ANENT THE "HEATHEN CHINEE."

Otago Witness, Issue 1341, 11 August 1877, Page 11

ANENT THE "HEATHEN CHINEE."

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,— Your Arrow Correspondent seems to have a strong predilection for Chinamen, judging from the warm eulogium he passes on them in your last week's issue. After enumerating a whole catalogue of virtues which they possess in his eyes, he says • — " They are strongly bound by the ties of kindred, and possess an ordinate love of home." No doubt of it ; and your Correspondent must be remarkably blind not to see that that is one of the best possible reasons why he should not be encouraged into the Colonies. Granting that John possesses all the virtues here attributed to him, and none of the vices which are popularly ascribed to him, it does not at all follow that it is just or expedient to allow him to come into a Colony founded by English subjects; step into ground opened up by them, enjoy the protection of their laws while working it (always very favourably interpreted on his behalf), and then, when he has .accumulated enough to satisfy him, clear out, and leave the colony absolutely poorer by the amount he takes with him. Your Correspondent, like many others, seems to forget that gold mining, which is the chief attraction for' John, is not like any other industry. Whatever quantity he may be lucky enough to take away with him is so much clear loss to the Colony ; for the argument that he works ground which Europeans would not, will not stand. In the first place, he only does so when he cannot help it, and is willing to work as rich ground as he can get hold of, and small blame to "him; and in the next place there is no ground which will pay him to work now, which would not pay Europeans to work at some future time. I positively assert that it was nothing else which .brought about the sudden collapse of the mining industry in Victoria than the large amount of what, in the early days, was called poor ground which was worked out by John; and which, but for him, would have been there for the miner to fall back upon as rich ground became scarcer. Hordes of Chinamen were allowed to pour in without restriction, because a few large import merchants in Melbourne benefited by their trade, and they were allowed to rob the Colony in broad daylight of the gold which should have been retained for this European _ colonist, whose enterprise and industry had discovered it. If these men came into the Colony to settle in it^to take up landand cultivate it, to establish manufactures, or in any way to benefit it permanently, even then they would not be desirable colonists in any large numbers, and we should have.the same right to reject .them as we would a. cargo of convicts or French Communists. It ifl-not a'question 'in which the Home Government has any right to interfere ; it is entirely a domestic matter relating to ourselves alone, and we alone should have the right to determine whether they should be admitted to the Colony which' we have made our home. — Yours, &c, ' • Miner.

Blacks] Augu3t'sth,lß77.