IMMIGRATION. 345 



advancing the sum required. That such has turned out to be the 

 case there can be no doubt. I shall proceed to explain why it 

 appears to rne that it was likely to happen. 



" On entering into contract, the Coolies were liable, on break- 

 ing their engagements, to certain penalties. In order to enforce 

 these it was necessary, first, that the delinquents should be 

 caught, and then brought before a justice of the peace. Now, 

 the great difficulty is, in this country, to get such penalties at all 

 to bear upon the delinquents. 



"The result has been that I know only of one instance in 

 which the proprietor has attempted to recover the Coolies. 



"The consequence of their readoption of their wandering 

 habits has been most distressing. I was induced, from numbers 

 being found destitute, sick, and starving in the roads, to establish 

 two hospitals for their reception/'' (Lord Harris, February, 

 1848.) 



In these words and observations of Lord Harris, we have the 

 proof that it was not the fault of the planters if the first at- 

 tempts at establishing and regulating a fair system of assisted 

 immigration remained ineffectual. In this opinion Earl Grey 

 seems to have concurred, for he says in his despatches to the 

 Governor of Trinidad : — 



"It is possible, indeed, that the code of Coolie regulations pro- 

 posed by you might have been more successful than ordinance No. 9 

 of 1847 ; and the primary objections that I took to it, namely, 

 that it had no legal validity, might have been obviated by the 

 enactment of an ordinance. Such rules could not be enforced 

 without a violation of the principles on which free labour is 

 ordinarily regulated, nor without running the risk of great 

 abuses. It is possible that the abuses would have occurred but 

 seldom, and that they would have been a far less evil than the 

 vice and suffering on the part of the Coolies, to which their 

 unrestrained condition has given birth ; but we have to bear in 

 mind the sentiments to which the exposure of even one gross 

 example of abuse might give occasion here, and the obstruction 

 to all immigration, which might be the consequence, not only in 

 Trinidad, but throughout the sugar colonies ; and I doubt not 

 that your lordship will perceive the serious difficulties under 

 which we labour in the treatment of immigrants belonging to 

 savage or half-civilised races, whose unfitness for unrestrained 



