AUSTRALASIA. 



45 



ivided fmm New South Wales. His pro- 

 \\iis that (Queensland should In- divided 

 inin thier provinces the northern, central, and 

 Miii; hern, \\ith separate executives and legisla- 

 tures. There would be a central government of 

 tin- united provinces similar to that which at 

 pivM-ni exisis. with a legislature of two houses 

 one elected liy the legislatures of the separate 

 provinces, and the other by the electors of the 

 provinces in proportion to the European popu- 

 lation in each. In contrast to the bill of last 

 year, the present bill reserves to the Central Gov- 

 ernment the sole right of levying 1 customs duties, 

 t hu-^s,. curing uniformity of tariff throughout the 

 colony. With this exception, so far as the infor- 

 mal ion to hand goes, the connection between the 

 provinces and the central legislature would be 

 extremely slender. The three provinces would 

 have local self-government to a very full extent. 

 The three parts have little now in common, since 

 there is no land connection, the railroads all run- 

 ning east and west, and their climate and pro- 

 ductions are dissimilar. The Premier estimated 

 that his federation project would add 25,000 a 

 year to the expenses of the Central Government. 

 The bulk of the population of the colony lives in 

 the south, which has about 269,000 inhabitants, 

 while the central district has 47.000 and the 

 northern 78,000. These figures do not include 

 the aborigines, estimated at 12,000. 



Kanaka Labor. A few years after the intro- 

 duction of the system of importing Pacific island- 

 ers for the cultivation of sugar plantations in 

 Northern Queensland, the abuses accompanying 

 the traffic led Earl Granville as Colonial Minis- 

 ter to issue stringent resolutions, and declare that 

 it must be suppressed if these should not prove 

 elVicacious. In 1872 the British Parliament 

 passed an act against kidnaping. In 1875, when 

 a 1 1 igh Commissioner for the Western Pacific was 

 created, he was empowered to deal with the Poly- 

 nesian labor traffic. The regulations and restric- 

 tions proved so useless that a royal commission 

 which looked into the subject in 1885 was com- 

 pelled to report that all the efforts of the Impe- 

 rial Government had failed to prevent "the con- 

 tinuance of a system of fraud, outrage, and mur- 

 der." Constant attacks on British subjects in 

 the South Sea Islands had no other motive than 

 revenge for the murders and man-stealing com- 

 mitted by the slave ships. The condition of the 

 islanders on the sugar plantations was practical 

 slavery of the most brutal description. The mor- 

 tality among them was fearful, and the terms of 

 their indentures, by which they were to receive 

 wages and be returned to their villages at the ex- 

 piration of the contract period, were constantly 

 disregarded. The Queensland Government at 

 last stepped in and had a law passed to stop the 

 forcible impressment of Kanakas, requiring the 

 contract to be entered into voluntarily by each 

 man after its terms had been explained by an in- 

 terpreter, and requiring masters and owners of 

 labor ships to give bonds to return the laborers to 

 their homes. The act contained regulations re- 

 gardingthe treatment of the laborers on the plan- 

 tations which provided that they should be prop- 

 erly housed and fed and cared for when sick. 

 Agents wefe appointed to inspect the plantations 

 and see that the regulations were carried out, and 

 these were clothed with the powers of police mag- 



istrates. The condition of the laborers wa con- 

 siderably ameliorated, but the slave raids and 

 massacres by which the lulxjr was supplied did 

 not cease. The acts of the officers and agent of 

 tin' " Hopeful," which had led to the investiga- 

 tion of the British Government commission, gave 

 a special turn to the lalior agitation against Chi- 

 nese, coolie, black, and all colored labor in 

 Queensland, which was as strong in Southern 

 Queensland as in other parts of Australia where 

 the workingmen are a political power of prime 

 importance. The Queensland I'arliament, bow- 

 ing to .his movement, passed an act in 1885 to 

 discontinue licenses to recruit Kanaka labor after 

 1890. There was an expectation that some other 

 system of labor would be found for working the 

 sugar plantations, or that the objections of white 

 laborers, who could not work themselves under 

 the tropical sun, to the employment of Kanakas, 

 as all Polynesian islanders are called indiscrimi- 

 nately in Queensland, would abate as soon as the 

 consequences of the loss of the sugar industry 

 came home to the people. The Premier, Sir Sam- 

 uel Griffith, who had been instrumental in car- 

 rying through the prohibition law, counted on the 

 latter contingency when he issued a manifesto on 

 Feb. 13, 1892, declaring that the sugar mills and 

 plantations would soon have to stop operations 

 unless the privilege of recruiting colored labor 

 was renewed. In spite of the indignation ex- 

 cited in England at the revival of the slave trade 

 in the Pacific and the protests of the Queensland 

 Labor party, the Parliament of the colony passed 

 an act to renew the importation of Kanaka labor 

 for ten years longer. No ships are allowed to en- 

 gage in recruiting laborers without a Govern- 

 ment license, and each ship must carry a Govern- 

 ment agent charged with seeing that no islander 

 enters into a contract without a full knowledge 

 of its full meaning. This is a fictitious safe- 

 guard, for none of the agents are acquainted with 

 t he t wenty languages spoken on the islands. The 

 same provisions were in force under the old law 

 and still did not put an end to the "deceit, cruel 

 treachery, deliberate kidnaping, and cold-blood- 

 ed murder "denounced in the report of the Royal 

 Commission in 1885. 



South Australia. The Legislative Council, 

 consisting of 24 members, is renewed by the re- 

 placement triennially of 2 members from each of 

 the 4 districts. The House of Assembly has 54 

 members, all of whom go out at the end of the 

 electoral period, or sooner if dissolved by the 

 Executive. The Governor is the Earl of Kin- 

 tore, who assumed office on April 11, 1889. The 

 ministrv in 1892 consisted of trie following mem- 

 bers: Premier and Commissioner of Crown 

 Lands: T. Playford; Chief Secretary. C. C. 

 Kingston; Attorney-General. R. Uomburg; 

 Treasurer, W. B. Roimsevell ; Commissioner of 

 Public Works. ,1. G. Jenkins; Minister of Agri- 

 culture and Kducation, W. Copley. 



Tasmania. The Parliament "consists of the 

 Legislative Council of 18 members, elected by 

 restricted suffrage for six years, and the House of 

 Assembly of twice as many members, elected for 

 half that term, under a slightly limited fran- 

 chise, the electors for the former body in 1891 

 constituting 4-<> per cent, and for the other 21 

 per cent, of the total population. The Governor, 

 in the beginning of 1892, was Sir Robert G. C. 



