CHINESE LABOUR FOR THE TRANSVAAL. —VOTE OF CENSURE.

HC Deb 21 March 1904 vol 132 cc252-321

SIR H. CAMPBBLL-BANNERMAN (Stirling Burghs)

The Motion which stands in my name is avowedly a vote of censure upon His Majesty's Ministers. His Majesty's Ministers during recent years, using the power obtained amid the war fever in 1900, have done many strange and unexpected things, which shall not pause to recall, and they have also, stretching their hand into the future, indicated a movement in directions which would involve fresh and mischievous novelty. But I doubt whether anything that they have done or said has been so great a surprise to the country, so great an infraction of established policy, or has moved so deeply the intimate sentiment of great masses of the people as their sanctioning of this Transvaal Labour Ordinance. The gravity of this step is, of course, greatly enhanced by the fact that in present circumstances the Imperial Parliament stands, as it were, in the place of trustee for the voteless and voiceless inhabitants of that colony. Had they with full constitutional representative authority put forward this measure and submitted it for the sanction of the Crown we might have thought they were in error, we might have disagreed with them and regretted their action, but we should have had to acknowledge that in their own affairs, and in their own House, it was not very easy or proper to interfere directly with them. But now, while they have no self-government, it is upon the Imperial Government and upon the Imperial Parliament, and, if we assent to the action of the Imperial Government, upon us, that the responsibility rests for a new departure, which may, if not checked, irretrievably influence for evil not only the future of the colony itself, but the whole district of the world in which it lies. To import aliens from without the Empire and to make them bondsmen under degrading conditions for the mere purpose of benefiting, not the whole community into which they are introduced, but a wealthy industry and the speculators in that industry—can in any one conceive a more flagrant denial on all points of the principles of freedom and equity by adherence to which we have gained our place in the world? I do not shrink, Mr. Speaker, from saying that, if I thought our countrymen would accept and regard this measure which has been sprung upon them as a permanent part of the law and policy of the new colony, I should conclude that our countrymen had lost, and that they deserved to have lost, the proud place which the wise and just and humane and Christian men who have preceded us have through generations procured for us in the world. I, therefore, by this Motion call upon the House to stop this measure in its early stages, in which it can be dealt with.

The House knows the view of this matter taken by the Party on this side of the House and by thousands of persons in the country, and I will not, therefore, occupy time in stating it beyond the few words that I have already uttered. But I will proceed to inquire into the occasion and the excuses that are urged for this new policy. Sir, if such a step as the Government have taken can be tolerated at all we have to inquire—Does the condition of the mining industry in the Transvaal justify it? I must make, I am afraid, a brief excursion into past history, and here I must at once say that Parliament and the country have not been fairly treated by the Government in this matter. Under what impression did the Government leave the House of Commons at the end of last session? We had two notable speeches in the course of that session from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. On 19th March he used these words— I say that there was considerable indignation expressed at the proposal for the introduction of Asiatic or Chinese labour. Let me say, in the first place, that no such proposal was made, so far as I know, or is likely to be made. Every one concerned in the matter, even those who take the most pessimistic view of the future, is agreed that every other possible source of supply must be exhausted" [MINISTERIAL cheers] "before the introduction of Asiatic or Chinese labour is even thought of. At the present moment, as every one knows, colonial people throughout South Africa are, by a very large majority, against any such proposal. Why, then, should the House of Commons intervene to beat itself against an open door, to teach our Colonists what they ought to do and to interfere with the rights which we have conceded to the self-governing communities? Those words were pretty plain, and on 27th July the right hon. Gentleman confirmed this view and elaborated it. He said— As regards Chinese labour I will only say that it is really a premature question. The right hon. Gentleman— that is my right, hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth, who had stated that the mine-owners had said they could not conduct their industry unless they were allowed to do so with the assistance of Chinese labour— The right hon. Gentleman relies on the little paragraphs which he sees in the newspapers. At present no suggestion of the kind has been made to me, and, so far as I know, no suggestion about Chinese labour has been brought personally to the notice of the Transvaal Government. What are the facts? They show that the Colonial Office must be very imperfectly informed. I will only mention two main facts. On 1st April, nearly four months earlier, Sir George Farrar, a member of the Legislative Council, and one of the leading men in the mining community, made a speech advocating the introduction of indentured Asiatic labour—a speech which made an immense sensation throughout South Africa and was taken as an open declaration of the mine-owners' intention. It appears in the Blue-book. Then, on 2nd June, a deputation of what is called the White League—an organisation formed to oppose the demand for Chinese labour—was received by Lord Milner. What was his reply to them? He did not, in so many words, commit himself to Chinese labour, but he advocated the regulated use of Asiatic labour. He said that if they were to go ahead it was a question of getting more white labour or Asiatic labour—an alternative which we only wish had been more fully weighed. Lord Milner adopted in anticipation the findings of the Labour Commission, arguing that there was no additional supply of native labour adequate to the demand. It is rather a balancing speech, but the scale distinctly inclines towards importation. Two significant observations were made by Lord Milner. This statement was this— We have not so far the slightest certainty that the people whose rumoured advent so greatly disturbs some of us would be prepared to come. The Asiatic labourers may not care to go to a country where they have at least some reason for thinking that they will meet with a very unfriendly reception, or if the labourers themselves were willing to risk it, their Governments might refuse to let them. and then ho goes on— The Indian Government, for one, has already declined to consider a proposal for the introduction of Indian miners into Rhodesia, and has given as one of its reasons that it cannot feel certain that they would be properly treated there. Let me pause in the middle of my quotation to ask how we are to reconcile this statement of Lord Milner's with the positive answer given by the Secretary of State for India a few days ago to the effect that no communication whatever had passed between the Indian Government on the subject.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,) Warwick and Leamington

No.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Yes. Surely, the little difference is not to be drawn between the Transvaal and Rhodesia? Surely, we have had enough of these little differences in dates, in names of documents, and so forth, which are made the means of giving answers which, on being thoroughly explored, do not convey the facts as fully as they ought to have been conveyed. Surely, at any rate, Lord Milner uses it for Transvaal purposes?

MK. LYTTELTON

What is the date of that?

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

2nd June, 1903. It cannot be pleaded that Rhodesia is one thing and that the Transvaal is another. [HON. MEMBERS: I Why not?] Because, as I say, Lord Milner himself will not accept that plea, because he gives the case of Rhodesia as a complete answer to the case of the Transvaal. Having noticed that, I go on— We have not only to consider the Indian Government, but the home Government. The home Government will not agree to our introducing indentured Asiatic labour if they think the mass of the European population are dead against it. In this quotation are three hypotheses. In the first place, India certainly would not agree to the recruiting of coolies. Next, China and the Chinese coolie him self might object to come; and the third is that the home Government might veto the proposal if they think the people of the Transvaal objected. Thus, though no formal suggestion had then been made to the Transvaal Government for the importation of the Chinese, here, at all events, is the Governor fully occupied with the matter, receiving a deputation on the subject, and proceeding to argue the thing with them. Why, then, were we led to believe that interest in the question in this House and in the country was idle and premature? The second statement to which I have referred and to which the attention of the House should be called is this— To listen to some of the extreme advocates of Asiatic labour you would think that this place was on the verge of total ruin. What is the real case? The production of gold even now is greater than in 1895 or 1896, when the Transvaal already was, and had been for some time past, the marvel of the world in the matter of gold production. The world progresses no doubt, but what was fal ulous wealth seven years ago is not abject poverty now. Lord Milner is nothing if not rhetorical— Not only that, but the rate of production is steadily increasing. It was 217,000 oz. in March, 227,000 oz. In April, and it is likely to be 250,000 for May. So far Lord Milner. Bat let us follow up this question of the output of the mines. The December output was 286,000 oz., of the value of £1,215,000, representing an annual output at that rate of £14,580,000, or only £560,000 short of the result of 1898, the year before the war. Yet at the end of this month of December and at the beginning of this year we have from Lord Milner profoundly alarming reports. How are we to reconcile this with his rebuke, which I have quoted, of the disappointment and deeply-coloured statements which the mine-owners were circulating in the spring? Surely if it was wrong to fall into a panic when the mines had got back to the position of 1896 there is nothing on the face of it to show cause for the measures now proposed—measures which are justified only on the ground that they are necessary to avert a positive catastrophe—when the output is within an ace of what it was in 1898. The surprising thing is, not that progress in the mines has not come up to the optimistic expectations that were practically unbounded; but, what with the war and its disturbing effect on the Kaffirs, and in face of the sweeping reduction in wages which took place during the war, the wonder is that it has been as great as it has been. At all events, however this may be, when the House rose it was not given the remotest reason to suppose that a desperate state of things in the mining industry was impending. Quite the contrary. It rose under the spell of the Aladdin and Monte Cristo speeches and stories of the late Colonial Secretary, fresh from South Africa. Matters were going so well, in fact, that the new colonies would be able, without inconvenience; to pay the interest on the debt of £65,000,000, with which His Majesty's Government had merrily started them on their new career. The disappointment that has taken place has been in the financial condition of the Transvaal itself. Undoubtedly there is distress in the Transvaal; but I have quoted figures enough to show—and the more recent figures bear out the same result—that there is no reason for despair, or even for gloomy anticipations, in the case of the mines themselves. I ask—was it treating the House and the country fairly to thrust this proposal upon us at the point of the bayonet the moment Parliament met, and then to say that we must content ourselves with such oblique discussion as we could manage to obtain on the Address?

THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.

Oblique?

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Yes, oblique; I think it is rather a good phrase. If ever there was a ease in which the onus of proof rested on those who advocate a great change it is this case. And what is the evidence that has been presented to us? Assuming that the system proposed was morally justifiable—which I admit for the purposes of argument, though I cannot from any other point of view—there are two heads on which decisive evidence should have been forthcoming. First of all, proof of the absolute want of labour, exhaustion of the native labour, impracticability of the use of white labour impracticability also of developing labour-saving appliances. That is the first thing. And the second thing of which we ought to have had conclusive testimony is that the inhabitants, and notably and above all the permanent inhabitants, both Dutch and British, were in approval of the importation of Chinese. Now, is the House satisfied on these two points from the evidence we have received? I will not go into details, but there are one or two salient facts which stand out from the information, rather grudgingly furnished I think, at least in slow instalments. First of all, as to native labour; we have upon that the testimony of no less a person than the late Colonial Secretary. The late Colonial Secretary told us in last July that he considered a fatal mistake had been made in reducing the wages. What was the effect of that reduction? Not only that the men themselves were disappointed, and that the inducement was lessened, but that, men having gone there on the faith and in the expectation of receiving the old rate of wages, and being paid only the new rate, have lost faith in any statements that may now be made, and if you now tell them they will receive the old rate they say, in their own language, "Once bitten, twice shy." The next thing that the late Colonial Secretary told us was that there was an abundant number of Kaffirs available in the country, although there was a shortage at the mines. The next thing he told us was that such shortage as there was, was largely due to the lack of consideration shown for the comfort and happiness of the workers by those in charge of the mines. Why, I might almost stop there, as far as black labour is concerned, because that seems to me to destroy, by these three admissions, the whole case. Then, secondly, we have the evidence of the Boers before the Committee to the same effect, and we have the strong and reiterated declarations on the part of the Cape Ministry, who surely know something about South Africa, even beyond the limits of the colony, that the conclusions of the Committee were valueless and that labour adequate to all reasonable requirements was available. Then the third point I will name as standing out is, that so far as this Committee or Commission was concerned, much of the evidence was interested evidence, and the whole of it was adjudicated upon by a tribunal which no stretch of language could speak of as being impartial, because a substantial majority of the members were connected with the actual mining interest. Then, lastly, I would mention that by its term of reference that Commission was precluded from taking evidence or gathering information as to the importation of Chinese; and with regard to the question of alternate methods which might supersede the necessity for a great deal of labour, that is not even alluded to in their Report.

So much for black labour. Let us now return to white labour. I say at once that I have no pretension to teach people their business, or to instruct milling experts in the management of mines; but we are entitled to indicate the directions in which ordinary business men would expect a full trial to be made before a great revolution, such as this, in the social condition of the country was effected. Some improvement in the condition of labour usually arises from one of two causes; either from broad views of public interest commending themselves, or from the national con- science being aroused, as we have seen it in many cases in this country; or it may rise from the difficulty of obtaining labour, which stimulates ingenuity. As long as what they call muscular machinery can be got at a cheap rate there will be no great effort made to spare it; men will not spend money and exert their ingenuity in that case, and all industries would be in the primitive and almost prehistoric stage if abundance of cheap uncontrolled labour was available. Now, what are the possibilities of gold mining? Is there room for improvements which would dispense with a great deal of unskilled labour? Here, again, let me disclaim any attempt on my part to dogmatise or express an opinion, because I am not qualified to form one on such a subject. I would merely say that surely something should be tried before this terrible plunge is made. But I am not without authorities. I invite attention to two passages. One was quoted already in the previous debate by my hon. friend the Member for Cleveland; it is from a speech by Mr. Eckstein, who, I should think, knows something about it, at a meeting in Johannesburg— It is not yet entirely satisfactory, I admit; we all acknowledge the case to lie in some respects unsatisfactory for the machine drill. But the experience is a comparatively recent one. We are improving all the time, and I think we may reasonably look forward to the introduction of a small spoke drill which will aid us immensely in solving our labour difficulties, and he went on to say that— by the development of the machine drill we can get down our native labour to a very large extent—50,000 or 60,000 natives. That is Mr. Eckstein, but I have almost a higher authority than Mr. Eckstein. What do you say—I mention his name almost with breathless awe—to the Johannesburg correspondent of The Times? Here is what he says, and f think if the House has patience to listen to it, they will find it most apposite to the case. Of course he is arguing in favour of Chinese labour, and he says that a certain class can be got from Northern China and a certain class from Southern China, and he goes on— Should both sources prove inadequate, the country will at least have had the satisfaction of having given the experiment a fair trial, and will have proved that neither in Kaffir or in Chinese labour is salvation for the mining industry to be sought. In that day the star of the ad vacates of white labour will be in the ascendant, and the energy now thrown by the industry into the acquisition of Chinamen will have to be transferred to developing a scheme for attracting a large white population to the mines. That this could be done there seems little doubt; while, if the need were there, the ingenuity of the mining experts of the Rand should be equal to devising the necessary improvements in the machinery of the mines to counteract the enhanced cost of the labour." "There is a tendency to imagine that the last phase in the perfection of mining plant and the treatment of the ore has been reached on the Hand; there could be no greater fallacy. I think I have honestly disclaimed for myself any right to have an opinion, but have adduced two opinions which, I think, are unimpeachable, and I think they are most satisfactory to those who had before them this view of the question—that it was, at all events, possible that machinery might be improved on the Rand, as it has been in every other part of the world, and that white labour might be more used.

But then objection is taken to white labour by influential mine-owners on political and other grounds—they fear the voting power of enfranchised British settlers. It is a pity they did not think of that before the war. Then they were busy circulating memorials among the miners, and putting themselves at the head of the movement for the franchise. If any one on this side of this House had at that time anticipated the doctrine now entertained in the highest circles of Johannesburg, what name would have been too hard for us? But with some people the rule is to shout for the Uitlanders when they are against Mr. Kruger, and to vote for them to-day when they wrap themselves in his mantle. Whether they are fighting a corrupt oligarchy, or engaged in starting a reform, even an expensive one, does not seem to matter. And yet one would really have thought that these gentlemen on the Rand, whatever their nationality, might have stretched a point in the British man's favour; after all he has done and suffered for them, they might have had some consideration for him. If to give him the franchise was going too far in the direction of equal rights for white men, surely the v might at least have allowed him the chance of showing that he could work? Could not the Government have put in a word for the British workman? We know that anything that increases employment is dear to their heart; we know what they think of the miserable alien who takes the bread out of the mouth of Englishmen. We recall the terms of their war prospectus—it was to be a miners' war, there were to be new openings, fresh fields of labour, smiling homes for British families, as soon as a semi-barbarous civilisation and an effete form of Government had made way for the higher ideals! Where is their valour and where is their rectitude that they have not a word to say for the British workman now that he is to be snuffed out by the Chinaman? Sir, this is the biggest scheme of human dumping since the Middle Passage was abolished. Where are the economic convictions of the Government that they not only sanction, but actually base themselves upon, the wholesale importation of destitute Asiatic natives as the one means of saving South Africa from ruin? This is to be the constitution of society in the new Colonies: capitalists at the head, mostly aliens and non-resident, and, below them, Chinese labour. A pretty organisation for society in a British Colony! I know that a reference to conscience may be nauseous to some hon. Gentlemen opposite. But what is this exploitation of the Chinese from first to last but one conscienceless and nauseous proceeding? If British men would not do, there is always India. But India knows how badly Asiatics are likely to fare in the Transvaal, where at the present moment the Indian is deprived of his British citizenship, and has less cause to be proud of living under the protection of the British flag than the Frenchman or the German. What sort of patriotism, what sort of Imperialism, is it that thus effaces itself at a signal from Johannesburg?

It is asserted, indeed, that by importing the Chinaman you will enlarge the field of white labour. The unskilled Chinaman the skilled white man—that is the expectation. But all the information which I have received shows that the Chinaman will not work under white superintendents; he must have his own Chinese superintendents; and then, as Chinese superintendents are cheaper than white superintendents, the next thing we will hear is that the mines cannot be worked if the superintendents also are not yellow. Or is it meant that these Chinamen will give employment to a large number of whites because of the money they will spend? What a ludicrous conception! These Chinamen are most thrifty; they have few wants, and most of their wages will go back with them to China. If their wages will go back with them to China, how can it be said that they will spend money in the Transvaal? Another count in the indictment against British workmen being employed in the mines is that they have an ugly habit of combining. The mine-owners have signified that they do not want another Australia in South Africa, and by falling back upon the Chinaman they hope to get rid of the trail of trades unionism. That is calling in the old world to redress the balance of the new. Cheap and abundant labour, unenfranchised labour, labour incapable of combination—these are the three essentials that the mine-owners require in their workers; and, as the Kaffir is too dear, as the British workman suffers from the same liability, and has, besides, a stub-born and ineradicable taste for freedom and citizenship, the mine-owners have fallen back upon the Chinaman. That is the genesis of this Transvaal Ordinance. We say that this policy involves the negation of all the social, economic, and political principles which have given us and our Colonies our position in the world. We say that it ought never to have been adopted, and that, having been formally passed into law, it ought not, and shall not if we can help it, be put into operation. That is the reason why I bring forward my Motion. [A CONSERVATIVE MEMBER: Will you revoke it?] Being a Scotchman, I reply to that question by asking another. Will you put me in power?

We know that opinion on the spot is against this Ordinance. Dutch and other opponents of the importation of Chinese labour were not allowed to express their opinion before the Commission. There was no inquiry, no referendum, no authoritative expression of opinion. On the other hand, criticising pressmen were parted with, criticising officials were dismissed, and a meeting called in Johannesburg for the purpose of asking for a referendum on the question was broken up by hired roughs. I invite the House to read in the Blue-book the minutes and dispatches of the Cape Ministers on the subject. In a minute of 17th August they refer to a resolution unanimously passed by the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council in July against Chinese importation, and proceed to set out their objections to it. First, that it was most undesirable to introduce another coloured race into South Africa; secondly, that it would check the process of civilising the black races, third, that it would greatly impede and complicate South African federation. Remember that federation is the policy to which we all look for the future of South Africa, and that we are taking a step which in the opinion of the Cape Ministers will retard that consummation. They also say that there is sufficient labour south of the Zambesi for the purpose of the mines. Therefore they deliberately disapprove the proposal, and they say that if carried it will have a most prejudicial effect upon the future of South Africa. And what does the High Commissioner say in reply to all this? He says it is a mere electoral trick; that one Party is trying to dish the other. That is the language used by the representative of the Crown of his own Ministry and of two Chambers, the elected representatives of the Colony under a free Constitution. The House will also have read the letters of some representative Boers setting forth the claims of the permanent inhabitants who will be there when all the gold is gone. They say the measure would be a public calamity of the first magnitude for which the temporary slackness of the labour market forms no excuse. Again, what does the High Commissioner say? He says he quite expected that there would be an attempt to make political capital out of it. I regret to read such words in an official document by a man of the eminence and high position of Lord Milner. It would be better if in both these cases he had spoken with more reserve as to the state of opinion and with more respect to those who had come to a different conclusion from himself, and I would say that cheap rhetorical phrases are hardly a substitute or the free verdict of the constituencies on the subject which we should like to possess.

And now, having examined the alleged case for the Ordinance, let me look into the document itself. I would call the Colonial Secretary's attention to his telegram to Lord Milner of 22nd February, in which he says he cannot convey His Majesty's sanction to the Ordinance until satisfied that the local arrangements for the Chinese were adequate. I assume he has considered the point and that the local arrangements are adequate. Then I would ask what about the negotiations with the Chinese Government? Are they proceeding? If they are still continuing, what are the subjects that require further discussion? This Ordinance is a document per se. I know of no precedent for it in our history or for the state of life it creates. The Secretary of State for India found an analogue to it in the Army, but his parallel did not seem to be accepted with enthusiasm, and, after all, barracks and barracoons, camps and compounds, will not make interchangeable terms even in the Transvaal. It is contended by the Government that the system is consistent with considerable freedom, a considerable degree of liberty—or a sort of liberty—humane and considerate treatment, and absence of the grossest immorality, and that it is based on freedom of contract. As to liberty, let us free our minds of illusions. The Ordinance is necessary because the sentiment in South Africa is opposed to the admission of Chinamen as free men. They must have cheap labour we are told. The Chinese will afford it. But then they are face to face with the dilemma either they must let them loose over the country, in which case there will be degradation and infection of every kind, demoralisation, competition in trades, and other things which are objected to, and a new race will be introduced where racial difficulties are serious enough already. But if we take the other horn of the dilemma, then they must be shut up and be segregated from the community, and it is difficult to find where the difference lies between that and positive slavery. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh!"] The essence of the law is that the Chinaman is a chattel. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No!"] The fourteen offences are incomprehensible on any other assumption. The labourer is forbidden to hold property, he is forbidden to engage in any other work but the specified unskilled work he is sent there for. If he deserts, any man who shelters him may be sent to prison for thirty days as a receiver of stolen goods would be. He is not to leave the compound without permission, and he has no guarantee that that permission will ever be given. If his wife and family come they must live under the same conditions—that is, immured in what has been called a garden city, and liable to arrest if they go outside. When his contract expires he is shipped off, unless, of course, the contract is renewed. I have said that is very like slavery—it is so like it that it is almost indistinguishable from it. [MINISTERIAL laughter.] Well, these are at all events uncommonly like slave laws. "Indentured labour" no doubt sounds better; but do not let us haggle over words; let us see what the thing itself is.

At any rate it is said the coolie goes thee with his eyes open, that there is perfect freedom of contract. How is this secured? This Ordinance, with its thirty-five clauses and fourteen penalties, together with the regulations of which we know nothing, except that Mr. Evans and the Attorney-General of the Transvaal have been at work on them ever since 20th February, are to be explained to each individual coolie before he signs. That will require some handling and a good deal of patience. But first the coolie is to be brought to Hong-Kong, possibly hundreds of miles from his home, by the recruiter; and the Colonial Secretary anticipates that this long journey will be enlivened by the recruiter explaining the thirty-five clauses and the numberless regulations, laying stress, no doubt, on the delights of the garden city, but saying nothing of the thousands of feet below the surface, and of course speaking of the purely formal nature of the penalties. When the coolie gets to Hong-Kong the terms will be first officially explained to him, and if he accepts he signs them, and off he goes. That is a contract which a free country ought not to ask him to sign, for under I it he will sign away his freedom, a proceeding unknown to our law. But suppose this eligible recruit does not approve, does not even fancy the garden city, then what happens? He must return home at his own expense, or else stay in Hong-Kong. Now these men, according to the Colonial Secretary, are earning a penny or twopence a day—an income that does not seem to lend itself to large facilities for travelling. Therefore the penniless coolies who object to being stranded starving in Hong-Kong will have no option but to sign the contract. How nonsensical to call this freedom of contract! But then let us take him across the seas to his new sphere of influence and suppose the garden city is not found congenial, then he can terminate his engagement and return. That sounds a very fair concession, and quite free from objection. But he must make good the cost of his introduction into the country and pay reasonable penalties for damage. Among these reasonable penalties is the full expense of carrying himself and his wife and children home. How long will it take him to work out his freedom under those conditions? The Colonial Secretary says he will earn seven or eight times his home wages—say a shilling a day. The whole thing seems a farce; and the Colonial Secretary, I must say, is almost trifling with the country when he informs correspondents through the Press that the Ordinance enshrines the principle of freedom of contract. It so happens that we are not entirely without experience in this matter—fortunately not in our country, not under our authority. Bur thirty years ago there was a great organisation for the transport of coolies to South America through the Portuguese Colony of Macao. Hong-Kong is on one side of the Canton River estuary and Macao is on the other. Macao was the centre of Portuguese recruiting; Hong-Kong is to be the centre of ours. Macao was the depât where these men were brought from all parts of China before they were sent to South America. Sir, there were such abuses and horrors in the trade and in the treatment of the Chinese labourers that the civilised world rose against it. I need hardlysay—I am proud to say that foremost in the chase to hound this down was the British Government. The British Government in 1873 presented what was practically an ultimatum to Portugal, and accordingly the system was abolished. Here is the edict of the Governor of Macao— Chinese emigration hitherto carried on from the port of Macao is henceforward prohibited. The debate on the subject which took place in the House of Commons on 23rd May, 1873, was brought on by Sir Charles Wingfield, who said that our Consuls all united in denouncing the crimes and miseries of this traffic and in attributing them to the employment of crimps and recruiters. He went on to say that these unfortunate Chinese were not in any way to be distinguished from negro slaves, and that the only way in which the Portuguese Government could put an end to the traffic was by putting down altogether the crimps and the recruiters and the barracoons employed and maintained in connection with it. That, it is true, is only the opinion of an independent Member of Parliament who may have been a sentimentalist. But here is the representative of the Government, Lord Enfield. He admitted the case and quoted from a private letter from Hong-Kong— The greater part of the men obtained are either men of indifferent character more or less at variance with the local authorities. In Portland and Pentonville we have also men more or less at variance with the local authorities [MINISTERIAL cries of "Passive resistors."]— Or are given to drink—men of extreme stupidity. The majority are boatmen, but one-third are agriculturists or men employed on shore. These men are either deceived by delusive promises, by threats of being split upon for some real or fancied offence against the authorities, or are induced by a continued round of dissipation and drink to promise anything. Many sell themselves to pay their gambling debts. That is the description given by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs at that date of the sort of coolies that were got under these conditions; and Lord Enfield said that he hoped the House would believe that Lord Granville, true to the traditions he inherited from Lord Palmerston, was keenly alive to the evils described and would do all in his power to alleviate them. A protest was made to the Portuguese Government—

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

May I ask just for information, Did the British Government maintain that objection?

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

What objection?

ME. A. J. BALFOUR

Their refusal to allow those coolies to be transported in British ships.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

There was no question of their being transported in British ships. I am not aware of that. I was talking of the description given of the coolies and of the system, and showing that owing to the condemnation of it, headed by the British Government, it had to be given up.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I had understood that there was objection felt, and I have no doubt rightly felt, by Lord Granville, and that every step was taken by the Government to prevent it. I think that the Portuguese changed the regulation, and that our objection was withdrawn. [AN HON. MEMBER: You withdraw your regulation.]

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

The Governor of the Province of Macao and Timor on 2?th December, 1873, in obedience to the order of the Government of Portugal, issued the following proclamation— The Chinese emigration hitherto carried on from the port of Macao is henceforward prohibited. What does this show? It shows the unavoidable nature of the traffic. We have gentlemen here who are different from all others and who can pass regulations which will completely prevent any evil existing, but that is not according to past history. We have no reason to suppose that the Portuguese Government were at all less alive to the necessity of regulation. It is a pretty thing, at any rate, for us, after taking such a creditable part in 1873, to embark on a new scheme of a similar nature. It may be said, many men may think, "After all, this is so remote an affair! It looks a little doubtful, and we have a sort of formal responsibility, but after all it is in the hands of the Transvaal. It is the Governor of the Transvaal or the High Commissioner who is really at the head of this organisation. It is remote from us, and the name of Britain is not brought very directly into the case." But I was more struck than by anything in this Ordinance when I looked at the back of it. What I read was this—and it will bring home to every man how much the good name and character and authority of this country are directly involved — Schedule II. Know all men by these presents that A. 15. of—C. P. of—and E. F. of—are held and formally bound unto"— Unto whom? Unto the High Commissioner or the Governor? Not at all. Unto our Sovereign Lord Edward VII. by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, in the sum of—for each labourer imported by the said A. B. under a contract dated—made under the Labour Importation Ordinance, 1904, to be paid to our said Lord the King, his heirs and successors, and so forth.

I have no doubt that this is the regular legal form. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] Certainly I quote it as showing that we must remember that we ourselves and our King, whom we wish to honour in every possible way, are brought into immediate, nominal, and formal connection with a traffic of the possible nature of which I have already given a description.

Another point I wish to ask the Colonial Secretary is this. The rate of wages is still left blank. Seven or eight times a penny or twopence is just a little too vague. This is, I suppose, in addition to the food, fuel, and medical attendance which the Duke of Marlborough says will be supplied. Look what this means. It means that the Chinaman will receive about one-half of a Kaffir's wages. Have the Government considered how this will affect the native question in South Africa? We are to provide the mine-owners with labour below market value. Will the Kaffir's wages be reduced to the Chinaman's level, or is it the intention to fill the mines with Chinamen alone? We ought to know that. If so, I can well believe that it is counted on as a permanent factor, and this is probably the reason why the amendments of limitation were refused in the Legislative Council. This is an instance of the inconvenience of discussing this matter in the absence of these regulations, or discussing the Ordinance in blank when questions affecting the entire structure of South African society are left open. These are not details, as the Prime Minister said. They are really of the essence of the whole question. I will not touch on the question of the wives and families—that is not a very attractive subject—or the question of the balance of the sexes, but I think a letter in The Times by Mr. Wray, who has had thirteen years official experience with the Chinese in the Straits Settlements, opens our eyes to some of the possibilities. The Transvaal may, for the time being, be in a bad way, but this Ordinance, degrading to the British name, repugnant to the sentiment of the nation, and to its most prized traditions, is not the cure for the evils that affect the Transvaal. What is it that this House is asked to put its hand to if it votes against my Resolution? To the resuscitation of a system indistinguishable in many of its features from slavery. [Cries of "No."] Yes, because it hands over human beings body and soul to the custody of their masters, and declares them, in effect, if not in terms, to be outside the pale of human society. The House is asked to commit itself to an economic policy, thoroughly vicious and long since discredited, by affirming that low wages and servile labour are necessary to the promotion of successful industry, and this industry, forsooth, the richest in the world. It would commit itself also to a race policy which argues ill for the peace and contentment of the native races and to a colonial policy which is an outrage on the white men of the Transvaal, whose views have never been consulted, but who all the same are assumed to have assented through a bastard kind of sham self-government that has been extemporised. On the other hand, we in supporting the Motion shall be affirming the unimpaired vitality of those principles which as a great freedom-loving nation, a great colonising race, a great industrial people, we believe to be essential to our common life, and therefore the only sure basis of public policy.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House disapproves the conduct of His Majesty's Government in advising the Crown not to disallow the Ordinance for the introduction of Chinese Labour into the Transvaal."—(Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.)

MR. LYTTELTON

The right hon. Gentleman made one personal reference to myself, and as personal matters are usually unimportant, and certainly unimportant in this case, I mention it in order to get rid of it. It is true that when the Government and myself were accused by Member after Member in this House of instituting a system of slavery in the dominions of the King, I, not reading from a written paper, did in language possibly too rough repel that charge with indignation and scorn. I should like to know, having listened to the long and able speech of the right hon. Gentleman—for I have been quite unable to discern from those observations—whether he persists in that charge now. [An HON. MEMBER: What charge?] The charge that the British Government have instituted a system of slavery. [Cheers and counter-cheers, and cries of Answer.] I hear a great many cheers, apparently irresponsible— I do not say it in an offensive way—but I do not get a specific answer from any Member opposite.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Certainly I said that, and I shall say it again, "in many of its features indistinguishable from slavery."

MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman— [Cries of Order] — I say that the country has answered in the by-elections, and they are not to be howled down by bankers' and mine-owners' representatives.

MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Member was not in order in interrupting.

MR. JOHN BURNS,

who rose again amid cries of "Order," said: Mr. Speaker, as you suggested that my interruption was irregular, I wish to explain that I rose at the same time as the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and I gave my to him, very properly, for the moment. My object in rising was to answer the Colonial Secretary, who wanted to know whether Members on this side of the House were prepared to stand by the charge which had been made. I stand by it. [AN HON. MEMBER: They asked a Question and are afraid of the answer.]

MR. LYTTELTON

Now I have an answer from the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. He says so, and I must deal with it in the proper order when the time comes. Before I deal with this matter I would like to take the order of the right hon. Gentleman's speech: and deal for a moment with the case of my predecessor's pledges. It is-alleged by the right hon. Gentleman, if I followed him right, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham took a different attitude from that which has been taken by myself. My attitude and the attitude of the Government was founded on the declarations of my predecessor. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman quoted a statement made in March, 1903 —not of the latest view expressed by the late Colonial Secretary; but this is the point of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham's speech— I ventured when I was in South Africa, on behalf of my Government, and I can safely do so on behalf of the House of Commons —and this was assented to— that although technically the new colonies were Crown colonies, and as such, technically subject in the last resort to any ultimatum which may be propounded from Downing Street, the Government would treat them in all matters in which Imperial interests were not concerned as if they were self-governing colonies. That is the principle on which this Government has acted. And on 27th July the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham again said— It is because I believe that at the present time the opinion of the Transvaal is hostile to the introduction of Asiatic labour that I make no movement whatever in its favour, and I should not assent to it if it were proposed. And so long as one opinion of the Transvaal is hostile, the right hon. Gentleman may rest perfectly satisfied that I shall not assent to it and I shall certainly not be a party to imposing it upon a hostile majority. But the right hon. Gentleman asks me what the future is likely to be? I think it is very likely that the opinion which is now hostile may not always be hostile, and I have received information that amongst the Boer farmers the pressure for labour has become very acute and that a great change of opinion is taking place. There are not wanting indications that that change of opinion, has gradually occurred. In a telegram received only yesterday, Lord Milner sums up the position in words I think I may be allowed to read to the House— Distress is steadily increasing since my telegram of 3rd January No. 1. More people are depending on credit, numbers of those seeking employment in every social grade are increasing, with drawings from savings banks continue exceptionally heavy, railway traffic continues to fall off. Secretary of the Rand Aid Association states that there has never been so much distress as at present existing. As far as European community on Hand is concerned opinion is practically unanimous. With the exception of certain trade societies, who have little influence even with the working men, there is no one left to oppose Asiatic labour. You have in favour of it the municipalities, the chamber of commerce, converted from a majority of 51 to 5 against, to a majority af 61 to 11 for, the great body of white miners, the whole professional class, the various Christian Churches, and a unanimous Press. That shows what has been abundantly proved throughout the whole argument, that opinion has changed. Nobody doubts that most people were against the introduction of Chinese labour a year ago; but opinion has gradually changed, and the facts of the case have irresistibly compelled the conclusion that there is a shortage of native labour, and, in consequence, a diminution in skilled white labour, and that unless additional black labour is obtained, recourse must be had to other quarters. I will not go through the evidence as I did the last time this matter was discussed to show how that opinion has been growing in strength. We have heard about resolutions from the Cape, but the people who are really interested and by whose opinion we are bound to go are in the Transvaal; and there, not merely the Legislative Council, not merely at meeting after meeting have resolutions been adopted in favour of the proposal—there have been twenty-six such meetings, greater and stronger than some five or six on the other side—and petitions have been in proportion. I shall not shrink from the points the right hon. Gentlemen has urged; I quite agree this does not conclude the question, notwithstanding the absolutely incorrect quotation the right hon Gentleman has affected to give of my words. I spoke of conscientions objections of people with the utmost reverence and respect; and I said no matter what were the economic advantages, no matter what were the economic interests of the Transvaal, if it could be established that ethically or morally it would be wrong, if it involved gross immorality or slavery, and there was anything like this in the Ordinance it should not be sanctioned.

Before I come to that let me recall the fundamental facts of the case. There is a land sparsely inhabited by a black population in a proportion to whites of six or eight to one, a black population unaccustomed to habitual toil. In this land so inhabited you had seventeen years ago and in the interval since a capital of something like £200,000,000 invested; and as the result you have an industry created which has risen in the midst of a rural community, and the existence of this industry has almost of necessity required the creation of a costly, elaborate, modern administration. You have then a devastating war, following which you have a great movement of reconstruction and development, while the country has to contribute large sums for development and war expenditure. Now there are more black inhabitants working in South Africa than there were before the war. Yes, but you do not see the effect of that. The effect is that while so many more men are engaged upon great works of reconstruction all through South Africa you have a shortage of 30,000 in the mines. I do not pause to consider what efforts have been made to obtain this labour. The Blue - book shows that the mining authorities—I do not give them praise for it—of course as-business men they desired to get labour as cheap as possible, they went wherever they could in South Africa to get more labour. Obviously for preference they would employ labour to be obtained in South Africa rather than import it from China. Let me say again I do not rely merely on the Blue-books or on the statements of people interested. I have had the advantage of statements from relatives in the country, and I have been told that even at a few miles from I Pretoria, near a place where a great camp is contemplated, a farmer contemplates giving up his farm because of the shortage of labour. I have information from sources I can rely upon that Dutch farmers have been compelled, owing to want of Kaffir labour, to keep their children from the education provided for them. There, then, is one side of the picture. The land is rich, no doubt, there is treasure to be had, and you re quire hands to gather it and to preserve the situation in South Africa. Then, on the other side of the world, you have another nation, sober, industrious, thrifty, and, unfortunately, living in a condition of desperate poverty. The unskilled labour of a Chinaman is worth from five to ten cents a day—say about seven, or 1½d. So great is the congestion of population and the poverty that men; are willing to do an enormous day's labour for almost nothing. Dr. Henry reports an incident which would be ludicrous, but it has its pathetic side. He tells how he was carried by three Chinese coolies for twenty-three miles be fore breakfast, and in order to save the five cents which they would have had to pay for breakfast, they walked back the whole twenty-three miles to Canton—or a walk of forty-six miles before eating their frugal breakfast. That is the condition of poverty in which the Chinese exist. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite whether it would not be a deplorable thing, by the exercise of His Majesty's prerogative to prevent the coming of a Chinaman sunk in this desperate poverty who is anxious and willing to work, and who would receive in the Transvaal at least 2s. a day, which is fourteen or fifteen times as much as he would receive in his own country. Go to any agricultural labourer in Dorset if you please—

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE (Carnarvon Boroughs)

We have already gone there.

MR LYTTELTON

I know hon. Gentlemen have gone there, and although I do not say that they have made gross misrepresentations, a great many people have done so in Dorset. But supposing the hon. Member for Carnarvon, with his great powers of exposition, had said to a labourer in Dorset, "If I can give you 15 times the wages you are now receiving, will you consider it?"

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE

I do not believe he would become a slave at that price.

MR. LYTTELTON

I expected that answer, and will deal with it presently. If the Chinese are willing and anxious to come—I do not know, after the misrepresentations that have been made, whether they are willing to come or not— and the people of the Transvaal are practically unanimous in desiring to receive them, His Majesty's Government are confronted with this problem. Are you going to veto this scheme and declare that nothing shall be done? That is one alternative. Are you going to permit Asiatics to come, and, against the wish of the Transvaal, to become a permanent element in the country? That is the second alternative. The third alternative is, are you going to allow them to be introduced subject to some restrictions and conditions? That is the alternative which has been adopted by the Transvaal and sanctioned by His Majesty's Government. It is the only one, in our opinion, by which the transition period can be bridged over—the transition period before the natives of South Africa have increased sufficiently to furnish the additional unskilled labour which is required. Do not suppose that His Majesty's Government were not aware that this would be at first an extremely unpopular thing to do; do not suppose that we were not perfectly well aware that it would be open to the grossest misconception and misrepresentation. We were well aware of both situations, though possibly even our imaginations did not take us quite far enough. But we should have despised ourselves if, for fear of incurring a little unpopularity, or of being exposed to misrepresentations, to which we are not unaccustomed, we had refused to do that which we believe to be in the interests of the country and necessary for the economic development of the country. I believe that hon. Gentlemen opposite will find that there is retribution for misrepresentation, because I for one have trust in the people, which leads me to think that folly and injustice and exaggeration find no permanent lodgment in their breasts.

I hope I have made good the first proposition — the overwhelming majority in favour of the measure; the overwhelming economic necessity for it. I quite admit that there remain other objections to be met, which I hope now to meet. I will take the four objections which seemed to me to be expressed in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. First, you complain that there has been an invasion of the right of the British workman to exploit the country which he has conquered. Secondly, you say that there is an invasion of the right of m n, who is alleged under this Ordinance to be a slave, and to present a degraded and demoralising spectacle repugnant to lovers of virtue and freedom. The third objection is that this Ordinance is made in the interests of Mammon and to inflate capitalists' property. Lastly, it is alleged that all the self-governing Colonies are against it. That is not accurate. Natal and Canada have taken the part of wisdom— that is to say, they have passed resolutions affirming that this is the business of the Transvaal, and have absolutely re used to have anything to do with the matter. Now let me take the first of these objections. It is said that white labour ought to have the benefit of the work in these mines. I need hardly pause to point out that white labour can only be employed there at the rate of about 10s. a day, and I pass from the question of figures by saying that it is an economic impossibility to employ white men at 10s. a day when the cost of living for a man and his wife with three children is £24 a month in the Transvaal. I am perfectly certain that hon. Gentlemen opposite will think I do right to spare them a long discussion upon figures when there is this unquestioned fact at the bottom of the whole situation. Even the right hon. Gentleman did not attempt to deal with this question, and I do not wonder, because he has the excellent authority of one of his most experienced colleagues to show that it is impossible to obtain white men for unskilled work in South Africa because white men cannot be found to do Kaffirs' work. The right hon. Gentleman said with great candour that he did not know much about the subject of white labour. Let me read him an extract from a book written by his right hon. friend the Member for South Aberdeen on his impressions of South Africa— All rough, hard work is done by natives. White men think it beneath them and only fit for blacks. The coloured man is indispensable to the white man; he is a necessary part of the economic machinery of the country, whether for mining, or for manufactories, for tillage, or for ranching. That is absolutely true. We have had two long debates on this subject already this month, and I have waited in vain for a correction by the right hon. Gentleman of the views that his colleagues have put forward on the question of white labour. Therefore, it is necessary for me now to read this extract. Everybody knows it is an idle dream to suppose that white men will go from this country in order to become the competitors of Kaffirs.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

We were told that the war was a miners' war.

MR. LYTTELTON

I do not accept the phrase, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is not aware that besides the unskilled workmen there are skilled workers in the Transvaal who are paid very high wages, and, if you get a sufficient number of natives to work the 3,000 stamps that are now idle, you will enormously increase the number of white men employed in the mines who get very fine wages. But if the present state of things goes on much longer these white men will be compelled to come away from the Transvaal and leave it to people who are far less desirable than themselves. In the last debate I ventured to ask the hon. Member for Battersea whether he could produce instances of miners who have gone out from this country to work in the mines of South Africa in competition with Kaffirs, pulling at the same chain with them, filling the same wheelbarrow.

MR. JOHN BURNS

Miners do not pull at a chain.

MR. LYTTELTON

He could not do so, and he knows it would be an absolute libel on the class which he represents to say that they would do it. I admit that the last time I gave that challenge he did say that in West Africa he did some work with some blacks. I venture to say that if he worked with ten blacks it was as captain of the eleven. If he was working with any gang of West African natives it was as foreman, and not as a fellow-workman. My point, then, is this—that what you want in South Africa is a good class of white. You do not want to degrade and to deteriorate the dominant race by putting them in competition with those whom they regard as their inferiors. I admit it is a sad thing, but it is the fact; and I defy anyone in this House who knows Africa, or who knows any tropical country, to say that it is a possibility to get at the present time— and I am afraid it will be a long time before you get—white men to go into the same work, the same class of work, and the same neighbourhood with those who are centuries behind them in civilisation. To do so would be not to elevate the black, but to deteriorate the white.

I pass to the second point. I do not need to labour that which has been already stated by Lord Milner with an authority which cannot be doubted, and which has been accepted by those who really know the conditions of mining in South Africa, that if you do get sufficient labour to work the unemployed machinery now existing in; the Transvaal, if you get 3,000 more stamps working than you have now working, you will give an opportunity which will be readily taken by the skilled workmen of this country and Scotland to go out to South Africa and enjoy the high wages which skilled labour commands there.

I come now to the point which the right hon. Gentleman has had the courage, for I think it requires courage, to allege against the Government—that they are instituting a system of slavery, I or a system akin to slavery. It is fair to him to say that he does not, that he could not, know of the conditions that exist. They have not yet been published. I am dealing now with the contract which is said to be a contract of slavery. The conditions will be these. The contract, as he has seen it in the Blue-book, is to be advertised in the Chinese language by the Chinese Government throughout all the villages in which recruits are to be sought; and, therefore, months before the recruiter goes into the village the Chinaman, who is a very different person from that which, apparently, hon. Gentle man opposite, who have not been in China and read nothing about the country, seem to imagine, will have had the contract before him. He is well educated; he is perfectly capable of understanding a bargain; he is well organised—it is an utter folly and delusion to suppose that he is not—and organised in trades unions, too. If that is so, is the right hon. Gentle man so anxious to prove his fellow- countrymen are slavers that he must fain represent us as practically forcing these Chinese to come on board a ship because they do not understand the contract? His question, as I understood it, was what hope would there be for a Chinaman, with twopence in his pocket, when he is brought several hundred miles, to get back to his own village when, for the first time, the contract was explained to him? The right hon. Gentleman did not, and could not, know of this provision that has been made for advertisement in the villages; but he will see that, when such advertisement is made, when it has been talked over by the villagers, when they come to embark at Hong-Kong, or at any other port, they will be in a position to appreciate the bargain. Then, having had the matter advertised and having had the contract fully explained by an official of the British Government and of the Chinese Government, the Chinaman goes on board a ship provided with better comforts than emigrant ships are now compelled to provide under the regulations of the Board of Trade. Then he comes over to South Africa. He is equally protected there by members of his own and representatives of our nationality, and he is placed in a location or com pound—I do not care which you call it —which is to be of very considerable size and far bigger than the Kimberley com pounds, which have always been spoken of by those who know anything about them in terms of warm approval. Last time I quoted Canon Scott Holland, who has seen these compounds—

DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)

And who is against Chinese labour.

MR. LYTTELTON

And who is against Chinese labour. I quoted him as the testimony of an adversary. Now I will quote Dr. Moffat, an honoured name among missionaries in Africa. He, again, is an antagonist. What does he say? — There are those who condemn the compound system in no measured language as slavery, as a deep machination of the tyrannical' capitalist gang' to secure a supply of labour, as an infamous and degrading bondage into which thousands of unhappy and helpless natives are forced. This is the sort of language we hear used, in some instances by men who do not know what they are talking about, in others by men influenced by motives respecting which the less said the better. That is an extract from an article in the Contemporary Review, edited by Mr. Percy Bunting, a Nonconformist. In the same number articles are to be found from Mr. Stead and Mr. Courtney, so I think I have gone into the camp of the enemy for evidence.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

What is the date?

MR. LYTTELTON

March, 1901. In addition to the other provisions of the contract, the Chinaman will earn at least twelve or fifteen times the wages that he is earning in his own country; he is to have rations at the expense of his employer, housing at the expense of his employer, and medical assistance at the expense of his employer. It is useless to try to reason with those who say that such a system is slavery. But I would point out that nearly all the provisions which have been objected to by hon. Members opposite as constituting slavery are present in colonial Ordinances, for which that side as well as this side are responsible. I have been advised that it is not necessary, and that it is undesirable, to specify a minimum wage on the face of the Ordinance, but there is not the slightest question—I stand here and give the House my assurance — that the Chinese will receive at least the amount which I have specified. Because we leave them to bargain themselves in this matter, can it be said to be a badge of slavery in our Ordinance as compared with previous Ordinances? It is the precise opposite. It is the recognition of their intelligence.

SIR HENRY FOWLER (Wolverhampton, E.)

Is there any provision if they are not satisfied with the wage?

MR. LYTTELTON

There is a provision that, if they are dissatisfied with anything, whether it be the wage or any other circumstance connected with the contract, they are to have a position better than anybody who is a party to a contract in this country, for they will have the right to break it without the usual consequences of the breach. There is no penalty, no damages. The sole provision is that they should make good the actual out-of-pocket expenses.

SIR HENRY FOWLER

The cost of the journey from China.

MR. LYTTELTON

That is a better position than they would have if they were Englishmen under a similar contract. Let me tell the House this. After the language we have heard used on the other side, it is scarcely credible that in British Guiana in 1894, at the time when right hon. Gentlemen opposite were in power, an Ordinance was sanctioned and put in force in which there was the obligation on the part of the coolie to reside on the plantation of the person who employed him, and the obligation of working on that plantation. There is a penalty if the coolie is absent without leave; there is the penalty of imprisonment if he deserts; there is a penalty if anybody harbours the deserter; and, differing from this contract, and differing from the settled policy of this Ordinance, there is the ability on the part of the Governor of the colony to transfer the labourer without his consent. There is another difference—the period of indenture of the Indian coolie is five years, and this is three. Again, another difference; it has been pointed out that at the end of the period of indenture in British Guiana and Trinidad the coolie is at liberty to remain in the country, while by this Ordinance he is to be repatriated at the expense of his employer. Is that a difference which is said to constitute slavery? Just observe what the absurdity of she position is. It is not slavery in one case, but is slavery in the other, because in the one case a man goes on living in a foreign country, and in the other he is repatriated at the expense of his employers.

SIR HENRY FOWLER

Would the right hon. Gentleman now give the House all the provisions in favour of the labourers in British Guiana and Trinidad, which he has studiously avoided doing?

MR. JOHN ELLIS (Nottinghamshire, Rushcliffe)

It is a garbled statement.

MR. LYTTELTON

The right hon. Gentleman will have his opportunity. The case does not stop there. We have heard from the right hon. Gentleman of the opinion of Australia, and the opinion of Australia is one to which everybody who occupies my position must, of course, attach great weight; they have a right to discuss matters of Imperial concern, and I assure the House that I gave their opinion and that of Cape Colony my most respectful consideration. But I confess that when this matter first became a subject of discussion in Australia I was unaware of one or two matters. I find that in 1880 Queensland passed an Act which brought indentured labourers from the Pacific Islands; the Ordinance provided that they should be confined to certain kinds of agriculture, and in 1884, after experience, they expressly forbade, by an amending Act, numerous employments which were scheduled to the Act. They provided, in addition, for the repatriation of the indentured coolie unless he was re-indentured. That is the Ordinance of a self-governing Colony.

MR. JOHN ELLIS

That has been repealed.

MR. LYTTELTON

No, it has not. I will take another equally ludicrous test of slavery. It is supposed to be slavery because the alien is not entitled to hold land; that is another badge of slavery, and I have been challenged to find specific enactments in the Colonial Office against it. I can give a better answer than that. By the law of the United States at this moment no alien can hold land. If hon. Members are anxious for a later instance of Australian wisdom on the subject I would refer them to the West Australian Act of 1897, in which there is compulsory repatriation after service of indentured Asiatics, and there are employments forbidden to the indentured labourer. There again, are the two elements. The only rag of a distinction which hon. Members opposite can draw between the legislation for which they -are responsible and that which they have called slavery is repatriation and restriction of employment, and one finds a place in Acts sanctioned by a Liberal Government with which Lord Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary of Mr. Gladstone, did not think of interfering. Another in an Act of a self-governing democracy as recently as 1897. That is the position. If this were slavery, if it deserved the abominable terms which have been heaped upon it, of course, whether it were a self-governing colony or not, it must expunged. But w find that Lord Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary to Mr. Gladstone, certainly not a statesman inferior in virtue to those whom I face, permitted such a statute to go on the Ordinance-book in 1880, and it was amended, and amended against the labourers, in 1884. The explanation is that it is for a Party purpose that hon. Gentlemen adopt their present attitude. Possibly the statesmen of 1880 were older and a little wiser than the distinguished man who occupy that Bench now. There was one other point that was made by my right hon. friend the Member for West Fife, who 'hinted that the Indian Government were totally against indenturing labour with the conditions of repatriation. [An HON. MEMBER: Lord Milner said it.] Lord Milner, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite stated, said something to that effect in June, 1903. I can only tell hon. Gentlemen opposite, however, that, though I am not in a position to go fully into it, negotiations have taken place since then with the Indian Government, and the position then vouched for by my right hon. friend is not now correct.

SIR HENRY FOWLER

I put a Question to the Secretary of State for India, asking whether at any time—I went as far back as 1902—there had been any communications between the Government of the Transvaal, the Colonial Office, the Secretary of State, or the Government of India with reference to the immigration of coolies into South Africa; the answer was that there never had been any.

MR. MARKHAM (Nottinghamshire, Mansfield)

said last session he had asked numerous Questions on this subject, and had had numerous replies from the Secretary of State for India.

MR. LYTTELTON

I think the right hon. Gentleman skipped a word inadvertently.

SIR HENRY FOWLER

I asked the Secretary of State to repeat the answer that there might be no confusion as to what the reply was. He said that the statement arose out of a remark that Lord Milner had telegraphed to this country as to the foolish and obstinate attitude of the Indian Government. Such an attitude was repudiated by the Secretary of State for India, and the statement was made to me that there had been no communication with reference to the immigration of Indian coolies for the purpose of mining.

SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAG-GREE (Bethnal Green, N.E.)

I happen to have the exact words of the Secretary for India's replies given last Wednesday to the Questions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, which, with the permission of the House, I shall read— MR. BRODRICK: The extract from the Natal newspaper referred to in the Question is entirely unjustified by the facts. The Government of India have never been invited to allow coolies to be recruited for labour in the mines of the Transvaal. Correspondence is proceeding with reference to the position of Indian subjects in the Transvaal, and the possibility of recruiting Indian coolies for work in that colony on Government railways, but it has not reached a point at which it could be laid before Parliament. SIR H. FOWLER: Am I to understand that no communication has passed between the two Governments with regard to the immigration of Indian coolies into the Transvaal for the purpose of working in the mines? MR. BRODRICK: My answer was distinct on that point. No correspondence whatever, that I am aware of, has taken place between the two Governments with regard to the recruitment of Indian coolies for employment in the mines of the Transvaal.

MR. LYTTELTON

I did not hear the Question or the answer; but as far as I know no negotiations or correspondence has ever taken place with reference to the employment of Indian coolies in the mines; but negotiations have proceeded with regard to the employment of Indian coolies on other works. I may say that Indian coolies are not fitted in any way for employment in the mines.

The right hon. Gentleman who preceded me mentioned the moral aspect of this question in such a manner as to convey that there was some dreadful moral iniquity behind this proposal. But he did not specify, and I have heard no one specify, anything or give any evidence on this subject. I agree some very honoured men have seen some danger in the proposal. The House is familiar with the provisions we have made for the bringing over of wives and families of labourers at the expense of the employer, and for taking them back also. I do not see myself what more we could possibly do. I believe it is urged—I have seen no evidence for it—that there is some peculiar vice of the Chinese which is supposed to be going to be introduced into the Transvaal. I have gone into this matter, I have taken the opinion of those who are well acquainted with the Chinese in the Malay States, and their opinion is entirely against the allegation that the Chinese are an immoral people ["No"]—forgive me, it is. It has not been the subject of official return, but I have had the very great advantage of the Blue-book, which I have already quoted, with regard to the Chinese in British Colombia. The Royal Commission appointed by the Canadian Government in 1902, a Commission that was extremely hostile to the Chinese as a whole, on the ground, doubtless, that they furnished cheap labour, reported fully and fairly on the matter. They say there were some 16,000 Chinamen in British Columbia, with scarcely any female population, and yet according to the returns from the penitentiaries there were only three indecent cases against Chinamen in four years. They add, dealing with the religious and moral aspect of the question —"Certain it is that the Chinese have many noble virtues and characteristics. There are customs amongst us which they from a moral point condemn as much as we do many of theirs. They compare favourably with others in their observance of law and order. There is little doubt that to the frugality of their habits is to be attributed the comparative absence of sensuality. "Again, the Bishop of British Colombia writes that the number of Chinese women is very small, and that there was no proof that the men in any way whatever had debauched the community. "They lead quiet, sober, and moral lives," he says; "there is not a particle of evidence of their importing new and detestable vices." Surely, with these testimonies before us, and considering that the Bishop of Pretoria, the late Bishop of Natal, and 30 out of the 31 representatives of the Churches of South Africa, Free and Established, passed a resolution in favour of this measure, we are justified in not refusing to sanction the Transvaal Ordinance.

It is repeatedly said that this is a pandering to Lord Milner and the capitalists of South Africa. What is the root of the policy of which this is the expression? It is to make South Africa, as far as possible, a country to which white men will freely go; to develop it and make it a great country, and not a country with simply a head and no body, and to develop it out of the wealth of the mines. It is the fact, incidentally, that the mine-owners wish for labour to get that treasure, and to get it quickly. But the coal and permanent interests of the country, the prosperity of its commerce, its agriculture, and its means of transport, depend upon the working of the mines; and the policy which asks the House to enable the Transvaal to get its treasure is a policy of making a good use of that wealth and not a bad use. Of every sovereign which comes out of the mines the Government is to receive a substantial share, and that share is to be used in maintaining education and a Judicial and Civil Service beyond corruption. I say that is a worthy policy — a policy which recognises the true destiny of this extraordinary country, which in seventeen years has developed from a rural community into a community with vast potentialities of wealth. What has been the history of British Colombia and California? Both these countries were based, in their economic inception, upon the gold mines worked by Asiatic labour; and their history has shown, what I trust will happen also in the Transvaal, that they were developed with the working of the gold mines, so that when the goldmines became exhausted they yet remained a splendid inheritance. That is the policy of my predecessor in office and Lord Milner. Some compliments have been paid me at the expense of Lord Milner; but Lord Milner's character is so much above mine that it is unnecessary for me to repudiate those compliments or to defend him. That policy is not to make any vulgar use of the wealth of the mines, but to make use of it for the splendid purpose of building up a great community in the Transvaal, a community in which Briton and Boer may live worthily together. That is a policy worthy of a great man, and it is a policy to which I trust this House will always give its most cordial support.

MR. MOULTON (Cornwall. Launceston)

It is always a pleasure to hear a speech by the present Secretary of State for the Colonies on account of the frankness and clearness with which he states his position, but I feel that in this case anyone who has given more than a superficial attention to the subject will feel that the right hon. Gentleman wholly fails to realise the fact that he has here to deal with a subject of the greatest importance which has seized hold not only of the intellect but also of the sympathies and the imagination of the whole of our great Empire. He believes that he can deal with this matter by treating it as a small administrative problem in which he has to justify minute regulations, and that if he shows that those regulations do not differ much from others which have preceded them it will be an adequate answer to the impeachment of the Government. I venture to think that the right hon. Gentleman will find himself grievously in error, and that if this be not proved by the vote to-night it will be proved later on when the matter goes before the country. It is useless for him to defend himself or his predecessor by pointing out that they stand pledged to support the views of the Transvaal in all things in which Imperial interests are not involved. In this question Imperial interests are most deeply involved. The whole fame of the name of the Empire is involved, and I think I shall be able to show that there is involved a question vitally affecting the interests of people at home as well as those of the people in every one of our self-governing Colonies. The Colonial Secretary has again and again cited Ordinances in our self-governing Colonies approaching more or less to that which is proposed in the present case as though they justified him in claiming the authority of those Colonies in his favour; but he has not added that in every one of those cases the great mass of public opinion in the Colonies has repudiated what has been done in the past, and has thrown the whole weight of the authority of those colonies upon our side in protesting against the Empire, in the person of the mother country its head, being disgraced by a repetition of those blunders.

I propose to take the case put forward by the Colonial Secretary, in the same order in which he took it, and to show the wide difference between his views and ours. He has given reasons for allowing this Ordinance. I think the word "reasons" is misplaced. He ought to have said the "temptations" to allow this Ordinance. Anybody who has read the history of the past will have noticed that where a nation is trying to shake itself free from the entanglements of slavery, or anything approaching thereto, there always come up these same temptations — the necessity of helping or keeping up trade, manufactures, or agriculture, by slave labour or labour under compulsory regulations of this kind. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to realise in what company the arguments he puts forward have been found in the past, let him read anything published in the Southern States shortly before the War of Secession, and, except that it is far more richly adorned with Scriptural quotations than his speeches are, he will find exactly the same train of reasoning as he has now propounded. The temptation is no new one, and this is a moment when England as a nation and as an Empire has to decide, for good or forevil, whether she will turn back to the bad ways of the past or raise one stage higher the standard of national morality and of the recognition, I will not say of the equality of man, but of the dignity of human nature, which up to this time she has always been the first to put forward and the most strenuous to support.

Let me point out the fundamental error that underlies the speech of the right hon. Gentleman and the policy of the Government. The industries of a country meriting the support of a Government and of legislation he takes to be defined by the existing industries. We join issue with him there. You ought to regard only the existing legitimate industries, and if an industry can exist, i.e., can only be made to pay by degrading conditions of labour, it is not a legitimate industry. You always find that when a country has had cheap servient labour industries spring up which ought not to exist, and they have been profitable solely on account of the degrading terms under which the labour necessary to carry them on has been obtained. These industries justly suffer when better times come. When you draw the distinction between legitimate industries—that is, those industries which are or can be carried on with labour employed under proper conditions—and illegitimate industries which cannot so be carried on, you will at once see that the whole case of the Government falls to pieces. What are the main industries of South Africa? There is the large diamond industry at Kimberley as to which no difficulty has arisen. In the open market, with fair treatment and liberal payment, they get as much labour as they require freely and without any legislative oppression. Next, there is the mining in the Rand. People talk of this as if it were a question of only one mine and whether that mine would go on or stop working. The Rand represents mines of every degree of wealth. One of them, I know, pays 180 per cent, dividend. There are many others that pay large dividends, and many that make a profit, although they pay but small dividends, because it happens that those mines have been capitalised far more highly than they should have been. Some of the mines cannot be worked at a profit at all. Suppose you raise the price of labour. The result will be that the richer mines will still make a profit and will go on working with properly remunerated labour. Those that make a profit go on, and those that do not make a profit remain undeveloped until the progress of science has invented machinery which will lower the cost of working them, or until the price of coal has gone down, or until the labour market is fuller and wages are smaller. The consequence is that the true legitimate industry, i.e., that which can work and pay properly remunerated labour will continue, and when the Colonial Secretary says that we must have 30,000 more men employed in the mines or otherwise the Rand will stop work, he means that these mines that cannot be fairly carried on will stop, and in my opinion they ought to stop. The consequence is that what he proposes to do is to accept the profits of the present time as a state of things that must be kept up no matter what be the conditions necessary to accomplish it, whereas we say that you must make your conditions of labour fair and content yourself with such profits as that permits of. Your profits must depend on the fair remuneration of your labour and not the remuneration of labour on your profits.

There is the gulf between us, and it is a gulf on one side of which are the British people, and on the other side you find the Government. For remember that this is a problem that the British people thoroughly understand They thoroughly understand what is meant by bringing in cheap foreign labour under contract terms to work at very low prices. It has nothing specially to do with gold mining or South Africa, I could make out exactly the same case for bringing Polish labour into this country in order to manufacture goods so cheaply that profits could be maintained or increased as the Colonial Secretary has made out for the introduction of Chinese labour in the case of the Rand. Indeed I could make a still closer parallel to the proposals which have been so loudly applauded from the Benches opposite. Take the county in which my constituency is situated. Does anybody doubt that If you could bring in Chinese labour to work for all but nothing a large number of the disused Cornish mines would be able to work at a profit? The disused Cornish mines have still plenty of copper and tin in them, but those metals cannot be raised because the prices of copper and tin are such that it would not pay for the labour. But we are told that the maintenance of an industry is sufficient justification for bringing in labour upon terms so unnatural that no citizen of the country would allow himself to be pledged to them. If it be so, then you would be justified in bringing Chinese labour into Cornwall to work these mines. Do not let it be thought that this parallel is a piece of ingenuity on my part. I am going here to shelter myself under the language of the spokesman of the Government in the House of Lords on this very subject last Friday. Upon that occasion the Duke of Marlborough said— If an employer in this country were anxious to employ foreigners under a system of contract, no objection could be taken. Why should the thing be inherently wrong when the employer was in South Africa and the employee was a Chinaman? If the industry had been cotton or wheat-growing, no one would have said that the demand for labour was based on morally bad principles. But because the individual concerned was yellow, and the industry was gold-mining, a prejudice was created. So that the view held by the Government—I beg pardon, a view held by the Government—and put forward by their spokesman in the House of Lords is that this plan of supporting an industry by foreign contract labour imported at a very low figure is applicable to England as well as to South Africa, and is applicable to farming as well as to mining. It could not be more clearly enunciated, and I trust that all of us when we next go to our constituencies will take care that this statement of the spokesman of the Government is put clearly before the electors. It asserts broadly that in order to preserve profits, if you cannot get them in any other way, the Government is justified in permitting by legislation the bringing in of foreign labour to work upon terms which would be scorned by every British working man and which every British Court would regard as an infringement of the liberty enjoyed by everyone under our common law.

Now we have got the issue fairly and squarely before us. Are you or are you not to bring foreign labour into the Transvaal to support existing profits? Let me deal with that question. My learned friend has drawn the picture of these huge mines representing £200,000,000 of capital. He asks us, Are you going to let the stamps that have been put up in those mines lie idle? I can assure him that £200,000,000 of capital does not give me any great idea, or at any rate any very clear idea of what is the real value or what was the actual cost of those mines. There is a great deal of that £200,000,000 which should be put back into the pockets from which it was originally taken out by over-capitalisation. If this could hi done we should be in a better position to find out which mines can work and which mines cannot be worked. English labour is only too willing to be employed if the terms are fair, and I think black labour could also easily be obtained if the terms are fair, and as I have said I have not the slightest desire to keep alive those mines which cannot be worked with fair conditions of labour. A most pathetic appeal has been made to us not to impoverish the Transvaal by stopping mines from getting labour. Will it impoverish the Transvaal so greatly? To whom do the profits of those mines go? If ever there was an industry which brought little wealth to the country itself in comparison with its size, it is mining in the Rand. The mines are owned outside the Transvaal, and if I might judge by their strange names which are so difficult to pronounce, the owners are outside the English race too. At any rate, to a very large extent, the mines are all held outside the Transvaal, and the consequence is that the profits which are made pass immediately out of the country, and the only portion of the results of mining that remain in the Rand is that portion which is expended upon wages. The result is that when I am asked to support an Ordinance to permit wages to be put down to such a miserable figure, I am asked to do so in order to secure that as small a portion as possible of the wealth of the mines should remain in the country. By bringing in Chinese labour you diminish even to a vanishing point the amount of benefit that these mines bring to the country because, beyond the absolute necessities of life, the Chinaman practically makes no demands on the trade of the Transvaal. With the exception of his food the Chinaman practically consumes nothing. He saves up his wages to take away with him at the end of his service, and the consequence is that not only will the profits of the mines go into pockets foreign to the Rand but even the money paid in wages will, to a very large extent, go out of the country. You see, therefore, that in order to secure profits to men who are not members of the community in which the mines are situated, you are practically letting the enormous mineral wealth of the Rand be taken away into foreign countries, while the country which produces that wealth benefits very little indeed.

There is one further consideration which must not be overlooked. I agree that the Rand is a country of enormous mineral richness, and we have taken upon ourselves the awful moral responsibility of acquiring that country and annexing it to our Empire. How have we got it? By conquest. But you cannot keep it by conquest. You must keep it by colonisation. Everyone who has thought out the whole matter of the future of South Africa knows that its prosperity depends on the way in which we bring colonisation into that country in order to tie to us that which has been acquired by conquest. How are you going to do it? You can only do it by using the great mineral wealth of the Rand according to sound principles of government, namely, by letting the industries of the country collect round themselves a working population fit to form the nucleus of the future nation that you hope to see arise in that country. You have got in the millions to be raised from the Rand the materials for attracting such a population, but what are you going to do? In order to keep up the price of shares, in order to keep up momentarily the profits of the people who own the shares, you are going to allow these mines to be worked by people whom you are going out of your way to say you will not permit to be citizens of the future country. If, on the other hand, you choose to work the mines by white labour, what you will do will be to lower the profits of the richer mines and perhaps delay the working of the poorer ones, but you will absorb an enormous quantity of white labour which will form the nucleus of the future inhabitants of South Africa. There are enough of those rich mines to enable you to carry out such a policy, and create a large gold-raising industry collecting round it, as the industry of a nation should, a population which is to be the nation in the future. But if you throw this opportunity away, if you allow the mines to be worked out as they will be —for all mines get worked out—by a population which will leave the country absolutely as poor of men as before they came in, you lose the one chance of saving England from the awful fiasco of having conquered a nation and not being able to colonise it.

I listened to some statements in the sonorous language of the Colonial Secretary as to the inadequacy of the supply of labour for the raising of the enormous sums which are annually obtained from the Rand mines. This does not justify his Ordinance. What is the good of raising these sums if they pass away, leaving the country no better than it was before? But we are told that the vast expenditure on the country can be wholly or partially defrayed by the taxation of these enormously rich mines. Even if this be so it is unwise to hurry. At the root of the whole matter is the maxim "take time." Very few people realise what this war has brought upon us. They do not realise what a task it is to make the conquered territory a sound part of the British Empire. You will never do it if you try to do it hurriedly. The only way is to build up a nation there, and when you examine all the proposals put before the House by the Colonial Secretary you will find that at the bottom of them all is the haste with which he wants to do that which nothing but time will do. No, if you will resist this temptation, if you take a course which will allow only the richer mines to be worked by reason of your insisting on fair terms of labour, I have not the slightest doubt I that the splendour of Johannesburg will go back for a bit, and it ought to go back to that to which it is legitimately entitled, but you will have no fears then of failure in the future. You will be standing on a solid foundation—on the foundation of a gradually growing up people of British race. And that people will not be ashamed to do work. The strangest thing in all this unreal discussion is that it is assumed that the English people, when they get to South Africa, must necessarily be ashamed to do work such as that which has made the English working class what it is in our own clime. I do not believe it. To tell me that English navvies will not make railways in South Africa when they make them all over the rest of the world is a thing it would take ten thousand times as much evidence as we have yet heard to convince me of. No doubt much of the rougher labour will be done by blacks, but that does not conclude the question. The Colonial Secretary talked about not being able to use English labour on the mines as if there were not different types of labour on the mines. The whole of the surface labour on the mines—all that which has to do with extraction of the gold from the ore—all that which has to do with the management of gangs—and even much of the work down in the mines—all this is work of a superior order, and work which there would be no difficulty in getting Englishmen to do successfully. Their field of labour will grow with the use of machinery. We hear of blacks making holes by hand labour, but everybody knows who has the most superficial knowledge of the subject that there has been development in recent times of portable drills and other like tools which will work by compressed air or electricity. In fact, all this wretched unskilled labour is a sign of backward mining. But though it is behind the standard of to-day it is a valuable type of mining for the people who are directing this crisis, because that mining is done by voteless miners. Enterprising mining requires men to whom you cannot deny the right of citzenship. It is the dread that there will grow up around the mines a population fit to form part of the self-governing population of the Empire that gives rise to the intense opposition of the mine-owners to white labour at this moment. It is expressed by them frankly in their letters. One man, probably the most typical example of a South African magnate, Mr. Rudd, compares the enormous advantage of having the work done by 200,000 non-voting blacks instead of 100,000 white people who would combine and give labour troubles. These mine-owners want a low class of beings to work the mines, too low to possess the privileges of citizenship, and that is what makes them insist that we shall not try even for a few years the experiment of regular white labour under proper conditions. It is not a question of not being able to work the mines with English labour, it is a question of not being willing to do so. Remember that they are now raising £14,000,000 a year with the present supply of black labour, and even before the war their greatest output was only about £18,000,000 a year. There is no question therefore of stopping the mines, but only of developing the output more slowly. But these abominable Ordinances will stop the inflow of British labour. If at this time you allow them to bring in Chinese you will find that gradually the area of British labour will get smaller and smaller, because the Chinaman is a most intelligent man, and, whether you pay him for it or not you are sure to work him as an intelligent man, and gradually he will take places which but for his presence would be filled by British workmen, and when you begin to take that course there will be a perpetual tendency to increase the area of Chinese work. All the things he can do he will be employed to do, and a little extra pay will induce him to do them. The instinct of the British working classes is perfectly right when they say that this is a blow at white labour. It is too clear for reasoning. They know that this is a blow at their labour market. They and their fellows are the real persons to satisfy the need.

I have dealt with the question of necessity. I say there is no necessity of importing Chinese labour because this is the precious moment when you might build up a population fit for self-government. I have said it is bad because by doing so you lessen the tendency to employ white men. I am now going to examine the proposed conditions, and in so doing I am not going to say anything about serfdom or slavery or anything of that kind. I do not care to fight about words; it is the substance that I object to. What I say is, that this is employing workmen on degrading terms which no self-respecting nation would accept, unless it was under the pressure of the direst poverty. If I want support for that statement I have only to appeal to the speeeh of the Colonial Secretary. What does he say? "Oh let us have this Ordinance, and the Chinese will come. They earn in their own country only 1½d. a day." Is the fact that they are paid 1½d. a day in China a reason to induce us to approve of the Ordinance? Are we going to say that it is justifiable because the conditions under the Ordinance will be better than the misery of that over-crowded nation? Do not hon. Gentlemen see that that is making the misery of China the standard of British rule? I should have thought that we should have begun at the other end. I should have thought that we should have ascertained what conditions the workmen ought fairly to have, and that we should not have thought it a salve to our conscience that there are men so miserable that they will take much less. I do not think that we ought to take advantage of the misery of their position. That is the answer to the right hon. Gentleman's appeal to the poverty and wretchedness of the Chinese.

I wish to say one word in regard to the modus operandi. Anybody who looks at the machinery of the Ordinance will see that from the moment that the Chinaman starts from home until he comes back after three years he is never to have the slightest chance of changing his mind. It is ridiculous to talk of a man who can only earn 1½d. a day changing his mind after going to Hong-Kong. How is he to get back? And if he goes to South Africa, and wishes to avail himself of the right to return home before the expiry of the three years under the repayment clause, how is he to get the money to enable him to do so? These provisions which purport to give him the power to change his mind are pure delusions. They are solely for production on Conservative platforms. You might as well leave them all out, so far as their practical use is concerned. But the Colonial Secretary says he is going to make a fresh regulation which he knows of and we did not know, and which he says will change our opinion. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Government are going to advertise these regulations in the Chinese villages. He thinks that the honour of the great British nation is going to be saved by a Chinese poster! It is too ridiculous to suppose that a poster could give to a man who had never left his village the slightest idea of the contract which he is accepting, and the consequence that will flow from it; and the moment he takes the first step he will have to go through with it.

But are the conditions such that we ought to allow the British nation to put its imprimatur upon them? I have read a collection of opinions in a booklet put forward in regard to this Chinese labour. A gentleman discussing whether there should be Indian coolies or Chinese labour in the Transvaal says— If it is not the Chinaman, it is likely to be the East Indian. He is a British subject and you cannot keep him off the side-walk, nor out of trade, and there will be some difficulty in inducing him to go home again. I cannot be malicious towards the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary, but, if I were for a second, I would like to fancy him walking with this gentleman and hearing him saying, "I like the Chinaman because you can keep him off the sidewalk; you can treat him as if he were cattle. The East Indian man is a British subject, and you cannot keep him off the side-walk nor out of trade; and there is some difficulty in inducing him to go home again." How proud the Colonial Secretary would feel of the sentiments of his companion. The same gentleman says a little farther on— The Chinaman, if he comes, must come as a hewer of wood and drawer of water—as nearly a beast of burden as it is possible to make the human animal into—and when his task is done be must go. He may not become a miner, neither may he hold a prospector's licence nor a licence to trade. No white man may enter into partnership with him for the performance of mine or other contracts, nor may he enter into contracts on his own account. Above all, he may not acquire, by purchase or otherwise, any house, lands, or claims, nor, in his own right, enter upon the occupation of rented premises. He will come simply as a labourer, and a labourer he must remain. Then, this gentleman goes on to point out that the people in America had not been careful enough about these Chinamen. He tells how the Chinamen had by their industry made one of those great Pacific railways, and that after it was constructed they had, very naturally, engaged in other branches of trade, from which, owing to the Chinaman's great utility, shrewdness, thrift, and industry, his enemies had never been able to dislodge him. "There must be no such mishap in the Transvaal," he adds. What is the mishap? It is that the Chinamen get the reward of their great utility, shrewdness, and industry! The friends of the Colonial Secretary think that that is a great mishap! And they ask that these men should be brought to the Transvaal to create wealth for them, but should be made to bind themselves never to accept the natural reward of their utility, their thrift, and their industry. The right hon. Gentleman's friends want to take these workmen and pay them a little more than the starvation wages they are paid in China and make them promise that they will not rise, or try to rise, and we are to authorise them to tell these poor Chinese that if they do not keep to these grovelling conditions they have broken the bond they have made with this great country of England, and come under the primitive provisions of the Ordinance!

This is what the people of England will not stand. The people of England are now beginning to understand this question. They understand that these men are going to be brought to the Transvaal to lower the wages of white men. It is not to prevent the mines stopping, because the rich mines will go on, whatever wages are paid. These Chinamen are to be brought under restrictive conditions which will forbid them to rise so that their industry, thrift, and utility, however great it may be, will not bring them their reward. That is the mishap which the English Legislature is to take care will not happen! We in the House of Commons may approve of this Ordinance, but, if so, it will be a permanent stain upon us. Do not imagine that you can get out of responsibility by saying that things were done in the past which were nearly as bad. There is a vast difference between consenting to an Adminstrative Act out of inadvertance or want of appreciation of the importance of the question, and consenting to a thing being done which has been prominently brought to your attention, and has been adopted deliberately after discussion. England has to say now, after due consideration, whether it shall support this Ordinance; and all I can say is that while I am satisfied that it will effect irreparable damage to the Empire if we do adopt it, I am also satisfied that there is not one hon. Member who will vote for this Ordinance who will not bitterly regret it in after life.

SIR GILBERT PARKER (Gravesend)

In listening to the speech of the hon. and learned Member who has just sat down, I could not help feeling that his sympathies were as strong as those of hon. Members who will support him least. The hon. and learned Member expressed no sympathy whatever for what I may call the industrial conditions which at present exist in the Transvaal. He was quite willing that we should limit our sympathies, and that England should limit its duty to the consideration of the mines, which, as he termed it, were prosperous. But it seems to us, who, I hope, take the somewhat larger view that the responsibility of this country does not rest solely upon our appreciation of those who are prosperous, and of the industries of those who are prosperous, that that is not the gospel generally preached from the other side of the House. And I cannot imagine that it will appeal generally to the Labour Members and those whom the Labour Members represent. What is good for this country is good for South Africa. [OPPOSITION ironical cheers.] I may point out that consideration should be had for the whole of the Transvaal, and for the whole of the industries there and all that concerns them. May I ask the House, and especially hon. Members on the opposite side, if it is quite fair to suggest at the present time that this Ordinance is a thing that has been sprung on the country. Is it quite fair to suggest that it is not the expression of the will of the South African people?—[OPPOSITION cries of "No"]—the will of the people of the Transvaal. [OPPOSITION ironical cheers.] I will take it on the ground that there has been an evolution of opinion from circumstances that existed a year ago, when the people of the Transvaal believed, when the members of the Chamber of Mines, and the Chamber of Commerce, when Lord Milner, and when the people at large believed, it was possible that Chinese or any Oriental labour need not be called for. But events have shown that the supply of native labour has not been sufficient. If we are to take into consideration the responsibility that exists there now—for the Legislative Council represents, for the time being, the Government of the country—we cannot afford to disregard the industrial circumstances, and the amount of capital invested there. I, for one, repel the idea that the capital invested there is capital represented by a few great mine-owners. Is it not the fact that in the Consolidated Cold Fields there are twenty-five shareholders who hold an average of ninety-nine shares each; and that there are 200,000 people in this country who hold shares in the Transvaal mines? Is it not also the fact—and I commend this consideration to hon. Members opposite —that there are hundreds of thousands of colonists in the Transvaal whose interests are at stake in this matter? I believe it to be a fair thing to suggest that this country should have regard not only for the interests of the moral idea, which is behind a great deal of what is pleaded for on the other side of the House, but should primarily have regard for the welfare of the people of the Transvaal, who have risked their all, and who are in danger of losing their all. It is not the great managers that we ask consideration for; it is the small owners, the small investors, who have sunk their all in the mines of the Transvaal.

These figures will bear upon what I call the colonial aspect. Before the war the expenditure on the Transvaal was £4,000,000. It is now in 1904 at the rate of £7,000,000. The debt of the Transvaal before the war was £14,000,000; it is at present £71,000,000; and that £71,000,000 represents in the first place the £35,000,000 which has been borrowed since the war; a liability incurred to the extent of £30,000,000; the Johannesburg municipality works, established there for the welfare of the people to give the municipality all the appliances of civilisation and conditions they did not have under the Kruger Government, and the railways which entailed an expenditure of £1,600,000. These responsibilities resting upon the Transvaal are a very important consideration for this country, quite apart from the investments of hundred of millions of money in the Transvaal. The responsibility for payment of revenue is a thing we cannot get rid of in this country, and since this House and the country are responsible for the well-being of that country, we cannot and should not refuse the means whereby they can meet their responsibility and pay their revenue. Then there is the question of the Cape and the question of Natal. The debt of the latter has risen from £9,000,000 to £13,000,000, to which must be added £11,000,000 for authorised expenditure. The debt of Cape Colony has risen from I £29,000,000 to £36,000,000, to which musbe added £5,000,000 authorised expent diture, making £41,000,000 altogether. What I want to ask is this. If before the war in 1899 the returns from the mines were £20,000,000, and their contribution to the Government of the country was according to the revenue, will the return of £12,000,000 or £14,000,000 now meet the necessities of the country under the new conditions? I believe that is a fair question to put to this House. The responsibilities resting upon the Administration there are very heavy; the responsibilities resting upon the people are very heavy; and to withhold the opportunity for acquiring the full amount of labour necessary to work the mines is to involve ourselves in the penalties—and in the natural penalties—of neglect and lack of consideration which will very rightly in the future lay us open to the eternal charge of misgovernment on the part of this country. May I suggest one or two points in connection with this. In the Transvaal before the war there were 6,240 stamps at work, whilst in 1904 there are only 3,275. In 1899 they were producing at the rate of £20,000,000, whereas in 1904 they were only producing £13,000,000 annually. In 1899 the capital invested; in the mines was £70,000,000, whilst to-day it is well over £100,000,000. At the present time with these stamps idle there are between 7,000 and 8,000 British white citizens out of work. Was it not a reasonable or a fair thing in our colonial policy to grant to the Colonies the right to decide for themselves as the people of the Transvaal have decided?

SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS

How?

SIR GILBERT PARKER

The Transvaal has decided in favour of admitting labour to supplement that black labour which has hitherto never been quite sufficient, but which, under the present circumstances, is altogether insufficient for the time and for the occasion.

ME. BRYN ROBERTS (Carnarvonshire, Eifion)

How was it decided, and by what authority?

SIR GILBERT PARKER

It has been decided by no authority, unless it be by those natural indications by which people in this country give expression to their will. Do hon. Members opposite venture to suggest that if there were at the present time in the Transvaal any real objections to the employment of Chinese labour they would not have been made manifest in very extraordinary ways? No objection has made itself manifest. There is a practical unanimity amongst all the white British population. Then the Boer population has given to this movement no direct opposition, and if they gave any opposition it would be on the basis that the opposition was given at the time of the sitting of the Commission, when the solution, as presented by the Boers who gave evidence, was with the view of compelling black labour to supply the needs of agriculture and the mines. But in view of these circumstances; in view of the fact that industry is retarded; in view of the fact that white labour there awaits its opportunity; in view of the fact that black labour has not been and cannot be sufficient, I say that this House, if it has the power to accept the suggestion of the hon. Member who has just sat down, will throw back the great mining industries of the Transvaal in such a manner that a few of the original mines would do well, but the whole of the rest of the industries would be crippled. At the present time there are twenty-three mines in the Transvaal which were working before the war that are not working now. That seems to be a serious thing. All the mine-owners ask is —and I am not an advocate, necessarily, for capital, but I will take on this question the colonial view—that the colony shall have the right to develop on its own lines, and under its own conditions. The Colonial Secretary pointed out that this introduction of Chinese labour was only a transitory and passing phase. We hope that is so; but if it is not to be transitory we must abide by the conditions that may obtain, and at the present time I am quite willing to show by the Minority Report the great need for labour from outside those areas where native labour might be requisitioned. It was pointed out by the Minority Report that it was necessary for the development of the mines to have 115,000 men. At the end of January, 1904, there was still a shortage, according to their own estimate, of 78,000. It is said that all efforts to recruit men for the different parts open to recruiting have been utilised, and that since the war there has been spent in recruiting £455,000. In spite of the most careful supervision of Sir Godfrey Lagden, and of all the efforts to obtain labour, we are still between 70,000 and 80,000 short of their estimate.

It seems to me the natural suggestion is that, given labour from outside, under natural and reasonable conditions that labour should be got. Hon. Members opposite made the point that there were strict regulations framed in order to confine Chinamen to one species of work alone. Has not that been done in the interests of British white labour, and if it had not been done, would not hon. Members opposite have fought, have challenged, and have impeached us, because we allowed the Chinamen to compete with British and white skilled labour? Our whole object is to prevent Chinamen from becoming colonists. I am not in favour of employing Chinamen if you can get Britons or black men to do the work. We are simply asking that there should be added that supplementary labour on the part of the Chinaman, which will give the industry of the Transvaal that which they need, but meanwhile we are taking up the ground that the Chinaman shall not become a colonist. All the regulations that are made are in the interests of non-colonising. He shall be in the meantime a bird of passage or a servant if you like, but I do not think it becomes people to be too strenuous on that point when we consider the conditions of domestic servants in a great city like this. There are servants in houses in London, and doubtless in the houses of some hon. Members opposite, who only get out for two or three hours in; the course of a week, and these are the hon. Gentlemen who stand up and complain of those regulations which compel the Chinaman to keep to a certain prescribed area; to work for wages which he willingly agrees to accept under conditions to which he has given assent before he leaves his own country. The question of Canada has been brought up. Will the hon. Gentleman opposite tell the House why it is that in Canada, a country not subject to labour strikes or labour agitations, a country which has always stood strenuously for the rights of labour and which has perhaps some of the best labour legislation which exists in the Empire, there are at the present time between 15,000 and 16,000 Chinese employed, namely, in the province of British Columbia. Why have not workmen from the East gone over to the West? Why had the Canadian Pacific Railway to employ 8,000 Chinese to build that railway on the eastern side? Was it because the company could not get labour from the East? Partly that. Would this country be prepared at the present time to give State-aided emigration to working men here to go out to the Transvaal and compete with black labour in the first place? Why did not the Canadian Government import into British Columbia eastern labour? Because once a labourer goes out he is free—his passage having been paid—to throw up his job at a moment's notice, and go into skilled labour for which he presently becomes fitted. No Government could force such a man, if he preferred skilled labour, to confine himself to unskilled labour. But in the case of the Chinaman in the Transvaal he will be confined to unskilled labour; and in that connection the regret of the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken might have been better applied to the British workmen now out of work in South Africa. The hon. Gentleman's sympathy might have been better applied to that population which has to depend practically upon one industry alone for its future and for its safety. In every colony there has always been one industry which has been the basis of its prosperity. I cannot imagine an Australian or Canadian being told that he must not take up the bad land or the second best land, but that he must take up the first best land leaving the rest waste because it cannot be worked under advantageous conditions. We have been told that no claim should be made on the community of this country in relation to the Transvaal mines; but in this country men have made great fortunes out of their discoveries. Men have made fortunes out of patents, and then have floated their businesses as limited liability companies. Some of these men who have made fortunes out of their discoveries, their enterprise, and their business character are Members of this House, and it is unfair to suggest that the mine-owners are more sordid than they because they desire the mines to be worked.

I venture to say that the House of Commons will be taking a great responsibility on itself if it refuses to endorse the action of the Government in this matter. The Transvaal is in great need. Undoubtedly, there is not enough labour for the mines. The Transvaal asks for assistance in its difficulty. Is the reply that we will make the reply which was given to a colonial representative at the Court of France? He asked the French Colonial Minister for help for Canada which was then in financial straits and the reply was— We cannot think of the stable when the house is on fire. The colonial representative replied,— No one can say you talk like a horse, The Transvaal is in the same position. The inhabitants are saying to this country, "Believe in our bonâ fides; believe we mean well by British industry," and is the reply to be, "we have got to think of ourselves and our fine moral ideas." There may be in the regulations in this Ordinance some of the incidents which we might wish to see otherwise, but the real fact is that it will bring hope again to an embittered and troubled land. A vast number of mines must have a vast amount of labour with which to attain success. We hold the land in trust for the people of the Transvaal until the time comes when, under happier fortunes, they control their own internal Government. But until that time comes it is our duty to see that the path of progress is neither impeded nor beset. We are told we must have regard to the morals of the Transvaal. I have yet to learn that the moral standard of the Colonies is not as high as the moral standard of this country. The moral welfare of the colony may be left to the people. The moral life of a colony is always upward and not downward, and this House may believe that the Transvaal has bonâ fides which might be properly copied in the policy of this country. Sir, in the interest of colonial conciliation—for it will never come, and colonial federation will never come in that country until the Transvaal is prosperous—Cape Colony and Natal will both decline, if the great sources of wealth in the Transvaal are crushed or impeded at the present time to join in federation. The £20,000,000 it produced before the war will not serve now to bring to it success. The Transvaal must now produce £30,000,000 or £40,000,000. The real danger in the future is not the scarcity of black labour; in the whole of South Africa, the era of prosperity must come; the danger in the future is that, in the exigencies of political life, hon. Members opposite may sit on those Benches and may view with anxiety the difficulties of the present moment. If they come to sit here they will have to reconsider the speeches made by them-selves and their supporters in this House and to consider whether they are prepared to revoke an action which has the approval of the people of the Transvaal, and which, when thoroughly understood, will have the approval of the people of this country.

ME. BRYCE (Aberdeen, S.)

The Colonial Secretary having in the course of this debate referred to some expressions which I had used in the course of my visit to South Africa, I may, perhaps, tell the House the impression my visit to South Africa made upon me. The case that is made is this. We are told that unless Chinese labour—far cheaper labour, much cheaper labour than Kaffir labour,—is given to the country the mines cannot be carried on and the country must become insolvent. On what basis does that case rest?

MR. LYTTELTON

Not cheaper.

MR. BRYCE

I took it from the right hon. Gentleman's own figures. The right hon. Gentleman gave us the figures, and it is the result of those figures which was made the basis of the Transvaal Commission. No one could read the Report of that Commission without seeing that the Commission entered into its laborious inquiry with that as a foregone conclusion. It is perfectly clear that they had that object in view and that was the result at which they did in fact arise. One knows perfectly well that the reasons for the dearth of black labour are transitory; that it is due to the fact that many of the labourers have earned a good deal of money during the war and so do not care to return to the mines, and also to the fact that there are many other kinds of public work which they like better. There is no reason to believe that in times to come a sufficient amount of black labour will not be found. No one knows so much about the blacks of East Africa as Sir Harry Johnston, and he conceives that there is nothing to prevent a sufficient supply of black labour being found. Then I go to white labour. The reason white labour is so costly is that the cost of living is so high. Why is food so dear? Because railway transport is so high, because there are high duties upon food, and because no efforts are made by the mine-owners to cheapen food and in that way to reduce the cost of labour. The best way to cheapen the cost of white labour would be to reduce the cost of living. Before we give up in despair the idea of employing a large quantity of white labour, let some effort be made by the Government and the mine-owners to reduce the cost of living. It has been said all through these debates that it will be for the benefit of white labour to have a greater number of Chinese in the Transvaal. No evidence whatever in support of that proposition has been given, and I venture wholly to dispute it. The Chinaman is a very intelligent worker. He is not like the Kaffir, who cannot be put to any work requiring skill. For many purposes the Chinaman is as intelligent a worker as the white man, and the tendency will be to employ Chinamen more and more. It is also true that Chinamen are accustomed to work under "bosses" or foremen of their own nationality, so that instead of there being a greater employment of white foremen the tendency will be to have Chinese foremen, and thus there will be a larger number of Chinese in the higher positions. There is really very little mining work except of the highest kind, requiring the greatest amount of scientific and mechanical knowledge, which Chinamen cannot do, and I do not see the least reason for supposing there will be the increase of white labour which has been suggested. Even the spokesman of the Government in another place on Friday last did not venture to estimate that more than 5,000 additional white men would be required. I should have thought that even that was a greatly exaggerated estimate. At any rate it is the high water mark of the Government's expectations.

AN HON. MEMBER

5,000 whites to how many imported?

MR. BRYCE

5,000 whites altogether. Nothing was said about the number imported. At any rate, considering the capacity of the Chinaman, and how few are the employments he is not fit to undertake, there is no reason to think that the number of white men will be substantially increased. This is not a case in which the country is benefited by the money being spent in it. In ordinary cases the money earned by labour, whether by the employer or by the workman, is spent in the country in which it is earned, but the Transvaal loses the result of the labour at both ends. The mine-owner is an absentee, living in Park Lane or on the Continent, and does not spend in the Transvaal the large revenues he draws from the mines; nor will the labourer spend his earnings there, because he will take his wages back to China. Therefore the Transvaal is a marked exception to the general rule, that the remuneration of labour goes to benefit the other industries of a country. The hon. Member for Gravesend devoted a large part of his speech to endeavouring to prove that the Transvaal desired this Ordinance. I fail to find any evidence of that. The hon. Member said that the Transvaal had given its decision. Where and how? We are told that we should treat the Transvaal as a self-governing colony. If it were a self-governing colony it would be able to give its decision. But it is not a self-governing colony, and you cannot treat it as one. No evidence has been brought before the House showing any such preponderance of opinion in the Transvaal as would relieve us of our responsibility. After all, the responsibility belongs to this House, and we cannot escape it. If we were to sit in silence and see the Government sanction this Ordinance we should assume our share of the responsibility for it; therefore, feeling as we do, we were bound to bring forward this Motion. We do not know what the view of the Transvaal is; but we know that the views of the Boers, as expressed by their most trusted leaders, such as their generals in the late war, are entirely opposed to the introduction of Chinese labour. We have the letter signed by General Delarey and others in which it is condemned in the strongest terms. This is not by any means a question for the Transvaal alone. Cape Colony is largely interested. If the Transvaal derives the enormous benefit which is suggested from Chinese labour, Cape Colony also will largely benefit. But Cape Colony does not expect any such benefit, or else she thinks the evils to be feared are greater than the prospective benefits, because both Parties there are strongly opposed to the Ordinance. As to other self-governing colonies we know what is the view of Australia. The Colonial Secretary dissented from the description of the war as a miners' war. Let me read what was said by Mr. Deakin in the Federal Parliament in Melbourne. Mr. Deakin said that— Australia had been told that the war was a miners' war, but not for Chinese miners; a war for the franchise, but not the Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had been told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia. The opinion of Australia on all that was said during the war is a matter which ought to be regarded.

The Colonial Secretary says we are face to face with two alternatives. One of them is to bring in Chinese with certain restrictions; and the other is to allow them to come in freely as they used to do in Australia and California. Let me, in the fewest possible words, examine those two alternatives. The first alternative is to allow them in with restrictions. The Colonial Secretary objects to the term "slavery." I will not wrangle over a word, but the right hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that this is a system under which the labourers are to be confined in certain enclosures, and there are to be severe penalties for breaches of this provision. It is a system under which there will be the greatest restrictions on their power of holding property. I will not discuss whether that is slavery or not, but it is certainly not freedom. The Colonial Secretary trotted out certain provisions from some of the West Indian Ordinances. We should be employed the whole evening if we compared carefully the provisions of those Ordinances with the provisions of this Ordinance now before the House. The provisions of the Trinidad Ordinance, which were referred to by the Colonial Secretary, were more carefully drawn with a view of protecting the labourer than this Ordinance. Part 8 of the Trinidad Ordinance, I may say, contains 236 clauses, and most of them are designed to give a careful and elaborate protection to the coolie. If the right hon. Gentleman reads the Trinidad Ordinance he will find that it contains the most carefully drawn provisions with regard to the wages which the coolie is to receive, his hours of labour, his holidays and residence, and he has to reside in a cottage of his own and not in an enclosure as is provided in the Ordinance now under consideration. No one can compare the two Ordinances referred to by the Colonial Secretary with this Ordinance without feeling that under them the life of a coolie will be a great deal better, and his security against unkind treatment a great deal more secure than it will be under the Ordinance now before the House. The Colonial Secretary has referred to Australia and the Ordinances passed by the self-governing Colonies, but he omitted to inform us that those Ordinances had been repealed by the Commonwealth Parliament.

MR. LYTTELTON

The Commonwealth has not repealed either of those Ordinances, but it has made provision by which at a future date no further coolies will be provided.

MR. BRYCE

I did not say they were slaves, but I was simply replying to the right hon. Gentleman's argument in which he said that what was being done in South Africa was justified by what happened in Australia. He has admitted that the Australian Commonwealth has decided that this form of labour will have to cease in Australia. And why? These Ordinances were passed under the influence of the planters, but when the Commonwealth Parliament came into existence and the public opinion of Australia was brought to bear upon this question, this foreign labour disappeared. I agree that this Ordinance is not likely to involve cruelty, and I am sure the Government will take steps to prevent any cruelty. But what does this Ordinance do? It intensifies the sense of separation and antagonism between different races, and it also intensifies the scorn and contempt which a superior race feels for an inferior race. It creates a class who are debarred from the ordinary civil rights which every man ought to enjoy, and you could not have an Ordinance like this in any part of the territories of the United States of America. In California, when the Chinese were there, the State of California endeavoured to pass severe legislation exposing Chinese to various disabilities. All that legislation was destroyed by the constitution of the United States, and the United States Courts of California placed the Chinese on a level with United States subjects in regard to the holding of property. Therefore an Ordinance like this is quite impossible under the United States Constitution. It should be remembered that we gave the first principles of liberty to the United States, and we surely ought not to go further back with regard to protection than we then gave to persons inhabiting British territories, or further back than the protection given in the United States to those who come into that country. The effect of these provisions will be to degrade labour, and in degrading labour you go some way to degrade humanity itself. You demoralise the human race and you make the difficulty of teaching the two races to respect one another far greater. Someone may say that labour is already degraded in South Africa. I am obliged to admit to some extent that that is true. I would point cut, however, that it was degraded by the fact that slavery obtained there. It is because slave labour was there that you have now labour in South Africa which is considered unworthy of white men to perform. Are you going to repeat that fatal lesson now? Are you going to deepen that lesson on the minds of the white races in South Africa? It is the worst thing you could do. From a book that I have written; the Colonial Secretary quoted a saying that all unskilled labour in South Africa is done by black men. I do not say that it should be done by servile classes. It is perfectly true that all unskilled labour is, or at all events when I was in South Africa, was done by black men. It is a regrettable fact, but are you going to make it a permanent fact? Are you going to stamp it for ever on that country? It was often said during the war that(what we must do was to make South Africa a white man's country. I have always felt it very doubtful whether we can make it a white man's country, but certainly you are not taking the right way to do it. You are taking the way to make it impossible that it ever shall be a white man's country. The reason for that is not the climate. The climate in the upper part of the Transvaal is as perfectly fit for white men as the mining districts of Australia and California. It is because of the prejudice the white man has against labour. You are going to intensify that. You are going to make it more dishonourable by having it done by these animated and servile instruments. I profoundly regret the decision at which the Government have arrived. When I hear the Colonial Secretary's arguments as to the impossibility of doing anything without Chinese labour, I am reminded of the arguments used before the American civil war. It was contended then that the prosperity of the South was bound up with the maintenance of slave labour, and that argument was used very often in England, where the people were told that the prosperity of Lancashire was bound up with slavery. Happily the workers there were not convinced of it. We have seen how false that was, and that the Southern States are more prosperous now under free labour than ever before under slavery. I use that illustration to prove that people applied to that case exactly the same arguments for slave labour to secure the prosperity of that country that you are applying to South Africa now.

That is one alternative. The other alternative the Colonial Secretary puts forward is that of allowing the Chinese to come in free. That is not the one the Ordinance adopts, but in spite of the rigid provisions of the Ordinance the Chinese may soak through them and you may have a Chinese population growing up there. In the next place you have no security that once the Chinese have been brought in these restrictions will be ultimately maintained. It may well be that in time they will be abandoned, and that you will have a Chinese population permanently established there. Let us for a moment consider what will be the results of Chinese immigration in South Africa. I do not join in the harsh judgment pronounced on the Chinese. Far from it. I have seen the Chinese in California and Hawaii, and I think they have many virtues and do not deserve the hard things said about them in many quarters. Where they come under proper conditions, as in Hawaii, they are a useful element in the community and not at all a demoralising element. But here you are not bringing them in under proper conditions, and you will probably get the worst possible kind of Chinese. What I apprehend from the coming of Chinese to South Africa are dangers of another kind—not moral difficulties due to the circumstances of this "compound" life, though I believe they will be demoralising. The danger I apprehend from the general settlement of Chinese in South Africa is this. The real problem in South Africa is the question of colour divisions. Allowing that the hostility of the Dutch clement and the British element will have passed away when they have been fused into one, as they will be, the permanently abiding difficulty will be the reconcilement of the black race and the white race, and it may prove in South Africa in the future as great, or a greater danger, as the presence of the black race has been in the Southern States of America because the whites are in a small minority in South Africa.

What are you going to do if you bring in Chinese? You are going to aggravate and complicate that race problem, which is already sufficiently difficult, by bringing in a third race, which if it comes in in considerable numbers will probably mix with the black race, and if it mixes with the black race a mixed population will spring up which will be a great deal more formidable, and a far more difficult and dangerous element in the population than the Kaffirs now are. The Kaffirs have little power of organisation or tenacity of purpose. The Chinese have a great deal of tenacity of purpose. They are an intelligent and tenacious race with remarkable power of combining and associating themselves together for any common purpose, and therefore, if you ever have in South Africa a population of Chinese, or a race of mingled Chinese and Kaffirs, you will have an element to deal with which the white population will find far more dangerous and far more formidable than any population the Kaffirs can ever produce. It may be said, I daresay it will be said, with truth, that what I have suggested is a thing that may never arise in the future, but when we stand at the parting of the ways and deal with one of the gravest questions any nation can deal with—the distribution of races on the earth's surface—we are bound to consider what the ultimate result of our action may be. It is not a historical parallel. There is no historical parallel which is absolutely exact. But when the Spaniards discovered America they found gold in the islands of the Celebes. There was no Spanish labour which could have been utilised except at a prohibitive cost; and therefore they set the native Indians to work in the gold mines. They said, "We must work these gold mines; we must have the gold, and as we cannot get white labour to work them ourselves, we must have Indian labour." The result was that in twenty or thirty years they killed off all the natives; and then, in order to find the labour which was necessary for the development of the country, they brought the blacks from Africa, and with that bringing of the blacks from Africa began the slave trade, which lasted down to within the memory of men now living. I do not say that the bringing of Chinese labourers into the Transvaal is comparable in extent, or in the changes made in the social condition of the country, or in the horrors produced by African slavery. I draw no parallel in that respect at all; but I call the attention of the House to the fact that a decision of the greatest moment was then made, which was hastily taken under the pressure of an immediate emergency, and that that decision had far-reaching consequences which no one foresaw, and which no one could have foreseen. The first man who brought a cargo of blacks from Africa to Virginia to grow tobacco in the seventeenth century did not contemplate that there would be at this day 9,000,000 of blacks in the United States, or that a civil war would be the result, which would last for four years, and that now the black problem would be one of the greatest which the United States has to face. So, we cannot contemplate what the ultimate results may be or what we are going to do in South Africa from the introduction there of Chinese labourers.

The evils which follow from a mistaken policy may be very different in one country from another country. I think that may be agreed on; and so I return to the main issue, on which I have only a word to say. And that issue is, that if there is so marked a case for believing that you cannot get more black labour and more white labour—if the two alternatives which we have to consider are so grave—each of them open to many objections—this question arises, is the gain worth the risk? Is the gain to be expected from the bringing of the Chinese into the Transvaal worth the two risks involved? You may, no doubt, have larger dividends in some of the mines; but there are many mines not worth working: they are too poor. These mines only give work to the Johannesburg and London Stock Exchanges. They are of no value. There are many gold mines in Wicklow in Ireland and in Wales which would be worth working if labour were cheap enough; but if a mine cannot be worked at a fair rate of wages it cannot be worked at all. There is a moral objection and the thing cannot be done. It would be a great deal better to stick to the broad lines of policy on which we have gone hitherto, than to endeavour to depart from those lines in order to get cheaper labour. And what will be the result? It will be the speedier exhaustion of these mines. Let it be remembered that at the present rate of working we are practically getting now as much gold as in the good years before the war. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] Well, very nearly. We are getting out as much as in 1895. I ought to have said before the Jameson Raid. We are getting practically as much as in those days of tremendous prosperity, or what everybody believed to be extraordinary prosperity, before the Raid. What is the difference that will be made by Chinese labour? It is that the mines which, at the present rate of working, will probably last fifty or sixty years, will only last twenty-five or thirty years. But after that there will be no demand for iron and machinery and food—all kinds of demands which would stimulate the prosperity of the rest of the country, and then the chance will be gone. What is more important, all the English element in the country's population will be gone, because there will be no reason for staying on in Johannesburg. The country will cease to be a mining country when all the gold has been taken out of it, and when there are no mines there will be no demand for food, iron, machinery, etc., and, as was the case in America, these townships will lapse into the condition in which they were before mining was introduced. The country will have to live on cattle farming, which is in the hands of the Dutch, and the country will then be again a Dutch country. You will have lost your British population because you will have exhausted your country. The Rand will have come to the end of its short merry life and it will be again that stony waste which it was before the mines were discovered, but the consequences will remain in South Africa, and when the prosperity of the Rand has been exhausted these consequences will remain and, for many ages to come, so far as we can see at present, these consequences are likely to be unpopular.

SIR FREDERICK M1LNER (Nottinghamshire, Bassetlaw)

It is appropriate that this vote of censure should have been moved by the right hon. Gentleman who was responsible for the phrase "methods of barbarism" as applied to our soldiers in South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman's speech will stir up ill-feeling in South Africa, and do mischief, as his speeches have done before. The right hon. Gentleman seems to think that those of his fellow countrymen who do not agree with him are capable of almost any atrocity. The Radical Party are maliciously endeavouring to persuade the electors of this country that it is His Majesty's Government who are initiating this legislation for the introduction of Chinese labour, but every Member of this House knows perfectly well that the Government are simply assenting to an Ordinance which has been exhaustively discussed by those responsible for the Government of the Transvaal, and approved of by the eminent statesman who represents this country there. Members of the Transvaal Legislative Council have set a good example which many Members of this House might adopt. Some of them were opposed to the Ordinance, and spoke their opinion plainly, but when an overwhelming majority of the Council were I against them, instead of trying to kill the Bill by factious obstruction, they did their best to make the Ordinance as good as it could be made, and in the end it was passed practically with unanimity. In the face of that fact, I do not see how it would have been possible for His Majesty's Government to withhold their approval. I do not believe that hon. Gentlemen opposite, if they had been in power, would have dared to refuse their sanction. Some of the greatest disasters that have happened to this country were due to the fact that the Government at home chose to think that they knew better than those they sent to represent them on the spot. That was the case with the Soudan expedition to rescue Hicks Pasha, and also after the British reverse at Majuba Hill. I have spent many weary hours in looking through the Blue-books, trying to discover whether it is true that the people of the Transvaal are opposed to the Ordinance, but I have utterly failed to find any evidence of it. It is true that in Cape Colony meetings have been held protesting against the Ordinance, but in all the speeches there made it can be seen that their objection was a selfish one, because they feared that imported Chinese might drift into the Colony. It was not the business of Cape Colony to interfere with the domestic affairs of the Transvaal. Those who protested in the Transvaal a year ago against the Ordinance are now convinced that Chinese importation is absolutely necessary. The Chamber of Commerce of Johannesburg, which in 1903 rejected a motion in favour of Chinese labour by fifty votes to five, have now by sixty-one votes to eleven decided to urge that the Importation Ordinance shall be made operative without any furthur delay, and a great deputation from Johannesburg has waited on Lord Milner, pointing out the disastrous consequences which must ensue if the consent of His Majesty's Government to the Ordinance is withheld. The attitude of the religious bodies ought to have some weight with the Opposition.

And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.