THE IMMIGRATION ORDINANCE. 373 



law; the contracts made were broken, first by the indented 

 labourer, and most willingly afterwards by his employer, who 

 could in no wise consider himself bound, when the immigrant 

 had freed himself from all obligations. Lord Harris having fully 

 treated this subject in his correspondence with Lord Grey, I prefer 

 giving his opinions, in his own words, to offering my own on the 

 matter. 



" My desire has been impartially to study the interests of both 

 parties, at the same time never to lose sight of the fact, that the 

 coolies are placed here under peculiar circumstances, as utter 

 strangers in a foreign land, and therefore requiring the zealous 

 and increasing care of Government : that they are, also, far from 

 being the best class of the Indian labouring population ; are 

 naturally dissolute and depraved in their habits, if left to them- 

 selves, and much inclined to fall into habits of drinking and of 

 wandering idle about the country, and therefore require the close 

 supervision of Government, in order to correct, if possible, but at 

 all events to prevent, any evident cases of vagabondage and licen- 

 tiousness." (Lord Harris to Mr. Gladstone, July, 1846.) 



" After having given my best consideration to the subject, it 

 appears to me that in the first place, the immigrants must pass 

 through an initiatory process. They are not, neither coolies nor 

 Africans, fit to be placed in a position which the labourers of 

 civilised countries may at once occupy. They must be treated 

 like children, and wayward ones too; the former, from their habits 

 and religion ; the latter, from the utterly savage state in which 

 they arrive." (Lord Harris to Earl Grey, February, 1848.) 



Lord Harris, therefore, with the aid of Major Fagan, the 

 coolie stipendiary magistrate, prepared a code of regulations which 

 was published in 1846. A great outcry was raised here, and in 

 England, against those regulations, some of which, on the assump- 

 tion of His Lordship himself, " were stringent." These rules were 

 disallowed by the Secretary of State for the colonies Lord Grey, 

 not only because, in his lordship's opinion, " they had no legal 

 validity," but also and mainly, on the strong and certainly most 

 injudicious representations of the Anti-Slavery Society ; so that the 

 system of laissez aller was, once more, preferred to a more 

 restrictive, but surely, as proved by the result, a more beneficial 

 id more humane policy. However, certain heads were, at the 



le time, sent out by Earl Grey, which were digested into an 



