THE COOLIE OF BRITISH GUIANA.*
[SECOND NOTICE.] Mn. Jenkins's book seems to us almost more valuable as supple- menting and explaining the Commissioners' Report for the benefit of the Colonial Office, than for putting the philanthropic public en rapport with the Coolie. In our author's untrammelled and irresponsible position, he tells a more simple, unvarnished tale of the Coolies' rights and wrongs than the Commissioners, harassed with the ever-present necessity of the strictest impartiality, can do; and we find, accordingly, that he is less sparing of the feelings of the planters as a body, though avoiding all personalities. His position is nominally that of a partizan, but the danger of partizan- ship ceases when the object is not to gain a verdict, or even to represent a patron or a friend, but simply to ascertain the truth, in the hope of benefiting a large body of unprofitable clients. The Commissioners had more to do,—they had to see that in working for improvement in the future they cast no undeserved slur upon the past. It is this feeling, for instance, that makes them severe—in jus- tice to the planters, they imagine—on language of Mr. Des Viseux which the evidence did not altogether justify. But as Mr. Jeri- kiln; points out, they forget that they were not appointed to sit on Mr. Des Van's, but to inquire into the relations of planter and coolie, and if some of Mr. Des Venus's numerous counts were not proven, they had only to accept that fact without comment. It is also to be noted that Mr. Des Voaux could not be allowed time after his arrival at Georgetown to prepare his case, though after reading carefully both his letter and Mr. Jenkins's book, we have little doubt that he could satisfactorily have done so as far as all the main points of it are concerned. At any rate, Mr. Des Vasux has done good and brave service in encountering the odium which he was sure to incur, instead of quietly ignoring, as he so easily might have done, the responsibility which the knowledge he had gained as a magistrate laid upon him of exposing, in order, as far as he could, to remedy, the abuses of which ho had become cognizant.
It is, perhaps, scarcely an advantage to the cause of redress that the grievances, albeit sad enough in all conscience, are not startlingly horrible. For humanity is more easily roused by cruelty than by injustice. The examination of witnesses before the Commissioners at Georgetown revealed nothing like the horrors either of American negro slavery, or even of the system of procuring and treating labourers which prevails,— if not at this very time, at any rate, which did very recently pre- vail—at Queensland, Australia, and which Captain Palmer de- scribed in a book which we lately noticed. t Nevertheless, there is a long and serious indictment against the ruling powers of British Guiana. Mr. Jenkins says :—" In looking at the immigration system, the abuses constitute a subordinate part of it ; their man- agement can, by stricter supervision and re-organized machinery, be made nearly perfect. But how are we to change a society ? how to secure a just administration of law ? how to insure to the Coolie, well or ill, a safe resort in cases of wrong, oppression, and fraud? " That is, the action of the dominant party could easily be turned in the right direction, if the selfishness of the spirit that rules it could be exorcised. But till justice to all classes has be- come a habit with all classes in British Guiana,—as, on the whole, it is in Great Britain—it behoves our Colonial Office to look very sharply after the constitution and laws of the local government, and after the character of the governor, who, otherwise, wields a power for which he is practically unaccountable, and which he may in timidity, or indolence, or ignorance, use or surrender for the pleasure of the wealthy and powerful iu his little dominion. We can do little more here than catalogue first, the evidences of this sort of blind and instinctive selfishness of spirit, and next, the acts which result from it, to the great loss and misery of the coloured labourers.
To begin, then, at the top, with the Governor. Au Immigra- tion Agent-General is appointed to regulate the supply of labourers from India, China, and elsewhere, and to protect them by carrying out the provisions of the various ordinances passed for that pur- pose. But we find that a late Governor, Sir Francis Mucks, took upon himself gradually to clip his wings and circumscribe his duties, till he (Governor Hinds), whose duty it hardly could have been to identify himself with any one class of his subjects, became virtually the arbiter of the Coolies' fate, the latter being thus deprived of the only powerful friend whose special, indeed sole, duty it was "to step in on all occasions and under all circumstances for their protection, and to see that they were fairly, and justly, and properly dealt with." Great delay and neglect * The Coolie. his liiylds and Wionis. By the Author of " lux.3 Baby." London: Straiten and CO.
"Kidnapping to the South Seas."
in the redress of grievances was the result. The same governor, it is stated, also passed ordinances affecting the immigrants, " the provisions of which were chiefly and obviously to facilitate not the Coolie's remedies, but those of his employer," without even con- sulting the agent-general, who did not know of them till they were passed. Then, as to the Council who assist the Governor, and pass the ordinances which make or mar the fortunes of the immigrant, it consists of four Government officers, acting, of course, for all parties alike, and of five other individuals, sent as vacancies occur in the council by a college of seven persons, elected for life by a constituency of only nine hundred persons qualified by property.
Clearly the Immigration Agent-General ought to be a member of this Council. A natural result of his exclusion is that ordinances for the benefit of the immigrants drafted by the Immigration Agent-General are so altered in council, and the important pro-
tective clauses so often expunged, that he does not re- cognize his own work when returned to him. Then, as to the magistrates, their unequal and often culpably lax adminis- tration of justice is the theme of pages upon pages throughout the book. We find them continuing to convict and punish immigrants under an ordinance which the Chief Justice himself had decided was incapable of interpretation, and under which no conviction could take place ; a fact " which, short of actual corruption, is one of the most startling proofs that could be afforded of magisterial demorali- zation." The Commissioners say that the recovery of two small sums " is the only instance, so far as we know, of a dispute as to the rate of wages in which the immigrants were enabled to recover by the intervention of the Immigration Office in the magistrates' Court ; and that before arriving at it, there had been two inquiries and one arbitration on the estate, several complaints from the Coolies addressed to all manner of authorities, and a strike of more than a fortnight, during which the loss to the labourers must have been considerable, as well as to the estate." " Wherever we went," they add, " we heard the immigrants loudly protesting a complete want of confidence in the magistrates' impartiality." Is this wonderful, when we find that " out of 31,900 cases returned for five years, 16,222 resulted in convictions "? "A large proportion of the rest were withdrawn or compromised, and a small proportion were acquittals. Nothing can be more significant of the course of justice than this It is incredible that this is a proper average of acquittals." In one district there were four acquittals out of 818 charges. " In another district, in five years, out of 1,603 cases, there were only 33 acquittals ; and in the last three years, of 783 eases not one has ended in an acquittal I This is simply monstrous." "To be prosecuted is with an immigrant almost the same thing as to be convicted and sentenced." Another sad evidence of the want of proper appreciation of their responsibility by some of the magis- trates, is that they will not only accept the hospitalities of managers whose cases they are about to try—though the most honourable will not do even this—but that they have been known to listen to their side of the story and advise with them before going into court. And when we turn, lastly, to the managers themselves, we find that the spirit of self—to the utter ignoring of the claims of the labourer—is, as we might expect, even more predominant than with those higher in power who should control and counteract it. In the instance already quoted—of a solitary decision of a wages' case in favour of the coolies—so strong is the manager's position, and so utter his belief in himself as the only real authority on his estate, that though the matter had been left to the arbitration of three neighbouring managers, their decision, being adverse to him, was not accepted, and the plaintiffs had to take out summonses against him before they could gain redress, and the only advantage of the arbitration consisted in the moral force, in court, of its decision. The same intense confidence in the impregnability of their position leads them—and, of course, in such a moral atmosphere their confidence is not often betrayed— to trust so completely as a matter of course to the support of their subordinates' evidence, that they do not even inquire before the trial begins what they are going to say. Again, we learn that the returns of wages earned, called for by the Commissioners, were prepared in so loose and careless a style, or that there was such a mental obliquity in regarding the principle on which they should be prepared, that they were utterly untrustworthy. Mr. Jenkins tells us, as an instance of the prevailing feeling in the colony, that neither he nor the Commissioners could for some time secure the service of secretaries, and that those who were finally brave enough to offer themselves, and then and afterwards to speak honestly their convictions, were everywhere assured that they would ruin their prospects in the colony.
With such a spirit imbuing almost every white man, from the highest to the lowest, with some noble exceptions—amongst
which it is encouraging to find the four probably most impor- tant officials, namely, the present Governor, the Immigration Agent-General, the Inspector-General of Police, and the Medical Inspector of Hospitals—it is not wonderful that we have lastly to record a long list of grievances that cry out urgently for re- dress. And first, the Colonial Emigration recruiting agents in India and elsewhere—besides occasionally kidnapping persons, of which there have been some atrocious instances—grossly misrepresent to the coolie the work to be done and the wages to be earned in British Guiana ; and carefully conceal the conditions of punishment —fine and imprisonment—for non-fulfilment of engagements. The coolies are assured—on printed forms which are handed to them and called certificates, and which purport to emanate from the Guianian Government, but which are coolly ignored when presented in British Guiana—that they will " easily earn " from ls. 3d. to 4e. for out-door labour, and have a house rent-free and many other comforts. They are taken from all sorts of occupations and not informed that thez are meant to be used only for out-door labour, and many are consequently subjected to deep disappointment and irremediable injury ; and it is no comfort for them that the planters also suffer by this system, as they have to keep in hospital and otherwise, sick and incapable immigrants in large numbers. We are shocked to see this fatal incongruity between the promises of the recruiting agents and the performances of the planters, called by the Commissioners themselves " carelessness as to the ants of their agents abroad " on the part of the Immigration Sooiety. Again, the medical officer of emigration makes the moat cursory and hasty and utterly insufficient examination of the emigrants, passing numbers of them who are quite unfit for the voyage, and much more so for hard labour, while the "Protector of Emigrants " not only performs his duties most ineffectually, but will not even answer the letters and expostulations of the Immigra- tion Agent-General at Demerara. These deceived emigrants find on arrival at Georgetown that not only is labour, for which they are often quite unfit, demanded of them, but that they incur punish- ments, of which they never heard, for its non-performance, and that the able-bodied amongst them cannot earn nearly the wages which had been promised to them. So far from even 2s. being "easily earned," a best man in perfect health will not earn more than from ls. 7d. to is. lid., not on an average, but for a best day's work ; while 2s. 6d. is the highest wages of the highest class of workmen (engineers), and ls. 3d. a high average for out-door work for good men. The coolie is therefore grossly deceived on the most important of all points, his occupation and his wages, and he does not find it out till half the world divides him from friends and home. He is indentured for five years ; there is nothing else for it, as there is also nothing else for the majority of them, when that term is worked out, but to be re-indentured for another term, every obstacle being putt in the way of freedom, while temptation and coercion are used to induce a further surrender of liberty. Then follow aggravations of his misery. If he loses• time, he is not only imprisoned, but he has to make up the time thus lost at the end of his indentures. His wages are often. (against law) deferred or stopped. If he go to seek redress at the Immigration Office, he is taken up for absence from his plantation and fined or imprisoned, though there exists a special proviso that for the purpose of laying a complaint he may absent himself. This provision for his safety was, till lately, sys- tematically ignored. Again, though the planters have very sum- mary methods for enforcing their side of the contract—in making which, by the bye, the coolie has practically no hand—the coolie has none ; he has to bring a civil action, and we have already seen how often he succeeds. " The entire number of charges under the Immigration ordinances before stipendiary magistrates in the colony, for five years ending June 30, 1870, is returned at 32,876. Of these the Report says, 1 certainly not a hundred, perhaps not a score, were cases by immigrants, or by others on their behalf, against employers ; and the charges brought by officials against employers under the same Acts may be almost counted on the fingers of one hand. It follows from this that the immigrants. must look upon the Court as a place for doing justice rather upon them, than to them.' " Amongst many of the disabilities under which the poor coolie labours in Court is his ignorance of the language, and the difficulty of getting au honest interpreter. Mr. Des Vamx, who knew something of the language, gave an instance of deliberate falsehood in an interpreter, which he himself heard and detected. Another is, that the entries in the books of the estates are taken as legal evidence, so that the coolie is at the mercy, not only of the honesty, but of the accuracy of the officials of the estate. And a more serious one still is that " the coolie defendant cannot, under the Immigration ordinances, give evidence in his own case. Perhaps nothing," adds Mr. Jenkins, " will more /startle the reader of these pages than to learn that in a matter 'professedly of civil contract, the mouth of the unfortunate de- fendant contractor is shut." The vagueness and contradictoriness 'of many of the ordinances which govern the coolie are other pro- catives of much annoyance and distress. For instance, the price of work, whether by the day or " task," in case of dispute, is to be regulated by that given on the neighbouring plantations. But the conditions may be different, or the prices in the neighbourhood different, or there may be no other plantation near. Again, the coolie is punishable for not going to work, and for being about from work, and yet he may be doing task-work which, if he finishes in the week, he may begin when he likes ; yet he may not be absent or idle, say on Monday, without being liable to punish- ment, and almost certainly incurring it. The same ordinance pre- vents their taking holiday with safety when the weekly task is done ; and another, providing for their not being found off their .own estate, lays the same embargo on liberty earned by work. Of the long hours of work often enforced in the sugar factories— sometimes as much as twenty-three hours' continuous labour-- -and of what may be called the more domestic matters, the taxes on food, the great disparity between the number of male 'and female immigrants, the bad drainage, bad water, cruelties and carelessnesees in hospital, and of the weakness of the Government in enforcing the ordinances on these matters, we have not space to write. We can only recommend the careful study of the book, and -conclude with the admirable paragraph that closes Mr. Jenkins's ,chapter on "Immigration Laws :"—" It should be the aim of legislation to confer upon the coolie—to protect, at all events—the maximum of liberty consistent with an honest performance of his contract. The policy of legislation has hitherto been rather to remind him of the force of his bonds, than to render them so light that he may be almost unconscious of them."
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