HC Deb 04 June 1894 vol 25 cc311-2
MR. BYLES (York, W.R., Shipley)

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to statements made at a Missionary Conference in London by Lord Stanmore, a former Governor of Fiji, to the effect that women are there by law flogged for bathing on Sunday, and that many other innocent exercises of personal liberty are punishable by fine and imprisonment; whether these restrictions are still imposed on the natives of Fiji; who imposes them; and whether the Code of Laws which allows these punishments has had the sanction of the Colonial Office? The hon. Member, in putting the question, said he believed the statements referred to Tonga and not Fiji.

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. S. BUXTON,) Tower Hamlets, Poplar

In reply to this question, Lord Stanmore has written as follows:— In writing of the undue forcing of Western ways upon 'different islands in the Pacific,' I did not refer to Fiji, and thought it very manifest that I did not do so. The groups I had in my mind were the Friendly Islands and Wallis Island, as they were in the days when I was in the Pacific. It was a village in Fiji under the Wesleyan Mission that I described as a pleasant contrast to all this absurdity. Neither of the two groups referred to is a British possession. I feel sure I may add that Lord Stanmore—formerly Sir Arthur Gordon—was one of the men least likely to allow such laws to be enacted or enforced in a colony under his Government. Indeed, I may point out that he himself, while Governor of Fiji, passed a native Regulation in 1877 in regard to Sunday, explicitly to declare lawful such things as those referred to in the question.