HL Deb 20 March 1876 vol 228 cc254-6
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether in the Instructions to be issued to naval officers respecting Fugitive Slaves, Her Majesty's Government will provide the same measures of protection for fugitive coolies as fugutive slaves? Before putting the Question he would observe that the Anti-Slavery Society and those who worked with it were decidedly of opinion that there was no difference between the status of the coolie and that of the slave, and they were going to make hay while the sun shone, and do their best, now that public attention had again awakened, to alleviate the hardships endured by coolies. It was not, however, necessary for his argument that any of their Lordships should accept that view. It was sufficient that it had been laid down by the "leading journal" that not only danger to life, but also the fear of a brutal flogging justified running away, and a captain of one of Her Majesty's ships in protecting the fugitive; for it was undeniable that coolies were flogged and subjected to ill-treatment. A Cuban correspondent of the Aborigines Protection Society wrote as follows:— On arriving at Havannah the Chinese are treated exactly like the negroes. They are confined in large barracoons, and sold individually or in lots by a mere endorsement of their contracts, and then taken to the sugar plantations. On the plantation the Chinese labourer is treated as a slave. His scanty wages—a fourth less than is earned by many of the negroes—hardly suffice to supply him with the necessaries which, from the poverty of his own fare, he is compelled to buy. The frequency with which the Chinese commit assassination or suicide is the best proof of their desperate condition in Cuba. Formerly the Chinaman recovered his liberty of action on the expiration of his original period of service; but recent ordinances imposed by Spain compel him to be always under a master or patron, or at once to leave the country, which, of course, for want of means he is unable to do so. Thus the servitude of the Chinese practically becomes life long. If that statement was not sufficient authority, he could cite some cases from our own colonies, which had been judicially proved. There were the two Hindu coolies who died of flogging in Province Wellesley. There was a coolie in Mauritius who was trampled to death, and whose case was thus described in a recent address of the Aborigines Protec- tion Society to the Secretary of State for the Colonies— We refer in the first place to the trial of a Frenchman named Tampier, for causing the death of an Indian labourer on the estate of M. E. de Chazel. The evidence unquestionably disclosed the most brutal violence on the part of the prisoner, and yet on the trial the jury only convicted him of a common assault, and at the same time strongly recommended him to mercy, while the columns of the local Press have since borne witness to the public sympathy which was felt, not for the victim, but for his murderous assailant. These were facts established. Now suppose that one of Her Majesty's ships was at anchor in a Cuban port, and at night two men came off in a boat or swam to her—one was a negro slave born in Angola, the other was a Chinese coolie kidnapped at Macao. Next day before noon an official came on board with a request from the authorities of the port for the delivery of the two fugitives. Well, what would the captain do with the coolie, if his instructions had not prepared him for this contingency? There were some who quoted Vattel to prove that a nation might disregard the comity of nations—or what was due to other nations—in obedience to its own judgment of what its conscience prescribed to it, and others had blamed the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs because he had preferred to respect the comity of nations and the law of nations, and in order to do so, had not scrupled to trample on the reputation and judgments of the great Lord Stowell. There was another possibility. The French nation had set up the principle that there should not be any "exploitation de l'homme par l'homme," and this was one of the principal cries of the Revolution of 1848. It was very difficult to translate the phrase. The nearest translation he could suggest was, "No man shall make a profit out of another man to his disadvantage." The French or any other nation, acting on those principles, might in the ports of our colonies rescue discontented coolies just as we rescued fugitive slaves. The mere possibility of such a thing showed that we had also a vulnerable point if the comity of nations was to be made light of. The noble Lord concluded by putting the Question.

THE EARL OF DERBY

said, he did not think it would be advisable to lay down any fresh instructions bearing upon the particular case to which his noble Friend had referred. In the first place, it was not desirable that any new instructions respecting fugitive slaves should be issued at all, pending the inquiry which the Commission had already commenced, and whose Report he hoped would not be long delayed. In the next place, whereas it was certain that many cases of fugitive slaves coming on board Her Majesty's ships had occurred, he was not aware of any instance in which a fugitive coolie had so presented himself. Such a case might, perhaps, have occurred; but if it had, he had been unable to find a record of it in any of the Papers which he had felt it his duty to look through. Therefore he did not think that any advantage would be gained by laying down general rules which could not have any application; in other words, he did not see the advantage of providing against a contingency which never had arisen and possibly never might arise. Having said that in answer to his noble Friend's Question, he would point out that there was a very wide distinction—looking at the matter in its legal aspect—between the case of an escaped slave and that of a coolie who took refuge on board our ships. It might be true that in some places coolies had suffered much, and that in those places their condition did not practically differ much from that of slaves; but from the legal point of view there was this great distinction—that where the coolie had been treated as a slave, that was done, not in accordance with the law of the land, but in violation of that law, while, on the other hand, the fugitive slave sought to be taken out of the operation of the law of the country from which he was escaping. When anything was done in the case of the coolie contrary to the law of the land in which he was serving, he had an appeal to the authorities of the country. If he happened to be a British subject, it was competent to the captain of one of Her Majesty's ships to represent his case to the British Consul, and through him to the local authorities. If he were not a British subject, we should have no locus standi for interference, except on the simple ground of humanity, and in that case the matter would probably best be dealt with by an unofficial representation from the British Consul. The matter was one in which it was not, in his judgment, necessary or expedient to lay to lay down a general rule.