54 Timehri. 



Fully one-third of the labourers became absolutely unavailable, and 

 the work of the remaining two-thirds was unreliable and desultory. The 

 planters then had to face one of two alternatives, to abandon their estates 

 and accept their ruin with what philosophy they possessed, or to continue 

 to work their plantations on the possibility of securing a regular and 

 reliable labour supply from new sources. 



Many of the planters found it impossible to tide over the interval 

 between the emancipation of the negroes and the establishing of a regular 

 supply of imported labour, and a number of estates went out of cultiva- 

 tion. 



The indentured labour system was successfully established in this 

 colony, and after many vicissitudes, necessitating various inquiries, com- 

 missions, reports and modifications, public opinion in India at last became 

 so exasperated by the revelations that continued to be made, showing 

 beyond doubt that the system had reduced the Indian population in this 

 colony (and other colonies where this system was in vogue) to which 

 they had been sent under indenture, to servile conditions, and had given 

 rise to grave immorality and enormous hardships, that Lord Hardiuge's 

 Government strongly recommended the early abolition of the system, in a 

 despatch dated October 15th, 1915. 



Owing to renewed agitation in India in the early part of 1917, when 

 it was feared that a prolongation of the system was contemplated, Lord 

 Chelmsford's Government, with the consent of the Imperial authorities, 

 prohibited the further emigration of indentured Indian labourers during 

 the war, and it has since been officially announced in the House of Com- 

 mons that it is not the intention of the Government to revive the system 

 after the war. 



The indenture system, we may take it now, is a thing of the past. 



The importation of labourers into British Guiana from India com- 

 menced in 1838 when the good ship Hesperus brought her precious cargo 

 of living human flesh and blood that was destined to revolutionize the 

 labour conditions obtaining in the colony due to the abolition of Negro 

 slavery. 



In the same year, the system was condemned in Parliament by Mr. 

 Fowell Buxton, Lord Brougham, and others, through certain revelations 

 made in connection with it, and immigration was thereupon suspended. 



On the recommendation, however, of Sir J. P. Grant, who wrote an 

 extensive study of the question, indicating certain safeguards and suggest- 

 ing certain remedies to be secured by legislation, the system was resumed 

 in 1844 in favour of this colony, Trinidad and Jamaica. 



It wa9 not, however, until 1864 that the system was organised on 

 the basis of a thorough Government control. 



