11 MARCH 1905, Page 15

mo 7ADDVOR os Till"13PICTRAZOR.") SID,—May I ask . you to

notice the aspect of this question. which is here presented P The countries which largely. employ- cheap coloured labour to perform, often in hot climates, work 'which white men cannot so cheaply perform seem to- have gone ahead in prosperity, wealth, and population. Example : the United States, where the population has gone up to over seventy millions. Also British India.• On the other hand, countries which exclude coloured labour, like the States. of Australasia, Australia and New Zealand, though possessing a larger area and unbounded advantages of soil and climate, continue to suffer from a miserable unexpanding revenue, heavy taxation, and a stationary population, not yet exceeding four millions. Those who oppose the employment of cheap coloured labour in South Africa would boycott the industrious Chinaman, refusing to allow him to work for an honest wage

because he works cheaper than white men, are, according to the above view, blocking the one road in a new country to prosperity and denying the principles of Free-trade.—I am,

Sir, &c., T. W. W.

[If our correspondent had studied our articles on the question of Chinese labour a little more closely, he would have found that we have never advocated that the door should be closed to individual Chinamen. We object to indentured labour, and to special legislation under which Chinamen can be imported on semi-servile conditions. To the use of Chinese labour in tropical Colonies we have never objected, but regard it as legitimate. But the Transvaal is not a tropical Colony, but essentially a white man's country.— ED. Spectator.]