. Commodore Erskine, the present Commodore in those seas, was well qualified to do what was necessary. On one point that officer differed from the views now put forward, but only because he thought that the performance of additional duties might interfere with his usefulness in discharging the duties already devolving upon him; and to meet that objection it might be necessary to increase the naval force under his command. France, for the maintenance of order at Tahiti, New Caledonia, and the Marquesas Islands, had 73 vessels and 11,000 men; whereas we had in Australia, in China, and on the West Coast of Africa no more than 39 vessels and 7,000 men. He made no charge against the Government; he only called on them to express some opinion with regard to this very difficult subject, and, perhaps, show that the present arrangement was better than that which he had suggested for the consideration of the House. He thanked the House for their kind reception of him, and hoped the Secretary to the Admiralty would give good reasons for the course the Government had taken.

SIR HENRY HOLLAND

said, that he heartily concurred in the Resolution moved by the right hon. and gallant Admiral. He observed that reference was made in the Resolution to the safety of Her Majesty's subjects engaged in commerce, and the well-being of the Native races. He believed that the safety of Her Majesty's subjects depended mainly upon the well-being of the Native races. There was no doubt that cruelties of an abominable character had been committed upon the Natives of these islands by kidnappers, and that these cruelties had naturally irritated and excited the Natives, and endangered the lives of those who devoted themselves to Missionary work among the islands as well as of those who benefited the Natives by introducing among them an honest and profitable trade. It was for the purpose of checking this kidnapping that the Pacific Islanders' Protection Act was passed in 1872. He (Sir Henry Holland) was then in the Colonial Office, and necessarily took an active part in preparing and working out the details of that measure; and there was no part of his work in the Colonial Office to which he looked back with more satisfaction. That Act empowered certain officers and consuls to seize and detain suspected vessels, and provided for the trial of the offenders in the Australasian Courts of Law and in the Vice Admiralty Courts. The Act worked well and greatly checked these kidnapping outrages. But it was found desirable to have, if possible, a more direct and constant and local check upon these offences, and hence, when we had obtained Fiji, the Amending Act of 1875 was passed and the Queen was empowered to appoint a High Commissioner. This was a wise step in the right direction. Large powers were vested in the High Commissioner, and Sir Arthur Gordon, then Governor of Fiji—to whose merits as a zealous and able Governor he desired, in passing, to add his tribute to that given by the right hon. and gallant Admiral—was appointed High Commissioner. Sir Arthur Gordon exercised those powers satisfactorily so long as he was Governor of Fiji; but the question was whether he could continue to do so as Governor of New Zealand? This he (Sir Henry Holland) ventured to doubt. He thought it would be necessary, if the Acts were to be efficiently carried out, that the High Commissioner should be either the Governor for the time being of Fiji or the Naval Commander-in-Chief for the time being on that Station. If, however, it was decided to retain Sir Arthur Gordon as High Commissioner, he (Sir Henry Holland) would urge upon Her Majesty's Government to take steps for the appointment of one or more Deputy High Commissioners. He was disposed to think that legislation would be necessary for this purpose, but it would be of a very simple character. He doubted whether Her Majesty could now appoint a Deputy High Commissioner. The Act of 1875, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 51, only empowered her to appoint a High Commissioner; and though reference was made in the last paragraph of the 6th section to Deputy Commissioners, those Commissioners were only members of the Court of Justice established under the same section, and were not Deputy High Commissioners with the full powers attached to the office of High Commissioner. The powers of the existing Deputy Commissioners, as members of the Court, did not extend as far as the powers vested in the High Commissioner, which he (Sir Henry Holland) thought ought to be vested in some officer, whether the Governor of Fiji or naval officer, nearer to the scene of action than New Zealand was. He trusted the subject would receive the careful consideration of Her Majesty's Government.

MR. TREVELYAN

said, that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had touched a great and complicated question, with regard to which he had made a very definite proposal—a proposal with which the Government found themselves unable to agree, but which they were very glad to discuss. Recent events had drawn public attention to the islands of the Pacific. Those events had excited strong feelings—feelings of indignation at barbarous outrages, of sympathy with fellow-countrymen who had been cruelly murdered, and of grave uneasiness and dissatisfaction at the necessary imperfections in the methods by which those outrages had been visited and punished. It was under the influence of those events that the right hon. and gallant Member had brought forward the Motion which stood in his name; but he could not but think that the impression which they had produced had given him a somewhat one sided view of a question which had many sides, though none, perhaps, as striking as that. For when he proposed to intrust a naval officer, and that officer our Commander-in-Chief in those seas, with the office and duties of High Commissioner, he could not but think he lost sight of the fact that the punishment of outrages by Natives was at present no part, and the prevention of conduct of Europeans which might tempt Natives to those outrages was only a part, of the duties of the High Commissioner. On that point Sir Arthur Gordon spoke positively. It was by no means "to see that Whites were protected from outrages by Natives "(p. 47), and but in a secondary sense "to protect Natives from outrages by Whites" (p. 47), that that Court was formed. He said— It was principally designed to provide means for the settlement of disputes between White men themselves and to prevent Her Majesty's subjects from breaking Her Majesty's laws. It was found that in Samoa, in Tonga, in the New Hebrides, and in other places small communities of British subjects were springing up over which no Court had jurisdiction and no law had force. Debts were incurred, and the debtor could at pleasure evade his creditor's claim; contracts were entered into the performance of which could not be enforced; wills were made which could not be proved; disputes arose as to successions which could not be settled; crimes were committed which either escaped punishment altogether or wore dealt with by a lynch law demoralizing to those engaged in it. It was primarily to remedy this state of things that the Deputy Commissioners' Courts, under the High Commissioner, were established at Apia and Nukualofa. It was, no doubt, also an object that the letter and spirit of the Western Pacific Acts should be carried out by Her Majesty's subjects and that the Court should enforce their strict observance; but no one who looked carefully at the Orders in Council can fail to perceive what was their primary object—the establishment of a Court to which British subjects who had no locus standi before any other judicial tribunal might resort. If hon. Members would study the very voluminous Order in Council of the 13th of August, 1877, and the still more voluminous Schedule, they would find that the functions of the High Commissioner embraced the powers of every species of tribunal, civil and criminal, judicial and administrative, legal and equitable. It was impossible that a naval officer, with a naval officer's training, should face such a grange of duties, so special and, at the same time, so multifarious in their nature. A Commodore who, in the intervals of inspecting quarters and putting his men through gun-drill, could deal with questions of partnership, questions of probate, questions of bankruptcy, questions of intestacy, would be a sea-lawyer with a vengeance. And if it was impossible, it was at the same time most unadvisable. He could hardly imagine anything more certain to distract an officer's mind from the very important cares which the safety of his ships and the security of his station demanded. And if, by some happy chance, the Admiralty secured an officer who had the legal knowledge which qualified him for the post, the mere fact of his being tied down to the head-quarters of his Court would be an immense disadvantage to the Service. Litigants who had business before the Court at Sydney would be hardly used if the exigencies of the Service required the High Commissioner to go on a four months' cruise to Western Australia. The main principle of naval administration was that our ships and our squadrons should be able to sail whenever and wherever they were ordered. The elasticity of our Navy depended upon our vessels being always, as they were now, ready for war on a moment's notice in any quarter where need might arise; and to fetter the commander of four vessels on an important station with judicial duties which would cramp his movements as much as they would absorb his energies, would be contrary to the whole spirit on which our Service was conducted. And then there was another consideration which weighed with the Admiralty greatly, and that was that to appoint our Commodore High Commissioner would place him in a position with regard to the Colonial public in which, for every reason, it was inexpedient that a naval officer should be placed. Colonial opinion on some important matters was not English opinion. Nor did it always express itself after the fashion which was observed in English politics. He had seen something in India of the mode in which non-official British residents attacked an official, be he Judge or Administrator, who was supposed to deal tenderly with the darker races when their interests clashed with those of the White man; and it was a species of attack to which he did not desire to see our naval officers exposed. And as it was in India, so it had a tendency to be in other quarters of the globe. In January of this year there met an Intercolonial Congress at Sydney, composed of leading gentlemen from the different Governments of Australasia. There was no one under the rank of Colonial Secretary, Colonial Treasurer, Attorney General; and yet these gentlemen were pervaded with the feeling with regard to questions between the Native races and the British race, which never failed to prevail where those races came freely into contact. The Intercolonial Conference printed in the appendix to its Report a certain number of letters and articles from newspapers, and so gave those letters and articles, to speak very moderately, a certain stamp of authority. Now, it was well known to the House that Sir Arthur Gordon was High Commissioner, and Chief Justice Gorrie was Judicial Commissioner; and how were those high functionaries treated in those letters and articles which, after being printed in that Report, had become, as it were, the semi-official expression of Colonial opinion? The first letter was from a Mr. Julian Thomas to the Secretary of the Intercolonial Conference. He said— Having lately returned from Fiji, I have seen the pernicious results of the Exeter Hall policy of Sir Arthur Gordon and Judge Gorrie, the High and Judicial Commissioners of Polynesia. I was witness of the supineness and indifference of the High Commissioner to the outrages committed. Native policemen have power to arrest White men on the moat frivolous charges; and the insolence of the whole aboriginal race of the South Seas proves Sir Arthur Gordon's public statement that these are not the countries for White men. And the next extract was from an article— Both these officials (Sir Arthur Gordon and Chief Justice Gorrie) have been for years playing to the gallery of Exeter Hall, and, no doubt, have acquired in Great Britain a great reputation for philanthropy, earned, as results show, at the cost of the blood of their countrymen. To try cases before Judge Gorrie is a mockery. The Colonies should join together to protest that the property and lives of their citizens shall no longer be at the mercy of the High Commissioner or his judicial assistant. Now, he asked the House, and he asked the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, whether that was the sort of language which we should wish to see applied to the officer who commanded Her Majesty's squadron in those seas? Sir Arthur Gordon took these attacks in that spirit in which a high-minded man took all attacks which it was part of duty, and he might say a condition of his calling, to face. When a civilian administrator undertook such a post as that of Sir Arthur Gordon, he regarded that sort of criticism as all in the day's work. But it would be in the highest degree calamitous if the chief representative of the fighting power of England was to be abused twice a-week by two out of the three Colonial newspapers as a partial magistrate and a maudlin humanitarian. It was an ordeal which naval officers could not be called upon to face, and which they should not face either for their own sake or for the sake of the country. That was not the way to maintain the popularity of our Navy. But, without taking the strong step of making the Commodore a High Commissioner, there was still something to be done. The Intercolonial Conference, among other recommendations, made two that were specially worthy of notice. They resolved that— Extended powers should be conferred upon the High Commissioners for the punishment of Natives of the said islands for any crimes or offences committed by them against British subjects. And Sir Arthur Gordon supported their view in his very powerful Memorandum of the 26th of February, which was a sort of comment on their Report. He said— Unless a jurisdiction were created competent to take cognizance of offences committed against British subjects in the Pacific beyond Her Majesty's possessions, the infliction of punishment on British subjects for outrages against Natives in the same regions was sure to excite on their part not unnatural irritation and a sense of being treated with injustice. Well, that great question—for a very great question it was—was beyond the scope and power of the Board of Admiralty, though they took the strongest view in favour of a change of system. But there was another suggestion of the Intercolonial Conference to which they had directed their earnest attention— That the more frequent visits of Her Majesty's ships among the islands would have a beneficial effect upon the Natives, and tend to lessen in a great degree the crimes now so prevalent. That suggestion was enforced in an excellent and moderate series of articles in The Sydney Morning Herald; and the Admiralty had despatched two vessels—the Cormorant and the Beagle—to cruise in and about the islands, visiting every mission and commercial station, with a civilian Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Romilly, on board. The Admiralty had likewise taken the same view as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, to the effect that a naval officer should be appointed Deputy Commissioner, and that charge had been conferred on Captain Maxwell, who would now have, among other important powers, the all-important power of removing by deportation any British subject whose conduct was of a nature to produce or excite a breach of the public peace, from the neighbourhood where his presence was oppressive or dangerous. It was one thing for a naval officer to be High Commissioner himself, exposed to the fierce light which beat upon that post at Sydney or Wellington, and quite another to be a Deputy Commissioner on the high seas, with the redoubtable presence of Sir Arthur Gordon to stand between himself and public criticism. In the words of Lord North-brook's letter to the Colonial Office— My Lords were convinced that the influence of a sensible naval officer, whose duty is not confined to the distasteful task of punishment, but who can investigate and decide differences on the spot, will be more likely than any other measure gradually to produce a cessation of the serious outrages which seem to threaten the extinction of the valuable trade with the islanders. That was what the Admiralty had done; for that lay within their own power. And Lord Northbrook's strong recommendation to the Colonial Office to obtain, if legally possible, authority to check outrages on the part of Natives by the course of law, instead of by acts of hostility, which too often confounded the innocent with the guilty, represented what the Admiralty, and he believed Her Majesty's Government, as a whole, regarded as at least a partial remedy for evils which could not be altogether remedied except by that policy of annexation to which hon. Gentlemen who most deprecated the severities and irregularities of the present system of retribution would, he imagined, be the last to urge them.

In reply to Mr. HOPWOOD,

MR. TREVELYAN

promised to lay the despatches on the Table of the House.