§ SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether the Colonial Office sanctioned the arrangements under which Ceylonese and Indians have been exported from Ceylon to Queensland; whether, before these people were exported, under indentures binding them down to labour for a term of years, enforced by a highly penal Law, an Ordinance was passed in Ceylon providing for their protection, in the same way as they are protected in India; whether the Penal Laws enforcing contracts of service, now existing in Queensland, apply equally to whites and blacks; whether it is true that many of the Coolies imported from Ceylon were sent to prison for alleged breach of contracts of service by benches of magistrates themselves sugar planters and employers of labour; whether the immigration of Chinese into Queensland is now free, and not hindered by any special taxation or special Laws against them; and, whether the Colonial Office permits the recruiting of coloured labour, under indenture, for any Colony which restricts the immigration of free Chinese labour?
§ MR. EVELYN ASHLEYSir, the Colonial Office did not sanction the arrangements under which Singalese have on a recent occasion been exported to Queensland. There was at the time no Ordinance in force which empowered the Governor to detain them; but since then an Ordinance has been passed under which the Governor is instructed to prevent the exportation of Singalese labourers to any place where the regulations in force for their protection have 574 not been previously approved by the Government. The Acts regulating the relations of master and servant in Queensland apply equally to Whites and Blacks, except that there are some special laws as to labourers brought from Polynesia. We know nothing about the newspaper statements as to the magistrates in the case under inquiry being all sugar planters. The immigration of Chinese into Queensland is not prohibited; but there is a special tax of £10 a head on each Chinaman, payable on landing. The Colonial Office consider these two questions of Chinese free immigration and of indentured labour as distinct, and has never made the allowance of one to depend on that of the other.