374 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



[November i, 1882. 



the labouring white man might tolerate the Chinese. 

 But. as. has been shewn over and over again, the bounds 

 of toleration are passed, when the pigtailed men bring 

 down the rate of wages on the sliippmg whai'ves, in the 

 coal mines, in the cabmetmaker's shop and in other im- 

 portant departments of labour and handicraft. Of 

 course, to an onlooker, not personally interested, as 

 was the case with us, the abstract and equitable question 

 of free trade in labour as in commodities was obvious 

 and simple, and we felt ourselves on strong ground in 

 arguing that the yellow skins had as much right to 

 come tn labour and trade in Australia as the white 

 skins had to enter China for similar purposes. The 

 answer of the working classes, as interpreted by their 

 spokesmen on the platform and in parliament was : — 

 '•We mean to keep this glorious heritage of ours free 

 from the contaminating influences of an inferior 

 and a foully immoral race : that is our firm detenn- 

 ination," the real meanmg of which amongst the 

 labourers and artizans was, " We are determined that 

 our scale of wages and our standard of living shall 

 not be lowered by colupetitors who are ready to work 

 for half or quarter our normal rates of 6s to lis 

 per day of eight hours." As universal suffi'age pre- 

 vails in Austialia, the working classes control legislation, 

 an<l there are but few constituencies in the south (except 

 in Western Australia which has only recently ceased to 

 be a depot for convicts) which would return to parliament 

 and give the chances of public life to any man who 

 adhered to the abstract doctrine of the equal rights 

 of all men to go anywhere to live and labour, so that 

 they do not violate law or disturb order. We shall 

 not soon forget the embarrassment of a member of the 

 New South Wales I'arliameut with whom we crossed 

 the Blue Mountains by the celebrated zigzag railway 

 and discussed the whole question. He conceded all 

 the principles of abstract right for which we contended, 

 but he ever fell back on the popular argument of self- 

 preservation. • The white races had possession of Aus- 

 tralia, and for themselves and their children they must 

 preserve the inheritance. They had rights founded on 

 the principle 



That he should take who has the power, 



And he should keep who can. 

 Above a;ll, the dignity and the rewards of labour 

 must not be lowered. In this spu-it. even so zeal- 

 ous an advocate of free trade as Sir Henry Parkes 

 has been as ready to to further anti-Chinese legislation 

 as the arch- Protectionist, Graham Berry of Victoria. 

 And the strange part of tho mnttpr is, tliat, notwith- 

 standing our treaties with (Jnu»«i, lUe Imperial Govern- 

 ment has repeatedly advised the Queen to consent to 

 such legislation. 



But although we could lai-gely sympathize with 

 the feelings, considering the position of those who 

 cherished them, whicli dictated anti Chinese and 

 anti-cooly legislation affecting the temperate por- 

 tions of Australia, we did expect that the leaders 

 of thought in the southern colonies would recognize the 

 necessity of exceptional treatment of the trojiical 

 portions of their vast territories : the northern portion 

 of "so-called South Australia and Northern Queensland 

 for, in Australia, be it remembered, the further north ; 

 we go the hotter does the climate become, because 

 the nearer do we get to the equator. We always 

 contended that both should be separated by a 

 convenient geogiaphical line and ruled by Lieut. - 

 Governors, Superintendents or whatever design- 

 ation migh* be preferred, on the principles, generally, 

 which are applied to Crown colonies, like Ceylon. A 

 system, indeed, approaching this principle has been 

 applied by the Government of so-called Soxithern 

 Australia to their Northern Territory by the 

 appointment of a Resident at Port Darwin. In 

 company with Mr. Buck, the Commissioner for India, 

 now at thehe.id of the ludiiin Agricultural De^iartnieutj 



and the gentleman who succeeded him at Melbourne, 

 Mr. Jas. Inglis, we discussed the whole question in 

 Melbourne with the former able editor of the Queens- 

 landir, Mr Gresley Lukin. Mr. Buck, who took great 

 interest in the subject and who has elaborated a 

 scheme of cooly immigration to Queensland, as also 

 Mr. Inglis, who was enthusiastic on the subject 

 of a closer union between Australia and India, 

 fully supported our contention that by means of 

 cooly labour alone could the resources of tropical 

 Austi-alia be developed, seeing that the supplies from 

 the Solomon group and other isles of the Pacific were 

 becoming so scarce that even Fiji was in danger of 

 coming to a standstUI for want of labour. The chiefs 

 objected to the departure of theii- figliting men, and 

 the Kanakas, who had returned with guns amongst 

 other trophies, were often only too ready to use their 

 acquisitions in thinning a population already di 

 minished and diminishing from other causes besides 

 violence. To our surprize Mr. Lukin objected to black 

 or coloured labour even in the tropics : white men, 

 he insisted, could do all the work ! When we men- 

 tioned this to a sugar planter on the Burdekin, he 

 exclaimed : " Mr. Lukinis only avewspaj^er editor, and 

 knows nothmg about it ! " which, we said, was rather 

 rough on men who were only newspaper editors. It was 

 in vain we pointed out to Mr. Lukin that the coolies 

 would only come to sojourn — to engage for fixed terms 

 in tropical labour and to return, and that we contemp- 

 lated a form of local government under which the 

 question of the franchise could not be raised — a bene- 

 volent despotism, tempered by an open council and 

 public opinion, such as we have in Ceylon. Mr. Lukin, 

 who had had the advantage of residing in Queensland, 

 insisted that white men could labour there from the 

 tropic of < apricorn at Rockhamjrton to the extreme 

 north at Cape York and Thursday Island. Sub- 

 sequently we had the opportunity of judging for our- 

 selves, not only b_v visits to the splendid sugar estates 

 which line both sides of the Pioneer river in the 

 Mackay district, but amidst the mangi'ove swamps 

 of the Burdekin delta, where quinine and 

 chlorodyne were indispensables. Most part, even of the 

 tropical portion of Queensland, is fauly salubrious, but, 

 except on the hills, the climate is at times hotter far 

 than even in Kurunegala and Matale, and there are 

 many fever-haunted localities which have claimed and 

 will claim their victims. Even in the cleared and 

 cultivated portion of the Mackay district, a touch 

 of fever occasionally reminds dwellers on the banks 

 of the Pioneer, that a rich soil and forcing climate, 

 if they have their advantages, have also some draw- 

 backs. The proportion of white labour to black which 

 we saw on the Mackay sugar estates, and which, no 

 doubt, the experience of about a dozen years had 

 settled as the best, was 20 per cent of white labour 

 to SO per cent of black. The white labourers ploughed 

 the land, drove the waggons and looked after the 

 horses, exceptional aborigines or Kanakas who could 

 perform such work being very rare. In the moderate 

 climate of Mackay the white men followed their 

 ploughs : in the more northern delta of the Burdekin, 

 with its higher temperature, the j^loughs employed 

 were the American "sulkies" on which the plough- 

 man sat and drove. The Kanakas perform the field- 

 work and are also (women included) employed in 

 feeding cane to the sugar-mills and other work con- 

 nected with the manufacture of sugar, molasses and 

 rum. When we saw the Pacific islanders vigorously 

 cutlassing down the cune beneath a vertical sun and 

 in heat which was stifling, as no breeze could pass through 

 the dense grove of tall stalks, we felt that if white men 

 could be got to perform such work, " sunstroke " 

 would speedily claim many victims. We could not 

 help, however, remembermg Messrs. Hornby & Sons' 

 most effective hedge-trimining machine, which we had 



