The Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29, 1876.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 190, 29 November 1876, Page 2

The Evening Mail.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29, 1876.

"Wenteafethinsw. and » drop of ink falling upon a thoxjscht may pfodoco that which makes thousands thlnfe."*

Il¥ a previous i.-csue. we entered a vehement protest against the importation of Chinese labor into the Colony, and pointed out the sad results of the mistaken policy of both Queensland and California in doing so. We notice from the Dunedin papera that Mr. Stanley, a gentleman connected with Kaynkk'.h Panorama, and who, in his professional capacity, has both visited and is well acquainted with China and the Chinese, has uttered similar words of warning on the danger to be apprehended from the threatened influx of Celestials. As is known to all, the hordes of yellowskinned and almond-eyed barbarians who bow their heads to his Celestial Majesty reckon almost half the human race, and notwithstanding the wholesale destruction of the young, they are increasing in number year by year. In their own land they drag out a miserable existence, while

those who hare visited European Colonies i or American settlements, and saved a few • hundred pounds, return to their country, and with that sum set up for Mandarins, living in Celestial ease and opulence for the rest of their days. Dazzled and allured by this attractive bait, for the one Chinaman who ventured to leave the Flowery Land twenty years ago, there are at least a thousand to-day; and to such an alarming extent has the exodus been earned on that the original residents of the places favored with celestial preference will soon become but an atom in their populations. When it is remembered that China, with ! its 400,000,000, could spare 10,000,000 of its population—which would be but an atom of the whole—or five times the population of all the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, it will be seen we not been speaking idly, and our alarm was not without good grounds. Sir. Stanley has not long since returned from the Celestial Empire. He is acquainted with its people, their customs, and their projects. He has witnessed the eflect the return of those lucky diggers from the Australian goldfields has had upon the down-trodden and half-starved toilers, and he asserts that the Colonies are now threatened with an invasion of between three and four millions, and unless a stop be put to the traffic, every tea vessel would arrive laden with opium-smoking rice-eaters, who would drive European labor effectually to the wall. He further adds that an offer was recently made to the Queensland Government to furnish Chinese laborers for the railways of that Colony who would work for 10s. or 15s. per week. We know perfectly well that a Chinaman could manage to live, ar.d live well, on 155., or even 103.; per week. Those may be the class of colonists which some may desire —beings who will be " hewers of wood and drawers of water "to the lords of the soil; but are thev the sort of colonists which will make this Britain of the South like its prototype, "great, glorious, and free?" Beings, certainly endowed with the senses given to humanity, but void of domestic ties or home associations —a race between whom and Europeans there exists a barrier which years of intimacy cannot break down, and who never can, nor never will, be colonists in the true acceptation of the term. We have no wish to be alarmists, and happily the (Jolony is able to cope with the evil and prevent its spread. At present the Chinese as a body form but a very insignificant portion of the population ; but should the project we have mentioned be allowed to mature, like the ants mentioned by African travellers, which march in solid compact bodies miles in length, and at whose approach habitations have to be abandoned, the tribe will swarm in myriads and overrun the land. Give the " Heathen Chinee " the footing they now seek, and farewell to civilisation. "The Noble Savage" will have been driven back to the extreme North but to make room for a far more ignoble one ; and should that traveller of Macaulay's ever sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, it will be in blousy costume, and decorated with a porcine caudal appendage.