A General Survey and Summary of Events J83 



account, and employ the very natives they came to 

 replace. I suggested that their contracts should 

 terminate in India, not in Natal, and that the 

 employers should be bound to re-ship them to India, 

 that any other indentured Indians should be subject 

 to a considerable immigration tax, and even then 

 the number allowed into the country should be 

 strictly limited. He thought that I was unduly 

 alarmed at the time, but subsequently asked me to 

 put my ideas in writing, which I did. It was, how- 

 ever, the usual shutting the door too late. The 

 Indian has now practically possession of Natal, their 

 numbers exceed the whites, they have ruined and 

 driven out the smaller white trader, they employ the 

 Kaffir, and cultivate more sugar cane than the white 

 man, they spend little or nothing in the Colony, and 

 in no way, either from a social or economic point of 

 view, or as a defensive force, take the place of the 

 white men whom they have displaced. They are 

 now claiming rights which they did not enjoy in 

 India and are becoming a source of unrest and 

 danger, not only in Natal, but also in the Transvaal. 

 If the British Government, in view of their great 

 interests in India, attempt to force these Asiatics on 

 South Africa as British subjects, it will cause people 

 to think it a heavy penalty to pay, for being a 

 portion of the Empire. 



Apart from their supplanting and driving away 

 the white trader from the Transvaal, their influence 

 on the native races is most detrimental. It is a 

 question upon which much can be written, but there 

 is no space in a book of this kind. Unless the 

 Union Government tackles this question of Asiatic- 

 invasion boldly, and from a South African point of 

 view, this will soon be no white man's country. 



