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a policy that must prove detrimental to the interests 

 of the Country. As long-, however, as protection is 

 the recognised policy of Government in its Home 

 Department, and these treaties require special Acts 

 to over ride the Law of the Land, such arguments 

 in relation to treaties with foreign powers, must 

 appear a little whimsical. To concede to the natives 

 of India, the freedom of carrying their labour to 

 any market they please in one thing, and to con- 

 cede to foreign powers the right to send agents into 

 your territories to entice away the labour which 

 your own country requires for reclaiming culturable 

 waste land, making railways, building barracks, and 

 other public works, is quite another. The one is a 

 right the natives enjoy, or ought to enjoy, in virtue 

 of their own subjection to British rule. The other 

 is a right I have yet to learn that any nation on the 

 face of the globe has thought proper to concede to 

 foreigners. The one right involves a principle which 

 is an important element of the British Constitution. 

 The other a principle which, if carried to the extreme 

 limit, would place all poor countries at the mercy of 

 the richpossibly depopulate many. 



I have repeatedly in the course of this review had 

 occasion to dwell on the fact that the natives of India 

 are in a state of infancy, and consequently in need 

 of protection, not in the sense in which that term 

 is opposed to free trade ; but in the sense in which 

 the Law applies it to persons under age. In the 

 present condition of things, however strict emigra- 



