AUSTRALIA. 



63 



Territory of South Australia. The whit 

 dents of the territory in the spring of 1888 

 addressed a memorial to the Governments of 

 New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, 

 urging restrictive measures, in which they 

 blamed their own Government for introducing 

 the evil by importing Chinese laborers for 

 the gold-mines at public expense, and after- 

 ward allowing Them to squat on Government 

 lands, to bid for Government contracts, and 

 to vote as rate-payers. From that district they 

 had advanced inland by way of Roper and 

 Me Arthur rivers into Queensland and the 

 South Australian ruby -fields. The Govern- 

 or resident at Port Darwin in the beginning 

 of April advised the authorities in Adelaide of 

 information that had come to him, according 

 to which vessels sailing under the Chinese flag 

 were preparing to land a great number of 

 Chinamen to work the ruby-mines. The Gov- 

 ernment has hitherto encouraged the immi- 

 gration of Chinese into the territory, because 

 they alone have developed the agricultural re- 

 sources of the land, and are almost the only 

 laborers who will long remain and work in 

 the mines. Without them it would not have 

 been possible to build the Port Darwin Rail- 

 road, which is expected to make the territory 

 prosperous and self-supporting. There are at 

 present 6,000 Chinese in the Northern Terri- 

 tory and only 600 Europeans. There is a 

 regulation limiting the Chinese to a distance 

 of 1,000 miles inland, but the South Austra- 

 lian Government proposes now to adopt in re- 

 spect to the Northern Territory the same re- 

 strictions on immigration that prevail in the 

 rest of Australia. The Chinese question is 

 treated by Australian politicians as a working- 

 man's question, although the workingmen 

 there, unlike those of California, have not yet 

 felt the direct competition of Chinamen in the 

 trades, save in furniture-making, which the 

 Chinese have learned and pursue on their own 

 account. They have been very successful as 

 gardeners, and have taught the English colo- 

 nists many improvements in the cultivation of 

 fruits and vegetables. The large cities are en- 

 tirely supplied with such produce from their 

 gardens. Once before, when the Chinese, 

 who began to come in 1851, increased from 

 2.000 in 1864 to 42.000 in 1859, Victoria im- 

 posed a capitation tax on immigrants, which 

 had the effect- of reducing the Chinese popula- 

 tion to 20,000 by 1863, when the poll-tax was 

 removed. The first of the more recent meas- 

 ures was passed in 1881 in consequence of the 

 action of the authorities of Western Australia, 

 who were about to import Chinese laborers. 

 The Chinese evaded the tax by procuring let- 

 r naturalization, which their countrymen 

 in Victoria began to take out in unusual num- 

 bers. While only 91 letters had been issued 

 to Chinese during the eleven years preceding, 

 there were 317 naturalizations in 18*2, and 

 the number increased to 1.178 in 1885. The 

 arrivals by sea had fallen on the imposition 



of the head-tax from 1,348 in 1881 to 327 in 

 1882, and then increased at almost the same 

 rate at which naturalization papers were taken 

 out, until they reached 1,108 in 1886. In 

 1885 additional precautions were taken in con- 

 nection with the forms of naturalization, in 

 order to prevent fraudulent personation, and 

 there was an increase of 438 in the number of 

 arrivals in 1886 over the previous year, be- 

 the papers that had been purchased 

 from Chinese residents in the colony would 

 not be thereafter available. By the laws of 

 Victoria and New South "Wales, a poll-tax 

 of 10 is payable on every Chinese immi- 

 grant, for which the master ot the vessel is 

 responsible, and no vessel is allowed to bring 

 more than one immigrant for each 100 tons. 

 Queensland collects a tax of 30 on each Chi- 

 naman landed, and limits the number that can 

 be brought in a vessel to one for each fifty 

 registered tons. Tasmania has adopted the re- 

 strictions that prevail in Victoria and New 

 South Wales, and requires vaccination, as does 

 South Australia, which, except for the North- 

 ern Territory, imposes a poll-tax of 10, but 

 allows a passenger for every ten tons. In all 

 cases Chinamen who are naturalized British 

 subjects are exempt from the operation of the 

 acts. In New Zealand an act was passed in 

 1882 restricting the immigration of any person 

 born of Chinese parents, but this law has not 

 received the approval of the home Govern- 

 ment, and is inoperative. The number of Chi- 

 nese in all the Australian colonies does not 

 exceed 51,000, and is smaller than it was before 

 the yield of gold began to fall off. Instead of 

 increasing, the Chinese population is said to 

 have diminished of recent years at the rate of 

 3 per cent, per annum. Living in compact 

 colonies, they are conspicuous in the towns, 

 though forming a very small fraction of the 

 population. The only districts outside of the 

 Northern Territory of South Australia where 

 they outnumber the white population are the 

 mining-camps and plantations of the torrid 

 part of Queensland, where they have been in- 

 troduced as laborers. 



The question raised in the letter of Lew-ta- 

 len, the Chinese Minister, was submitted to 

 the premiers of the different colonies by Lord 

 Salisbury. Sir Henry Parkes. replying for New 

 South Wales, and D. Gillies for Victoria, urged 

 the home Government to make a treaty similar 

 to that which was being negotiated between 

 China and the United States. Public meetings 

 were held in the two colonies, much political 

 feeling was aroused on the subject, street dem- 

 onstrations took place. anti-Chinese riots were 

 threatened, and. finally, the executives mani- 

 fested their energy by prohibiting the landing 

 of Chinamen and sending about four hundred 

 back to China. The New Zealand Government, 

 in order to accomplish the same object, declared 

 all the ports of China to be infected districts. 

 In the middle of May a severer Chinese restric- 

 tion bill was introduced as a Government meas- 



