THE COLONIST. Published Daily—Mornings. Nelson, Friday, March 11, 1892. QUEENSLAND SLAVERS.

Colonist, Volume XXXV, Issue 7207, 11 March 1892, Page 3

THE COLONIST. Published Daily — Mornings. Nelson, Friday, March 11, 1892. QUEENSLAND SLAVERS.

Thsre is commotion among the] Queensland sugar planters, in its way, as fierce as there was not long since among those engaged in the pastoral industry. While there seemed to be a prospect of combating with a moderate amount of Bnccess the somewhat excessive pretensions of that formidable combination formed among the Shearers, because substitutes were procurable from New Zealand, the producers of sugar are at the mercy of men who can endure the hardships inseparable from toil in an exceedingly hot climate. Thus there appears to be no help for a great industry but the revival of the system of recruiting among the Polynesian natives, or in plain terms, the renewal of the Slave Trade. That there is any hope of the hideous abuses and countless crimes J formerly committed, practically without check, being prevented, or even materially lessened, cannot be honestly J pretended. Recruiting among a people with slender notions of the rights of their fellows to perfect freedom, when there are those interested in procuring a price for them under some pretext, i 3 not to be expected. Even with the most rigorous regulations, and with the employment of agents as vigilant as can be obtained, it was, and will again be, absolutely impossible to hinder boys being obtained contrary to the desires of their parents, and what is far more difficult, ensuring the return of those probationers who have servecT their covenanted term to the tribes to which they belong; There is no disputing the fact that barbarities were practised by those employed in recruiting of a disgraceful character, possibly, it is an exaggeration to talk about the horrors of the African slave trade being renewed ; but at any rate, it does pot need those atrocities to cause the condemnation of a traffic legalised among people of our own race for the sake of making larger gains, that are procurable by confining the employment to men with a certain extent of civilisation, and capable of making their own bargains for their services. What, it may be asked, is i the reason that Indian or Chinese labor is not employed ? And the only answer" possible reveals the sordid motive — that it wpuld be vastly more expensive. Thus it comes again in the world's history that men of British \ blood, men who never tire of boasting of their freedom, of declaring they never will be slaves, are not top proud tp trick a poor Polynesian black into t working for them at very niuph below what his labor is worth. The very i foundation of the movement made at the instigation of the Queensland sugar 1 planters is what they conceive to be [ tbe necessity of making a large addition to 'their profits, on pain of an end being put to the industry they have embarked their capital in, fciow, it must never be forgotten, that the legitimate gains from the cultivation of sugar in Queensland were not any time sufficient to enable the planters to pay their way. To make their speculations profitable, tjie planters found ' themselves forced to practise many crimes, the least being, exae:ing labor for inadequate payment. When com pulsion or fraud bad once put the colored workman in the power of his [ employer, many methods were resorted to Iv order to obtain a satisfactory

amount of labor. The chance of an ignorant black man getting a patient hearing for his complaints and having his grievances redressed was at any time exceedingly small, though protectors of the natives might be plentiful in every district. This experience has shown, beyond all question, that the moat elaborate precaulions have entirely failed in the past to defend the recruit from the dishonest impositions jDf his employer, ever prepared to resfQrfc to the most cruel means to secure submission to his will. When the recruit is once landed, and ia supposed to be under the protection of a settled government, with its parliament and newspaper press to publish to the world the wrongs of the humblest sufferers, it is hard to believe that crimes are concealed, were it not that in simi'ar conditions the like things were constantly done in the old slavery days in the Southern States of America. Federation is a strange cry for a country to raise when one of the conditions permitted is the revival of a system of slavery. There may be much to pity in the failure of an important industry to maintain itself in a country in many respects fitted for it, but on no possible terms can a British community tolerate the resumption, under any fancy name, of a system of slavery.