LEADING ARTICLES. 



595 



COLOURED RACES IN THE EMPIRE. 

 Our trealment of the coloured races 

 arouses the ire of Mrs. Annie Besant, 

 and m the brilliant and eloquent lecture 

 reprinted ni the Indian Rri'ieiv she says 

 some scathnig- but truthful thino-s anent 

 this complicated problem. 



The difficulty in dealing with these 

 people is larg-el)' in the fact that the Em- 

 pire is governed by a Parliament that 

 sits at Westminster, and that, of that 

 body, only a few members know practi- 

 cally anything about the vast Empire 

 they are called upon to govern. Most 

 of them know practically nothing be- 

 yond the needs of the nation to which 

 they belong — some of them hardl)- even 

 as much as that. " Let us," she pleads, 

 " take the coloured races one by one and 

 try to understand them. Britain has a 

 great future before it in that work, if 

 the whole of our social system is to be 

 remodelled and reorganised on a new 

 basis of human happiness instead of on 

 the basis of struggle. I believe we can 

 modif\' the whole social system in Eng- 

 land, as well as elsewhere, and that in 

 tlie future we shall build up a number 

 of self-governing States, each ruling its 

 own State affairs, and one great Parlia- 

 ment of the whole Empire, in which 

 ever}' country in the Empire will be re- 

 presented, its voice heard, its wisdom 

 Drought to the guiding of the whole. 

 That is what 1 believe our Empire will 

 be in the future ; and in order that it 

 ma^' be so, we must first of all set our 

 house in order at home. We must sub- 

 stitute comfort, happiness, and securit)- 

 for the horrible unrest which is eating 

 the heart out of England to-da\'. And 

 thus, with the help of our ("olonies and 

 the help of the Indian Empire, we shall 

 be able to make our community one in 

 which wisdom and character will rule. 

 In that lm|)erial Parliament there wnl 

 be found the wisest, the best, the noblest, 

 and the most self-sacrificing ; and these 

 are not' to be found only among the 

 white race. The coloured races will send 

 their best also to Britain's Imiicrial Par- 

 liament, and we shall find that they, too, 

 are no whit behind the children of the 

 Eno-lish motherland." 



INDIA'S VALL'E TO THE EMPIRE. 

 In an article in the Fortnightly Re- 

 vieiv, quoted elsewhere, Mr. Archibald 

 Hurd points out that both in the value 

 of her jjroducts and the amount she pur- 

 chases in Britain, India is worth more 

 to the Emjure than all the Dominions 

 put together. 



In tlic last thirty years the people of India 

 have incr(!ased by 61,000.000, against an in- 

 crease of o,(X30,000 in the self-governing 

 Dominions, and 12,500,000 in the British 

 Isk'.s. There are 250.000,000 acres under 

 crop in India to-day, while Great Britain, 

 Canada, Australia, *and Ne^v Zealand all 

 told, have less than 50,000,000 of acres. In 

 one crop -wheat — India produces 64,000,000 

 bushels more than the whole of the rest of 

 the British Empire put together; that is to 

 say, 426,000.000 bushels of wheat are pro- 

 duced in India every year, to say nothing of 

 rice and the rest. The sea-borne trade of 

 India has increased in ten years by far 

 more than one-half, and now amounts to 

 £260.(HM),000, or £60.000.000 more than the 

 trade of Ru.ssia. India does not come beg- 

 ging to the rest of the Empire to buy her 

 exports. In Great Britain she buys, I think, 

 something lilje 70 per cent, of all she bu\-s 

 abroad, but she sells about 70 per cent, of 

 wliat slie produces to other nations outside 

 the British Empire." 



ASI.\TIC IMMIGRATION AND BRITISH 

 COLUMBIA. 



Danvers Osborn, m the liv.ipire Re- 

 view, produces some startling informa- 

 tion regarding the hold which Asiatics 

 have upon the trade of Canada and 

 British Columbia. One Province is 

 stated to harbour I 5,000 Japanese, and 

 the author candidly confesses that he 

 and the other whites are afraid of them : 



The extrenu' denunciation of the Asiatics 

 tliat calls so loudly in British Columbia to- 

 day is gradually resolving itself into a strong 

 anti-Japanese feeling. Our leading citiwns 

 and public men have voiced them.selves, and 

 many pertinent queries put to us to state 

 our case deserve attention and exjilanation, 

 ill order that Great Britain and the Eastern 

 i'rovinces may realist' that our reasonable 

 protests are l)y no means the hasty ebullition 

 of an.\-* frantic sentiment, worked up to a 

 fury, sucli as characterised events and 

 coloured history in th(> Western States of 

 America in the days of the Imlfalo and tlu' 

 M'dsivin. In this connection, it is necessary 

 to empiiasise the fact that two decades ago 

 it was only the whit<^ labourer who had Us 

 submit to Asiatic competition. The Asiatic 

 worked on the Canadian .Pacific Bailway 

 tiack; he used the pick and shovel in tlie 

 Dunsmuii- collieries; the shingle mills and 

 canneries wen> glad to employ him in the 

 unskilliMJ labour ela.>;s. The uiuler-dog section 

 of the white population raised feeble protests, 

 but little heed was paid to these outpourings! 



