CONSOLIDATED FUND (NO. 1) BILL.

HC Deb 23 March 1908 vol 186 cc1104-76

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

MR. LYTTELTON (St. George's, Hanover Square)

I have a very grave matter to bring before the House, and I ask particularly for the attention of hon. Gentlemen opposite, because, unless I am grievously mistaken about this matter, that which I am about to bring before the House concerns the self-respect of hon. Gentlemen opposite more than it does anyone on this side. The House will remember that last session, on the question of the sincerity of the Government with regard to indentured labour, it was my duty to bring before the House the fact that their practice did not very well conform with their professions on this subject, by bringing to the attention of the House a Convention to which I will not make more than a passing reference, but which did, as a matter of fact, meet with the condemnation of both sides of the House. That Convention contained clauses which were repulsive to the House, clauses admitting the indenture of women and children for no minimum wage, with very long hours of labour, and also a repatriation clause indistinguishable from the Chinese Repatriation Ordinance. We will not labour that matter, however. [MINISTERIAL Ironical cheers.] I quite understand that hon. Gentlemen opposite are a little restive. I think, at any rate, this Convention is closely relevant to what I am bringing before the House now. Comment sufficiently vigorous to arouse the attention of the Government was made on that occasion, and it cannot be said now that if they have dealt with indentured labour in any other part of the Empire they have done it heedlessly or without deliberation. Well, what has happened? This year, in the Transvaal, in the very seat of the controversy which has raged for some four years about Chinese labour, an event has occurred which I think will surprise the House. Let me deliberately formulate the charge which I bring against His Majesty's Government. I say that the Government have deliberately, behind the back of Parliament, and in breach of their pledges to Parliament, sanctioned the revival for a substantial period of that Chinese indentured labour in the Transvaal mines which for four years and from 10,000 platforms they have held up to execration and scorn. That is a very serious charge to make. I trust I should be the last man to make it unless I had beneath my hand documentary evidence to support it. I say again that I invite the attention of hon. Gentlemen opposite. This is not a question which involves our sincerity, because of course we were, and have always admitted it, full partners to the Ordinance of 1904 establishing Chinese labour. It is not our self-respect which is concerned; we should have done the same thing as the Government have done, only for a longer period. It is the sincerity and self-respect of the Party opposite that is at stake, because they have used language about the conditions of Chinese labour which was absolutely inconsistent with the action of their Government in sanctioning the continuance of those conditions. What was the policy of the late Unionist Government in regard to this Ordinance? In 1903 we were faced by the fact that a grave financial crisis was inevitable in the Transvaal unless we sanctioned the employment of the Chinese in the mines. Accordingly we sanctioned the employment of the Chinese, as an experiment, to meet the shortage of labour which then existed, and we most distinctly said that that Chinese labour was to be supplementary to, and not in substitution of, Kaffir labour. What was the position of the Liberal Party in regard to that policy? In the pre-election period, I mean before the election of 1906, we know what the language of hon. Gentlemen opposite and their leaders was with regard to that policy. I know the House would be wearied, and I hope it would be disgusted, if I were to repeat that language. It will be sufficient to say that their denunciation of the policy was absolutely unmeasured. But what happened in the post-election period; what happened after this election, which had largely been fought upon this question? The present Government found themselves compelled to deal with the matter early in their career. A note had been sounded which was not acceptable to the stalwarts below the gangway, and was struck by the Under-Secretary in the debate on the Address. His task, I admit, was extremely difficult; for in the politest terms he could command he had to show his dissent from the denunciation of the Ordinance by his own Party as slavery. The right hon. Gentleman said— A labour contract into which men entered voluntarily for a limited and brief period, under which they were paid wages that they considered adequate, under which they were not bought or sold, and from which they could obtain relief, may not be a desirable contract, may not be a proper or a healthy contract, but it could not in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified—— then the right hon. Gentleman used terms the repetition of which again would bore the House, but he intimated in gigantic words that those who said such a contract was slavery were not wholly truthful. I appreciate the difficulty the right hon. Gentleman was in, and I do not wish to say that he dealt with it in other than an extremely able way; but later on in that speech he said— It has been said that our policy is to leave the decision of this question to the Transvaal Legislature. Broadly speaking, that is true—— And then he gave certain qualifications which were forgotten afterwards, and the impression on this House at the time was, and I think it was intended to be by the right hon. Gentleman, that although he could not justify statements that had been made on previous occasions by his own Party about Chinese labour being slavery, in his judgment the policy of Chinese labour should be loft to the self-governing community in the Transvaal. Neither that declaration of the policy of the Government nor that description of the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite was popular on the other side of the House. I am not aware whether the gentlemen who called Chinese labour slavery, and were told they were not truthful, were more indignant than those who really thought it was slavery, and then saw it passed over by a British Government to a self-governing community to say whether or not they would have it. Unless I have greatly mistaken the feeling of the House, I believe that if that statement of the right hon. Gentleman had been left unqualified and un-contradicted by some higher authority the Government would have lost the division even upon the Address in the plenitude and heyday of their prosperity. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not for the first time nor for the last, came to their rescue. He saw the situation and his Party saw the situation, and he conveyed a different impression from that which had been conveyed by the Under-Secretary. He came down next day and took up this definite position on behalf of the Government. He said that for a time the Chinese experiment must continue, but as soon as the Transvaal as a self-governing community had had a reasonable time to look round, then this Ordinance and the regulations and everything that had arisen out of it would come to an end. The Transvaal Parliament would then itself be free, unembarrassed, and unhampered by the Ordinance which at present oppressed them, and they would have an opportunity, if they wished Chinese labour to continue, to submit their scheme and the regulations and conditions under it. If those conditions in any way corresponded to the Ordinance, if they were in any way repugnant to the best British traditions, His Majesty's Government would veto them. What I am bringing before the House this afternoon depends so largely upon this declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and on this pledge given in Parliament to his followers definitely and seriously—this declaration and this pledge are so serious that I think I ought to read them to the House, though I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer accepts in substance what I have said. [Mr. ASQUITH assented.] The right hon. Gentleman said— This is a matter in which the credit and responsibility of the Imperial Parliament are concerned. Speaking of their liberty to determine the future of Chinese labour he said— They will be required if they so determine, to frame legislation of their own as to the conditions under which such labour should be carried on. That legislation will, not only by the inherent power vested in the Crown in the case of colonial Constitutions, but by express instructions given to the Government, he reserved for the consideration of His Majesty's Government at home. Let me add that, though I do not anticipate any such contingency arising, if such a contingency did arise, so long as we on this Bench are responsible for the conduct of affairs, any legislation corresponding to that of this Ordinance and inconsistent with our best British traditions would unquestionably be vetoed by the Government on behalf of the Crown. That speech, though I daresay it did not appeal to those to whom the speech of the Under-Secretary appealed, did appeal to those who had honest doubts in this matter. The machinery was left open by the right hon. Gentleman—the machinery was not plainly indicated then, but he said it would be indicated thereafter. Five months passed from the date of that speech, and it became the task of the Under-Secretary to bring forward a Constitution for the Transvaal setting up a Transvaal Government and enacting the machinery by which the pledge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be fulfilled. I do not think I need do more than quote one passage of that speech of the Under-Secretary, but, perhaps, I had better first refer to the provisions of the Constitution by which this pledge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was, I quite admit, redeemed and recorded. It is found in Section 50, Subsections 2 and 3, and the substance of them is this, that on the termination of a period of one year from the date of the first meeting of the free self-governing Parliament of the Transvaal, the Ordinance entitled Labour Importation Ordinance made in 1904—that is the Ordinance of the last Government—shall be repealed and cease to have effect within the Colony, and that system of labour shall accordingly be determined. That absolutely fulfils the pledge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, although many thought that the "reasonable time" within which it was to be repealed was a long time, though I will not quarrel with that. The Under-Secretary in explaining the new Constitution said that— No law would be assented to which sanctioned any condition of service or residence of a servile character. [An HON MEMBER: Date.] The date of that is 1st August, 1906. Let mo just give a resume of the position. Under the pledges of the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer we were to get a machinery which was supplied by the Act of Constitution that; machinery was entirely apt and proper for the purpose, and nothing could have been recorded with greater solemnity and more formality than the provisions of the Constitution under which the late Government's Ordinance should come to an end on, I think the exact day would have been last Saturday. The Transvaal Government would then have a perfectly clean sheet upon which they could write any conditions for the regulation of Chinese labour they pleased, and not by one but by two or three declarations the supporters of the right hon. Gentleman were assured that if there was any taint of slavery whatever in the new conditions regulating Chinese labour His Majesty's Government would courageously veto them. But hon. Gentlemen opposite will really be astonished I think when they hear what the Government consider to be a redemption of those pledges. Will it be believed that last August, within, I think, two days of the rising of the House, on 27th August, there was promulgated in a publication which I am bound to say is not an attractive one or widely read in this country—in the Government Gazette Extraordinary of the Transvaal—without any debate in the Transvaal about it, as the Attorney-General simply mentioned it, a statement that there was re-enacted for more than two years every single line of the late Government's Ordinance, every single line of the regulations under it; and by Proclamation on 30th December last, His Majesty was made to say that it was His Majesty's pleasure—not to veto as the right hon. Gentleman had said—but not to disallow the re-enactment, that is, in other words, to sanction it? When I said that not a line of the Ordinance was altered I ought to mention, in order to prevent misunderstanding, that there were certain emergency provisions brought forward in the interests of the public safety in the mines in 1905, at a time when there had been some rioting. The provisions related to deductions and fines and to collective punishment, and I think summary trial on the mining premises instead of in the Courts. I think His Majesty's Government were right in saying on their responsibility some months before the right hon. Gentleman's speech that there was no necessity for the further continuance of those provisions as the emergency had disappeared, and I think they were right in repealing them.

THE UNDER-SECRETAEY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL,) Manchester, N. W.

What was the emergency?

MR. LYTTELTON

The emergency was the occurrence of riots for which, on the advice of the Superintendent of Labour, the special measures were framed. I see the right hon. Gentleman sneers at the idea of this being treated as unimportant. Does he really say that it is important? Does he really maintain that the Ordinance of the late Government is substantially affected by these emergency provisions? He cannot; and no man can, as I can prove; and the less the right hon. Gentleman sneers at that the better. If there had been any truth in what those now sitting on the Treasury Bench said about the Ordinance, it should not have been allowed to remain on the Statute-book for a single month. In 1904 the President of the Local Government Board said— This Ordinance was like a bill of lading for billets or railway sleepers. The negro slave in America was never treated as these Chinese were to be treated. He was not made to live in a compound, part prison and part hospital, while a company made heavy profits out of him by selling him rotten meal and diseased mealies, and by subjecting him to loathsome conditions. The Chief Secretary said that these labour conditions— Were objectionable to the English Government and the English people, and they could not, and would not, be approved of in time to come under any circumstances whatever Then what did the Chancellor of the Duchy say, speaking in 1904? The right hon. Gentleman said that the question for the House was whether they would sanction the introduction of slavery into one part of the King's dominions, and he went on to say that the British Parliament was not entitled to allow, and would have no moral justification for allowing, any Colony which called itself British to introduce such a system into its midst. The Secretary to the Local Government Board has made quite a reputation on this subject; I believe he has repeated these matters in Peckham lately. I wonder if he knew what the Government had been doing. He said in 1906 that, not as a mere elector, but as a Britisher, he would be a very unhappy man if six months hence there were very considerable numbers of Chinese on the Rand. That unfortunate gentleman has now the prospect of enjoying another two years of misery on the responsibility not of the late Government, but of those who now occupy the Treasury Bench, who pledged themselves in 1906 that the moment the Ordinance came to an end they would veto anything which had the least taint of slavery. The hon. Member for the Abercromby Division of Liverpool, on the authority of Lord Mansfield, set forth conditions which he said constituted badges of slavery. Have they been removed? They are all there now.

COLONEL SEELY (Liverpool, Abercromby)

Of course they are there, in order to control the people that the right hon. Gentleman brought there.

MR. LYTTELTON

It is a pity that that had not been thought of before, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer distinctly stated that after a reasonable time—eighteen months—they would be vetoed if they reappeared. We have heard that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is soon to sit on the Treasury Bench. With what face can he do so when those four conditions betokening slavery which he has repeated ad nauseam are actually re-enacted by his own friends on their own responsibility. Assuming that Ministers when they made these statements believed them to be true, do they not know now that they were false? They surely must. If they were true, then it is impossible, judged by any standard of self-respect, that Ministers can sit on the Treasury Bench and admit that they were parties to re-enacting them contrary to the pledges they had given. It cannot be contended that there is any pressing economic necessity now, for we are told that the natives are tumbling over each other in their ardour to go into the mines. If these statements are false, then in common honesty Ministers are bound to recant the words by which the country was deceived, and make, however tardily, some reparation for having used them. It should not be difficult, because they have attested the baselessness of these charges by their own action. On former occasions, when the Under-Secretary for the Colonies found himself in difficulties argumentatively on this question, he roused the clamour of his supporters by unmixed vituperation of the Chinese Ordinance and of those responsible for it. To repeat that process now would be simply to magnify and to emphasise the wrong which the Government has committed; the blacker the colours in which the right hon. Gentleman painted the Ordinance of the late Government the deeper the guilt of Ministers who against their pledges have re-enacted it. But that is not the end. If the pledge given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be broken, would any Member opposite get up and say that the House and the country should not have been plainly and publicly informed of it?

MR. HERBERT (Buckinghamshire, Wycombe)

Would the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether under the terms of this Ordinance we have sanctioned the introduction of any Chinamen not already there?

MR. LYTTELTON

I do not think that has anything to do with it; the Ordinance re-enacted the Ordinance passed by the late Government; it does not profess to deal with a new immigration. Anybody who likes straight dealing will say that, if a Parliamentary pledge given with great solemnity by a representative of the Government is about to be broken, whether for good cause or bad, Parliament ought to be fully informed both of the fact and of the reasons for breaking the pledge.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH,) Fifeshire, E.

Does the right hon. Gentleman now allege that when we gave our assent to this Ordinance we intended to break a pledge given to this House? [OPPOSITION cries of "You did break it."] That is another point. Does he say that we intended to break our pledge or does he not?

MR. LYTTELTON

I must leave the intentions of the Government to be explained by themselves. I never have stated, and do not intend to state, anything in regard to the intentions of the Government.

MR. ASQUITH

You did so.

MR. LYTTELTON

No. I am well aware of what I am doing. I took the trouble to write down the charge which I made against the Government. I stated that they deliberately, behind the back of Parliament and in breach of considered pledges to it, sanctioned the revival for a substantial period of the very conditions of indentured labour which they had denounced.

MR. ASQUITH

The right hon. Gentleman made the distinct statement a few moments ago that when people intend to break a pledge they should give full notice to the country.

MR. LYTTELTON

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong in the words he quoted. My right hon. friend who is sitting by me tells me that my words cannot properly bear the interpretation put upon them by the right hon. Gentleman. I do not remember them with verbal precision, but I say that the charge against the Government is not one as to intention, but if they deny the intention I can have no difficulty in accepting the denial. What I said was this, and I say it again, that whether they have given a pledge or not, when they inserted in the very foundation law of the Transvaal Constitution a term which brings that Ordinance to an end, and when, before the period of determination arrived, they, without mentioning either in any Blue-book or any speech, so far as I know, or in any single efficient utterance in this country, took the action I have described, they behaved in a manner which this House must and ought to condemn. Contrast the position with regard to the information upon these subjects, with that to which the House was previously accustomed. I make no sort of claim on my own behalf for any credit, but those who have studied this question know perfectly well that throughout the time I was in the Colonial Office every single detail with regard to the experiment of Chinese labour was formulated in Blue-books and was open to the inspection of everyone in this House. Most elaborate details were given, and the practice was continued by my successor; I ought to be well within the mark when I say that a thousand pounds must have been spent in this country on Blue-books issued by the Colonial Office, and by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Every detail was given, every occasion that a Chinese labourer was fined 2s. for being late at his work, and every single incident which could possibly be regarded as adverse to the experiment. I firmly believe that hon. Gentlemen opposite have every bit as much interest in a full disclosure as we have. But contrast the extraordinary fulness of detail with which this subject was treated when the experiment was difficult and was a subject of great responsibility with what has happened since this Ordinance was passed on the 27th August last. Seven months have passed since the promulgation of this document, and His Majesty issued the proclamation affirming and sanctioning it so far back as the 30th December last. Three months have elapsed and Parliament has met since then. How many Blue-books have been issued? Three or four—two of them, if I am not mistaken, deal with the subject of Asiatic immigration, which is closely associated with the question of Chinese labour.

MR. CHURCHILL

Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that he himself did not know that this Ordinance was in force when Parliament met?

MR. LYTTELTON

No, I did not. I take some blame to myself for not knowing.

MR. CHURCHILL

You ought.

MR. LYTTELTON

I think not, for this reason. Of course, I knew the Ordinance was to come to an end by a provision of the Constitution, in March of this year. That was the date on which my mind was concentrated, and it was not to the interest of anyone in South Africa to apprise me of the terms; and it was obviously not to the interest of the right hon. Gentleman opposite to apprise his followers. I may have missed something in the papers, but I am not aware of it. Can any hon. Member opposite refer me to any official publication in this country by which this was disclosed?

*MR. MACKARNESS (Berkshire, Newbury)

said he had referred to the subject, which was discussed for some time, in August last, and was duly reported in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates.

MR. LYTTELTON

I quite accept what the hon. Member has said. I was not aware of it; but what I say is this, that it was wrong and misleading for no mention to be made in this country in any official document or any Blue-book on this matter. I do not know what period the hon. Gentleman refers to.

*MR. MACKARNESS

The 21st August.

MR. LYTTELTON

I think I shall be stating what is correct with regard to the passing of the law when I say we were utterly unaware that the Ordinance had been passed and accepted. [Cries of "No, no."] I am perfectly open to correction on the point. If I can be satisfied that anything has escaped my notice, well and good. So far as I know, there has been utter official silence since the 27th August until this date. I think the hon. and learned Member who states that he referred to this matter in August is missing the true point. The point is whether the Ordinance passed by the Government of the Transvaal is in actual conflict with that which the Chancellor of the Exchequer laid down as the principle. [Cries of "No."] Yes. The right hon. Gentleman says not. He must forgive me for saying so, but I wonder he has the audacity to say that, because I am using his own words when I say that he pledged himself to this House to veto any such Ordinance passed by the Transvaal Government as corresponded to our own. This Ordinance is the same. [Cries of "No."] The hon. and learned Gentlemen said he referred to this subject in August. Assent by Royal Proclamation was not given to this Law until the 30th December, and I beg that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not interrupt me unless he can answer my Question. Can he refer me to any declaration since the 30th December last year in which there is any reference to the proclamation.

*MR. MACKARNESS

said he himself had taken very much the view of the right hon. Gentleman, and had pointed out to the Government in August last that the course was being taken which the right hon. Gentleman had stated.

MR. LYTTELTON

Fortunately I have an account of the proceedings in my hand. On the 26th August last, the hon. Member for Newbury asked whether the servile conditions expressly prohibited by the terms of the Constitution were to be re-enacted for three years. The Under-Secretary replied that the Ordinance— had not yet come to this country, and he could not forecast what would he the action of the Government of the Transvaal. Here is an official utterance— But it appeared to him that the Transvaal Government were prepared to terminate rather than touch the details of the system of Chinese labour which prevailed. I would ask the the hon. Member for Newbury whether he thinks that it was brought clearly to the attention of the House, and the friends who sit by him, that they were going to introduce, to use his own felicitous language, servile labour for a period of three years? This appears to have excited some indignation in certain quarters, but not in many, but I think hon. Gentlemen opposite will be glad to hear what are the real facts of the case. I do not think I have misrepresented a single thing. I do not think I have made any comments upon the facts. I think the facts as I have narrated them form the best commentary themselves. But I do ask the Under-Secretary how he can reconcile the facts which I have stated with the rudimentary principles of good faith.

MR. CHURCHILL

Mr. Speaker, the debate on the Question which you have put from the Chair affords wide scope to the ingenuity and activity of an Opposition. There are scarcely any subjects which can be conceived within the ordinary arena of Party politics which cannot in one form or another be raised on such an occasion as this. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, therefore, have had a very wide choice of subjects from which to select the principal ground for attacking his Majesty's Government. I must say I am surprised that, with so many attractive subjects of controversy before him, the right hon. Gentleman should have fallen back upon his old love, disdaining all novelties which might have been introduced into political controversy, to be faithful to that great system of Chinese labour with which his name will for ever be associated.

MR. LYTTELTON

And to which you have been faithful.

MR. CHURCHILL

And on which he has so often addressed the House from so many points of view. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to this old subject, probably well known to everyone who has sat for the last two years in the House of Commons, the issues of which have been threshed out over and over again, with a little less than the usual good temper which characterises his speeches in this House. I do not think I have ever heard the right hon. Gentleman use charges of broken faith and breach of pledges against his political opponents with so much repetition and emphasis as we have listened to this afternoon. This debate has followed a long succession of cross-examinations of a protracted and vigilant character, which we have had at Question time during the last three weeks. I say frankly, speaking on behalf of the Government and the Colonial Office policy, I am not at all sorry that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have at length had the courage to raise this question in the House, where it may properly be made the subject of debate, and of reply. I was surprised that the Opposition should seek to dwell upon the subject of Chinese labour. After all, there has been no subject, I think, on which they have more consistently been wrong, from the day the controversy was begun until this afternoon. I have seen it suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and by others that we who sit on this side of the House are ashamed of what we have said in regard to Chinese labour. I am not in the least ashamed. I am quite willing to admit that in some of the language used about Chinese labour there was an element of exaggeration. It is a deplorable thing that, when persons are engaged in acute political controversy, they sometimes allow their language to be rather the means of giving relief to their feelings than an actual description of the facts. That is, no doubt, a very melancholy fact for us to reflect upon, but it has gone on in the past in English politics, and it may sometimes recur in the future—I tremble to think that something of this nature may even at this moment be going on in this very city. But, reviewing the whole agitation against Chinese labour now, two years afterwards, when it is passing away for ever from South Africa, I doubt whether you could take from the whole area of politics any subject on which the Liberal Party and those who act with them in this question have been more completely vindicated. Why, it is proved now what could only be prophesised four years ago, when the Chinese were first introduced, that the system was a vicious, unhealthy system, producing lamentable consequences to the Chinese and the greatest disturbance to all the people of the country into which they were brought. It has been proved that under that system, in defiance of pledges given by the right hon. Gentleman to the House of Commons—though I am quite willing to admit without his personal knowledge—flogging on a very extensive scale had been practised on the Chinese by the sanction of the trusted officer of his administration. It is proved that, while the Chinese have been employed upon the Witwatersrand, the industry has deteriorated in almost every respect—in the number of white men employed per drill, per stamp, per ton of ore mined, per ounce of gold extracted, and in the wages which are paid to the native labourers, and in every respect there has been a sensible deterioration in the ordinary economy of the Witwatersrand industry. It has been proved that, so far from the introduction of Chinese labour leading to an increase in the employment of white labour, it has produced a positive reduction in the amount of white labour employed, and even in the proportion of white labour employed. And let the House notice this. It is a coincidence from which we are entitled to draw a moral, that the proportion of white labour employed to natives and Chinamen on the Rand fell to the lowest point at the moment when the maximum of Chinese importation had been attained, and the smallest number of white men on the Rand corresponded exactly with the largest number of Chinamen; and since we have turned the corner of this importation and have begun to wear it down there has been steady increase in the number of white men employed on the Witwatersrand. So that hon. Gentlemen opposite were wrong again on that matter, among all the others. But what am I to say about the will of the people of the Transvaal, of which we heard so much? It used to be represented in the last Parliament that not to allow the Chinese Ordinance would be to coerce a Colony which was virtually self-governed. We were told that the moment the people of the Transvaal had an opportunity of expressing their opinion, so far from letting the Chinamen go, they would insist upon some system by which their importation should be continued, and even increased. We were told that, even after General Botha had become Prime Minister, there would be no attempt on the part of the Transvaal Government to get rid of the Chinese. There sits the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dulwich, who in this House made a speech which, I am sure, every one sitting on the bench beside him deplores, in which he said that— General Botha has been paid for but not bought, and that the Chinese would not be repatriated under the Government which had then come into power. Very well. What has been the result? I stand here to admire the noble efforts which the Transvaal Government have made to get rid of Chinese labour. Let the House remember what they had to do. The number of Chinese in the country since we assumed power was increased actually while we, who disapproved of the whole system, held power; but why? Because under the administration of the right hon. Gentleman, in spite of his recommendation to his officers, 16,000 extra licences were issued which it would have been a breach of contract for the in-coming Government to disallow. Against that the Transvaal Government had to work. But, in spite of this upward tide of Chinese they have reduced the number of Chinese from something like 63,000, the figure at which they stood at their maximum, to something under 28,000 at the present moment, and before the end of the year I believe not much more than 10,000 Chinese will be remaining, and a very small and diminishing quantity will peter out completely and for ever when another twelve months after that has passed. So much for the substantial facts of the controversy. Let me follow the right hon. Gentleman into the Parliamentary point which he has made as to the pledges which have been given. We never pretended for a moment that it would be possible to get rid of the Chinese by a stroke of the pen. On the contrary, the house knows perfectly well that I made a speech, the first speech I had the honour of delivering in this House for the Government, in which I indicated to the supporters of the Government on these benches, who were earnestly desirous of seeing Chinese labour terminated at a stroke, that it was physically and practically impossible to determine it so. You had so committed us, you had so compromised this country and the people of the Transvaal against their will, you had so tied our hands for the future by the careful manner in which 16,000 further Chinese were to be admitted, that it was not possible, short of imposing upon the taxpayers of this country a vast and uncalculated expenditure, to terminate the system by a stroke of the pen. I appealed to the House for patience. I appealed to the House to trust to the judgment and opinion of the local Government. I appealed to the House to trust the people of the Transvaal, that when they got the power of dealing with their own affairs they would repudiate the action which was falsely and improperly entered into in their behalf. I was laughed at. We were derided from those benches just as we are to-day, but to-day we have the facts on our side. It is no use for the hon. Member for Dulwich to laugh. His laughter will not make the Chinese come back. It will not prevent them shrinking steadily until the last one has gone away, and will not prevent that beneficial and blessed operation so full of hope and advantage to South Africa and the British Empire as a whole, from being accomplished upon the authority and by the driving power of a Government elected on the widest possible franchise. What did my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer say as to the time in which Chinese labour could be abolished. He said, in the debate on the Address at the beginning of this Parliament— I remember pointing out on that occasion that the worst of taking a step of this kind was that once you had taken it in a large measure and for a long time to come it must be irretraceable. And so I believe there is no one who thinks or has ever encouraged the country to think at the time of the election that these coolies could be compulsorily deported en masse. He said further— I wonder whether hon. Gentlemen who gave that faint cheer a few moments ago have ever read the history of the dealings of this country and this Parliament with West Indian slavery. That was admitted slavery. There was no question or dispute about it in any quarter. And what happened? When the great reformed Parliament met in 1833, full of enthusiasm after the Act of 1832, the first really popular Assembly that had met within these walls for the best part of a couple of hundred years, one of the first tasks to which it addressed itself was the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. I suppose you would agree that Mr. Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, Mr. Wilberforce, and Mr. Buxton were perhaps as keen and as sincere in their abhorrence and in their desire to put an end to it as even the framers of this Amendment. Well, what was the legislation of that Parliament—the carefully considered legislation of men who were as keenly desirous as any man on these benches, that any reproach of this sort should be removed? They enacted that for a period of seven years these slaves released in name at least from the status of slavery were to continue as compulsory apprentices to their masters, giving three-fourths of their time and labour to those who had formerly been their owners, so anxious, and rightly anxious, were they that when an institution of this kind, good or bad had become mixed up with the whole social and industrial life of the community you should not, in your anxiety and legitimate eagerness to put an end to it at the earliest possible moment, inflict unmerited and unnecessary suffering on those who were affected by it. Is is in conjunction with that statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the whole policy of the Government in this matter must be interpreted. We have always recognised that time would be necessary. But let me draw the attention of the House to the special reasons for our objection to the conditions contained in the Ordinance for which the right hon. Gentleman was responsible. I have been frequently attacked in this House, on the ground that the conditions under which natives of South Africa are employed in the mines are exactly the same as the conditions under which the Chinamen are employed. Let me say here that I have noticed that answers which I have given on this subject have been mutilated for the purpose of quotation. For instance, I said the other day, in answer to a question as to the conditions under which natives and Chinese were respectively employed, that the natives were not, of course, subject to the conditions and restrictions of the Transvaal Labour Importation Ordinance, but in other respects they were not dissimilar. The first part of the answer is omitted, and use is made of the words: "The conditions are not dissimilar," apart from their context and apart from the explanatory sentence that precedes them. That may be a very useful form of political controversy to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but it scarcely entitles them to hold up their hands in holy horror at any placards or criticisms of their action in the past. The distinction between Chinese and native labour is simply this. The South African native who enlists for service in the Transvaal mines is in his own country, or one closely similar to it; all he does is to cross a political boundary and he finds himself in the main amidst races closely related to his own. He engages for a short term of service, six months, nine months, or a year at the outside, and he is able to return to his own people at the termination of his service. The Chinese coolie, on the other hand, is separated by an impassable barrier—the sea—from his native land, and he is condemned by the terms of his indentures to service of not less than three years duration. The native who goes to the Transvaal may, if he pleases, remain in the Transvaal at the end of his term of service, and the Government of the Transvaal is only too glad that he should do so. He can settle down and marry and bring up a family; he may own land and engage in trade; he may become a skilled artisan. The Ordinance devised by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and of which he is such an admirer, forces the Chinese coolie to leave South Africa when the term of his engagement has expired. Throughout the duration of his term of service he is forbidden to be anything but an unskilled labourer. He is required to act as nearly as possible as a human machine. His function is to extract gold for his employer, and when his utility is finished he is to be cast aside as a creature with whom it is filthy to come into contact. Under the special restrictions of this Ordinance the Chinese coolie is subjected to a law which creates a variety of offences unknown to the ordinary law. It is a criminal offence for him to desert from the service of his employer or to refuse to work for his employer. It is a criminal offence if he carries on any business other than that of an unskilled labourer in the exploitation of minerals. He is guilty of a criminal offence if he enters the service of any person other than the importer or his transferee; if he engages in any trade or business; if he acquires, holds, or leases, directly or indirectly, any fixed property or mining rights; or if he leaves the premises on which he is employed without a permit. Indeed his ability to commit offences is the only thing that distinguishes him from a machine. Under the Ordinance of 1905, Chinese coolies are not only responsible for individual offences; they may be punished collectively on suspicion of a particular group of coolies, and fines may be deducted from their wages. They may be punished criminally for losing the property of their employer, or for using insulting language to their employers. The Ordinance empowers any private white person to arrest a coolie without warrant outside the Witwatersrand district. In spite of these restrictions the Chinese coolies frequently do desert, and lamentable results follow. I wish the House to realise the distinction we make. Our objection is against special legislation of that kind, for which we cannot possibly become responsible. The right hon. Gentleman says we are responsible for allowing it to go on. We are responsible for not bringing it to a close. Any Ordinance which we have sanctioned is not for the purpose of continuing Chinese labour, but for the express purpose of bringing it to a close. It is perfectly well known to anybody who has taken the trouble to consider the question that it would be quite impossible to allow all the Chinese who are in South Africa, until they have finished their indentures, to disperse broadcast through the land. The people of South Africa would not allow it; the security and order of the whole country would disappear; you would never get them out of South Africa. This House knows perfectly well that the continuance of the restrictions under which they are at present working would be perfectly intolerable if it were part of a system by which Chinese labour was to be continued. But it is a necessary part of the process of liquidation, and as such it commands the support of those who have laboured so long and so earnestly to achieve that object. What is the attitude of the Party opposite? They talk about pledges. They were never concerned to bring Chinese labour to a close. The one pledge they would like to have extracted from us was that it should be continued in permanence. If any Minister on this bench had committed himself to a pledge of that kind, what has happened now would have been a breach and violation of that pledge. Pledges were given to gentlemen who were resolutely determined to bring to an end the system of Chinese labour.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London)

To Parliament and the country.

MR. CHURCHILL

I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman says. They were pledges given to Parliament and the country, and Parliament and the country must judge of their fulfilment. What are we to think of the attitude of the Party opposite? During the time that the Transvaal was represented only by a small group of capitalists, the great mining magnates, anything which menaced the mining industry was the object of violent attack from hon. Gentlemen opposite. We were told that in attacking the mining industry we were not only sapping the springs of prosperity in South Africa, but menacing the dominion of British power and the honour of the British flag. But now that the election has taken place and a responsible Government is in power and authority in the Transvaal, all their solicitude for the mines has vanished. These mines, which were so carefully guarded when they were directed in the interests of the few, have come to be regarded as a legitimate object of attack now that they are controlled by a Government elected on a wide franchise, and hon. Gentlemen exert themselves to show that this or that system of labour—native labour from different parts of South Africa—will produce evil conditions. I am far from saying that the conditions under which the natives are employed] in the Witwatersrand district or on the Rand are wholly satisfactory, but I can say that there has been a great improvement in the condition of the native labourers. In the year 1903, in the course of a debate on the condition of the native labourers, raised in this House by my hon. and gallant friend below the gangway, it was stated that the mortality among the native labourers amounted to seventy-eight per 1,000. That rate of mortality was reduced in 1905 by Parliamentary agitation to forty-six per 1,000. During the time the present responsible Government has been in power in the Transvaal—who are sending away Chinese in shiploads every month—the mortality among the native labourers has been materially reduced. The figure now is thirty-two per 1,000.

MR. LYTTELTON

said the right hon. Gentleman had permitted Dr. Sansome, the medical officer specially appointed by the late Government, to be dismissed by the Boer Parliament.

MR. CHURCHILL

I object strongly to the expression "the Boer Parliament." In the course which the Trans vaal Government have pursued in regard to the mining industry they have the support, not only of their own followers, who include half the British residents, but also of that minority who hitherto have been always opposed to them. By earnest efforts the Transvaal Government has been very successful in coping with a great difficulty in a short time; General Botha's Government has succeeded in reducing the rate of mortality considerably below the figure at which it stood under the right hon. Gentleman's Crown Colony administration, and it is no business of ours to ask whether they wish to employ Dr. Sansome or anyone else. I submit to the House that the course which His Majesty's Government has taken with regard to Chinese labour has been vindicated at every step, and that the result is much better than we hoped for. It is far better for us that the people of South Africa should make a clean sweep of the Chinese than that they should put forward a series of amended Ordinances with the object of trying to secure the continuance of Chinese labour under conditions which ought not to be tolerated in this country. I rejoice that they have taken the course they have done; and I venture to think that, having taken that course, they deserve the ordinary fair play that is extended to self-governing Colonies all over the British Empire. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may some day be called upon to administer affairs and to deal with the Dutch Governments in South Africa. In the main, they are Dutch Governments. They have accepted office under the Crown and they are loyally fulfilling their duty. I earnestly hope, when hon. Gentlemen opposite come into power, they will so conduct affairs as to make these Governments feel that they will be treated with that measure of fair play which is extended so fully to other self-governing Colonies.

MR. BONAR LAW (Camberwell, Dulwich)

said the right hon. Gentleman had done him the honour of mentioning his name in the course of his speech. He had said that no amount of laughter on his part would bring the Chinese back to South Africa. Apparently no amount of speeches on the part of the right hon. Gentleman would send the Chinese out of South Africa, for there were nearly as many there now as at the time this Government came into office. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No, no."] He understood there were 30,000 there now.

MR. CHURCHILL

Under 28,000.

MR. BONAR LAW

said the right hon. Gentleman had thought it wise to seem not to understand. The whole point of the charge made against the Government by his right hon. friend had been left unanswered. The Under Secretary for the Colonies had delivered a very irrelevant and a very confused speech. He did not say that in disparagement of the right hon. Gentleman's ability. His observations showed his Parliamentary aptitude. Parliamentary aptitude was shown not more clearly in making a good and incisive speech when one had a good case, than in making a confused and irrelevant speech when one had a bad case, and when his only hope was to try to confuse the issue. In this instance that was a forlorn hope. The issue was too plain, too precise, and too definite. The charge made by his right hon. friend was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in order to get over a temporary Parliamentary difficulty gave to the House of Commons a solemn pledge that if the new Government in the Transvaal attempted to keep the Chinese by conditions similar to those prevailing under the old Ordinance His Majesty's Government would prevent them doing so. That was the pledge solemnly, deliberately, and openly given in the House of Commons. It had been broken. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] It had been deliberately, if not openly, broken, and if hon. Gentlemen were satisfied with the explanations which the right hon. Gentleman had given of that transaction, then they were very easily satisfied. He was sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not leave it there?

MR. ASQUITH

Leave what?

MR. BONAR LAW

The case as put by his right hon. friend. It did indeed involve the honour of His Majesty's Government as a whole, but it involved in a special degree the honour of the Minister who made that pledge, and who had deliberately allowed it to be broken. What did the right hon. Gentleman mean by talking about intentions? What the Members of the Opposition had to do with was what the Government had done. They made a pledge, and they had broken it, and if there was anything in the right hon. Gentleman's interruption, it was only this, that the Colonial Office had done it behind his back, as well as behind the back of the House of Commons. The Under-Secretary had gone over a very large part of this ancient controversy; he had said it was strange that the Opposition had not tried to find something novel. There was a slight novelty in this transaction. Up to now similar incidents on the part of His Majesty's Government had only been used for the purpose of deceiving the public. That was characteristic of the whole of the efforts of His Majesty's Government, and but for the intervention of his right hon. friend their endeavours would have been successfully directed to deceiving their own followers, in spite of the eloquent defence of the policy of the Government by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. There was no page in our political history more remarkable, more disgraceful than the whole action of His Majesty's Government from beginning to end in regard to Chinese labour. Before the general election South Africa was useful to the Government in enabling them to get into power, and since they had got into power they had dealt with South Africa as if their whole interest in it was still to win elections, and as if they had no sense of responsibility whatever in respect of the interests of that great continent. He was not going to make that charge without proving it. He could prove it up to the hilt from speeches made in this House by the right hon. Gentleman who represented the Government on this question. In his first speech on this subject in the new Parliament the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies admitted that the policy of the Government had been to lower the value of securities in South Africa. He admitted that, and boasted of it. [An HON. MEMBER: Quote.] He was sure he would be asked to quote. The right hon. Gentleman said— If anyone will study the fall in prices that, I regret to say, has followed the declaration of His Majesty's Government's policy, they will see that it is not a sham fight in which we are engaged, but that, on the contrary, we are using ball cartridge. The right hon. Gentleman boasted that the Government had caused a fall in these mining securities.

MR. CHURCHILL

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I would crave the indulgence of the House to remind him of the circumstances in which that statement was made. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had indicated that all the alterations the Government were making in the Ordinance were not real alterations, and that they would produce no substantial effect in South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman said they were submitted to the mining magnates before they were made, and that those gentlemen were perfectly satisfied with them. That was a statement calculated to make hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House dissatisfied with the alterations, and the statement which the hon. Gentleman has quoted was made to show that the alterations were genuine.

MR. BONAR LAW

said he did not think the explanation in the least affected the arguments he had used. Whatever might be the right hon. Gentleman's ground for making the statement, he did not deny that the policy of the Government had caused a fall in these shares, and if he might be permitted to do so, speaking from memory, he would say that the right hon. Gentleman's statement was entirely wrong. He thought the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham spoke not before but after the right hon. Gentleman made the speech in which these words were used. It was not an interruption of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham that caused the statement. Therefore, he could not see the force of the right hon. Gentleman's interruption. He asked the House to consider the effect of that policy. It meant not only a loss of money to the men who held shares. The mining industry was the industry on which depended, and would for a long time depend, the whole prosperity of the Transvaal. It was not confined only to the Transvaal. It was the whole of South Africa. When the mining industry flourished the whole of South Africa flourished, and when that industry was depressed the whole of South Africa was depressed. The action of His Majesty's Government which caused this fall in the shares had precisely the same effect on the whole industry of South Africa. It destroyed confidence and prevented the employment of capital, and was the direct cause of a great part of the unemployment which prevailed in South Africa. He quite admitted that circumstances might arise to justify the Government in the action they took on moral grounds. That was precisely the claim made by the right hon. Gentleman. That was why he caused a reduction in the price of the shares. He said— I had the good fortune to address as many meetings in the country as anyone, and I know that there was no subject which caused greater and more genuine sorrow among the people than the belief that Chinamen were being kept in the mines against their will. That was the ground on which they took action, which caused all the depression in South Africa. He admitted that if that ground were justified there would be some excuse for the policy of the Government. But could it be justified? Let the right hon. Gentleman himself give the answer. Only two or three months afterwards in the House of Commons he used these words— It is impossible to resist the conclusion that there is no general desire on the part of the coolies to leave the Witwatersrand and return to China. Could anything more completely condemn the wanton recklessness with which this whole question had been dealt with than that the Government should have taken these steps for an object which a few months inquiry satisfied them did not exist at all? That was only the material side of the question, but there was another and more important side, namely, the moral aspect. They knew how the Government intended to deal with this question after they came into office. It was declared most emphatically in the first speech made by the Under-Secretary in stating the policy of the Government that their view was that Chinese labour had served its purpose, that they were done with it, that they would wash their hands of it, and hand it over to the new Government to be erected in the Transvaal. Every word in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman representing the declared and settled policy of the Government bore that construction. He read it over yesterday. There was not a word in it which did not bear that interpretation. The right hon. Gentleman said they would still have the same control as over Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and their policy was to leave the question to the Transvaal Legislature. But what happened? The Government were amazed to find among their own followers a number who not only used Chinese slavery as an election cry, but actually believed it. They had to meet a new situation, and it was then that the Chancellor of the Exchequer came down and made the pledge. The right hon. Gentleman said that if there was any attempt to renew the Ordinance on the lines of the old Ordinance he would veto it. They had renewed it, and he had not vetoed it. Now the country was beginning to realise what a tremendous fraud had been practised upon them at the election. The country was amazed, and he was sure that the House of Commons was amazed, to find that at the very time when on thousands of platforms throughout the country denunciations of cruelty and slavery in the Transvaal were going on, the men who were pouring out that rhetoric were themselves engaged signing a convention infinitely worse both from the humanitarian and the moral point of view. He referred to the New Hebrides Convention. But it was not merely the New Hebrides Convention. What were they to say of the treatment allowed to be given to British Indians in the Transvaal? He fully admitted the difficulty of dealing with this question. There was a difficulty in having Asiatics introduced in a country controlled by white men. But that ought not to be a difficulty to Gentlemen who sat on the Treasury bench. What were the evidences of slavery? The two evidences of slavery of which they had heard most in the House of Commons were finger-print identification, which was said to be associated with criminals, and the inability of the Chinese to hold property. Both of these conditions were applied to British Indians in the Transvaal, and not only to those brought in after the Transvaal Government came in, but to those who were there at the time. It was no use to say that, if they had a self-governing colony, these regulations must be left to them. If the conditions represented slavery in the one case, they represented slavery in the other; and if they were called upon in the name of humanity to prevent these conditions in the case of the Chinese, they were infinitely more bound to prevent them in the case of the British Indians, because they were British subjects. He came back to the specific charge against the Government. They made a pledge, and they had broken it. [MINISTERIAL Cries of "Oh, oh!"] He wondered what the majority of hon. Members opposite thought of the action of the Government. They were not like ordinary Members of a Government. They placed themselves on a pinnacle of special virtue. They were always to do everything in the most downright straightforward way. Never was heard such a multitude of noble sentiments. But noble sentiments from the time of "The School for Scandal," and probably long before, had been taken with a discount in this world. In ordinary life they found that men who made high professions did not generally act up to them. In his business experience he had frequently met men who talked of high commercial morality and high business principles. They might not refuse to do business with such men, but they watched their contracts with special care, because they knew that they would swindle if they could. It was precisely the same with the Government. Instead of standing on that lofty pinnacle, they had now fallen to a level far below the level of ordinary political morality. He did not know what the House of Commons thought of it all; but he did know what the country thought of it. The Gentlemen who sat on the Treasury Bench had now been on trial for two years before the country, and at every opportunity they were being convicted of having exploited some of the highest and noblest feelings of the people for party purposes, and party purposes alone. The Under-Secretary for the Colonies had told them that there was a difficulty sometimes in giving relief to their feelings. He felt it himself in addressing the House. He felt the limitations imposed by the rules of debate. In speaking of these transactions they had to use Parliamentary language, but Parliamentary language was quite inadequate. On this occasion he thought he could get over the difficulty by quoting a description of His Majesty's Government in anticipation by an hon. Gentleman who was then a supporter of that Government, and was now a Member of it. The Secretary to the Local Government Board, in the first debate in this new Parliament, said— If we allow this thing to continue, we shall be infernal hypocrites.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Dr. MACNAMARA,) Camberwell, N.

Hear, hear!

MR. BONAR LAW

said that the hon. Member declared that he did not mean it to continue for a few years, and that if Chinese labour continued for six months after the Liberal Government came into power— And I were there, I would he a very unhappy man. The statement of the Secretary to the Local Government Board was, however, undoubtedly— If we allow this thing to continue we shall he infernal hypocrites. The description of the hon. Gentleman was adequate—quite adequate—and it had the additional advantage that it described the position with scientific accuracy.

MR. ASQUITH

I am not going to pay very much attention to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, whose intervention in our South African debates is always a source of unmixed disadvantage. I cannot remember a single session in which he has not in these debates used language to inflame passion, to arouse party spirit, and to make the task of the conduct of the great experiment now going on for the settlement of self-government in that country infinitely more difficult. I should not have risen at all if it were not that my right hon. friend, whose special title to speak on this subject cannot be questioned, not only charged the Government, but me in particular, with a gross breach of faith. The Government is charged, and I am particularly charged, with having deliberately broken a solemn pledge given to the House of Commons. And it is only now, for the first time, since the pledge was given to the House of Commons that I am subjected to this charge. The hon. Members behind me, to conciliate whose suspicion the pledge is supposed to have been given, have not made this charge. I have not heard it from a single one of the hon. Gentlemen behind me, not from the most ardent advocates in its most extreme form of the policy of Chinese repatriation. I have not heard it from one of them, and I do not expect to hear from them. [Ironical OPPOSITION cheers and laughter]. Hon. Gentlemen laugh. Do they think the standard of public honour in this country has sunk so low that if the Government had in this matter been guilty of a breach of faith, my hon. friends are so steeped in partisanship that they would remain silent? They do not make the charge, because they know very well that it is an unfounded charge; and I am going to show that it is. First of all, it is suggested that in the speech I made on which this accusation is founded, I threw over—to use a common expression—my right hon. friend the Under-Secretary. Let me, therefore, quote the exact words of my right hon. friend. He said— I think that they (the Transvaal Parliament) will bring the experiment gradually but surely, to an end. But while believing that, the matter was to be left entirely in the hands of the Transvaal Parliament.

MR. BONAR LAW

Go on.

MR. ASQUITH

I am going on. I am going to point out, first, what was the charge. The charge is that this question had played its part—that we had used it as a gambling card at the election, and we had no longer any concern about it. What my right hon. friend, however, said, was— That, while believing that the Transvaal Parliament would bring the experiment gradually, but surely, to an end— a belief well-justified by the event— —it would be unreasonable not to face the other alternative, however remote the contingency of it may be. What if the Colony should decide to continue the importation of Chinese? That is the point, the point to which my right hon. friend's speech was directed, and my subsequent speech was directed. "What if the Colony should decide to continue the importation of Chinese," that is to say, make the system of importing Chinese labour under indenture part of the settled labour policy of the country. What did my right hon. friend say of that contingency? He said— I must point out that while the responsibility of the Imperial Government would be lessened our objections to the present conditions under which Chinese labour is carried on will not be removed by any vote of the Transvaal Assembly, however unanimous, however representative.

MR. BONAR LAW

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman but this quotation does not touch the question. The Under-Secretary said his objection would remain, but he only meant that the same remedy would be open as could be applied to all our other Colonies.

MR. ASQUITH

It means that you are reserving the right to refuse the Royal Assent to the objectionable measure, and that if, in the opinion of the responsible advisers of the Crown such a measure ought not to be passed, the Royal Assent is not given. That is exactly what I said the next night. And now what does it come to? It is alleged that I threw over my right hon. friend and promulgated on the part of the Government an entirely different policy from that which he announced. Now we have the admission of the hon. Gentleman that our two statements come to precisely the same thing. A nice foundation on which to build charges of breach of faith! Although I was speaking with the full assent of my colleagues and in their name, I do not shirk in the least degree the personal responsibility which is attached to me. What did I say? First, I pointed out, in language which has been already quoted, that it was impossible that a system of this kind when once introduced could be stopped at once. The great thing to do was to stop its permanent continuation. I remember deliberately selecting what had taken place in the West Indies for purposes of illustration. That was slavery; say what you like about this. [Ironical OPPOSITION cheers.] Personally I admit I never called it slavery.

MR. BONAR LAW

You profited by others so calling it.

MR. ASQUITH

The hon. Gentleman profits by a great many things which he would not like to avow. He is trying to do so, I think, at this moment. But do not let us go back upon that. There is no question that African slavery in the West Indies was slavery pure and simple; yet this House, anxious and willing to put an end at the earliest date to a system repugnant to our best traditions, allowed the system of forced apprenticeships to go on for no less a time than seven years. Why? Not for the purpose of continuing slavery, but for the purpose of putting an end to it—for the purpose of terminating an indefensible state of things with the least avoidable disturbance of the economic, industrial, and social conditions which had been set up. Having used that analogy, which showed clearly what was in my mind, I went on to deal with the question of South Africa, and I said that the question which in the opinion of the Government ought to remain within the competence of the Transvaal Government would be whether or not they cared to retain Chinese labour in South Africa. I will undertake to say that there was not a single man who listened to me or who read my speech who did not understand what I meant—not to put an end to Chinese labour at once in the most expeditious manner, but to do away with the system which had been employed. I challenge anyone to get up and say that for a moment I thought of dealing with anything but that. I went on to give a pledge, and I repeat that pledge now, a pledge which I say we have fulfilled both in letter and in spirit. I said at the end of that speech that I did not anticipate that such a contingency would arise; and what was the contingency? The contingency was the retention of the system of Chinese labour as part of the institutions of the country by the Transvaal Government.

MR. LYTTELTON

, interposing, said it was clearly understood that should a proposal to continue Chinese labour under the conditions of the Ordinance be made, he would advise that it should be vetoed.

MR. ASQUITH

And so I would. Let the Transvaal Legislature pass an Act—which I know very well they will not—to permit a continuance of the importation of Chinese labour under the conditions of the Ordinance, and his Majesty's Government will advise a veto of it. Everybody knew that was the sole point to which my speech was directed. I should have been very glad, I think everybody would have been glad if possible, to put an end to the system at an earlier date than it has been found possible to do so. It was with very great reluctance that we consented to a continuance for a very short time in an amended form; but that is a matter we thought we might very well leave to the judgment of the Transvaal Legislature, and they have clearly indicated that the whole thing shall come to an end at the earliest possible moment. I always thought they would, I said in my speech I was convinced they would, when I said that if the contrary course were taken the veto would be applied. I hope that is a plain statement, and I confess that when that statement was made and universally understood in the House and the country, when I made my speech on the policy of His Majesty's Government, I am entitled to feel a little resentment at these very grave and unusual indictments for breach of political faith and of personal honour made against members of the Government I need make no appeal to the House; I am certain there is not a man on these benches who will believe I would willingly be guilty of a deliberate breach of an engagement. Of course, when a man gives a pledge he must be careful not to make any reservation in his own mind which is not patent and obvious to the minds of those to whom he speaks, and in this instance what I said and what I intended was understood by everyone who listened to me.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am the last man to desire to make charges against my political opponents upon matters even remotely connected with personal honour, and I may say the same of my right hon. friend, but when the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes an indignant repudiation of the conclusions arrived at by my right hon. friend based on what he assumed to be the clear, undoubted meaning of what he said, I think he is straining the credulity of everybody who reads the speech. What are the facts of the case as they appear on the records before the House? Right hon. Gentlemen have made two speeches for the Government, and the first and longest of these speeches never dealt with the charge made at all. The right hon. Gentleman, the Under Secretary, came down to the House fully prepared to make an effective defence of the Government policy in regard to black labour and yellow labour in the Transvaal, but not to deal with the point raised by my right hon. friend this evening, and not being prepared to deal with it, he left it on one side altogether. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will not think I am saying anything derogatory to his abilities and his readiness, but we are accustomed in this House, when a colleague of a Minister is attacked and a Minister rises to reply, to expect that he will not deal with broad generalities and topics not raised in the attack, but with the plain and simple issue brought before the House. Now, the right hon. Gentleman did not do my right hon. friend the honour to refer in a definite manner to the specific charge brought forward. He made a great many rather uncomplimentary references to my right hon. friend, which I fancy my right hon. friend will bear with equanimity, but on the charge the Chancellor of the Exchequer has just repudiated with such indignant warmth, there is not a word from the right hon. Gentleman who represents the Department.

MR. CHURCHILL

I thought when I said that the Ordinance which we had sanctioned was to extend the term to terminate contracts and bring the system to an end—I thought that was an answer. I had not the dialectical skill to drive home the reply as my right hon. friend did, but it was the same answer my right hon. friend has now made with so much force.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Neither the dialectical ability of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which the right hon. Gentleman does not give too high an account, nor his own personal gifts in debate, to which he has too modestly referred, are sufficient to explain to the House that an Ordinance which extends provisions for two-and-a-half years is in fact an Ordinance bringing them to a conclusion. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks he made his meaning quite plain even to Gentlemen below the gangway, that extending the existing Ordinance two-and-a-half years was a periphrastic way of describing what was bringing it to an end, and that it did not mislead or lead to anticipation of un favourable criticism from any of the gentlemen who threatened the extinction of the Government in the moment of its triumph. Still, we want to know how it is that the Government have assented to an Ordinance which proposes to continue for two-and-a-half years a condition of things they have themselves described as slavery. The right hon. Gentleman says everybody who heard his speech—I, un fortunately, did not hear it [Mr. ASQUITH handed a volume of the Parliamentary Debates across the Table, I have read it since—everybody who heard or read the speech must have understood what he meant, and must have been convinced that what he referred to was action by the Transvaal which contemplated further importation of Chinese labour, that was what he was thinking of, and that was what the Under-Secretary was thinking of—that if the Transvaal Government were rash enough to import fresh Chinese the Government would have the courage of their opinions and advise the Sovereign to disallow the proposal. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said just now that he had pledged himself to disallow fresh importation——

MR. ASQUITH

That was the first thing, and I added the continuation permanently or indefinitely of the system of Chinese labour.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Where is the word "permanent" used in the speech? That is the word used now, but it was not used then. I do not think it can be seriously denied by any Gentleman who recollects the tenor of that speech and of that from another Member of the Government, that what was expected, believed, and hoped for by hon. Gentlemen below the gangway was that the Chinese would leave South Africa by the time the colony had self-government and a clean slate. ["No, no."] Let me say, then, that the time would come, about a year after self-government was instituted, when the Transvaal Government would have the opportunity of dealing with the whole situation with a clean slate. Then when the time came they would have the alternative of sending the Chinese home or of giving them employment under ordinary conditions. I do not know why the hon. Member for East Mayo says that is not the case. He has only to read page 675 of the Debates to see that it is the case. The Transvaal Government have absolute power to determine the economic question of whether or not they shall have Chinamen labouring in the country.

MR. DILLON

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I listened to the whole of the debate in the House. I took a very keen interest in the subject. I belong to an independent party, and the impression given to my mind was that the alternative was this: whether as soon as the Chinamen had finished their contracts and as was practically possible they should be sent home, or whether the Transvaal Government should make the Chinese labour permanent and allow it to continue in the country.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I must be permitted to appeal from the memory of the hon. Gentleman to the speech which I have before me. If it is suggested by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that his speech has been misreported, an unhappy event to which we are all liable, of course I have nothing more to say, but if the speech is accurately reported there is really only one interpretation to be put upon it— The Transvaal Government have absolute power to determine the economic question, whether or not they will have Chinamen labouring in the country. Then he goes on—it is not necessary for me to read the whole of it— So long as we on this bench are responsible for the conduct of affairs, any legislation corresponding to the Ordinance or inconsistent with the best British traditions will he disallowed. Now on the second branch of that contention I put this to the hon. Member for East Mayo. There are only two questions to be asked; first: Has there been fresh legislation, and secondly: Has that legislation corresponded to our Ordinance or been inconsistent with the best British traditions?

MR. DILLON

As the right hon. Gentleman puts the specific question to me, I say that I listened to those very words and the meaning I put upon them was this that "Corresponding to that Ordinance" meant an Ordinance allowing the importation to continue—to become permanent.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I put no question to the hon. Member. I said there were only two questions to be asked, and I beg the hon. Member to listen to the points; those are the only two questions to be asked, and how are they to be answered. There has been fresh legislation and that legislation has been on the old lines, and, therefore, it is absolutely undeniable that so far as the language of the speech goes the Government have broken their pledges. If the right hon. Gentleman says to me, your interpretation may be grammatically accurate, it may be that the speech may be read in that way now in 1908, that that is the construction which any reader might put upon it now, but that I can assure the House that in 1906 I meant something quite different—I have no answer to that. If that is the right hon. Gentleman's point we are all ready to bow to him, and believe that in 1906 he meant something that his speech read in 1908 does not convey.

MR. CHURCHILL

I have always said that it was not in the power of the Government to determine contracts before they expired by the effluxion of time, and that they meant to terminate the system at the conclusion of the contract; therefore we have not been guilty of a breach of faith.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman appears to have forgotten some of the most important elements of the controversy. The whole point is that an opportunity apparently contemplated by the Government in 1906 occurs—the opportunity of the clean slate. The Government in 1906 said that when it did occur they would see that these slavery conditions were not repeated. They have been repeated by legislation, and therefore, if language means anything, the Government are open to the charge made by my right hon. friend. That is manifest in the Constitution. It is not one element, it is a conclusion borne in upon one's mind by all the elements of the Constitution as passed. It is not worth forcing it farther. I do not think anybody will get up and deny that, so far as the language of the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned, we have not forced it, twisted or turned it in any degree to show that the policy adopted by the Government is an absolute contradiction to that which at one time they said they would pursue. I cannot help thinking that on this vexed question a great deal of light might very easily be thrown. My right hon. friend reminded us that it was in the dying days of last session that the Transvaal Government passed sub silentio the Ordinance which continued for two and a half years the conditions of slavery in South Africa. It was not known to the House when the House rose.

*MR. MACKARNESS

said that on 21st August there was a debate in the House on this subject. The right hon. Gentleman was not present nor was the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, but a debate took place and both himself and his hon. friend the Member for Preston sitting behind him pointed out that that Ordinance was being passed by the Transvaal Legislature and expressed their views upon it.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has interrupted me, because it has enabled me to look again at what transpired four or five days after the debate at which he expressed his view took place. I now find that four or five days after that debate the hon. and learned Gentleman himself asked whether the servile conditions expressly prohibited by the terms of the Transvaal Constitution were to be re-enacted for three years. It is therefore perfectly plain that the hon. and learned Gentleman at that time took the same view of the policy of the Government that we take now. What process of conversion has gone on in the eight or nine months that have elapsed I know not, but it is quite apparent that on the 26th August last year the hon Gentleman was of the opinion which we hold now.

*MR. MACKARNESS

I stated just now that I was of that opinion then, and am of that opinion now.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I did not know the hon. Gentleman adhered to that opinion. I was misled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has sources of information as to his followers not open to me and who confidently expressed the opinion half an hour ago that there was not a Gentleman below the gangway, who took a different view from himself.

MR. ASQUITH

I must not allow a fresh charge to be made. That was not what I said. I said there was not a single one of my hon. friends who accused us of breach of pledge.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not know what view the hon. and learned Gentleman takes on the matter of breach of faith. But he does think that something has been done inconsistent with the Constitution of the Transvaal. He does think the Transvaal Constitution exactly squared with the pledges of the Government. He therefore thinks something has been done inconsistent with the pledges of the Government. He may think that all right; it is for him to explain when he speaks. What I am concerned with is to ask the Government if they will lay upon the Table the correspondence which I am sure must have occurred and which if it did occur will at least throw a great deal of light on all these matters. The late Colonial Secretary commented on the fact that this important proceeding had been carried through without Parliament having any knowledge of it. There must have been some correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Transvaal Government. Can we have that correspondence? I have been a good deal interrupted in the course of my speech, not in any unfriendly way I admit, but if I could be interrupted now by the Under-Secretary, and if he could give me an assurance that all the documents dealing with this matter could be laid before the House, it would be a source of great satisfaction to myself and my friends. Until we see that correspondence we are not in possession of all the materials on which to form a judgment on this difficult question. So far our only material lies in the pages of Hansard. These pages are susceptible of one interpretation, and one only, and that is absolutely inconsistent, not indeed with the speech of the Under-Secretary, for he never referred to it, but with the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and I think if the right hon. Gentleman consults, not his memory or his recollection, but the actual words which he used, he will be forced to the conclusion that nothing that has been said from this bench goes beyond the facts as they lie before us.

COLONEL SEELY

said the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who no doubt was a sufficiently acute Parliamentarian, had avoided making any reference to the real charge which had been made. When the debate began the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, made a charge in language so surprising that he must confess he had never heard anything like it in that House. The Leader of the Opposition, with that caution for which he was justly famed, had not said one word in justification of that outrageous charge. When the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, made his assertion all who were on the Ministerial benches thought he had got hold of some document showing that the Government had assented to a fresh importation from Madagascar or elsewhere. What had he said? Let them inquire what truth there was in the charge. The right hon. Gentleman had deliberately said that behind the back of Parliament and without its knowledge the Government had sanctioned a system of labour which they thought to be slavery; in point of fact, that they had assented to an Ordinance which, thank goodness, and not hon. Members opposite, would have the result that the subject of this controversy would be over and done with in a year and a half's time. In regard to that Ordinance, which had been called the winding-up Ordinance, Questions had been asked in that House on 5th August, and again on the 12th, when further specific Questions were put. On 21st August there was a debate on the subject, which, on the 26th, was again raised, and Questions asked.

MR. LYTTELTON

How could the subject be raised on 26th August when it did not exist until 30th December? The charge I made was that the Ordinance passed in August was not sanctioned until 30th December, and what pretence has anybody for saying that notice was given in August?

COLONEL SEELY

said the right hon. Gentleman had undoubtedly led the House to believe that he had got hold of some proposal of which that House had never heard, and that the Government had sanctioned some law of which that House had not the least conception, or that it was not even before the public. The right hon. Gentleman asked the House whether they had ever heard of any public paper or documents in which it was referred to, and when they replied that they had heard of it, he expressed great surprise. The right hon. Gentleman was so candid and so sincere—he said this with absolute truth—that nobody in that House could believe that he had his tongue in his cheek. If it had been anybody else but the right hon. Gentleman who had brought the matter forward, after the questions they had asked in August last, he really should have supposed that the reason why this question—finally settled on 30th December last—had been raised on 23rd March, had something to do with an election to take place on the following day. He would refer the right hon. Gentleman to a Question put by the hon. Member for Preston on 12th August last, and the reply thereto, which he felt perfectly certain the right hon. Gentleman could not have had in his mind. The following was the Question— I beg to ask the Under-Secretary for the Colonies whether the Transvaal Government has introduced a Bill to prolong the restrictions of the Chinese Labour Ordinance after that Ordinance expires in March next, and if so what action His Majesty's Government intend to take. The reply was as follows— The policy of the Transvaal Government, so far as I understand it, is to repatriate the Chinese labourers at the termination of their indentures without permitting those indentures to be renewed. Under the Letters Patent the existing Labour Importation Ordinance lapses on 21st March, 1908. An interval will therefore arise during which some provision for the government of the Chinese who are waiting their turn to go is indispensable to the order and security of the Colony, and, indeed, to the complete termination of the Chinese labour experiment. His Majesty' Government have always recognised that some measure of this kind would probably be necessary as part of the machinery of repatriation upon expiry of contracts, and the Secretary of State explained the necessity in his place in Parliament in reply to a question on 17th June last. Was there ever anything more plain that this matter was fully known to the House? Surely the right hon. Gentleman must have been absent from the House at the end of last session, because in the lobby and in the House the question was being discussed as to whether the winding-up Ordinance was a breach of the premise given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He believed there were only two or three Members who believed that the winding-up Ordinance, as they called it, ought not to be as stringent as the Ordinance under which the Chinese first came. Their contention was that they ought never to allow it to remain on the Statute Book, even for a moment longer, under conditions which were tantamount to slavery. That was what they said then and what they said now. The majority of Members on that side of the House saw plainly that owing to the intense objection of the people of the Transvaal to having Chinese in their midst, and owing also to the fact that only Chinamen who were not of the best character would come under such servile conditions, they could not retain the Chinese without hemming them in with all those restrictions to which they took exception. It was for that very reason they had condemned the Ordinance again and again in that House. It carried with it its own condemnation, because they could not have it without imposing restrictions which were foreign to English law, and, he would suggest, to English morals as well. He had endeavoured to deal with the charge brought by the right hon. Gentleman. Questions had certainly been asked on 3rd, 12th, and 21st August, and now that he had enlightened the right hon. Gentleman he thought he should, in accordance with the courtesies of debate, withdraw the gravamen of the charge which he brought at the opening of his speech, and confine his charge to the purely technical matter, that under the promise of the Chancellor of the Exchequer the winding-up Ordinance ought to have been of a character wholly different from the original Ordinance which they had sanctioned. But the suggestion that Parliament knew nothing of this Ordinance was plainly a gross misstatement, and he called upon the right hon. Gentleman with confidence to withdraw it.

MR. LYTTELTON

The hon. Gentleman asks me to withdraw in consequence of something done in August. I will meet him with this answer, given by the Under-Secretary to the hon. Member for Newbury, on the 26th August last. The hon. Member for Newbury asked whether the servile conditions expressly prohibited by the terms of the Constitution were to be re-enacted in three years. The Under-Secretary for the Colonies replied that he could not forecast what would be the action of the Government upon it. I therefore contend that it is ridiculous to say that in August this assent was not unknown to Parliament, because the assent was not given until the 30th December, and it was never communicated to this House or the public.

MR. CHURCHILL

It has been published in the Transvaal.

COLONEL SEELY

said it had been known to every Member who had spoken on the subject ever since Parliament met. Again and again the matter had been referred to, and it was the very first time he had heard it suggested that every Member of the House did not know that it had been sanctioned. The fact of the matter was that the action of the Government meant that Chinese labour in South Africa was coming to an end in a year and a half. The action which the right hon. Gentleman wished to take would have meant that Chinese labour with all its horrible concomitants would be a permanent system.

*DR. MACNAMARA

said the hon. Member for Dulwich had made the charge that they had used the question of Chinese labour for political purposes. He could not help thinking when he listened to his speech that the hon. Gentleman, too, had his eye upon an election at present proceding in a borough which they both had the honour to represent. He observed that the statement which the hon. Gentleman had made that afternoon with regard to his comment was not exactly the same statement which he had made on Saturday afternoon at the Crown Theatre, Peckham. The hon. Member for Dulwich when at Peckham said he was willing to wager that the Chinese coolies would be in the compounds when this Government went out of office. He would like to take that wager, but as an honourable man he could not bet on a certainty, because, in the language of opponents of the Licensing Bill, to take it would be "pure robbery and confiscation." This was what the hon. Gentleman was reported to have said— It has been declared, according to Dr. Macnamara, that the Liberals would be infernal hypocrites if they allowed the condition of things which had prevailed to continue to prevail in the Transvaal. But they had done so. The hon. Gentleman had not stood up there and told the House that he charged the Government with allowing the continuance of a condition of things which they found as an ugly legacy that the hon. Member and his friends when they went out of office had left them. The hon. Gentleman had not said in that House what he had told the people of Peckham.

MR. BONAR LAW

I said precisely the same thing in both places. I said that the hon. Member had stated that they would be infernal hypocrites if they allowed these things to continue. I stated here this afternoon, as I stated at Peckham, that they have allowed them to continue.

*DR. MACNAMARA

Had they done so? He took occasion in the early part of this year to make inquiry at the Colonial Office in regard to the subject, and he found that at the opening of the year 1907 there were 54,000 coolies on the Rand. The Government could not break contracts, and they therefore had to admit the 16,000 who were smuggled in at the eleventh hour by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. For that the Government were not responsible, and they were very much ashamed of it. At the opening of 1907 there were 51,000 coolies, and at the opening of this year there were 34,000 coolies. Was that the same state of things that they found when they came into office? He found that, of the 34,000, 25,000 would go home this year, and that at the close of next year or before the close of January, 1910, the remaining 9,000 would have gone home. Yet the hon. Gentlemen said they had left things exactly where they found them. If they had left them where they found them they would be infernal hypocrites. Persaonlly he would have liked the whole thing to be swept away at once.

MR. BONAR LAW

I am sorry again to interrupt, but I am entitled to do it. The hon. Member has entirely misrepresented what I said about him. My statement was that he said that if they allowed this thing to continue, which was the use of the Chinese in South Africa, they would be infernal hypocrites. I said further that he had in his mind not years but months, for he said in the same speech that if it continued for six months, if there were many of them, he would be an unhappy man.

DR. MACNAMARA

said he confessed that he was an unhappy man. But they had not built this ugly fabric that was raised in the teeth of their opposition. But there were these contracts—and they were bound to respect them much as they disliked it—which were the work of the Party that preceded them. The hon. Gentleman had said quite clearly that whilst be (Dr. Macnunara) said that "if they allowed the condition of things which had prevailed, to continue in the Transvaal, they would be infernal hypocrites," things had been left as they were. They found the maximum of 54,000 and reduced it in a year to 34,000, 25,000 of these went this year and by the end of January, 1910, the remaining 9,000 would have gone. Could anybody say they had left things where they found them? All he could say was that it did not lie with the hon. Member for Dulwich to charge them with having used this for political purposes when he made such a statement at a contested election. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Withdraw."]

MR. JOHN WARD (Stoke-on-Trent)

said he had taken very great interest in this subject. The first debate he had taken part in in the House was on the question of Chinese labour. He was quite as sorry as the hon. Member for Camberwell that this thing was not dealt with heroically at the beginning, and entirely removed as part of their public policy. He would certainly like to know whether the subject was raised now because Gentlemen above the gangway protested against the principle of Chinese labour being eradicated and removed from their Colonial policy. He had been anxious during the whole of these discussions to know whether the Party above the gangway were pledged to maintain this form of Colonial Empire if ever they got a majority again, or was this only just a farcical debate for the purpose of electioneering, or did they only wish to revive a subject which he thought was settled? They had heard some very curious speeches. Hon. Members above the gangway had been charging hon. Members opposite with having deliberately and intentionally broken their pledges. On 12th August last, he himself put a supplementary Question, when the matter was under discussion, and protested against the action of the Colonial Office as explained by the Under-Secretary when he said that it would be necessary to re-enact the Ordinance for the remaining period over which the contracts went. That was the reason why he had shown that part of the discussion just now to the hon. and gallant Member for the Abercromby Division. He remembered the occasion well when he heard the speech of the late Colonial Secretary—when he heard that something had been done behind their backs since Parliament adjourned in August or September last year, he thought they were going to have something entirely new, that none of them knew anything about, and that he might very likely be able to find himself with hon. Members above the gangway attacking the Administration. As a matter of fact it turned out to be something that everyone of them knew about. Therefore he would imagine that these accusations should have been withdrawn the moment proof positive was given that no one had been deceived and that as a matter of fact the House well understood that the exigencies of the labour question in the Transvaal made it necessary, and always would make it necessary wherever the Chinaman was introduced among civilised people, to have some sort of servile condition that ought not to exist among civilised people. The very experiment necessitated those conditions and they were anxious to know whether Gentlemen above the gangway still adhered to that policy. Would they if they were in favour again re-enact, or try to re-enact, that Ordinance with which the country was thoroughly disgusted and wished to get out of its sight as soon as it could, as something entirely foreign to their character and their institutions? It was most important to know from hon. Members above the gangway whether that was their policy or not. With him and his colleagues Chinese labour was more an economic question than any other. They were afraid, when the late Administration were introducing Chinamen into the Rand, because they said other suitable labour could not be secured, that if once that was admitted as a policy in their Imperial affairs in South Africa it might be admitted in South Staffordshire. There were plenty of low-grade mines in Staffordshire which could not be worked, for the simple reason that no one would submit to the conditions that it would be necessary to impose upon the workmen, both as to working conditions and wages, to make them profitable under present circumstances. It would be quite possible with Chinese labour at 2d. a day and the compound system as in South Africa to open up many such mines in the very locality which he presented. Therefore, if they justified this idea of Oriental and yellow labour in one part of the Empire they were afraid it would very soon be extended nearer home. He was most anxious as a result of the discussion to know whether the Conservative Party still hankered after that kind of labour in Crown or any other Colonies. It would be very interesting to workmen all over the country to know whether the complaint was that the Government were not removing the Chinese Labour Ordinance sufficiently quickly or whether it was to Chinese labour being interfered with at all. That was a simple question. Surely the late Colonial Secretary could tell them whether he still believed that that kind of labour and the results as proved by experiment should be retained and extended, whether he had not learnt or forgotten anything during the last three or four years. It was doubtful whether hon. Members favoured it or were against it. If they were opposed to it he would help them in every way to kill it at the first opportunity and would go into the division lobby with them. But was it an honest attack on Chinese labour? Was it not a mere subterfuge—a mere farce—an electioneering discussion? That was more important to the representatives of the working men of the country than any other phase of the subject that had been discussed that afternoon.

*MR. MACKARNESS

said he did not think the right hon. Gentleman the ex-Colonial Secretary when he made his speech had made himself acquainted with what had occurred during August. Undoubtedly it was then well known in the House and in the country that the Transvaal Government were re-enacting the Chinese Ordinance of 1904, and certainly to a great many of them it had caused dismay, and they had distinctly stated what was their view of it. He would take the liberty in justice to himself, because he had been misrepresented, of repeating what he had said in that House on 21st August. He had said that as he understood the reports that had been telegraphed to this country from the Transvaal it was proposed to re-enact the Chinese Ordinance for a period so long as might be required for existing contracts, and if that were so it would be a piece of legislation obviously in violation of the pledges given over and over again by the Government to the effect that no Ordinance of that kind should be enacted after the expiration of the present one, and in violation of the express terms of the letters patent granting the Constitution to the Transvaal. Other Members, and especially the hon. Member for the Ince Division of Lancashire, had also protested on the same occasion. There was a reply from the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in which he said very much what had been said already by his hon. and gallant friend below him, that the Ordinance had not yet reached this country, and therefore they were not aware of its precise terms. But it was perfectly well known on that side of the House, and if it was not known on the other it was only because they had gone away for their holidays and did not read the papers, that that Ordinance had been passed in the Transvaal and that there was certainly grave danger that it would be sanctioned by the Government at home. At that time, when they might have protested with effect, not a single Member on the opposite side said a word upon the subject. What was stated in the House was stated in consequence of telegrams which had appeared from day to day in the papers, and it was now a very unfair charge to make against the Government to say that anything had been done behind the back of Parliament. That was why he had corrected the right hon. Gentleman. But on the main question he held the opinion then that the Ordinance ought not to have been re-enacted, and he was of the same opinion still.

MR. FELL (Great Yarmouth)

said the first speech he made in the House of Commons was upon the Chinese Labour question, but they had travelled very far indeed since then. At that time he tried to show that the Chinese were not living in South Africa under servile conditions or in a state of slavery. Since then the question of slavery had disappeared, and it had now been reduced to servile conditions. He was inclined to think that the Government would be glad to drop the whole question, but he would like to remind the House that there were now 20 per cent. more people in South Africa working under servile conditions than when the Liberal Government came into office. When the present Government took office there were more Chinese and less black men in the compounds, but now there were less Chinese and a great many more black men living in compounds and enjoying the same conditions of servility. Consequently he was justified in saying that the present Government had largely increased the number of those who were at present living in the compounds. [MINISTERIAL Cries of "No, no."] But that was so. There were 180,000 at present in the compounds, and when the present Government took office there were less than 150,000.

COLONEL SEELY

Does that include black men?

MR. FELL

Certainly.

*COLONEL SEELY

But they are under the ordinary law.

MR. FELL

Yes, I know they are. The Under-Secretary for the Colonies had made a very lame explanation of the difference in the treatment meted out to the blacks and to the yellow men in those compounds. He was aware that black men had not to be brought to South Africa by ships and they did not have their passage paid. That was done only for the Chinese. The black men were imported from Portuguese possessions and some came from the Transvaal and at the end of their service many of them were able to walk home. It had been said that the blacks were engaged only for six, nine, or twelve months, but if a labourer was brought 10,000 miles at great expense, naturally they had to make an agreement to serve for a longer period, because it would not pay to bring men such a long distance for short periods like six months. Therefore it was perfectly reasonable that the yellow men should be engaged for three years and the black men for only one year. He wished to point out that the black men were confined to the compounds and had poorer food without having any more pay than the Chinese, and therefore they were working under considerably poorer conditions than the yellow men. If it were true that servility or any conditions approaching slavery existed he was right in his statement that there were more people existing in the Transvaal under those conditions now than when the present Government came into office. It was said that they all knew that the Government had signed this new Ordinance continuing the conditions he had referred to for two and a half years. All he could say was that he had no idea of it himself, and he was in the habit of reading most of the news from South Africa. It had been stated that in the month of September some reference was made to this question, but probably many of them did not read their papers so diligently at that time, and in December he saw nothing whatever about it. He would have thought such a thing as that would have been notified to them in some way, but until the late Colonial Secretary mentioned it to-day he was absolutely ignorant that the new Ordinance had been signed and was in force. It was quite sufficient for him to say that at any rate there were some hon. Members whose attention was not brought to the fact that that Ordinance had been sanctioned by the present Government and was to be continued for two and a half years. He agreed that some regulations were necessary as long as Chinese were kept in South Africa, but it ought to be remembered that the supporters of the present Government promised to send the Chinese back.

MR. CHURCHILL

Never.

MR. FELL

said that that had been stated on every platform in the country in the electioneering speeches of hon. Members opposite.

MR. CHURCHILL

Yes, but not before the contracts expired.

MR. FELL

said it was placarded all over the country that the Government would immediately put a stop to Chinese labour, and every speech was to that effect. It was not said that the Chinese were going to be replaced by black men but by white men; that was stated at the election. What was the result? When the present Government came into office there were 1,000 more white men working in the mines than at the present time. It should not be overlooked that it required three black men to take the place of two Chinamen. From that it would at once be seen that by sending the Chinese back the mortality would be enormously increased. Suffering would be enormously increased by this change in policy on the part of the Government, and it would create a death-roll such as would never have occurred under the Chinese system, because the death-rate amongst the blacks were 50 per cent. more than amongst the Chinese.

MR. CHURCHILL

was understood to say that the death-rate was twenty per thousand. Nearly 5,000 Chinese had been repatriated as physically unfit, and when a Chinamen fell sick he was sent back home.

MR. FELL

thought the last figure of the mortality amongst the Chinese showed it was sixteen per thousand, whilst the mortality amongst natives was thirty-two, which was just double. Therefore, he was right in asserting that the suffering in the Transvaal mines owing to change of policy on the part of the Government had been materially increased by hurrying away the yellow men and replacing them by the black men, who were not so well fitted for the work and were dying off like flies. Many of the least fitted Chinamen for the work had been sent back to China, and it was admitted that there had never been so good a body of labourers for the work as at present existed amongst the Chinamen now in the compounds, and nowhere was there less crime amongst men working under those conditions. The blacks who had taken the place of the Chinamen came mostly from the low-lying swamps, and consequently the death-rate would be very great indeed. With the greater care that was now being taken in the compounds he hoped the death-rate among the blacks would improve, but it would always continue higher than in the case of the Chinese. He repeated that he was perfectly ignorant that this Chinese Ordinance had been re-enacted, and had he known it was going to be signed, he would certainly have asked some Questions as to its nature and whether more servile conditions were to be imposed than under the old Ordinance. They had been deprived of that opportunity because they knew nothing about the matter. The country was now beginning to know all about it. He attended a meeting in the country not long ago, and when the question of Chinese slavery was mentioned there was a roar of laughter, and people in the audience said they knew about the fraud that was practised in connection with that matter at the general election.

MR. MOND (Chester)

said that hon. Members on that side of the House were at a loss to understand the position taken up by the Opposition on this question. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth and his friends still entertained a lingering tenderness and regard for the Chinese coolie; they were losing him with regret. Indeed it was probable that, if they were returned to power, as the Transvaal Goverment would not have him, they would introduce the Chinese coolie into England so as not to lose their old friend altogether. It was the white people of the Transvaal who refused to have the Chinese among them any more; they were tired of the system forced upon them for the benefit of the mining magnates. One of the gravest accusations brought against the late Government was that they gave the white people of the Transvaal no opportunity whatsoever of saying whether or not they wanted Chinese labour. As soon as they had the opportunity, they said the Chinese must go; and now the Chinese were going. The Liberal Party was charged on the one hand with turning them out too quickly and on the other with turning them out at all. They could not have it both ways. Let the Opposition say frankly whether they wished to keep the Chinese in South Africa or not. Under the policy of the present Government they were going rapidly. In about eighteen months there would not be one left. What would have happened if the Conservative Government had remained in office? The Chinese would have doubled in number and they would have been rivetted round the necks of the white population, who would not have had representative government. No Liberal had expected that when the Liberal Government came into power they would turn the Chinese out by a stroke of the pen. Their pledge was that at the end of their contracts the Chinese would go, and that pledge the Government had carried out. To have broken contracts and repatriated the Chinese at once would have inflicted serious hardship. That would not have been statesmanlike. Would hon. Gentlemen opposite have allowed the Chinese to run about the Transvaal? If not, how could they blame the Government for carrying out the only sensible policy open to them? These charges of breach of faith, of pledges given to the House being broken, and of breaches of personal honour, came in a curious way from hon. Gentlemen opposite. They were not the judges of the pledges given by Liberal leaders to their own party. If their opponents were incapable of understanding simple English, that was not their fault. They were not responsible for the intellectual development of their opponents. Hon. Gentlemen would be more profitaby occupied in trying to find out the meaning of the pledges their own leader had given on tariff reform, than in interfering between the Liberal leaders and their followers. No Liberal Member had asserted that Chinese labour would be entirely replaced by white labour, but what they said on the authority of experienced people was that certainly more white labour would be employed, and was being employed. They were quite ready to fight another election on this co-called fraud. Let hon. Gentlemen opposite go to their constituencies and say: "We are prepared to introduce Chinese labour under the 1904 Ordinance into England." Liberals would be prepared to fight them on that issue, and would beat them as they did last time.

MR. HUNT (Shropshire, Ludlow)

said the hon. Member for Chester had asked whether they would bring the Chinese into this country. Under this Government there had been Chinese introduced into this country.

*MR. SPEAKER

Order, order. There is nothing in this Bill about introducing Chinese or anybody else into England; and hon. Members must, therefore, confine their remarks to affairs in South Africa.

MR. HUNT

said he understood from that ruling that he must not answer the question of the hon. Member opposite in regard to introducing Chinese into this country. He would remind hon. Gentlemen that one of the great points in the last election had reference to Chinese labour, and the question of compounds. Coloured labourers were now in compounds in South Africa, so that the charges made against the late Government as to Chinese being kept in compounds fell to the ground. As a matter of fact, the restrictions in connection with the compounds at the Kimberley mines were very much more severe for black men than for Chinamen. In his own constituency at the general election, the Chinese question was run very heavily indeed. All over the place there were pictures of Chinamen with chains on their necks. That was the way the election was won by their opponents. Hon. Gentlemen opposite made a point of the charge that the Chinese were so badly treated that they wanted to get back to their own country; but it would be remembered that Lord Selborne said that the Chinamen were so satisfied with their work in South Africa that there would be a riot if they were sent back. He reminded the Under-Secretary for the Colonies that during that outcry about the way the Chinamen were treated the Government entered into the New Hebrides Convention, and in answer to a Question which he put it was admitted that a girl of twelve years of age could be treated considerably worse than the Chinamen in South Africa. He asked the House whether political humbug could go any further than that? Were not the Liberals ashamed of themselves? [An HON. MEMBER:—" They ought to be."] No doubt they ought to be; for to a great extent they won the general election on the pretence that grown-up Chinamen were badly treated—men who were only too glad to get into South Africa if allowed to go—while they compelled girl children at the will of what they called their barbarous, man-eating chief, to serve indentures to work for fifteen or sixteen hours a day with very little food, and really under more servile conditions than the Chinese worked under in South Africa. That was the Liberal Party's idea of morality and the way they treated subject races.

MR. A. DEWAR (Edinburgh, S.)

said that the hon. Member for Ludlow had stated what was a very common fallacy amongst hon. Gentlemen opposite and those who agreed with them in regard to Chinese labour. He only spoke for himself, but he could say that from the moment he read the Ordinance he had an objection to the amount of restriction which was put on the Chinaman. They knew that Chinamen were Orientals, and indulged in Oriental vices under Oriental conditions. White men had to be protected against these vices; and one was prepared for compounds. One knew that the Chinamen's wages were low and that they worked hard, and he did not think that much objection was taken to the Chinamen on that ground. But the real, fundamental objection to the Ordinance was that not only did it protect the white man against the Chinaman's vices, but against his virtues. Because he was a Chinaman he was not allowed to compete with white men outside the compounds or to exercise his virtues. Therefore new crimes had to be invented for him. The Ordinance said to the Chinaman, "If you engage directly or indirectly in any labour except in unskilled labour in the mines, you shall be fined and imprisoned." What did that mean? It meant that if a Chinaman in his own time cultivated a little bit of garden—as only a Chinaman could do— and if he sold a cabbage he would get three months in gaol, while the white man who bought it would be subjected to a year's imprisonment, and a fine of £100. If a Chinaman invested his savings in a small shop he got six months imprisonment and was fined £25.

SIR F. BANBURY (City of London)

The Chinamen knew that.

MR. A. DEWAR

said that the fundamental objection to the Ordinance and the difference between it and other Ordinances and the New Hebrides Convention was that the latter did not prohibit the indentured labours from exercising their virtues as the Chinese Ordinance in the Transvaal did. Let the House look at the position in this country. We sent our missionaries to China and we told the Chinese that it was their duty to exercise all the faculties which God had given them; but when these Chinese were brought across the seas to South Africa, if they exercised enterprise, and by thrift saved money and put it to exchange for land, or by their ingenuity made a Chinese puzzle for sale, they were put in prison and fined. He maintained that that was an impossible position for a British Government to be in; and that was why he objected to the Ordinance. The late Secretary of State for the Colonies had said that that was not slavery. Technically it was not slavery at all; but really it partook of the quality of slavery. [Opposition cries of "Oh," and "No."] Yes: when they did not allow a man to exercise his own faculties in his own time, that man was not free. The hon. Member for the City of London said that the Chinese knew it. At the general election he was asked, "What would you do?" These sort of questions were always asked by his opponents. "Would you at once put a stop to Chinese labour?" If one said "Yes," the retort would come, "What! Disorganise the whole industry of the Colony, and against the wishes of the Colonists?" So that avenue was closed. "Would you continue to allow something to go on that is not freedom?" That was another dilemma. The only answer that could be made was, "What could the Government do, except to put the decision in the hands of the people of the Transvaal themselves, when they were granted responsible Government." But the Chinese labour had got to be got rid of. The evil that men did lived after them, and the evil which the late Secretary for the Colonies did lived after him—politically. But the right hon. Gentleman had got up that day and in an impassioned speech blamed the Government because they did not get rid at once of his handiwork. He was quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman did not believe now the charge he had made against the Chancellor of the Exchequer, viz., of having made a solemn pledge to get rid of Chinese labour at once. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman now believed that what the Chancellor of the Exchequer meant was, "First of all let the Chinese work to the end of their contracts, and then prevent any new contracts being entered into." The contracts were in existence, and they had always said they must be worked out, and they could not be worked out unless that Ordinance was renewed.

MR. LYTTELTON

was understood to say that the contracts could have been perfectly well worked out. If the parts of the Ordinance in the minds of the Government had been eliminated, the contracts could have been concluded.

MR. A. DEWAR

said he thought not. Apart from the Ordinance the Chinamen had no right to be in South Africa. [OPPOSITION cries of "Yes."] The Chinamen were brought into South Africa under the Ordinance, and their rights when there were regulated by the Ordinance. Did hon. Gentlemen opposite say that the Chinamen could come into the Transvaal and roam where they liked? Did hon. Gentlemen suggest that the Chinamen should have freedom to buy land or to engage in trade or skilled industries? Did hon. Gentlemen suggest now that the Government should have gone back on the Ordinance and said to the existing Chinamen brought in under contract that they were left free? Surely not. The pledge given by the Government was that the contracts should be worked out and any further importation prevented. He thought the charge against the Government had fallen to pieces. He was quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman now believed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that no more Chinamen would be allowed in; and he thought that that pledge was very likely to be kept. The right hon. Gentleman should recognise that the Government had some merit in the matter, because 10,000 Chinamen had left the Transvaal within a year, and within two years all the Chinamen would have gone. He thought that hon. Gentlemen opposite had made the most of this question from every point of view, and that they had not succeeded that evening in their object. They would not say what they would have the Government do. It was all very well to accuse the Liberal Government, in exceedingly difficult circumstances of not having kept the letter of what they called a pledge. But the Government had kept the spirit of it and they had kept faith with the country.

SIR F. BANBURY

said that the hon. Member for South Edinburgh had made a very ingenious defence, but when analysed and looked at closely it would not hold water. The hon. Member said first of all that during the general election all that the Radical Party did was to say that the Chinamen could not be sent back until their contracts had expired; and that those contracts would not be renewed. He dared say that the hon. Gentleman made that pledge, but that was not the pledge made at his election. On the contrary, they were told during that election that slavery existed and that that slavery was to be terminated as soon as the Liberal Party came into power. That was said in his constituency, and so far as he could learn after consultation with his friends, that was said all over the country. Therefore he thought that the experience of the hon. Gentleman was the exception which proved the rule. As to the general point which the hon. Gentleman had made, he thought he could not have read the Ordinance. The Government when they came into office might not have renewed the Ordinance at all and allowed Chinamen to remain in South Africa as free men, or they might have allowed them to continue there under modified conditions, but they had not done either of those things, because they had allowed them to remain there for two-and-a-half years under the very conditions to which the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members opposite objected, and with which the country rang at the last general election. The hon. Gentleman could not get out of that. He had listened with astonishment to the speech of the hon. Member for Chester; it was not relevant to the subject, and it was an exemplification of the debates which took place two years ago, and of the extraordinary statements which hon. Members then made on the subject. He understood the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent to say that if the Unionist Party would promise to repeal the Ordinance when they had an opportunity he would vote for them if they divided. But the hon. Member had quite missed the point of the whole debate. They did not say that they had done anything wrong in enacting the Ordinance. On the contrary, they said that the exceptional condition of the Transvaal at the time compelled them to enact it; but what they complained of was that the right hon. Gentleman, in criticising their enactment of the Ordinance, stated that it imposed slavery, but having come into power, had followed their example and continued it. The hon. Member said the only policy to pursue was to get rid of the Ordinance.

MR. JOHN WARD

You ought not to have started it.

SIR F. BANBURY

said it would be out of order if he were to go into that question, but what he was calling attention to was that while Ministerialists complained of their passing the Ordinance they were continuing it. That was the whole point of difference between them. He really could not conceive the view of the hon. Member for South Edinburgh. He had talked a good deal about breach of contract if the Ordinance was altered. Were they to understand that the great Liberal Party would sanction slavery, if it involved a breach of contract to end it? He would like the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to inform him whether the Convention for the New Hebrides allowed recruiting for New Caledonia, and whether during the last three months any alteration had been made concerning the employment of child labour under the New Hebrides Convention. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could give them some explanation on that point.

MR. CHURCHILL

was understood to say that he could only reply to the hon. Member's Questions by the permission of the House, as he had already spoken. It was unnecessary to discuss the New Hebrides question because they had laid a Paper on the Table, which gave the fullest details.

SIR F. BANBURY

wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman would answer his question.

MR. CHURCHILL

was understood to reply that the question of child labour in the New Hebrides had been the subject of further regulation under the Convention, which had been further developed in regard to it. This subject was discussed at the beginning of last session, and regulations had since been issued by the French Government to their Commissioners fixing the height of children to ensure that they should not be engaged until they were fully grown. It was impossible to ascertain the age exactly. This provision was claimed to have the effect of ensuring that the Convention would be applied in such a way as to prevent children being recruited and working before the age of fifteen.

MR. JOHN WARD

inquired if he understood that they were not to work until they were fifteen.

MR. CHURCHILL

was understood to reply that they were not to be engaged until they were of a reasonable age and fully grown and developed in the opinion of the officers, so as to be able to do the work which they were engaged to do. These were the instructions which the French Government had given to their Commissioners in the New Hebrides, and they had made the regulations more stringent and effective with regard to child labour. Then as regarded New Caledonia, before the Convention the French Government had the right to recruit natives for service in New Caledonia, and after the Convention they had that right, and no Convention they could enter into was likely to affect it. But as a matter of fact they had issued a number of regulations making that traffic much more restricted. They had forbidden altogether the enlistment of women and children, except when accompanying the head of their families, and he should say the extent of recruiting for employment in New Caledonia was very small—200 or 300 a year. That was the only place except Fiji where this system of recruiting was allowed, and in the latter place it only existed to the extent of ten or twelve persons a year. So far as the French Government were concerned we could not invade their rights as a sovereign Power in that respect, but he was bound to say that he thought if the hon. Baronet would read the new Article he could not fail to be impressed by the care which had been shown and the high standard displayed. As the question had been raised he would like to say that he quite recognised that the Parliamentary attention which had been given to the subject had resulted in more careful labour regulations being drawn up than were included in the original Convention. Those regulations would, he thought, be in accordance with the general view and wishes of the House. The document which had been laid on the Table was well worth reading, and was a welcome and attractive exhibition of the good feeling and international cooperation existing between the two countries who were parties to the Convention.

SIR F. BANBURY

said he had hoped the right hon. Gentleman would have given him an answer "yes" or "no," but he was very much obliged to him for replying as he had done.

MR. T. L. CORBETT (Down, N.)

said the hon. Member for Chester after saying that he would address the House in simple English, had asked what the Government should really have done; and if he might reply from that side of the House in simple English, he would say that the Government should have kept their word; but that was a solution which did not appeal to the hon. Member for Chester, or to many other hon. Members on that side of the House. He could not help being struck by the remarkable speech of the hon. Member for South Edinburgh. The hon. Member had said that technically the Ordinance partook of the character of slavery, and that the promise that no more Chinese would be introduced into the Transvaal was very likely to be kept. That was a curious kind of defence of a Government policy. The defence of the Under-Secretary for the Colonies was characterised by great ability and almost more than his usual audacity. The right hon. Gentleman had tried to divert the attention of the House from the point before it, to throw dust in the eyes of hon. Members, by talking about black and yellow labour, and thus to obliterate the very serious charge made by the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square.

MR. JOHN WARD

He has withdrawn the charge.

MR. T. L. CORBETT

said the right hon. Gentleman had not done so in his hearing. The charge of his right hon. friend was that, after all the bitter denunciation of Chinese labour during the past few years, the Government which professed to get rid of that labour at the earliest possible moment, had consented to renew the Ordinance for two and a half years, with all the conditions of slavery which attached to it and which had been depicted by hon. Members below the gangway opposite far more eloquently than the facts of the case justified. After all the abuse and obloquy they had poured upon it, it was a curious thing that the Party opposite should actually have sanctioned a renewal of the Ordinance for a period of two and a half years, without the least necessity being laid upon them for so doing and without the knowledge of the House. He believed the hon. Member for the Abercromby Division disputed that it was without the knowledge of the House. All he could say was that it was without the knowledge of Members on the Opposition side of the House, who otherwise would have raised the question.

COLONEL SEELY

said the question was raised on 21st August last.

MR. T. L. CORBETT

said that was before the renewal of the Ordinance, as the hon. and gallant Member knew quite well. The fact was that the Party which floated into power by vilifying its opponents in regard to that Ordinance, which pledged itself to put an end to Chinese labour at the earliest possible moment, and which considered it necessary after being in power for two years to renew that Ordinance, did, by so doing, break faith with the country and the House. If the Government thought such a policy as that would pay, they were mistaken. They would find it fail in a very short time.

MR. HARWOOD (Bolton)

thought the charge against the Government arose from a confusion of two things. One was Chinese labour itself, and the other was the Ordinance for Chinese labour. Chinese labour was the fact of introducing that labour into the Colony. The Ordinance laid down the conditions under which it was introduced. One or two speakers had suggested that it was possible that the conditions of Chinese labour might have been allowed, and continued without the Ordinance, and that, therefore, the action of the Government was inconsistent. He wished to point out with regard to that charge, and he knew that he was voicing the views of a great many of the Liberal Party, that their objection was to Chinese labour itself, and not to the conditions of the Ordinance. He asserted that the bulk of the Liberal Party would have objected to Chinese labour unless it was guarded by these conditions. They objected entirely to the introduction of this alien clement, but, if it must be introduced, then they demanded that it should be guarded by the most stringent conditions while it remained. He knew something about these compounds and about the feeling of the people of South Africa, and he spoke their views when he said they would never have listened for a moment to the introduction of Chinese labour, unless it was safeguarded by these conditions. The right hon. Gentleman opposite thought there was something alarmingly inconsistent in their agreeing to Chinese labour and to the conditions of this Ordinance, but the view of the Liberal Party was that if Chinese labour must continue it must be guarded by such conditions.

MR. T. L. CORBETT

asked was not the hon. Gentleman aware that if the Ordinance had not been renewed the Chinese would have been sent home.

MR. CHURCHILL

No, no. If the Ordinance had not been renewed the effect would have been that the Chinese would simply have settled in the country.

MR. HARWOOD

said that if the hon. Gentleman doubted it let him have regard to the feeling of the people of Australia in reference to Chinese labour and to the feeling of America in regard to Japanese labour. Both peoples said that if it was introduced it must be so guarded that the labourers should not mix with the people of the country. It would be nothing less than a disaster if these Chinese were allowed to merge into the general population. Hon Members opposite brought the Chinese to South Africa; they brought to that country a population which could not be allowed there except under conditions practically of slavery. They now said the Liberal Party had been false to their pledges. He could tell the House that the feeling of Lancashire was a feeling of anger not at the conditions of the Ordinance, but at the introduction of Chinese labour at all. They objected, of course, to the conditions of the Ordinance, because that labour could not be introduced except under conditions which practically amounted to slavery. That was not inconsistent. It was simply a business matter. The Government had to decide whether they should send the Chinese labour back at once or whether it should be allowed to run out its contract. They had to do one of two things. If they had sent the labour back at once they would have dislocated the trade of the country in a way that would be unjust to a struggling Colony. It would have been more heroic perhaps, but infinitely more foolish.

MR. T. L. CORBETT

said the hon. Member admitted, then, that the renewal of the Ordinance kept the Chinese there two years more.

MR. HARWOOD

said he did not admit that, but what he did admit was that if these men must be kept there they could only be kept under the conditions of the Ordinance. The Government had to decide whether the Chinese should break their contract or be allowed to run it out, and, if the latter, under what conditions. Certainly not under the condition of freedom, which would allow them to merge into the population of the country. If they had done that these men would probably have made the Transvaal a yellow country in a short time. If they did not do that they had to allow the contracts to run out so that the labourers might be gradually replaced by other labour, and if they allowed it to remain they must guard it by such conditions as the Ordinance laid down. What they said was that they should get rid of Chinese labour, but so long as they kept it, they must keep it under conditions which safeguarded the country.

SIR HENRY CRAIK (Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities)

said he was in the memory of the House when he asserted that often as this question had been debated in the House it had never been debated from the point of view taken by the hon. Member who had just sat down. He was convinced that most of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues were made uncomfortable at what he had said regarding the question. He (Sir Henry Craik) happened, he believed, to be the only Member in the House who had heard the whole of the debates in that House, and also the whole of the debates in the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria, in 1903. He had never until now heard a single argument on Chinese labour urged from benches opposite which bore the slightest resemblance to the arguments urged in the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria. The only hon. Member whose arguments had approached those of the Colonial Assembly was the hon. Member who had just sat down. The ignorance among some hon. Members on the question was singular. The hon. Member for Belton had told them that the Ordinance alone had brought the Chinese to South Africa. But before the Ordinance was passed they could have brought into South Africa any number of Chinamen. The argument used in the Assembly at Pretoria was this, "Introduce as many Chinamen as you like if you place them under the severest restrictions; but we know what the result of those restrictions will be; they will drive a coach and six through them, and before you know where you are the Chinamen will be in possession of all the small trade of the country." That was the objection taken in the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria. There was another argument used in that Assembly, and it was one which would surprise hon. Members opposite. It was this, "Why introduce Chinese labour? You have an ample supply of labour in South Africa. It does not depend on their will whether they come in or not; they have to work, and they ought to be required to work."' These arguments would be rather startling, would they not, in the House of Commons? One of the Members of the Pretoria Assembly pat the strange inquiry why, if they had any difficulty in obtaining native labour, they did not confer with the chiefs. To confer with the chiefs in order to obtain native labour was so palpably a euphemism for, slave dealing that it really proved too much for the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria. But after all the insults which hon. Members opposite had thrown at the late Government, after all the attacks which they had made upon their predecessors, what had they done to end this Chinese labour in the course of two and a half years? He had heard plenty of discussion on this subject in the Transvaal in 1903, and he thought he was within the mark when he said that it was contemplated that the system of Chinese labour was only to last some eight, nine, or ten years. It was to be a temporary and not a permanent measure. No one contemplated anything like what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had spoken of, that the Chinese were brought into South Africa as a permanent means of labour. Restrictions were placed upon that labour in deference to South African wishes. Those restrictions were obviously inconsistent with the permanent employment of such labour. What had the Government done? They were to bring Chinese labour to an end in two and a half years, which would be 1911, or about eight years from the time when Chinese labour was introduced, and about the period it was contemplated that it would continue by the late Government. The present Government had re-enacted those restrictions which were enacted in accordance with the wishes of the South African people; they were continuing those restrictions for two and a half years, which would bring the period for the employment of Chinese to not much less than that originally contemplated when it was introduced, and they were applying to that labour exactly the restrictions which were approved by their predecessors, but which had formed the subject of such lavish denunciations by hon. Gentlemen opposite throughout the country. What were the accusations which the Government had brought against the late Government, and what action did those accusations lay upon them as honest men? Had they acted up to the spirit of their pronunciations? Had they washed their hands completely of what they had asserted was nothing less than the introduction of slavery into British dominions?

*MR. CARLILE (Hertfordshire, St. Albans)

said that although the right hon. Gentleman had made the best case he could for the Convention with regard to the New Hebrides, yet he thought that it had been patent to all his hearers that under the provisions to which the present Government had given their adhesion together with the French Government, an appalling state of things was extremely likely to arise. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had said that, in regard to native labour in South Africa, to confer with the chiefs would be palpably like slave dealing; but there was no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman knew quite well what it meant when the Secretary for the Colonies agreed to allow to be embodied in the Convention with France a similar expression, "to confer with the chiefs." Where young girls and young boys were not allowed to be indentured, then the recruiters could confer with the chiefs. They knew pretty well what that would mean, and, if the right hon. Gentleman did not know, at any rate he ought to have known that he could not put his hand to any such instrument as that. They had been assured in every part of the country at the time of the general election that they did not object to the Chinese as Chinese, but that they objected to their being employed under conditions which they said were slavery. There could be no doubt on the part of anyone who really gave a thought to the matter, that the Government ought to have brought Chinese labour to an end, after all their professions and speeches, coute que coute. After their professions and speeches the Government and their supporters were in duty bound to make such arrangements as would cause the Chinese to go out of South Africa. They on that side of the House had not taken up that attitude. An endeavour had been made to show that they were bound hand and foot to the employment of the Chinese. That did not seem at all to be the case. If a Unionist Government had been in office at the present time the Chinese would now be going out of South Africa. They had got them for the purpose of ensuring that the mines would be worked. Everybody knew that the natives would not then work. They were full of wages after the war; they purchased more wives and settled down at home until their money ran out. The work had to be done or the mines stopped, and therefore the Chinese were employed. For the general welfare of the country, the late Government had employed the Chinese, but only temporarily; they had no need to apologise for their presence. Under the Unionist Government the Chinese would certainly have been sent home when the need for their presence in South Africa had come to an end, as was the case at the present time. Now there was an abundant supply of native labour, and the Chinese being no longer required they would have been repatriated under a Unionist Government; and, after the professions which had been made on Liberal platforms, the Chinese ought to have been repatriated at all costs at the present moment, from the point of view of hon. Gentlemen opposite. The charge against the present Government was that they had failed to veto the renewal of the Ordinance, and it was to be regretted that after their professions throughout the country, and after their high moral tone and aspirations, the Government should have been found putting their hand to the abominable Convention in connection with the New Hebrides, the outcome of which could not be otherwise than more or less fatal to the population. The right hon. Gentleman had sheltered himself behind the thought that they were so few. What had the fact that the numbers might be relatively small to do with it? The principle underlying the action of the Government and the responsibility which must and always would devolve upon them was exactly the same whether it referred to large or small numbers. If the whole question was a small one it was all the more necessary and all the easier for them to arrange a Convention such as would ensure the safety of the population committed more or less to their charge. If the number had been great it would not have modified their responsibility in any sense. There was a great deal that was absolutely artificial in the charges brought against his right hon. friends with reference to Chinese labour. He had no doubt that if a Radical Government had been in office at the time the difficulty arose they would have taken somewhat similar steps to ensure that the Transvaal mines and the great industry upon which the welfare of that entire country depended were safeguarded by the introduction of temporary labour such as was introduced by the Unionist Party.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for to-morrow.