THE IMMIGRATION ORDINANCE. 375 



penalties. In order to enforce these, it was necessary, first, that 

 the delinquents should be caught, and then brought before a 

 justice of the peace." 



" Now, the great difficulty is, in this country, to get such penalties 

 at all to bear upon the delinquents." 



" The result has been, that I know of only one instance in 

 which the proprietor has attempted to recover the coolies" 



" The consequence of their re-adoption of their wandering habits 

 has been most distressing. I was induced, from numbers being found 

 destitute, sick, and starving in the roads, to establish two hospitals 

 for their reception." (Lord Harris, February, 1848.) 



I must remark, here, that had Mr. M. Martin been actuated 

 by any feeling I will not say of candour, but of impartiality, he 

 would certainly have found in Lord Harris's despatches, a straight- 

 forward and natural explanation of His Lordships statement, that, 

 "in no country had greater suffering been undergone, than by these 

 unfortunate people, in the shape of disease, starvation, and 

 ultimate death." But the writer had only one thing in view, viz., 

 to insinuate that, in Trinidad, " the treatment of immigrants, 

 generally, and especially of the East Indian coolies, had been most 

 discreditable." More still he could have found, in Earl Grey's 

 answers to Lord Harris' observations, an admission that the fault 

 was not that of the planters, but of the " unrestrained liberty 

 granted to savage or half civilised races" 



"It is possible, indeed (says Earl Grey), that the code of 

 coolie regulations proposed by you, might have been more suc- 

 cessful than ordinance No. 9, of 1847 ; and the primary objection 

 that I took to it, namely, that it had no legal validity, might have 

 been obviated by the enactment of an ordinance. Such rules 

 could not be enforced without a violation of the principles on which 

 free labour is ordinarily regulated, nor without running the risk of 

 great abuses. It is possible that the abuses would have occurred 

 but seldom, and that they would have been a far less evil than the 

 vice and suffering on the part of the coolies, to which their unre- 

 strained condition has given birth: but, we have to bear in mind 

 the sentiments to which the exposure of even one gross example of 

 abuse might give occasion here, and the obstruction to all immigra- 

 tion which might be the consequence, not only in Trinidad, but 

 throughout the Sugar Colonies; and I doubt not that your lordship 

 will perceive the serious difficulties under which we labour in the treat- 



