The EARL of DONOUGHMOREMy Lords, seeing the noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty in his place, I would like, with your Lordships' permission, to put to him a Question of which I have given him private notice, namely, to ask whether the account, at page 7 of The Times of March 21st last, of a speech delivered by him at the Hotel Great Central Marylebone Road, on the previous evening is correct in attributing to him the statement that "the Chinaman did not, as was claimed by the late Government, come to South Africa of his own free will;" and to ask, if this account is incorrect, in what way it should be corrected.
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord TWEEDMOUTH)My 517 Lords, the report from which my noble friend quotes is not a verbatim one, and a negative has got into it which absolutely reverses my intended meaning. The passage that the noble Lord quoted should have read—
The Chinaman, it was claimed by the late Government, came to South Africa of his own free will, and in future, when in South Africa, if he wished to go back and had not the money in his own pocket, this country would find it for him. That removed some of the taint attached to the system.I stated that the late Government had said that they secured to the Chinaman a free choice of going to South Africa, and my argument simply was this, that the present; Government had complemented that, and affirmed it, and strengthened it by also making it perfectly open to the Chinaman, when he got to South Africa and found what his conditions of labour were, to return to China if he wished, and I said that if he had not the money to return at his own expense this country was prepared to find it. In order to confirm the statement I have just made I may quote from another newspaper, which gave what I said in this way—Not only did the Chinaman go to South Africa of his own free will, but in future, if he wished to go back and had not the money, we in this country would find the money for him.