[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—The replies to Mr. John Clapperton's queries (Spectator, February 20th) are obvious. Where the Chinaman comes in the white workman goes out. He• is as intelligent as the white worker, and three Chinese can live in comfort upon what would be a starving pittance for a European labourer. If his steady influx were permitted, the same laws that have placed most of the wealth and much of the power of European peoples in the hands of an alien race would operate to his benefit also, in a new and empty land, at a vastly swifter rate. Where are the founders of Goa and Macao ? In a generation, what hold will the whites have upon the trade of Singapore? In the matter of Chinese contract labourers, their case is not on "all fours" with that of "Mr. Atkins," who serves his nation, speaks its vernacular, is upheld by his officers, and guarded by public opinion. What is proposed in the name of safeguarding the yellow labourer's interest is neither more nor less than the re-establishment of barracoon slavery upon British soil. What consideration or protection will • be awarded to the yellow heathen, on the one hand, by those who exploit him, and, on the other, by those he has expelled and displaced ? Wherever the Chinaman comes among a white working population the people instinctively feel—notwithstanding his undeniable qualities—the menace and the danger he is to their race and their possession of the soil he invades. We may be perfectly certain that this menace and this danger will be recognised by all the real Colonists of South Africa, and that their discontent and anger will be shared by all those whose opportunities for forming an opinion have not been circumscribed by the interests of a London office, or the security of an assured
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